The First Bell Elkins Novel (Bell Elkins Novels) - A Killing in the Hills

I love a good mystery, but in too many mysteries, the plot is better than the quality of the writing. A Killing in the Hills has both: a great plot AND very high-quality writing.

I don't want to just go over the events in the novel -- too many reviews on this page read like a sixth-grade book report -- but let me just say that you will race through this book, desperate to find out who's behind the crime. And the characters are fascinating. I know some single mothers who remind me of Bell Elkins: They work hard every day of their lives.

A Killing in the Hills will remind you of John Grisham or Scott Turow at their best. I highly, highly recommend it. I can't wait to see what Bell does next.

Keller's figurative speech, strength of character, sense of place and ability to keep one "up all night" reading is a true gift. Her story is current, fascinating and one surprise after another. Can't wait for the next book!

Writer is descriptive to a fault. Felt like she was more focused on painting a picture and developing characters than telling the story. Still a good read, but needs to move and develop the story faster.

Incredible writer who made me believe each sentence in the story. The story is of the coal region in West Virginia and the storyline tells of misery but the overlay of triumph over evil, drugs, bad parenting creating a story that held my attention from the first line to the last. Mesmerizing, read it in one sitting. The author can tell a tale and you feel the triumph and the pain.

First of all, I do not understand why "reviewers" have to go into so much detail about the actual story. A review is to comment on the style of writing, how descriptive is the content, consistency in characters and story line,etc. Not to do a "book report"

I rather expected from blurbs that this would be a greatly involved mystery, which in a way it was. It just moved ever so slowly, although points for keeping an even flow going. My interest in this story never really got going I'm afraid.

The characters are tangible & relatable. Its a good story since the plot is reality & hasn't received enough notice as being a "real" problem. You can find "that" daughter in a lot of families so she fits in very well. Also returning to your roots is a thing many do & many more would like to do. It is all very credible.

Just finished the book this morning and have now picked up book 2. I am anxious to see what happens when she meets up with her sister.... great characters, great story.... found myself a new author.....

Two stars for descriptions and plotline...the rest of this novel consisted of flawed characters, graphic descriptions of child abuse, demeaning portraits of the majority of rural West Virginia residents, and an absence of any information and "build up" to support the twist at the end.

I read about the author & book in WV Magazine and decided to download it to my Kindle.
Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. Very good read. I can't wait to read more
by Julia Keller.

This is a horrible book. Totally annoying and unreadable. Have you ever wished a writer would just shut up and let you read the story? Julia Keller talks so much and is so detailed that the reader has no room to move. Really really really bad book. Horrible - waste of time and money. Avoid! Run away! Make another selection.
I would give you mine but I used it to light the woodstove.

I read about the author & book in WV Magazine and decided to download it to my Kindle.
Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. Very good read. I can't wait to read more
by Julia Keller.

The writer is deeply set and carries the reader to the hills of West Virginia. It is a political, socio-economic, and cultural view of this region of the USA. It goes far beyond murder, drugs, and breaking the law. I highly recommend it.

This is a horrible book. Totally annoying and unreadable. Have you ever wished a writer would just shut up and let you read the story? Julia Keller talks so much and is so detailed that the reader has no room to move. Really really really bad book. Horrible - waste of time and money. Avoid! Run away! Make another selection.
I would give you mine but I used it to light the woodstove.

From the very first page, I was totally under the spell of A Killing in the Hills. I was captivated by the beautiful writing, the fascinating characters, and the quick-moving plot. The last time I was so enthralled by a book was when I read The Client by John Grisham.
Like Grisham, this author weaves a great story into an exploration of human desire and motivation. TV crime shows often make villains simple bad guys -- but A Killing in the Hills asks us to look at WHY someone might choose murder and drug-dealing as a career path.
The characters in the book are SO real. In fact, as I read some of the comments here, they reminded me of the way people talk about real people, like their friends and neighbors: complaining about Bell's behavior as a mother, for instance. Many people criticize women they know for their parenting skills. There are no perfect parents. Most mothers I know -- especially single mothers -- do the best they can. Bell has a demanding job. She loves her daughter, but she also loves her job. Tough choices must be made.
I also love the sheriff character.
Bottom line: If you love John Grisham, you'll love this.

I bought this book since I was expecting to attend a lecture by the author at the home of James Thurber in Columbus Ohio. I am a Thurber fan!! For some reason, the lecture was cancelled so it was a double disappointment since I thought the book was poorly written and not particularly interesting.

Carla had been waiting for her mother; her mom was late. Her cruel disposition analyzed the customers as she waited for her ride inside the Salty Dawg that Saturday morning. A table of three old-timers were really getting on her nerves, for their laughter and chatter was filling up the room and Carla saw no need for it. Then Carla saw them slump over, one-by-one. What just happened? Carla looked at the door, a dull gray color caught her eye. Tiny eyes were looking out at the victims, taking in the chaos that had just been created and then the screaming began.

