June 24, 2024
McAlpine’s sluggish latest (after Holmes Entangled) reimagines The Wizard of Oz as a psychological thriller. Eleven-year-old Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, go missing during a terrible tornado in 1896. Both are found unharmed four days later in a pumpkin patch two miles from their home in Sunbonnet, Kans. Relief turns to wariness when Dorothy describes befriending a talking lion, scarecrow, tin man, and wizard during the storm; her neighbors attribute Dorothy’s tales to the influence of evil and a lack of religious training from her unpopular uncle Henry and aunt Emily. When Dorothy also claims she accidentally killed a witch, under circumstances eerily similar to the death of an old woman in town, she’s accused of murder and sentenced to seven years in the Topeka Insane Asylum. Her case piques the interest of 28-year-old alienist Evelyn Grace Wilford, who tries to determine if Dorothy could really be a killer and sends her findings to her cousin, writer Frank Baum. The pace is lethally slow, only picking up speed in the last 50 or so pages, and by then, even an intriguing 11th-hour twist isn’t quite enough to save the day. This misses the mark. Agent: Lukas Ortiz, Philip G. Spitzer Literary.
July 1, 2024
It's 1896, and 11-year-old Dorothy Gale has been sent to a mental health facility for treatment. It wasn't just her fantastical tale of an enchanted land with witches and flying monkeys and a wizard, who wasn't really a wizard. No, Dorothy's biggest crime is confessing to having killed a witch, a tale that coincides with the discovery of the murder of the town's prickliest citizen, an isolated spinster whose body was found doused in lye, the skin of her face dripping off her skull. Psychologist Evelyn Grace Wilford is intrigued by Dorothy's case and does not believe her capable of committing the crime. Concerned with Dorothy's welfare, she heads to the small town where Dorothy grew up, hoping to find the real killer. The psychologist-turned-detective's arrival is greeted with suspicion, and the townspeople don't take kindly to her determination to stir up trouble. VERDICT Far more than Wizard of Oz fan fiction, this novel by McAlpine (Holmes Entangled) is an exploration of the hypocritical treatment of outsiders and nonconformers. Told from alternating perspectives, the narration weaves together the firsthand account of Dr. Wilford with the collective interpretation of the townspeople. A fast and engaging story for readers familiar with The Wizard of Oz .--Vicki Briner
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August 1, 2024
Readers confronting this novel--especially if they're unfamiliar with McAlpine's work--might wonder whether this is a tiresome retread of Frank Baum's masterpiece, wordplay, or a pseudo-scholarly bore. But no! Author McAlpine's last novel--sadly, he recently passed away--is a blast of enchanting writing, straight-ahead storytelling, and a murder mystery too. The setting is a little prairie town on a Kansas plain late in the nineteenth century. A tornado has wreaked havoc, and 11-year-old Dorothy is missing. She's found eventually, rattling on about a tin man and red slippers and murdering a wicked witch. Damningly, a town woman is murdered in distressingly similar circumstances, and townspeople conclude that Dorothy's a crazed killer. A young woman psychologist, having none of it, examines the evidence, and suddenly, we're in Sherlock Holmes territory, realizing the importance of previously unimportant details. Then a skip to the Golden Age of mystery as the psychologist-turned-detective explains what's happened to the stunned townspeople. Golden Age, golden prose--it's a smart, classy reading experience.
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