Book Description
Former sheriff Jules Clement returns in this new installment of the celebrated mystery series, set once again in the wild, strange, windy town of Blue Deer, Montana, where your neighbors or the tourists can be just as deadly as the weather
Jules Clement is back in Blue Deer, working as an archaeologist and private investigator. He’s a mostly happy man: he’s a new father, and he and his wife Caroline are building their dream house on an idyllic patch of river bottomland. But everything that can go wrong will, in terms of money, love, and murder. The horrible neighbors enlist Jules to spy on each other. The county hires him to find out if a road runs over some misplaced bodies in a long-abandoned potter’s field. A former priest with a side hustle in extortion ends up very dead. A crew of Russians in fast cars is running amok through the Montana landscape. All this as an old nemesis returns, pulling Jules back to confront what he’s been avoiding his entire life: the death of his father.
Published alongside newly reissued editions of the entire series, The River View is further proof that “you haven’t been west in any meaningful sense until you’ve been to Blue Deer” (The New York Times).
Praise For This Book
Amazon, A Best Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense Book of the Month"Jamie Harrison’s mysteries featuring Jules Clement, published between 1995 and 2000, were recommended to me in my bookseller days over 20 years ago, but it took their reissue—and the publication of a fifth, The River View—to read them all in a frenzied gulp . . . As the new book opens in 1997, Jules, married and with a young child, has resigned from the sheriff’s office and is working as a P.I. He’s also dabbling in archaeology, plumbing the mysteries of old bones—even his father’s—as he tries to make peace with Blue Deer and forge a new path. I can’t help wondering what he’s doing in 2024, and I hope Harrison catches readers up to the present soon." —Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review
"Jamie Harrison gets it right . . . [Her] mystery series has several of the elements of my favorite mysteries . . . Like a true lover knows the good and bad traits of the beloved, Harrison balances the beauty of Montana with abuse, crime and violence that can be found in those same small towns." —Mara Lynn Luther, The Ravalli Republic
"Harrison’s riveting fifth adventure for Montana PI Jules Clement (after 2000’s Blue Deer Thaw) is worth the wait . . . The episodic structure works wonders, with each vignette highlighting Jules’s damage as well as his brilliance." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"What’s riveting is the ethical conflict Jules unearths: protecting (or surviving) the people you love versus defending justice . . . Sharp, bordering-on-absurdist humor." —Kirkus Reviews
"The River View is a singularly refreshing detective story. With humor and flair, Harrison takes us back to the wildest small town in the real-deal west. These novels keep getting better." —Ivy Pochoda, author of Sing Her Down
“The River View is a resonant crime novel that evokes both the vastness of the west and the narrowness of the human heart. These are real people, in all their gritty splendor, and Jules Clement is the hero we all need right now: Smart, funny, and defined by a world view that’s a little skewed. But more than that? It’s just nice to be back in Harrison’s town of Blue Deer, with all the grotesques in place.” —Tod Goldberg, author of Gangsters Don’t Die
“Jamie Harrison’s Blue Deer ain’t the Montana of Gary Cooper or Joel McCrea movies. It’s populated by well-to-do transplants who zoom over the mountains and pastures in trendy vehicles and indulge in nefarious swindles despite the heavenly natural surroundings. The River View is an ornery coyote of a novel.” —Barry Gifford, author of Ghost Years and Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels
"The River View and all the Jules Clement novels of Jamie Harrison are a welcome antidote to those sprawling, prime-time renditions of the New West. The heroes and villains of small-town Montana are way more intriguing—the crime is grubbier, the passion is bloodier, the revenge is sloppier—but the mountain views are just as spectacular. And Jules is beyond cool." ––Carl Hiaasen
