I read and enjoy well written mystery/suspense novels but many of them just run together after a while. I really liked this distinctive, first-rate thriller. After reading all of the positive plugs about Beautiful Ruins by the same author, I decided to check this one out. In contrast to the many over-the-top detectives in other recent crime dramas, these were believable…sometimes cynical and often overworked, frustrated and full of personal uncertainties. Dupree, one of the investigators, is esp...

A long time ago I spent time in Spokane, Washington, the setting for this marvelously written literary mystery. The small city itself was an interesting place of contrasts, surrounded by a beautiful and dramatic landscape. This was in the 1970's, so I imagine it has changed a great deal. However, when I was there it was in the process of trying to fit two very different life philosophies together - blue-collar, hard-working hard-drinking country/cowboy-music unstyled people with calloused hands

Serious and yet oddly whimsical serial killer mystery. This is Walter's first novel, and you can tell that there were a lot of elements he wanted to get in there—the Green River Killer and the double-edged sword of profiling and new policing vs. old and T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and even a touch of romance. I'm not sure how well it all works together; the resulting work feels a bit disjointed, not quite complete. But it's also so much more interesting and complex than the average mystery, wi...

Another great novel by Jess Walter. I think this was his first work of fiction. It might be not as polished or perfect as a thriller by an experienced author, but Walter succeeded in writing a crime story that has at the same time a literary depth and an engaging, believable plot. Too often you find either one or the other, but not both elements in the same book. Characters are 3D sculptures, alive and breathing from the pages. You also have an original twist on the "typical cynical investigator...

I had never heard of Jess Walter, but when my Goodreads friend Erin listed his Citizen Vince as "To Read", I became interested in that book so did a little research on Walter then decided I wanted to read all of his books starting with the first, Over Tumbled Graves.I joined Goodreads to get good ideas for what to read next. This was one of those serendipitous, validating choices: I loved Over Tumbled Graves! Unlike a much more recent former journalist's first foray into fiction (Paula Hawkins'

I am a Jess Walter fan. Most of his other books are complete winners for me. This book, not so much.It is possible that since I read this book while studying a Financial Analyses text book I am a little biased against any writing that is not dialog driven. Reading the text book was akin to reading Romanian through a mason jar of thick maple syrup and so, I turned to Walter for an escape. This book was not as difficult to read as the finance text, thankfully. It was, however short on dialog as Wa...

After being totally wowed by the short story collection "We Live in Water" I've been working my way through Jess Walter's back catalog. "Over Tumbled Graves" is his first and it falls short of the mark set by "The Zero" and "Citizen Vince" This is a fairly typical story about a serial killer preying on prostitutes in Spokane Washington and the police officers trying to track him down. It's not that the book is bad, it's just fairly unremarkable. Walter seems to be just starting to find his voice...

I've been thru Spokane before. It's one of those mid-sized smaller cities like Buffalo, NY; Dearborn, MI; Springville, IL; and a city that I spent more than 10 years in, Duluth, MN. These cities (and a handful of others) had big big money when the railroad was big and when inland ports prospered. There's a certain poverty that lives in these cities that threatens to drown out the history - poverty resulting from meth, the white poor, bigger gangs moving into smaller communities, and the people t...

With an upcoming trip to Spokane I figured I read a novel set there. I ended up reading one about a serial killer menacing Spokane. Not the best choice maybe, but it made for a great read nonetheless.The book itself gave what I thought was an accurate description of the city from the time I have spent there before, warts and all. The book falls into the genre that I don't care for all that much, but overall I'm impressed and surprised with the quality of "Over Tumbled Graves." This book should h...

I read Beautiful Ruins last summer and was so enthralled by (a) Jess Walter's prose and (b) the fact that he's from Spokane and sets some of his novels there that I promptly added pretty much everything he's ever written to my to-read list. It's just taken me a little while to get to it. After reading this one, I already have a library request in for the second Caroline Mabry novel, Land of the Blind. I think I'll be reading a lot of Jess Walter this summer. A drug-bust gone bad turns into a hom...

I am on a Jess Walter tear. Under Tumbled Graves is the 5th book of Walter's that I have read. Yikes.I think my addiction stems from his newspaper reporter quality. He writes with knowledge of police and crime. He's obviously an observant man. He knows his characters and he helps us know his characters. Also, he writes from Spokane, WA which is a similar town to Tacoma. I just relate to his writing and so wish someone from Tacoma could write in this same way.This plot positions old police styles...

I can't think of anything clever to write about this.

I read this book – when it was initially published – almost ten years ago. I remembered it as a police procedural/mystery set in Spokane, Washington, with two interesting and flawed law enforcement protagonists tracking a serial killer. My memory served me right, but in rereading Over Tumbled Graves I noted a not so subtle undercurrent in the writing and story-telling. Although this book has all the ingredients of the mystery/thriller genre, the finished product is not what I expected, i.e. the

It's so boring and predictable, I don't even know why I finished it. All characters are forgettable, the so-called love story is ridiculous, huge amount of scenes made no sense, and there were literally only one person except the cops who could have been a suspect. Arghhh.

So, I read Land of the Blind before reading this, which meant I knew how certain things would go. Somehow, though, that didn't change how much I enjoyed the book. I think that really says something about the power of good writing. However, I strongly recommend reading this first!This book follows Caroline Mabry and Alan Dupree, two police officers in the homicide unit, as they try to unravel the seemingly open-and-shut case of several murdered prostitutes, their bodies all found in the same mann...

After reading two recent impressive novels (Citizen Vince and The Zero) by Jess Walters I have decided to go back and read his first two novels. The first of which is Over Tumbled Graves. The title comes from an epigraph from T.S. Eliot’s seminal poem “The Waste Land”: In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves. In fact, Walters states in an interview in the back of the book that he has tried to write a parallel structure with the poem in the novel. I can’t judge whethe...

After falling in love with "The Financial Lives of the Poets," being confused by "The Zero" and reading "Beautiful Ruins," to which no other book I read after that could compare, I've decided to read all Walter's books. This one was a good, fast-paced story. For his first novel, it's not bad. The characters are relatively stock, and the relationship quandary is overused. But like Walter does in everything else he writes, he turns stereotypes and stock story lines and characters into something mo...

Finding a new author (new in the sense of my never having been exposed to him before) that I like is one of the great pleasures in life … and I definitely will be looking for novels by Jess Walter in the future. It turns out that this was Walters’ first published novel (2001), and this copy was a 2000 advanced reader’s edition (Not For Sale). This particular copy appeared on the book-swap shelf at the VA Hospital last week. Frankly, I picked it up largely because it was set in large print (altho...

This is a great mystery by one of my favorite authors. I can't believe I'd never heard of him until I saw his new short story collection We Live in Water on the new book shelf at my local library. Since that one I've read 5 more, and thoroughly enjoyed them all. This one is pure suspense, with plenty of surprises in the last third of the book. The plot and pacing are excellent, and the story never gets tired. The characters are multi-dimensional and full of life. I love Mr. Walter's writing styl...

This was hyped up to me and I can appreciate why: the running commentary on crime as media phenomenon and serial killers as celebrities and the portrayal of the screwedupness of police, in general, is notable. The main character, Caroline, participates in two instances of police brutality, other major character (view spoiler)[ tampers with crime scenes (hide spoiler)], and of course (view spoiler)[the main serial killer is an ex-cop whose status initially protected him (hide spoiler)]. At the sa...