Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2017
280 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
Five memorable characters, each with a separate agenda, come together in this layered tale of murder, deceit, and political intrigue.
After his unspectacular professional baseball career ends with a knee injury in Toledo, Ohio, Johnny Earl gets busted for selling cocaine. After serving seven years in prison, all he wants to do is return to his hometown of Steubenville, retrieve the drug money he stashed before he went to jail, and start a new life where no one has ever heard of Johnny Earl.
However, before he can leave town with his money, Johnny is picked up for questioning in the murder of Rayce Daubner, the FBI informant who had set him up on drug charges in the first place. Then his former prison cellmate shows up - a white supremacist who wants the drug money to help fund an Aryan nation in the wilds of Idaho.
"Starred Review. Yocum (A Brilliant Death) has produced a rollicking tale sure to appeal to Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard fans." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Superb… The narrative fascinates as much for its artfulness as for the revelations that come through the multiple points of view: the splendid pacing, the deceptively simple prose, and the high energy boiling just beneath it all prove addictive." - Booklist
"Starred Review. As if the raucous plot isn't complicated enough, Yocum filters it all through a system of dueling first-person narrators whose perspectives are amusingly at odds with each other to produce a memorably merry tale of murder most richly deserved." - Kirkus
"Robin Yocum writes vividly about what he knows, suffusing a bleak landscape with brilliantly conceived and memorable characters and a compelling plot that will keep you reading, and guessing, to the very end." - Mark Pryor, author of The Paris Librarian
This information about A Welcome Murder was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Robin Yocum is the author of the critically acclaimed novels A Brilliant Death, Favorite Sons, and The Essay. Favorite Sons was named the 2011 USA Book News' Book of the Year for Mystery/Suspense. It was selected for the Choose to Read Ohio program for 2013-14 and was a featured book of the 2012 Ohioana Book Festival. Yocum is also the author of Dead Before Deadline...and Other Tales from the Police Beat and Insured for Murder (with Catherine Candisky). He is the president of Yocum Communications, a public relations and marketing firm in Westerville, Ohio. He is well known for his work as a crime and investigative reporter with the Columbus Dispatch from 1980-1991. He was the recipient of more than thirty local, state, and national journalism awards in categories ranging from investigative reporting to feature writing.
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