An exciting story of murder and mayhem! This is the best book I've read in quite a while. It had an original story line and held my interest from start to finish. It had an exciting story of murder, man eating bears and a new family riding out the drama. Believable characters, great descriptions and nonstop action. What more can you ask for?

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

Henry Farrell's life is teetering toward a happy new start when a headless corpse is found off Red Pine Road. Although a bear has feasted on the body, it's clear the missing head was purposefully detached by something other than wildlife. In The Bramble and the Rose, third in Tom Bouman's Edgar-winning rural noir series (Dry Bones in the Valley), Henry is caught up in multiple homicides on the eve of his wedding.

Sole employee of the Wild Thyme, Pa., police department, Henry helps with the necessary tracking of the bear while also questioning neighboring landowners, trying to identify the body, investigating a string of convenience store robberies and coping with the stress of his and Julie's family in town for their impending nuptials. When someone from his past reappears with supposed information about the murdered man and his nephew goes missing, Henry's personal life is pulled into the mix, forcing him to leave his home and his family to clear his name of a second killing.

Bouman's writing is fluid, balanced and infused with a sense of place that makes Henry's mission all the more daunting. Bouman has a talent for "small town" writing--the secrets, character, quirky denizens and demanding landscape of Wild Thyme are seamless parts of the story but don't overtake it. The many intertwining plot arcs, both personal and professional, are compelling and always under control. Even with Henry on the run and loose ends fraying, Bouman ties the knots on another terrific mystery.

THE BRAMBLE AND THE ROSE: A Henry Farrell Novel
Tom Bouman
W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 978-393-24966-8
Hardcover
Literary Crime Fiction

THE BRAMBLE AND THE ROSE is a dark, blinding joy to read. Author Tom Bouman writes neither long nor frequently but when he does he makes every sentence, every word, count. This newly published work --- the third in what I suspect will be known as the Henry Farrell trilogy --- is impossible to put down when you start reading it and impossible to forget when you are finished.

Henry Farrell is a police force of one in Wild Thyme Township, a blink-and-you-miss-it hamlet tucked into the Endless Mountains of northeast Pennsylvania. It is the type of place where police jurisdictions shift among Farrell’s patch, the Holebrook County sheriff’s department, the Pennsylvania State Patrol, and the occasional quasi-administration of a state agency. All come into play with the grisly discovery of a headless body on some acreage near the shared border of two properties whose owners maintain an uneasy peace. The body has been mauled by a bear, and the question (among others) is whether the feast was the end result of ursan efforts or the creature happened upon the unlucky victim post mortem. It is concluded in due course that the latter was the case, as is the identity of the individual who occupied the corpse in happier times. The victim is Carl Dentry, a licensed private investigator. The reason for his presence in the back end of nowhere is unknown, as is his client. Farrell concludes, not unreasonably, that the answers to those questions will lead him to Dentry’s killer. Farell, as one might expect, has a life outside law enforcement, and Bouman’s delicate and elaborate construction of that, beautifully described in THE BRAMBLE OF THE ROSE, is as interesting as the quietly riveting murder investigation. Not the least of this is Farrell’s marriage to Julie --- Farrell refers to her as “Miss Julie throughout his first-person narrative --- and the fallout from that, which includes his parents, as well as his sister and her children, moving into the newlyweds’ homes while they take residence elsewhere. Julie and Farrell are newly pregnant as well, understandably regarded as a blessing by both. What keeps Farrell up at night, however, is an affair he had with a married woman named Shelly Bray. That relationship preceded his meeting Julie and for a short time overlapped their pre-engagement relationship, a detail that Farrell never mentioned to Julie when it would have been more opportune. Shelly subsequently divorced her husband, Jay and left the area. Jay, who is still around, is a source of worry for Farrell, but it is Shelly’s return to town that is a source of anxiety for Farrell on several levels. When Julie is found dead after being seen talking to Farrell at a local tavern, he immediately becomes a suspect in her murder and must go on the run to prove his innocence at a time when his family needs him most. There is a climax, and then a conclusion which seems full of uncertainty yet which Bouman, in the most subtle of ways, lets the reader know that everything turns out okay. Maybe better than okay.

THE BRAMBLE AND THE ROSE is beautifully conceived and written from beginning to end. I don’t know if there will be another Farrell novel but it is my fervent hope that Bouman will see fit in the future to revisit Wild Thyme, its inhabitants, and the surrounding environs frequently and, if possible, often. Strongly recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2020, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

This is the first I have read in the Henry Farrell series. I found it to be disjointed and had to force myself to finish it and it did not make me want to go back and read the prior novels in the series.