As I began reading this novel, I knew that I had found a keeper. The main story had me hooked but there were other stories that complimented it, as I read. Carla’s mother Bell, is the town’s prosecuting attorney and Carla was trying to show her peers that she was nothing like her mother, she was rebelling as hard as she could. Bell has been working to rid the town of illegal prescription drug, a never-ending war which was affecting everyone. When the shooting took place at the Salty Dawg, there seemed to be no reasoning behind it yet as the story unfolds, it is a tangled tale for which Carla is hiding a key fact. It’s a small Appalachian town for which the community all knows one another but it is the secrets that keep the individuals divided.

I was surprised at the low rankings of this novel for I really enjoyed it. I liked the variety of characters and their personalities and I really enjoyed all the different stories which were running throughout the novel. I will definitely be reading the next book in this series as I highly recommend this novel.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

Pros:

-The protagonist and her daughter are well-drawn characters, with understandable motives.
-The picture of desperation and poverty in rural West Virgina is well done.
-Keller's prose is lovely. Very lyrical and wonderfully descriptive.

Cons:

-Rampant head-hopping.
-The author frequently puts the story on hold to dive into pages of backstory. Every time a new character is introduced, the story comes to a full stop and we get a 1-3 page info-dump of that character's past. Even a few buildings (like the house, and the diner where they eat pie, and the brick building where the climax takes place) get several paragraphs of back story. Who cares? It's not even remotely relevant to the plot. Even leading into the climax, rushing to the place where some crazy guy with a gun is holding Carla hostage, the narration stops to give us the history of the building he's in. I was skimming frequently by that point, trying to get back to the actual story. Some editor needed to make this author kill her backstory darlings.
-It's quite obvious who the bad guy is, because the author stops at least three times in the narrative of the book to give the reader lengthy explanations of why he's such a saint, so as to make it more shocking when he's revealed as the villain. Except it was so heavy-handed, I don't know how any reader could miss it.
-Flashbacks galor. At one point, there was a flashback within a flashback (story on full pause for a flashback to breaking up with her ex, and from there a flashback to when they'd met, then forward/back to the breaking up flashback, before we're finally returned to the present day and the story at hand).
-Along with the flashbacks, the authors uses a lot of strange sequencing in her narrative. For example, chapter 41 beings with Bell signing in as a visitor at the jail (in Charlie's POV, for some inexplicable reason). On the very next page, the narrative jumps backward in time. That section begins, "Earlier that day, Bell made a trip to the Bevins home. She didn't go alone." The VERY NEXT sentence is what happened even earlier in the day, BEFORE she visited the Bevins home. So, we're now essentially in a double-flashback which lasts for three pages. We finally get TO the Bevins home (Phew! Back to only a single flashback!), where we stay for the remainder of the chapter (six more pages). And then, at chapter 42 (ten pages later), we finally come back to the present-time narrative in the the jail. Why not just tell the story in order, rather than jumping all over the place? I guess it's a style quirk, but I found it very annoying. The whole story felt like a "two steps forward, one step back" rhythm.
-The storyline with Albie was ridiculous. Nobody thought to ASK the guy what had happened? And then when they finally do, it takes only a handful of questions, and suddenly he spills it all, clear as day? It was worse than an episode of Cold Case.

And yet, after listing all those cons, I still feel the book was decent and (mostly) enjoyable. In general, the author's style is good enough to carry the book, despite the annoying stylistic quirks.

Who would walk into a crowded fast food restaurant and shoot three men as they sat drinking coffee? And why? Why these particular three friends; why this kind of violence in a small, rundown West Virginia town? These are the questions that prosecutor Bell Elkins is faced with in the wake of a seemingly random triple homicide. As gruesome as this killing is, Bell can not give it her undivided attention. The trial of a twenty-eight year old, profoundly mentally impaired man is about to get underway. Albie Sheets killed a six year old boy; a boy he befriended and often played with. Should Bell charge him with murder, or was it just an accident - a game gone terribly wrong?

This is how we are introduced to Bell Elkins, thirty nine year old single mother and chief prosecutor for Acker's Gap, West Virginia. Bell is juggling her overwhelming professional responsibilities with the daunting task of parenting a moody, angry seventeen year old girl. As the mystery unfolds, Bell's personal and professional lives intersect, driving the tense storyline to a heart-pounding conclusion.

