Bernard Schopen - Böcker

Norman "Fats" Rangle, an ex-deputy sheriff, operates a horse stabling and excursion business with his brother and sister-in-law on their family ranch in the small rural community of Blue Lake, a few hours outside of Las Vegas. But fate has other plans for him when, high on a southern Nevada mountain range, Fats discovers the wreckage of a plane that crashed two years earlier. Although he reports his find to the sheriff, he does not disclose that someone had already been to the crash site—evidence that Fats deliberately destroyed.Soon, Fats is tracking back and forth between Las Vegas and Blue Lake in a search for a missing cousin, a briefcase full of cash, and finally, for a killer. Along the way, Fats also begins to understand that he's searching for himself and his place in a rapidly changing West.Angry and alienated, Fats distrusts everyone he meets, from sleaze-merchants and political power brokers to two women: one he wants to believe in, a retired judge; and one, a police sergeant, he can't quite believe isn't deceiving him. After all, in this Nevada, corruption is a given. Everybody lies. Much is uncertain—motives, loyalties, affections. But in Drowning in the Desert, one thing is certain: water is a precious resource that can both kill and be killed for.

After publishing The Iris Deception, the final of his three Jack Ross detective novels, in 1996, Bernard Schopen's literary voice went quiet. Nearly two decades later that voice makes a distinctive return with Calamity Jane, a novel that takes a hard look at the realities of rural and ranching Nevada while also examining the enduring myths of the West. Calamity Jane is not a detective novel, but there are mysteries here and fans of Schopen will recognize connections to his earlier work. Set somewhere in the arid basin and range wilds east of Reno and north of Las Vegas, Calamity Jane is told through the private journal of retired high school English teacher Winnifred Westrom, long-time resident of Blue Lake and a keen observer with a stake in the story. This is grown-up fiction, asking serious questions about the fate and future of the West and exploring ideas as big as the Great Basin it inhabits. At the same time, it is storytelling worthy of the Western movies and pulp fictions it admires. Bernard Schopen in Calamity Jane is an old dog up to new tricks.

Tad Fellows is an American graduate student working on an archaeological dig in rural England. He is also a wounded veteran of the Afghanistan war, where he found purpose and identity as a cog in the vast military machine of the U.S. Army. A quiet man prone to unexplained blackouts, guided and comforted by the stoic advice of Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius, Tad is intent on doing what he now believes is his destined role—protecting the dig and its artifacts, including the mummified corpse of a Roman soldier. The dig completed, Tad is assigned to catalogue its artifacts in the cellar of a Cambridge museum. At ease in the world only when he is surrounded by the detritus of the past, Tad believes himself content.Instead, he finds himself at the center of a maelstrom where academic rivalries, international politics, the stultifying English class system, and his own awkward foray into love leave him bewildered and more alone than ever. Marcus’s wisdom no longer suffices, and a series of devastating betrayals drive Tad deeper into his own dark world, toward a cataclysmic climax.Novelist Bernard Schopen is at the top of his form in this gripping, perceptive account of a misfit struggling to hold fast to ancient values of loyalty and duty in a world where little is as it seems and only the past can be trusted.

In The Dying Time, Bernard Schopen delivers a thrilling and contemplative addition to the Jack Ross series. Jack Ross has settled into his old age as well as anyone can. He jogs. He eats right. He naps. He no longer involves himself with the actions or the people that have developed into a “nasty notoriety.” That is until Alicia, Ross’s ex-wife and sister of Jack’s best and ailing friend, receives a potentially earth-shattering letter. A young woman, Mia Dunn, believes that Randall Barnes, Alicia’s deceased husband, might be her father. Reluctantly agreeing to discover the truth of these claims, Ross soon finds himself embroiled in a plot stretching back decades, and it’s not long before old habits come to the surface. The Dying Time is a poignant observation on the process of aging, astute and insightful as it is suspenseful intrigue. This novel asks how people come to create an identity and if we can ever truly bury the past. Can hurt stay hidden? How about the money? In a wonderful addition to the Jack Ross Series, Bernard Schopen is running on all cylinders as he weaves his plot with the golden thread of truth. In The Dying Time, the power of fiction is manifest. Here is a masterly yarn that keeps you guessing while always touching on something profound and inevitable in us all.