Crown of Thorns is the second Nick Barrett southern mystery which returns the recalcitrant hero to his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, during his time off from teaching astronomy at a junior college in New Mexico. Awaiting his majority of the wealthy Barrett family inheritance which his attorney has assured him will be rightfully awarded to him with the IRS collecting its share from his wicked half-brother’s part of the settlement, Nick finds some unique but generous ways to spend some of his future wealth.
His old friends Glennifer and Elaine Beloise, spinster sisters who run a profitable antique shop and know most if not all the dirt in Charleston’s upper class history, engage Nick’s help to buy what was once a stolen painting of Charles I, brought into their shop to sell by a very young girl old beyond her years who goes by the name of Angel.
The intrigue involved in discovering the history of this painting as it relates to a scandalous murder in a formerly elite family leads Nick to a strange cult, discovering the reason for the absence of the local voodoo priestess Grammie Zora, a shaky friendship with her 12 year old granddaughter Angel and her baby sister Maddie, an old high school football buddy who is now a police detective, and a female P.I. named Kellie. There are peripheral characters which float into the plot adding color, strangeness, emotion, and flavor to this unusual story of historical aristocratic white families intersecting with the freed but poor black families which they endeavored to keep subservient to them. Add to this the contemporary cult members who are white supremacist leaders hiding under the guise of a church that follows Jesus, and you have a multi-layered mystery which finally comes together and explodes in a two-facet conclusion.
To fully reap the benefit of every aspect of this novel, one should first read Out of the Shadows. The first Nick Barrett mystery is full of twists and turns and the shadowed past of prominent Charleston families as they seek to hide the ugliness of their histories with all the advantages that money can buy. Both of these novels present a montage of wealth and poverty and the prejudice revealed as two different worlds merge unexpectedly. The history of the protagonist Nick Barrett is both heartbreaking and triumphant, although the full measure of his triumph isn’t revealed until the final pages of Crown of Thorns. These are both older novels by Sigmund Brouwer, well written and capturing just enough of the heart of Nick Barrett to allow the reader to forgive his occasional cynicism.
I continue to be surprised at the errors found in novels, although since I so frequently comment on it I know I shouldn’t be. I read a hardbound version of the novel which at full retail sells for $22.99, produced by MF (Moving Fiction) under the Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. label (copyright 2002), and still there were several unnecessary, out of place, incorrect words particularly toward the end of the book. I’m sorry, but I find this inexcusable.
If you’d like to read a couple of unusual contemporary mysteries incorporating some of the history of “aristocratic” southern families with long-suppressed secrets they’ll do anything to conceal, these two novels provide colorful, suspenseful, and sometimes unnerving plots to carry the reader through to satisfying endings with the stories revealing the significance of their meaningful titles.
Father, I pray for Sigmund Brouwer asking for your grace and mercy upon him. I pray you would guide and direct him in all he does and continue to inspire his stories for your glory. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
*Please remember to pray for Kristy Dykes.*