I thought this was a first rate mystery. I am not an "armchair sleuth", it's not putting together the pieces of the puzzle that draw me to a mystery, but rather the characters. I find that authors who write this genre generally know how to create intriguing, multi-dimensional characters. Julia Keller excelled in this area. These characters were richly drawn; realistic and relatable. She is a very visual writer - I could clearly picture each scene. The dialog had a natural, non-scripted feel to it. As a parent of a teen myself, I must say that she "got" the relationship between Bell and her daughter.

As for the mystery itself...it was well thought out and there were no glaring holes in the plot. I have to confess that I figured it out a little too early, which surprised me. As I stated above, I'm far more interested in the characters than solving the mystery. However, I thought the author gave it away in a clue that was delivered with a too heavy hand. A bit more subtlety and I probably would have been caught off guard by the conclusion. This is a minor point though as I really enjoyed this story. Atmospheric, tense, intriguing...a good, solid, entertaining mystery. Very well done and highly recommended.

Very little strong language; some sexual language but no explicit content. Violence is described in some detail.

Good but not great because of the endless descriptions which were extremely annoying and interrupted the flow of the story. The author rambles on ad nauseam with unnecessary details. For instance does the reader need or want to know how a dog's bark sounded or how the front door sounded when opened. I discovered that if I ignored anything following the words “as if” or “like” or “seemed”, and skipped whatever was between dashes, the flow of the book was more acceptable.
I found it ironic that Bell was impatient with Rhonda's digressions and failure to “stick to the basic narrative”. Rhonda told stories “in a distinctive—and distinctively infuriating—way”. This is an apt description of the author.
I liked the characters and appreciated the story line which, being from neighboring Kentucky, really struck a chord with me about conditions in my area of the state, but I won't be buying any more books by this author.

Acker's Gap, West Virginia, has maintained a simple way of life, far from big city turmoil and crime, a place where family values still matter, a community of friends and neighbors. But the insidious influence of the drug culture, thriving on poverty and lack of opportunity, has infected a small town recently torn by addiction and the violence that follows. When three old men are shot to death in a local Salty Dawg franchise, the folks of Acker's Gap are outraged. As the sound of gunfire rends the air, prosecutor Belfa Elkins races from her office to the site, late to meet her seventeen-year-old daughter, Carla, at the venue. As prosecutor, one of Belfa's most worrisome issues is the prevalence of illegal prescription drugs in her home town, a problem that has reached epidemic proportions. Clutching a trembling, albeit usually rebellious teen, for the moment content to be in her mother's embrace, Elkins is determined to find the killer and end the violence.

Unbeknownst to Bell, Carla thinks she may have recognized the shooter, but decides to keep her suspicions to herself until making further inquiries. As Elkins and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong initiate interviews with family members of the deceased to ascertain possible links to the killer, Carla plans her own investigation, thinking to identify a man who recently attended a party offering free prescription drugs to partygoers. Meanwhile, the killer speaks with his anonymous boss on a throwaway phone to learn who is next on their hit list. In a small town setting where everyone knows everyone else's business- including their secrets- Keller examines the damage wrought by the influx of drugs, the shattered families with children lost to addiction, the denial of parents and the deliberative work of law enforcement despite the obstacles.

The familiarity of the people in Acker's Gap provides this thriller with its emotional punch, especially the conscientious Bell, whose daughter dances closer to danger while her mother collects enough facts to name a suspect, unconscious of her own danger or the depths of betrayal she will endure by the end of the case. Simultaneously working a homicide where a mentally challenged man may or may not be responsible for the death of a six-year-old boy, Bell is caught in a flurry of events that lead to a final confrontation. Even when the odds are against her, Elkins knows this is one war she will never stop fighting. With a sense of the urgency with which Acker's Gap faces the enormity of their problem, Keller's novel gives crime and addiction a human face. Luan Gaines/2012.

For Belfa Elkins being the Prosecuting Attorney for Raythune County is suppose to be a fairly simple job. The small town of Acker's Gap and the rest of the county aren't much in the way of size. For West Virginia they are about as small town and normal as you would expect. But something has happened. Drugs have moved into the area and are really starting to cause a ripple effect in crime that is beginning to look more like large city issues than small town America.

When Belfa (her friends call her Bell) moved back to Acker's gap with her daughter she was returning to small town life and small town values. She felt that leaving the Washington D.C. area and all of it's large city crimes would be behind her. She also left behind her husband who wanted nothing to do with small town life, but everything to do with being a Washington D.C. lawyer / lobbyist / insider with lots of clout and the money to go along with it.

Bell and her daughter Carla have done fairly well in small town America, but Bell is finding the fight more and more difficult as she teams with her friend, Sheriff Nick Fogelsong to fight drugs and organized crime. But their fight takes on a new aspect, the killing of three older men in the town fast food restaurant starts a cascading effect that may have terrible repercussions for Bell and Carla as well as the entire town.

