Tag: Christine Carbo

Enjoying Christine Carbo’s four-part Glacier Park Series

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

There are four novels in Carbo’s Glacier National Park police procedural series. I just finished The Weight of Night which was released in 2017. The books have a lot of snap, crackle and pop to them, strong characters, and accurate descriptions of the world of Glacier.

From the Publisher:

The Weight of Night: A Novel of Suspense (Glacier Mystery Series Book 3) by [Christine Carbo]In a land sculpted by glaciers, the forest is on fire. Thick smoke chokes the mountain air and casts an apocalyptic glow over the imposing peaks and vistas of Montana’s Glacier National Park. When firefighters are called in to dig firebreaks near the small town bordering the park, a crew member is shocked to unearth a shallow grave containing human remains.

Park Police Officer Monty Harris is summoned to the site to conduct an excavation. But with an incendiary monster threatening to consume the town, Monty seeks help from Gretchen Larson, the county’s lead crime scene investigator.

While the two work frantically to determine the true identity of the victim, a teenager suddenly disappears from one of the campgrounds in Glacier. Could the cases somehow be connected? As chances for recovery of the missing boy grow slimmer and the FBI finds only dead ends, Gretchen and Monty desperately race to fit all the pieces together while battling time, the elements, and their own unresolved inner conflicts.

The Weight of Night is the latest novel in an award-winning series which “paints a moving picture of complex, flawed people fighting to make their way in a wilderness where little is black or white” (Publishers Weekly). It is a gripping tribute to the power of redemption set against one of America’s most majestic and unforgiving landscapes.

Any one who enjoys police/suspense novels will probably find this to be a page-turner. Those of us who worked in the park and/or visit it often will enjoy “going back again” via Carbo’s stories.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell

Publisher: Thomas-Jacob Publishing

Website

Facebook Author’s Page

Amazon Author’s Page

Malcolm R. Campbell’s novels include a few set in Glacier National Park and a few more, including “Fate’s Arrows,” set in north Florida.

Advertisement

Being on location vs. reading about the location

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Christine Carbo has written a dandy four-book series of suspense novels set in Glacier National Park. Had their location been a city, they might have been called “police procedurals.” Her books focus on the work of Park Rangers, with help from personnel from local sheriffs’ offices in solving crimes within the park. I have just now finished book two, Mortal Fall after enjoying The Wild Inside.

Carbo lives in Whitefish, adjacent to the park, and her proximity to the location of her stories shows what a good writer can do when they can be on location to check specific areas and talk to rangers and others who work there. If you love Glacier and suspense novels, you will love the accuracy of these novels.

Most of you know what I worked two years in the park in the 1960s and have been back a handful of times on vacation. My love of the park drew me to set several novels set there. Two of those are fantasies, taking place in a look-alike universe accessible via the park. The other two were set back in time and stayed away from specifics that would be difficult for a Georgia writer to know about or uncover through research. So, okay, I’m not only impressed with Carbo’s work but a little jealous that she lives where I planned to live, something that didn’t pan out mostly due to the lack of large computer companies in the area in need of technical writers.

Being on location, either because you live there or because you can afford summer-long visits is night and day different from using books, Wikipedia, Google Maps, and Google Earth from the far sie of the country. In my mind, writing what you know partially depends on what you know about the places where you set your stories.

I’ve been impressed with the work of authors like Hilary Mantel (in Wolf Hall) for the accuracy of their location work about the way things were in the 1500s. Such work shows what one can do if they have the talent as well as the resources that allow them to be there.

Some experts say that the adage “write what you know” is false advice. Well, sure, if you don’t know the subject and place before you get an idea for a story, you can learn it and (possibly) come to know it by the time you start putting words on the page. Needless to say, I take exception to the notion that the old adage is false advice. Even if you’re world building a place and culture for a sci-fi novel or fantasy, you will have come to know it if your resulting novel ends up selling well and being critically acclaimed.

If I hadn’t come to love Glacier, I probably would have set all of my novels–like those in the four-book Florida Folk Magic Series–where I grew up, or possibly down the road from here I live now. But my muse insisted on the Glacier books even though I said, “But dammit, Siobhan, I live in Rome, Georgia rather than Whitefish, Montana.”

“Wing it,” she replied.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell

Glacier Park Novel

Publisher: Thomas-Jacob Publishing

Website

Facebook Author’s Page

Amazon Author’s Page

Jeff Shaara’s ‘Midway’ and other stuff

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books
  • I have enjoyed all of Jeff Shaara’s books, but The Eagle’s Claw had a flaw in it, that being that Raymond Spruance, who commanded both the Enterprise and the Hornet in the battle, was not in the book. This left many questions about the last part of the battle unanswered in the novel. It seems unlike Shaara to omit a major character and/or part of a battle. So, I would have to give this book three stars if I were writing an Amazon review.  As always, I enjoyed the book and the approach to the story.
  • Thank you to those of you who went over to Facebook and chipped in a few dollars in my birthday fundraiser for Sun Kissed Acres Equine Rescue. My modest $300 goal was met by your generosity, plus, I got a nice thankyou note from the farm.
  • My actual birthday is tomorrow. No need to send lavish gifts or cash because that might push me into a higher tax bracket. (Yeah, right.) My wife made a cherry pie, my favorite, and we cheated by having some of it last night.
  • I have given up getting the rights to my audiobooks, Emily’s Stories and Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire assigned to me now that my former publisher is out of business, leaving all of us seeing our books still being sold with the sellers keeping the royalties. There should have been a clause in the contract and I kept pushing for it, but my former publisher was lazy in many ways about such things. My current publisher keeps up with her authors!
  • I’m reading an interesting suspense novel by Christine Carbo set in Glacier National Park called The Wild Inside. For a Glacier fan, it’s fun following a story set in a place one knows well. She lives in a town next to the park, so she knows the territory. I might just have to read a few more from her “Glacier Mystery Series.”
  • Yes, I’m still working on another novel set in Glacier, but at my advanced age, I type very slowly. This one is a contemporary fantasy, like The Sun Singer and Sarabande. It’s been fun returning to the Montana mountains.

–Malcolm