SOUTH OF SHILOH
Chuck Logan
Harper
Thriller
ISBN: 9780061136696

Chuck Logan is known primarily for his Phil Broker novels, but his latest offering is not one of those. SOUTH OF SHILOH is a dramatically different turn for Logan, a book that surprises with its page-by-page richness, depth and ability to transcend its genre.

The story is set in one of the most interesting areas of the United States --- northern Mississippi in the vicinity of the Tennessee border. It begins with the death of Paul Edin, an insurance salesman from Minnesota who is participating in a Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Kirby Creek near the Mississippi town of Corinth. Logan’s attention to detail with respect to what goes into the preparation for participation in a Civil War battle reenactment is worth the price of admission here all by itself. But the ultimate focus is Edin, who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, inadvertently taking a bullet meant for Kenny Beeman, a local police officer.

That bullet was fired by Mitchell Lee Nickels, whose marriage into the prosperous and influential Kirby family ultimately cannot overcome his background and heredity, which includes a feud with Beeman’s family that goes back at least one generation. Edin, as we learn in beautifully understated dribs and drabs, was a solid, dependable and decent man, raising a 10-year-old daughter, Molly, who he knew was not his own. Edin’s widow, Jenny, had been discussing with him shortly before his death how they were going to approach Molly with the news concerning her paternity.

Jenny is literally on the verge of bringing John Rane, Molly’s biological father, into the discussion when she learns of her husband’s death. Rane is a well-known news photographer, and, as we come to learn, something more. While he could face the open end of a gun barrel armed with nothing but a camera, he could not confront the duties of fatherhood and left another man to do so. Though Edin’s death is officially ruled an accident, the result of an apparent negligent misfire by an accidentally loaded gun, Rane decides to conduct his own investigation. Traveling to Corinth, ostensibly to do a photo feature on the Civil War reenactments and Edin’s death, Rane meets up with Beeman and forms an almost immediate kinship with him, forged in the sudden death of a man whom neither knew well but to whom both owe much for different reasons, which have common elements nonetheless.

As their investigation into the circumstances of Edin’s shooting confirms that Edin was indeed the victim of a bullet meant for Beeman, the men begin to take different paths toward a single-minded pursuit of justice and retribution. There is more going on here, however, than the book reveals at first blush. Nickels’s sins are many, and as they are slowly uncovered, they also come back to haunt him in ways he cannot anticipate. As the novel proceeds steadily toward a suspenseful, pulse-pounding climax, debts are paid but not without cost.

SOUTH OF SHILOH is a deep, quiet masterpiece, one that should find its way onto many “Best Of” lists for this year and bring Logan the focus and attention he has long deserved.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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