Carla is at the restaurant when a gunmen opens the door, guns down the three senior citizens and then calming leaves taking no other lives. Why these three men? Why in open daylight? Why with so many witnesses? What is really going on.

Carla saw the gunman and thinks she may know who it is but she doesn't tell her mother or the police. She keeps it to herself. Is it an act of defiance or protection? Is it being non committal or being afraid to get involved?

Further, the gunman has been hired by someone who wants to send a message. But as part of that message he also wants to take out the County Prosecutor. Is it a disgruntled criminal that Bell has put behind bars, or is it part of the organized crime that is bringing drugs to the region.

Julia Keller puts together a great novel with lots of intrigue, mis-direction and plenty of human drama that will keep you turning the pages. Will Carla ever reveal what she knows? Will Carla and Bell ever reconcile their mother / daughter differences? Will Carla leave and move back to Washington D.C. with her dad? Will Bell turn the corner on the criminals and get a hand up on the drug problems and the crime problems?

There are two other story lines mixed in with the main story. One is that of an adult man who has the maturity of a 12 year old. He is accused of killing his young 10 year old playmate. But should he be tried as an adult or let go because of diminished capacity. Bell has to decide whether to prosecute. Also there is the story of Bell's background (childhood) and the fact that her sister was put in prison twenty nine years ago for the brutal murder of their father. But was it murder or was it self-defense? Should her sister be let out on parole or not? Will Bell come to her sisters aid or just let her languish in prison?

This is a fun summer read that any Grisham fan would love to read. I hope you enjoy it, and I'm sure that you will be like me at the end, wanting a bit more and anxious for the next Bell Elkins novel.

Enjoy!

The debut novel for Julia Keller, "A Killing in the Hills" is a very good mystery & hopefully the beginning of a promising series/career. The story opens with a killing of 3 men in a restaurant in fictional Acker's Gap, WV which is a sleepy hamlet in West Virginia that has as of late become infiltrated by the drug trade. The county prosecutor's daughter, Carly, is a witness to the crime & she herself (Bell Elkins) is thrust into following evidence provided in order to prosecute the crime. There is also a secondary plot involved in this in the case of Albie Sheets who is a mentally challenged individual accused of the murder of a friend Tyler. Both stories are interwoven in a way that while they remain completely irrelevant to each other that force Bell to focus on both family & the grizzly crimes that have suddenly rocked this community. Keller's story is very well written & the town & surrounding community could be any small town in America & more importantly any one of us. The emotional crescendos in this story are well played & a surprise concluding sequences will keep you guessing up until the very end. Very nicely done & I look forward to reading more from this new author in the mystery genre.

The book starts with a jolting disaster, the apparent random murder of 3 men in a diner in a small West Virginia town. One witness is the daughter of the county prosecutor, Bell Elkins, the book’s main character. A second criminal case is added, the upcoming trial of a man accused of killing young boy, a death that occurred some months in the past.
Beyond these spectacular events, the story gets pretty lame. With a triple murder, you’d assume a platoon of authorities immediately fanning out to interview everybody from witnesses to family and friends near and far to employers current and former et al. Mostly we get Bell and the sheriff in desultory discussions. The reader finds out who the shooter is fairly soon but not the ‘boss,’ the person behind the shooter. For that, just pick any random person you encounter in the book, make up a reason to suspect that person and see if you are right. There’s not much that points to the actual boss more than to any number of other people.

The case of the child death is stalled when the trial is postponed. It is then readily resolved with one conversation Bell has with the jailed suspect, a conversation that should have occurred the first time the suspect was interviewed.

What fills out the book are two things. There are numerous descriptions of beautiful countryside contrasted with descriptions of impoverished urban scenes, dilapidated houses, trashy trailers, rusted vehicles. After several of these, I wanted to tell the author “Got it.” There are numerous flashbacks to Bell’s sadly awful upbringing. It takes about a dozen of these flashbacks to get out the whole story. What’s the benefit of the story in snippets?

Then there’s the mother-daughter element in the story. I decided to read this book in part because it featured a heroine who is also a mother, very unusual in the crime genre. Bell is supposedly a good mother but, alas, daughter Carla, age 14, is sour and angry. Please, oh ye authors out there, give us a teen who is not sour and angry. Would the fact that there isn’t one scene in which Bell and Carla spend more than 5 minutes with each other be a contributing factor? In one case, for example, Bell stops for fast food en route home but Carla rejects the grilled cheese sandwich, saying she’s not hungry, and withdraws to her room.

A side issue: Bell decides she’s not hungry for the burger-and-fries she bought for herself and stores both meals in the frig. Only then is she reminded that her frig is stuffed with casseroles provided by neighbors because of the trauma Carla suffered as a witness to murder. I would dare to say that no working mother forgets that her frig is full of food. I won’t comment on Bell’s choice of food for herself and her daughter, even while the both of them are described as being thin.

