Distant Sons by Tim Johnston

 

So, this novel manages to tie into both Descent and The Current, but it does so subtly, and it doesn't matter if you're not like intimately familiar with either or both those other books--there are things that came back to me as I was reading this, but this novel is pretty well self-contained. It's set in small-town Minnesota/Wisconsin, and there are a lot of screwed-up people there, even aside from the crimes at the core of the novel, in the ways that small-town-Middle-America tends to screw people up: mostly drugs, but violence and blown chances have their say, too. The main here is probably less screwed up than most, and trying to make his way. He's basically a good guy who can't let bad stuff stand, and that keeps getting him into trouble (it did in Descent, too). This is a complex novel, though it's mostly linear--and there's a strong hint that the actual truth of the older crimes at the center of the novel dies with one of the POV characters, which might cut crossways to some people's preferences. The prose skitters toward beautiful, and the characters and the places are deeply believable. Highly recommended.