Hell With the Lid Blown Off: An Alafair Tucker Mystery

Hell With the Lid Blown Off is a historical novel set in the rural Oklahoma of 1916. In folk history terms, this gives us a chance to see life from the hardscrabble farmers’ point of view. Life was tough and about to become tougher as America decided to enter the Great War in Europe. About one third of the way through the book, there’s a major storm, and a tornado picks things up and drops them down again.

One of the “things” found when people emerge from shelter is a body that was probably dead before the storm arrived. This leaves the final third of the book to decide whether this suspicious death was a murder and, if so, who might have done it. Although this is probably very authentic, I found little to engage my interest in the people. They are the stock characters of hardworking, God-fearing farmers who are bullied by the local bad apple family. Needless to say, the body belongs to the most despised member of this family and no one in the community spares even a minor regret at his passing. Although the actual mystery element is quite nicely worked out, I found reading the book hard work.