An annoying feature in the book is that every woman described is not attractive. E.g.: Dot is “doggedly stylish in a navy blue suit . . .Dot had a chin that seemed to merge directly into her neck . . . a pointy nose, and black eyes that sat just a shade too close together.” Serena: “exceptionally skinny, with straight, shiny-black hair and a markedly sharp chin and nose. Her resemblance to a crow was undeniable.” Rhonda “settled the phone beneath the flabby pouch of her jawline . . . “ And so on. I expect male writers to lack respect for woman, to see nothing about them but their looks, but I hope for better from female writers.

Finally, here’s just a major annoyance. At one point, the narrator explains one of Bell’s views: “. . . churches were the primary dispensers of charity - real charity, not the fake charity of government checks and trumped-up work programs.” I applaud all efforts undertaken by churches but government programs are crucial to a much larger number of people than can be served by churches. There are many stories of people being restored to a full life and to being contributing members of society because of social programs. They are one of the ways we all can and do help those in need. The author’s gratuitous bit of right-wing philosophy is insulting to a lot of readers, those who support government programs and those who benefit from them.

This is the first book in the Bell Elkins series. I actually read them in reverse order by accident, so a couple of things (mostly about Shirley, and what had happened to Bell as a child) already. This book though gives more detail on what happened.

In this book Bell is all grown up and is the county prosecutor. He works a lot of cases with the local Sheriff, whom I have also come to love. There are two cases in this novel to solve. The biggest one is the killing of 3 elderly men in a chain restaurant in broad daylight.

All of the characters are well developed. Bell is close to my own age, and I almost wish she were a real person that I could sit down and chat with. I have also fallen in love with Acker Gap, W.V. even though it is a fictional place. I am eagerly awaiting the 4th book in the series that is to be released later this year.

Julia Keller has fast become by newest favorite murder mystery novelist. She grabs your attention with the first chapter, and you do not want to put the book down until the very last page.

At the Salty Dawg restaurant in Acker's Gap, West Virginia, seventeen year old Carla Elkins waits for her divorced mom, Raythune County's prosecuting attorney Bell Elkins, to arrive. Instead the teen watches in horror as a gun man shoots in the heads three elderly men (sexagenarian Daniel Dean Streeter, septuagenarian Paul Arnold "Shorty" McClurg, and octogenarian Ralph Leroy Rader) drinking coffee together. The trio dies instantly.

Sheriff Fogelsong leads the investigation in which many saw the horror unfold, none can describe the executioner. Bell, who has worked closely with Fogelsong on illegal prescription drug trafficking, joins the inquiry. Meanwhile Carla, displaying teen resilience by recovering emotionally rather quickly, decides she is best suited to helping her estranged mom find the killer and get closer to her mother too. At the same tome the local drug chief puts a bounty on Bell.

A Killing In The Hills is a terrific Appalachia murder mystery with a strong cast who brings to life dying in the hopeless whirlpool of poverty. The mother and daughter duet keep the vivid tale focused, but it is the residence of Acker's Gap who turns Julia Keller's thriller into one of the best regional whodunits of the year.

Harriet Klausner

I enjoyed this book, once I got through the first third of it. A suspenseful mystery, well developed characters, a determined, idealistic protagonist.
I almost quit reading in the first third, however, because every time the heroine opens a door, gets into her car, drives a mile, sits down for coffee, or takes any action, we are enveloped in extended metaphors or lengthy backstory.
I prefer lean prose that advances the plot, It takes two paragraphs to tell us that a trailer sits at the edge of the road. 130 words to describe the heroine's favorite chair.
But that decreases after you get into the plot. I enjoyed the town of Acker's Gap, even though the townspeople are mostly described as pathetic losers. And the plot kept me guessing, and became more suspenseful toward the end. I would recommend this book, for patient readers who enjoy atmosphere.
I got this book at the library.

