This begins after the day after two college students are married in another friend's dilapidated family mansion in 1980. The next day they and four of their college friends decide to explore the ruins of Eastern State Penitentiary. Seven go in, six come out, a dead cat and a wedding ring are the only traces left in the wake of the bride's disappearance. Years later the bride's body surfaces in the Penitentiary and her widower is brought in for questioning. His wife had inherited a lot of money when her parents died, her husband had inherited the money on her death and started a chain of restaurants with it as well as helping a friend. Motive enough for murder think the cops. Meanwhile, the person who can provide a motive has disappeared into another life and has to decide whether to divulge secrets that could ruin their life or not. The persons responsible for the murder really surprised me and it turned it that the autistic brother of one of the college mates had actually seen the murderer but wasn't listened to. Creepy good. ( )

And so success had come to her, as it comes to so many people, not by doing the things she loved, which she did ineptly, But by doing the things she hated, that at which she was a genius.

Long Black Veil
by Jennifer Finney Boylan

Well it is the end of the first month of 2021 and I have already DNFED three books this year! Am I off to a roaring start or what?

To be honest, Long Black Veil, is not a bad book. I read enough of it to give it a rating. But no way is it the book for me.

A group of kids decide to explore an abandoned prison in the early Nineteen Eighties. They inadvertently get separated and then locked in.

In the process of all this, one of the friends does not make it out.

The friends' lives are all changed by this. Some of them are emotionally brought down. Or worse.

OK....From the beginning, I was doubting whether I should have picked this. The scenes of being locked in the prison were apropriately creepy but the dialogue...the dialogue, man...it was heavy handed and for me it didn't flow.

There was much talk about mundane things..and lots of inner dialogue as well. I do think it sort of got better as I went along but I struggled from the beginning to really get into it.

And the book also features...pretty early on....TRIGER ALERT: ANIMAL CRUELTY.

I seem to be fining this more and more lately. In fact I am now going to create my own GR category for books with animal abuse. I will say as I have said before....many of us readers do not want to be triggered by reading about horrible things happening to cats or dogs or sheep or goats or llamas or tigers or bunnies or dolphins or squirrels or skunks or buffaloes or zebras...you get the picture right?

I found this to be less a mystery then a multi layered character study about friends. Not what I was seeking at this time. I did categorize it as Historical but that is because it parts of it take place in 1980. Wow...it hurts to think 1980 was so long ago!

Long Black Veil has a powerful hook, an amazing title, a large cast of diverse and complex characters and isn't all that long. But for the reasons mentioned above, it was not for me. ( )

The above is the description taken from Goodreads.
However as fitting as that is, it is not the description from the cover, and I feel a bit let down. I was expecting this book to be more of a thriller, and I guess I was expecting it to be.... thrilling. I suppose it is more a mystery, and it's aftermath. When the reason for Wailer's disappearance was revealed I was let down again, and even more so at the ridiculous ending.
I received a complimentary copy for review
( )

I started out enjoying the story, and got wrapped up in the mystery pretty well, but the ending didn't really do it for me. Without giving much away, part of the book spends time in the past and part catches up in the present; I much preferred the mystery of the past to the resolution of the present. ( )

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This is an amazing book that surprised in many ways. Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan is extremely well-written, has strong characters, and an ending I could only hope for! This is a tough review to write simply because I don’t want to spoil anything, but the best things I want to talk about might be considered spoilers.

The mystery at the crux of the story is a simple one, and perhaps because it is so simple, we never really see it coming. All is revealed to the reader midway through the book, which is a good thing because the heart of this novel doesn’t lie in solving the mystery. The heart of this novel lies in piecing these people together. In watching them struggle to overcome what happened, stutter, fail, and then try again. Only after everything has been brought to light is there any hope of moving forward.

There are slight suggestions to spoilers here as I will briefly touch upon the ending. I was worried, given what unfolds in the book, that the ending would be one we see all too often. A trope that I hate with a passion that befalls characters like Judith, where they are denied happy endings and used as a means of self-reflection for other….. ‘mainstream’ characters. Boylan definitely teases that this is the way it will end, that we will get that predictable ending so many characters like Judith meet in ‘mainstream’ fiction, but thanks to every deity, we don’t get that. We get a good ending. Perhaps some cynics will say it was too saccharine considering the events of the book, but I disagree, and would argue that those readers possibly missed the point. The point of the mystery, the point of the novel. That holding onto hate, to darkness, to secrets, will poison and consume you, will lead you to darker roads you might not be able to turn away from. Yet, if you persevere, you face the truth, and are willing to accept the same in others, then yes, good things are possible.

Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan is an extremely well-written novel that draws its suspense not primarily from the mystery, but from the interpersonal relationships between old friends and former selves; the struggle for self-acceptance for ALL of the characters.

// I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this title. // ( )