Where the Dead Sleep, by Joshua Moehling

A carefully crafted mystery that keeps a reader guessing even after the story ends.

Acting Sheriff Ben Packard moved to a small town in Minnesota with some heavy baggage. As the plot in Where The Dead Sleep unfolds, the author unpacks this baggage, a few items at a time. It is brilliant mystery writing. Small revelations about Packard are layered within the clues regarding Packard’s investigation into who murdered Bill Sanderson. Eventually, the murderer is arrested, but a few items remain in Packard’s baggage.

Where The Dead Sleep is foremost a classic detective story. It is unusual among modern day mysteries, which are often tainted by thriller components designed to appeal to that massive audience that looks for action on every page. To be clear, there is thrilling action in Where The Dead Sleep, but it doesn’t saturate the plot. At one point a gunman shoots at Packard and then leads him on a wild boat chase in a lake. Another time, Packard is assaulted by a suspect he is attempting to take into custody. And then there is the suspenseful final arrest during which the antagonist shoots a hole the size of a baseball in a door behind which Packard stood the moment before. But these brief explosions of action involving Packard’s physical prowess are a sharp contrast to a multitude of his internal associations that are metaphysical in many respects. Most novelists approach this metaphysical side of their protagonists by writing the story in first person narration. Moehling chooses the third person point of view, which allows him to jump in and out of the mind of one of the antagonists. This gives the reader a broader connection to the story. More importantly, it presents a complex, yet ambiguous, world where the difference between truth and lying is uncertain.

The use of the third person narrative means that the plot is conveyed in a manner similar to the dismantling of a Russian doll. Packard’s mind approaches the murder by first looking at the largest doll. Not finding what would be an obvious solutions, he next extracts the second, smaller doll. Here reside additional clues that allow Packard to apply a new perspective and compile a list of suspects. As smaller dolls are taken out, Packard not only learns more about the crime, but makes associations relating to relationships among the suspects. The story beats come faster as the dolls get smaller. Finally, the murderer is revealed, but the story isn’t over. Moehling’s final revelation in the novel is brilliant. There is one more, tiny doll.

What makes Where The Dead Sleep a pure mystery is its intermingling of the actions associated with finding the murderer and the exploration of how Packard’s mind sorts through the clues. This involves depictions of his own prejudices and ideologies. So the reader experiences Packard’s blind spots in his thinking, and stays on the end of her seat to see how Packard overcomes his failings, and in the end how he gains perspective on events that occurred in his past, particularly the death of his lover in Minneapolis and the disappearance of his brother when he was a child. Thus, the story becomes a learning one, both for Packard and the reader. Packard is a gay man. That fact is revealed right from the beginning. How that fact affects him is revealed slowly in a way that is behind the scenes of the story action. And this is a learning experience for the reader, which Moehling delivers in both a sensitive and, thankfully, not a sensationalist manner. There are several recent detective novels that contain a gay protagonist, a recent example being a translation of Red Queen by Juan Gomex-Jurad in which a gay detective is suspended for planting drugs in a pimp’s car and goes on a quest to restore his self-respect. But the depiction of the sexuality of the detective in that novel is superficial in comparison to Moehling’s rendition of Packard, and not nearly as believable.

The elements of a classic detective novel that are brilliantly employed in Where The Dead Sleep make a long list. These elements include the authors use of inductive reasoning for Packard, of reveals that gain in intensity as the story progresses, and of red herrings, double clues, self-revelation, and a poetic justice associated with finding the murderer, to name just a few. An analysis of all of these elements is beyond the scope of this review, and would necessitate the inclusion of spoilers, something the reviewer wants to avoid. Suffice it to say that Where The Dead Sleep is a transcendent detective story because it includes a kind of meta fiction, meaning that it is the working of Packard’s mind that tells the story and leads to the truth, what is his synthesis of the story’s events. This makes the novel as much about Packard as it is about finding the murderer. In fact, the use of Packard’s growing consciousness in the story sets up at the end a final, unsolved mystery. How true to life this is! A mirror is held up for the reader to see herself and understand that the discovery of who she is will involve the solving of one mystery after another.