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Summary
Summary
When aging, balding, copy editor Ernest Sparky Hemingway gets a call from the daughter of his Vietnam buddy George Washington, he leaves his quiet world and heads out to Minneapolis to help her out of a jam. Then things start to get weird.
Author Notes
Joel Rosenberg is the author of the best-selling Guardians of the Flame books as well as the D'Shai and Keepers of the Hidden Ways series. He resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Home Front is the first in his Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway mysteries, a delightful new series with a wonderfully quirky character set in the land of the Cohen Brothers' Fargo .
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
If this first mystery from fantasy author Rosenberg (Not Exactly the Three Musketeers) were a movie, it might be titled "The Boyz in the 'Hood Take a Day Trip to Lake Woebegone." Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway, a 50-ish copyeditor living in Hardwoods, N.Dak., gets a call from the teenage daughter of his Vietnam buddy George "Prez" Washington (an officer with a strange sense of humor put them both in the same tank crew, along with a guy called Doc Holliday). Seems that Prez, a Minneapolis pharmacist, has been killed by some of that city's burgeoning crew of gangbangers and left instructions that Hemingway and/or Holliday (now practicing medicine in Indianapolis) were to be called to look after daughter Tenisha in the event of his death. After both Sparky and Doc rush to Minneapolis and anger a large number of gangstas and local cops, Sparky takes the scared, shy, sullen Tenisha home to Hardwoods, where the locals are astonished to find an urban black teenager in their midst. An FBI agent with a Vietnamese face and a Norwegian last name shows up, making mysterious noises about Prez and his daughter; then four young black males are found dead in a car not far from Hardwoods. Rosenberg's plotting has some intriguing twists, and his portrait of Sparky as a man smarter and tougher than he looks is interesting, but the disparate elements never quite gel into an exciting or entertaining whole. (Mar. 12) FYI: The author should not be confused with Joel C. Rosenberg, author of the bestselling thriller The Last Jihad, also from Forge. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Reclusive Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway prefers the small-town life of Hardwoods, North Dakota, to the chaos of the city, and his freelance copyediting job to the rat race. The only thing that could draw Sparky and faithful mutt Snake out of the boondocks-an appeal for help from one of his close Vietvet buddies-comes from beyond the grave when Tenishia Washington, the teenage daughter of George "Prez" Washington, calls him. Gunned down by members of the Minneapolis chapter of the Crips, Prez told Tenishia with his dying words to call Sparky for help. Now that she's threatened by the Crips herself, Sparky brings the sullen girl back to Hardwoods, encountering a little resistance from gang members parked near her house. Sparky and Tenishia warm to each other slowly but surely. Aided by another vet pal named Doc (Holiday), Sparky fends off Minneapolis police inquiries. The centerpiece of the story is a massive blizzard that causes Sparky to respark an old love and Tenishia to find friendship with some neighboring kids. When the blizzard subsides, a carload of Minneapolis Crips are found frozen to death not far from Sparky's place. A letter Prez wrote shortly before his death turns out to provide the motive for his killing and gives Sparky the dangerous idea of making peace with the Crips before they make another attempt on Tenishia's life. Rosenberg (Not Quite Scaramouche, 2001, etc.) paints an appealingly offbeat backdrop for a mystery series, but leaves out the essential element of mystery. And Sparky's nonstop wisecracks may have limited appeal for the series this debut is kicking off.
Booklist Review
This is the first mystery from accomplished fantasy novelist Rosenberg. Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway is a copy editor, growing older and wearier by the day. When the daughter of old Vietnam buddy George Washington asks him to help her out of a tricky situation, he decides, somewhat unenthusiastically, to give it a shot. Teaming up with his ol' pal Doc Holliday, Sparky sets off from his comfy North Dakota home to the big, bad city of Minneapolis on his reluctant rescue mission. This is the first in a projected series of Sparky Hemingway novels, and if the series is to flourish, the author needs to make a few changes. The people-with-famous-names gimmick is tiresome; the first-person narration (by Hemingway) is wearisome; and one of the story's central plot points--the color of Tenishia Washington's skin--is handled in a manner that some readers might find distasteful. Still, Rosenberg has a sound premise (the aging-copy-editor-turned-sleuth), and readers looking for something offbeat may enjoy the story. --David Pitt