The Bramble and the Rose by Tom Bouman is a superb crime mystery in a rural setting where small town life is simple and law enforcement is routine until someone dies and then everything breaks loose. This novel kept the reader guessing at every turn as relationships were revealed and the plot thickened. Great read.

Know that large parts of this short novel take place in Henry Farrell's head and that if you, like me, did not read the first books, it might be a tad confusing. It has, however, quite a start- a headless body is found and everyone thinks it's a bear kill until the head is found in a tree. Yikes. There's more going on in Wild Thyme, a rural Pennsylvania town, than meets the eye and a lot of it somehow involves Henry and his family. Bouman has packed a lot into this slim volume. He's an interesting writer. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

A corpse found in the woods is initially blamed on a bear until it becomes clear that this decapitated body belongs to a murder victim. Officer Henry Farrell is left to figure this out while also investigating the disappearance of his nephew and fending off the suspicions of half the town that the himself is a criminal. I had not read previous books in the series, but I had no trouble treating this as a standalone novel, especially because there was lots of deep-woods atmospheric detail about rural mountain life that pulled me in. The book is well-written, and there is plenty of conflict between Farrell and it seems like just about everybody else. The pace picks up as the story progresses. The stakes are high for Farrell, and the element of personal risk as he investigates makes the action compelling.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital advance review copy.

A series that drew me in from the first pages.So well written characters that come alive kept my interest .Set in rural Pennsylvania this oe opens with the discovery of a headless body a stranger murdered a book to read#norton&norton#netgalley

This novel is a slow burn despite the presence of a headless dead man in the early pages. Set in Wild Thyme, a rural town in Pennsylvania, the first-person narrator, Officer Henry Farrell, takes the reader on a journey that starts out as a simmer and ends in a boil. The aforementioned dead man is at first presumed to have been killed by a wild bear, but once his head is discovered high up in the hollow of a tree, it becomes clear that foul play is involved. The rest of the story is a race to determine who the dead man is, who killed him, and why. The story branches off in an equally compelling direction when an old-flame of Officer Farrell's ends up dead. Prime suspect: him. This is elegant writing, labyrinthine and interconnected plots, and characters the reader will hear and feel. In other words, the best kind of crime fiction. Highly recommended.

For me this was a strange book. It starts off interestingly enough with the discovery of a headless body, but it develops into this whirlwind of thoughts and images that take place in the main character’s mind.
This might lead you to believe it is a psychological thriller but it isn’t. I understand that this is rural crime fiction but I found that there was way more information about hunting than was necessary to push the story forward or in any way adds to the story. I agree with other reviewers that you need to have read the previous books in the series to really grasp the relationships and don’t recommend reading this book as a standalone. The ending was over dramatic and over complicated and felt very contrived to me. This book had potential but really missed the mark in my opinion.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Set in rural Pennsylvania, the Henry Farrell series continues to keep you on the edge of your seat and watching his character evolve, both in his professional and his personal life. All of Bouman’s characters are people of action—a great deal of the pleasure of reading this book comes from trying to determine what is going on internally with each character’s thoughts and emotions, while the action continues—hiding, tracking, hunting. Thoroughly enjoying watching Henry and the rest of the characters evolve.

This is OK. It's uneven and most of the characters lack development. I didn't read the previous books in the series, and I suspect it lacked some of it's punch for me for this reason. Nonetheless, I probably would have been disappointed either way.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

The Bramble and the Rose (great title) starts out strong with a gruesome discovery in the woods and the initial scene of the investigation. To all appearances a man has been attacked, mutilated, and killed by a bear. Once the investigation gets going things become much more complex.

The plot quickly devolves into a confused flashback to a recent wedding that introduces too many characters who are little more than a jumble of names thrown out in quick succession. I was eventually able to sort out exactly who was who as the story progressed but there were several important characters that never really "came to life" in any significant way. I spent the first half of the book trying to play catch up.

That plus several long stretches of stream-of-consciousness narrative that reduced everything to a snail's pace had me seriously thinking about not finishing. Then around the halfway point the story focused more on what was actually going on, some decent plot twists dropped into the mix, and my interest was renewed.

I suspect those who have read the earlier books in this series (I have not) will enjoy this book much more than I did.

For me it was just okay. The Bramble and the Rose doesn't make me want to search for other books in the Henry Farrell series but if I just happened to pick one up I'd probably read it.

***Thanks to NetGalley, author Tom Bouman, and W. W. Norton & Company for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.