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Kathleen Hills
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Witch Cradle (John McIntire Mysteries) Kindle Edition

by Kathleen Hills (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

"Hills' latest John McIntire adventure is dark, dense, and delicious—and musn't be rushed."—Booklist STARRED review

January, 1951: America is in the grip of war in Korea, the threat of nuclear annihilation looms, and Senator Joe McCarthy has begun his Red Scare. But the residents of St. Adele, Michigan, are more concerned with staying warm and shoveling snow until a bizarre ice storm brings down a towering pine. Entangled in its roots is evidence that leads Constable John McIntire to the abandoned farmstead of a young Finnish-American couple who had supposedly left the community years before to help build a workers' Utopia in the Soviet republic of Karelia. There he discovers two bodies, buried sixteen years in an unused cistern.

In his zeal to uncover the truth, McIntire brings the scrutiny—and the suspicion—of a Red-hunting government agent upon his neighbors and himself. Then a part of the past he hoped to bury forever threatens to destroy his new life.

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  1. Book 3 of 4
    John McIntire Mysteries
  2. Print length
    345 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Poisoned Pen Press
  5. Publication date
    October 12, 2007
  6. File size
    2.1 MB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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There are 4 books in this series.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Constable John McIntire, Sheriff Pete Koski and their neighbors in St. Adele, a small town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, must deal with the effects of isolation and far-away political events in Hills's absorbing third mystery (after 2004's Hunter's Dance). One January night in 1951, an ice storm has the hardy residents of St. Adele on edge, but it's the discovery of two human skeletons in a cistern on the farm that once belonged to Rose and Teddy Falk that really upsets everyone. The couple were thought to have resettled in Soviet Karelia with other ethnic Finns in 1934, lured by the promise of a worker's paradise. Now it appears they never left. Many of those Finns later returned, disillusioned, to the U.S., and FBI agent Melvin Fratelli fears Communist spies are lurking even in this remote community. As McIntire investigates, complicated family intrigues rise to the surface and lives change irrevocably. Unidentified news squibs before each chapter help place this illuminating tale in the context of the McCarthy era. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Hills' latest John McIntire adventure is dark, dense, and delicious--and musn't be rushed. Although she generates enough suspense to keep readers turning pages, it would be a mistake to turn them too quickly and miss even one word of her taut yet lyrical prose. Set in 1951, amidst the paranoia of McCarthyism, Hill's story revolves around a community of mostly Finnish Americans in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. McIntire, the steadfast constable of tiny St. Adele, becomes embroiled in a murder investigation when two skeletons are found in the cistern of Falk farm--one is Rose Falk, but the other is not Rose's husband, Teddy. Like many other Finns in 1934, the Falks had been recruited by Communists and were planning to immigrate to Soviet Karelia: Rose never made it, but what happened to Teddy? Did he find Rose with a lover and kill them both? Is he still alive? As he grapples with the cold-case investigation, McIntire is investigated himself--by overzealous FBI agent Melvin Fratelli, the embodiment of the xenophobia running rampant in the early 1950s. Like a determined ice fisherman, McIntire slowly chips away the layers of lies and bitterness, creating possibly fatal cracks in his friendships and marriage. Jenny McLarin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0863CBL22
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Poisoned Pen Press (October 12, 2007)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 12, 2007
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2.1 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 345 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

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Kathleen Hills

Kathleen Hills

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
9 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Eric
    5.0 out of 5 stars Kathleen Hills is a winner
    Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I love Kathleen Hills. She has fascinating characters, a great locale, and a deft way with words. Her main character, John McIntire has a fascinating back story that keeps emerging slowly. The time period is after WWII and he was working for the government during the war. All this coincides with the house committee on un-American activities pursuit of Communists. John lived with his wife in England for some time before returning to Michigan's UP with her where he was elected Constable, a job that mostly involves rousting out teen-age parties. This story begins with a horrific storm that causes large trees to tip over. Under one of them John's old friend Mia finds a pale green fruit jar with money in it, a lot of money. Mia says it was her father's money and she's entitled to keep it. John McIntire believes the money belonged to a couple who emigrated to Karelia, Russia in the early 40's, or did they. It looks like the woman might never have left the Upper Peninsula. He is intent on finding out what happened to Rose Falk. A great story.
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  • moderatelymoderate
    5.0 out of 5 stars cabin fever
    Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This is an excellent mystery. It's also a good representation of cabin fever, so I wouldn't recommend reading it in January or February if you live in the snow belt.

    The only thing I wish the book had included was the McIntires' background, as I couldn't recall them at first. That Leonie was British & had experienced WWII there could have been brought up as the reason she was upset by the thunderstorm. That John was a UP native but had been away 30 years could have been worked in as well.
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  • Amazon Customer
    2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
    Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    With my husband's family being Finnish-American, our love of the U.P. and my fondness for mystery books I thought this would be an ideal mid-winter story to settle in with for the night. How very disappointed I was.

    The writing style is somewhat disorienting, the who-done-it blatantly obvious from the beginning of the book, and the constant repetition of prattling by the characters unneeded.

    Save your money and your time.
    One person found this helpful
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  • carl brookins
    5.0 out of 5 stars Solid complex murder mystery
    Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2006
    Author Kathleen Hills has a history with regions of the northern United States, and although the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is separate and distinct, from, say Montana or Northern Wisconsin, there are certainly similarities. In this third outing for the author's protagonist, the reluctant constable of St. Adele, John McIntire, comes across evidence that two former neighbors had not emigrated to the Soviet Union, as was supposed by pretty much everybody in the region.

    In the early 1930's this country was in the grip of a serious depression and there was more than a little unrest. Some people organized a sort of mass emigration by mostly poor or disaffected people to a place in the Soviet Union called Karelia. Karelia was touted as the people's Eden, a place where everyone would be well-housed, properly fed and would find useful work, according to their needs. Karelia was advertised as sort of the penultimate socialist community. In reality, a lot of people who went, disappeared and were never heard from again. What was their fate in Stalinist Russia?

    WITCH CRADLE, is set in the early fifties, a time when suspicion of that great evil, Communism, also known as the Soviet Union, was rampant in this country. It was the time of Roy Cohen and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. It was a time of black listing and anxiety. And while the people of the Upper Peninsula were relatively isolated from most of the excesses of that time, there were those who would take advantage of the circumstances. Bringing those national concerns down to the individual and very personal concerns of the people of St. Adele is a feat worth reading about, especially in the careful and adept hands of author Kathleen Hills.

    Many questions rise. What is the FBI doing hanging around this isolated area? What exactly was Constable McIntire doing during his time away from St. Adele, the time he refuses to talk about? What exactly did happen to the people who went to the Soviet Union? And if some of the former residents of the area never made it to Karelia, what happened to them and why? This is a moving, solid work about people we all can relate to, in one form or another.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Amos Klein
    5.0 out of 5 stars A whodunit cut above
    Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2011
    Kathleen Hills is a cut above Mystery Writer.
    From John McIntire's entry on the first line
    thru a maze of rich 1950 characters and McCarthy
    era suspense, she holds and guides your attention.
    A wonderful look back in history from a writer
    using today's perspective. Here's hoping for
    more Kathleen Hills.
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