Bouman's first novel, Dry Bones of the Valley, was a stunner, with prose you wrote down or got out of your chair to read to your spouse. This one... not quite so much. But still an order of magnitude better than the industrially-churned out crap that keeps popping up on my benighted public library's webpage. Henry Farrell is still morose, brooding, and alone (except for a really unfortunate inclination to jump at the booty-call texts he gets from a local married woman. Of course it ends badly...). He hunts, he drinks, he drives around in his truck, he plays a soulful bluegrass fiddle. And he wanders around, into, and through the violence, abuse, cruelty and misery of the residents of Wild Thyme township, centering around the disappearance of the female half of a pathetic couple ensnared in poverty, drugs and alcohol. Bouman's best gift is his portrait of these folks: rural, poor, enmeshed in each other's networks of cousins, siblings, in-laws, bosses... everyone is connected somehow. It sounds depressing, and it is - sometimes - but he also sees their humanity, that no one wants to rat out their brother-in-law even if he is dealing; the anguished woman who cries for her missing sister no matter how badly she's hurt her. It's a community of people we don't see, and should. There is also the beauty of the woods, the rivers, the lakes; the music, the work ethic, the legitimate beefs and conflicts.

All that said, this is a tougher read than Dry Bones. The pacing lags, drags, slows, wanders... partly to illustrate how these backwoods crimes and problems drag out because there are too few cops and lawyers, boundaries are blurred, and sometimes just because no one cares enough to pursue. But after a while, after months and seasons pass, all those cousins and strangers and drifters start to get confusing, and it's difficult for the reader to maintain a keen interest either. Farrell meets a woman. That relationship chugs into low gear, but I still gagged on the first spark of passion between them being lit by a dawn deer hunt. The musical scenes, admirably written as they are, don't seem to serve much purpose other than Bouman (also a musician) wanted to write them. A side plot about a building project may interest carpenters, and the language of wood working is often rather poetic and rich, but is peripheral.

Good writing, a vivid and important cultural portrait. A bit slow and rambly, but he does know how to write a corpse. ( )

I almost didn't label it Police Procedural, because Henry sure doesn't feel compelled to follow the rules to the letter. He's a local boy, back after military, experience life & love, and then heartbreak/death.
Music is much of his life.
He's a good ol' boy, and yet not...
2nd of this line, still enjoyable. ( )

FATEFUL MORNINGS(HENRY FARRELL #2) BY TOM BOUMAN is the second in the Henry Farrell mysteries set in Wild Thyme Pennsylvania a small town but a town that is now seeing the dangers of drugs. Farrell is not only fighting the crime related to drugs, but now he has a missing person,possible murder on his hands.

This is the first in the Henry Farrell books I've read and I liked it so much I'm going to looking for the first book so I can really enjoy the series, in other words I'm hooked! Boumans main character, Henry Farrell is not your perfect law enforcement officer . He fools around with married women, & he drinks, sometimes too much, which makes Farrell seem just like regular folks. Maybe that's why he's such a good law officer & a good main character for this series.

I recieved this book free from goodreads in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Henry Farrell is the lone policeman who patrols the back roads of Wild Thyme township in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. Mostly his job isn’t too demanding. He can park his vehicle and spend time enjoying the local lakes and forests without anyone much missing him. He can even take on an illegal after-hours job. He helps dismantle old barns and salvage the wood for new barns designed by his best friend, wordworking genius Ed Brennan.
In Bouman’s fine descriptions of Henry’s world, you can just about smell the trees and ponds along with Henry, who narrates most chapters. In Henry and several other principal characters in this rural noir novel, Bouman has created well-rounded, complex individuals. Henry also plays fiddle in a roots music trio, for example.
These bucolic images coexist uneasily alongside the dirty business of hydraulic fracking and the even dirtier practice of drug dealing, which are ravaging the natural and human resources of Wild Thyme. As a result, law enforcement in the township is about to face some serious challenges. At first, it’s an uptick in burglaries and motor vehicle accidents, which Henry attributes to the rise in drug abuse.
But then a young woman goes missing. Penny Pellings is a sometimes heroin user who lives in a trailer with her boyfriend. The pair has lost custody of their infant daughter. Though they want her back, they aren’t on a road that can lead to that outcome.
The search for Penny Pellings requires the casting of a rather wide net, which takes Henry out of his jurisdiction. He has a thoughtful, amiable demeanor that helps him interact well with nearby departments that have many more resources than he does in Wild Thyme. So many crime novels focus on the turf battles and stonewalling between police agencies, it’s refreshing to see real cooperation.
Investigating Penny’s fate is an almost geological endeavor. Each layer excavated reveals another, with its own mysteries. In the end, the resolution of her story seems almost secondary to the 360-degree picture of the community of Wild Thyme that the author has created.
Bouman won an Edgar Award in 2015 for his first novel, Dry Bones in the Valley, also featuring Henry Farrell. ( )

Received an ARC of the book from the publisher.

If you like your crime novels to be of the meandering it's a boys life variety, this is the book for you. It certainly felt as if more time was spent on telling the protagonists life history, personality quirts, hobbies, and foibles than was spent trying to solve the various crimes that were committed. For what it was, it was well written; however, what it was wasn't really my cup of tea. ( )