Author Julia Keller steps away from a Pulitzer Prize-Winning journalism career to tell this richly-characterized, memorable tale of crime and punishment in a small rural town in West Virginia. As a young woman, Bell Elkins left behind Acker's Gap, WV, hoping to close the door on a troubled childhood and start a new life in Washington, DC. Marriage, a law career, and a child could not fit together for Bell and her husband, and after their divorce, she returned to Acker's Gap, bringing along her reluctant and rebellious seventeen-year old daughter, Carla. Bell's old friend, Sheriff Nick Fogelsong, is pleased that she has come home, but he is perturbed by her determination to become the Prosecuting Attorney of Raythune County. While he admires her conviction and despairs of her stubbornness, Nick warns her of the drudgery and bleakness that the job entails. Undeterred, Bell wins the position and determines to clean up the drug racket which is poisoning the small community. Bell's commitment to her work does nothing to ease the tense, often hostile relationship between herself and Carla. Everything changes one day, in less than a minute, when a gunmen opens fire in the local eatery, The Salty Dawg. Killing three old men as they drink their coffee, the gunman leaves chaos and horror in his wake. As he makes a fast exit, Carla sees his face, and thus becomes a victim of another kind. Later, she realizes that she has seen the killer once before in a place she shouldn't have been, and she keeps silent so that her mother won't know where she had gone. Carla decides to investigate the killing on her own to save face, causing more harm than good. As Bell continues her quest to destroy the hold that drugs have on Raythune County, she is targeted by the drug lords, and life becomes ever more complex. In communities such as Acker's Gap where poverty is an inescapable, intricate link in the chain of life, there will always be hunters who prey on the weak and the hopeless. This is an endless cycle, as old as humanity itself. On a personal note, West Virginia is my close neighbor--my home in Virginia is just a half-hour away from the WV border. I have a deep fondness for West Virginia and its people, and I have found much there to appreciate. The mountains, while looming and silent, are also breathtakingly beautiful. Their majestic reign encompasses all, and they are sure in the knowledge that the differences each new generation will bring will be absorbed into the timeless legacy of the past.

Under the shadow of the looming mountains sits Aker's Gap, a small town in West Virginia with one traffic light that switches to a blinking light at 6PM. With few jobs to offer and an economy that is barely functional the town doesnt have a lot to offer in the way of hope for most people. In the surrounding hills and down the back streets are people who are struggling to make ends meet. There is a potent mixture of boredom amongst the youth and most hope to find a way to move far away one day. Bell Elkins was one of those who grew up in Aker's Gap and endured poverty and everything that came with it. She is a woman with a past, but she found a way out of Aker's Gap only to return years later as the prosecuting attorney for the county. With practical skills she thought she could make a real difference in her home town. She sees the crime, the abuse and the other problems in the community and has taken a hard line to try to stop the rise of crime. And then one day, the quiet is shattered when three old men who were just sipping their coffee in a restaurant are gunned down in cold blood. And so begins the search for the answers why in addition to who which leads everyone involved down the roads of tragedy that they never expected to face.

Although there are a few tongue twisting sentences at the start of the book, the writing throughout the rest of the book is very good. Julia Keller has created a story of poverty, family and small town politics and relationships. It is also a story of discovery for Bell and her daughter Carla. The discovery story is as important in the book as the murder mystery itself. The author spends the first 2/3 of the book building the story and developing the characters as she slowly pulls the reader into the story. Although the story may be slow at first, the last 1/3 of the book was full of suspense and difficult to put down as the story twists and turns as it unfolds.

From the sounds of the surrounding hills to the feel of the pace of life, the author has done a convincing job of creating the Aker's Gap. The author is from West Virginia, herself and although Aker's gap doesn't really exist, it may have been created from the world that the author saw and experienced. The problems of the small depressed town are simmering at the surface throughout the book and the book has a very authentic feel of experience.

I enjoyed A Killing in the Hills and I look forward to reading more Bell Elkins stories from Julia Keller in the future.

Bell Elkins grew up in Acker's Gap, West Virginia. After a tragic upbringing that includes a fire and the death of her father, she then goes from foster home to foster home. She goes away to college, gets married and has a child. She feels drawn to return to Acker's Gap to make a difference. Her marriage falls apart and she takes her daughter home to West Virginia. She runs and is elected prosecuting attorney for Raythune County. The county has a serious drug problem and Bell is determined to clean up the county.

While Bell is working on another tragic case where a child was killed she learns that 3 elderly men have been gunned down in a local diner. The same diner where her now 17 year old daughter Carla was waiting for her Bell to her up. The eatery was full of witnesses but it happened so fast no one really saw the shooter. Why were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted? Was it random? Drug related? Carla was shocked and horrified by what she saw, but after a few days, she begins to recover enough to believe that she might be able to help her mother do her job. Bell vows to find and bring the killer to justice not knowing her daughter may already know who he is or that Carla may be putting herself in danger to help her.

A Great Debut to a new series!!

Julie Keller has created some wonderfully flawed characters and set them loose in West Virginia.

This first story has more than one mystery for readers to follow and she has woven them together seamlessly. We learn about Belfa's (yes, that her real name) past and her dysfunctional family that made her the woman she is today. A young boy is killed and Bell has to decide how to move forward charging a mentally challenged 28 year old. Three elderly residents are gunned down by an unknown assailant. Add to that Bell's teenage daughter going through normal growing pains and then she witnesses this terrible shooting.

