The Swamps of Jersey

I just finished reading a good mystery.

Not that there’s a shortage of good mysteries, but this one was written by a friend (so, take this blog any way you want) and it’s set in New Jersey.

I can’t say I’m fond of the title, The Swamps of Jersey. I mean, sure it has as many meanings as you want it to have, but many things are swampy in New Jersey, so I probably wouldn’t have used that as a title.

But, title aside, it is a fine mystery.

It starts a little slow, but the same can be said for a lot of books. And, since I know the author, Michael Stephen Daigle, is a fine writer, I was highly motivated to persevere.

It’s the kind of book where the setting is almost a character. Like Trenton is for Janet Evanovich, although it’s not funny like her books. In this case, it was obvious to me almost from the very beginning that Ironton, the fictional town, is Dover, a very real town. But the time Mike used some Dover street names, like Baker and Blackwell, I already had mental pictures of many of the settings.

I was born in Dover and Dover was the place you went shopping when I was a kid.  My mother shopped at the Acme Market. I bought my first LPs in Woolworth’s basement.  We bought fabric for all my school clothes in Newberry’s. Every girl I knew got her first bra from Annie Fink. And all the kids got their good winter coats from Crown Friedland. Our fathers got their suits from The Quality Shop. We saw all the Disney movies at The Baker Theater. I also learned all the swear words I ever learned from the ladies room wall at the Baker.

Dover was the center of the universe.

Then the Rockaway Townsquare Mall was built. How, we weren’t quite sure. I remember fishing with my dad in McKeel Brook right where the J C Penney store is now. . .But, built it was and Dover started going downhill. It soon became the town described by Mike in the book.

I’m not going to go into all the political and social reasons for Dover’s decline and the decline of every other downtown. Some of those reasons are part and parcel of the story in The Swamps of Jersey.

Being a New Jersey story, it involves political corruption. Being a story written by an old newspaperman (and I know Mike won’t take offense at that) it deals with musty files and budgets and a somewhat curmudgeonly cop and a quite curmudgeonly reporter.

All in all, a good read.

Mike Daigle speaking at a Society of Professional Journalists event