Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Imagine yourself as a nine-year-old girl discovering that your father, a butcher by profession, is dismembering a corpse in the basement of your house.  And realizing that this isn’t the first time he’s done this.  What would you do?

This is Daisy Bellon’s story.  She’s the only child of a severely depressed mother and a father whom she has come to understand is a serial killer.  Now he demands that she “go fishing” with him, which she recognizes as a euphemism for disposing of the body of the woman he killed the previous night.  “You’re an accomplice, guilty as me,” he informs her, and she knows what he means.  She must never tell anyone their secret.

Then two things happen almost simultaneously.  The first is the appearance of Marina, the woman her father killed the night before.  Her ghost is not visible to anyone except Daisy, but the two are able to talk.  Marina tells the young girl that she would like to leave but can’t, and the two become bound together for years.

The second event is the collision between Daisy and Caleb Garcia, a boy three years older than she is.  They bump into each other, literally, in the livestock market in Hellene, Nebraska, Daisy’s favorite place, and the next day Caleb and his family move into the house next door to hers.  Theirs is a perfect friendship until the age difference between them becomes insurmountable.

Although Daisy cannot know it then, Marina and Caleb will prove to be the two most important people in her life.

One positive thing her father gave her was a respect for animals, particularly cows.  They live in pastures, graze on fresh grass, and upon their death they bring nourishment to people, he explains to Daisy.  That’s more that can be said for humans, “because we leave nothing behind.”  Perhaps that explains his disregard for human life.

The novel is told in alternating flashbacks.  It opens with Daisy deciding to return to her hometown after seventeen years of avoiding it, going back in time to her childhood, and jumping ahead to her adult life.  Her life is filled with difficulty, of which her father’s serial killings are only a part, but Daisy has incredible strength, even if she is not always able to recognize it in herself.

The Butcher and the Liar is a brilliant tour de force, telling Daisy’s story in such a way that you’re always rooting for her, even if/when she does the wrong or hurtful thing.  S. L. Woeppel takes what could be a simple horror story and makes it a compelling coming of age story instead, featuring realistic people who have to deal with their complicated lives as best they can.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.