Bell has a true friend in the sheriff and he is there to walk with her through the mayhem and he does his best to protect her. I love the meetings over pieces of pie as they try to sort out the clues. Last one to arrive buys the pie!

Bell has a lot on her plate besides her job a prosecuting attorney for the county. Her sister has just been paroled from prison and her daughter would rather be living with her dad. With this a foundation has been laid for the series moving forward. Bell is a strong woman with a noble agenda that will probably get her in lot of trouble.

One of my favorite parts of this story was Bell driving in the mountains to question the mother of the mentally challenged suspect. The author's description of the winding roads, cliff drop offs, up and down the mountains, made me feel like I was right in the vehicle holding on for dear life. Extra tension was added when she was being followed. It was a white knuckle moment holding on to my kindle as I couldn't read the pages fast enough.

I am looking forward to my return to this "shabby afterthought of a town". If you are a mystery lover you too will enjoy this story.

I enjoyed reading "A Killing in the Hills" but there were some distinct issues that I had with the book:

1) I figured the mysteries out almost as soon as they were presented. As that was less than a third of the way through the book, I had some problems wanting to finish it. I kept hoping that maybe I was wrong - but no, I was right on all counts. I think the problem here was that the author gave away too many clues that made both the current and the older murders too easily solvable. Add to that is my second issue.

2) The storyline was too predictable - there wasn't anything new here to see. Even without the clues, you could tell what was going to happen next. It still made for a good read - but not a great one.

3) The author kept interrupting sentences with asides which were really long and involved and made it next to impossible to carry the original thought of the sentence back to its conclusion.

and finally,

4) While I like a mystery to move around a bit, this one did a little too much. Backwards in time, current time, another person, backwards again, yet another person and on and on. It made it difficult to follow. Add this to having already figured out the story, it was difficult to finish.

Having said all of that, I am glad that I read the book and would recommend it. It is the debut mystery for this author and her writing shows a lot of promise. Once she tightens up on the issues I mention above, her books will be outstanding. I do plan on reading the next in the series (assuming there will be one.) I must admit that one of my favorite characters is Rhonda - she was the quintessential small town girl grown up to a small town gossip. I liked reading her character and especially look forward to more - she made me laugh.

This is a very atmospheric novel/mystery. Living in West Virginia, Julia Keller's descriptions jumped off the page to me and were quite real. Fictional Raythune County very much resembles large portions of southern West Virginia. Her characters are ones that could easily be a neighbor.

I like the structure of the mystery - it seems she divulges much early on, but she keeps her high card hidden until the end. The mystery is very well put together - if you pay attention, Keller drops subtle clues and you can solve the mystery (or have an inkling) before the end. I've read the second in the series and she also plants the seeds for things that happen in the second novel as well.

The one thing I didn't like about the novel was Keller's propensity to remind you (overwhelmingly so at times) that you were in West Virginia. She didn't refer to the Legislature, for example, but always the "West Virginia Legislature." Never the State Police but the West Virginia State Police.

A woman returns to the place where a family tragedy took place years ago. Everyone else is gone. She decides there is nothing here for her, either.

That woman is the prosecuting attorney of Raythune County, West Virginia. Bell Elkins has brought her teenage daughter, Carla, back to her hometown when her husband wanted a high-flying career that didn't seem to include them. But home hasn't been a sanctuary. Carla is in full teenage-rebel mode. She also could have been hurt the day a gunman walked into a local restaurant and killed three old men in the middle of their morning coffee meeting.

Bell and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong, who was a young deputy when the tragedy in Bell's family took place and who took her under his wing, seek to find the killer. They also deal with other cases, the people they work with and the rest of the town where everybody seemingly knows everybody else. As is normal in a small town, not everyone is as they seem.

One of the cases appears to be an easy prosecution but shows Bell's determination for precision and doing right. A developmentally disabled young man plays with a much younger boy. One day, the younger boy dies. On its own, this case could have taken center stage in showing Bell's character, the ins and outs of small-town prosecutions and a decent plot.

The main story is told from the investigation side as well as the first-person account of the shooter, who is fairly standard-issue small-town nobody who wants to be known for something. The interesting part of the case has to do with Carla as she struggles with growing up and wanting to make her mother proud of her even if she wants Mom to just leave her alone.

Keller's first novel is an interesting attempt to showcase the struggles of people who live in beautiful country and high poverty, where drugs can offer an easy way out and a way to make some money. It isn't the strongest novel, as a few Too Stupid to Live moments are employed to raise the stakes in finding the killer. A contractor wanting to stop by a house after 10 p.m. also can easily take a reader out of the story. But the novel is an honest attempt and shows the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's considerable admiration for West Virginia and her people.

Set in Ackers Gap, West Virginia, Belfa Elkins and her daughter Carla, are in the throes of mother/daughter drama. Carla is a rebellious teen, and Bell is busy with work as Rathune County's prosecuting attorney, with little time or attention to much else. Drugs are overtaking this small coal mining town, and many of the county's youth are taken up with this evil.
As Carla sits at the Salty Dawg one morning waiting for her chronically late mother to pick her up, three elderly men are shot dead at the table next to her as they enjoy a cup of coffee. Carla remains unharmed - at least visibly- but doesn't share with her mother that she recognizes the killer. He had been at a party she attended without her mother's knowledge.
What both Carla and Bell don't know is that Chill, the man who killed the gentlemen, is also planning on killing Bell. Carla wants to help her mom and begins to do a bit of investigative work on her own, only to put herself at risk.
Combine this plotline with a few subplots- a mentally handicapped young man who accidentally kills a neighbor boy he plays with until more evidence arises, Bell's mysterious past and the sister she hasn't seen in nearly three decades, A Killing In the Hills is a rich and easily absorbing mystery.
Just like Julia Spencer Fleming's Clare Ferguson/Russ Van Alstyne series, I felt at home with these characters as soon as I began reading. I will be pressing this book into the hands of friends, knowing they will also find it hard to put down.

Beautiful writing, characters, and must read plot. The author got the small town feel wonderfully. The well-developed characters are complex: sad, funny, miserable, compassionate, pathetic and morally depraved. 39 year old Bell Elikins is the county prosecutor in Acker's Gap, an Appalachian Mountain town in Raythune County, West Virginia where the natural beauty is dwarfed by poverty, hopelessness and violence. She left when she was 10, had a tragic upbringing that put her through a cycle of foster houses one worse than the one before, became a Washington DC attorney, married a hot shot, had a child and when her marriage dissolves she returns. Rhonda is Bell's disorganized & unreliable assistant but her connections in the small town prevent firing her. Her current case load includes Albie Sheets, a 28 year old man with the IQ of a 12 year is accused of killing his 6 year old playmate, about to go to trial.

Carla, Bell's 17 year old daughter, is hurting big time. Five years ago her mother took her from her father and friends, all she was familiar with, at the lowest point a child could have - a divorce in a family. I just couldn't get over that her mother wouldn't put off moving, until her daughter is off in college, to move back home and save the town. Add to that Bell is working long hours leaving Carla to fend for herself *sigh*. Carla is sitting in the Salty Dawg, the only eatery in town, waiting for her mother to get off work and take them home when Shorty, Lee and Dean are gunned down. Carla has seen the shooter at a party she shouldn't have been at but, rather than tell her mom who really doesn't seem a bad sort, she keeps quiet for the moment. A wow finish with the killer's capture and learning who the bad guys are. I really enjoyed the special bond shared by Bell and Sheriff Nick that goes back 29 years. Two things kept me from loving it, Bell as a mother (she has two assistant prosecutors - she couldn't stay home with her daughter after seeing all that carnage?) and Shirley's story. I'd say more but it would spoil the novel for you

This is not a shallow murder mystery. It focuses on several important and common realities: Realities faced by normal, everyday people: Prescription drug addictions; drug dealers just around the corner; parental worries about with whom and how their kids spend their days; how to stand firm when peer pressure is against you, and poverty in our own backyard.

The main character has very strong feelings about the problems in her community. She is not one to look the other way. She's a tough, concerned, loving Mom who senses that her daughter is at a crossroads between taking the easy route and bowing to peer pressure or listening to Mom's advice.

There is much love in this book: For family, friends and a home town, county and state. There is much that is awful in this book: Incest, murders, poverty, drugs, despair, depression, filthiness, laziness. The book is very well balanced in that way; in the way your emotions flit from one end of the spectrum to the other.

The novel is very well written. The words, conversations, story line flow easily and smoothly. The wording is vivid and the author paints an adequate picture of each scene. Towards the last third, the book becomes a real page-turner. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this mystery and look forward to more from this author. I'm glad I read it.

If I could, I would rate this somewhere between "like" and "love," because the former seems a little too lackluster, but the latter I prefer to reserve for the rare occasion when something really knocks my socks off. This novel was not a title I'd add to my lifetime favorites, but it's a really solid debut, with interesting characters, an unusual locale, and good momentum, which sets it apart from most of what I've read lately. My life is full of drugs--shows about drugs, people recovering from drugs, classes about drugs--and it still amazes me how little most people understand about the reality of drug culture, so this novel, which takes place in a small, backwater town that is falling prey to a scourge of prescription pill addiction...made me happy? It did. And it threw in some dysfunctional relationships and grisly murder for added flavor. The characters could have a little more dimension, but, all-in-all, I would really like to see more from this writer.