Book Talk: ‘Raining Tears’ is detective tale with modern themes
Cuyahoga Falls resident Laura Freeman has taken a sharp turn from historical romance with “Raining Tears,” a detective story that incorporates modern themes like the opioid crisis and police-involved shootings.
The main characters are Claire Batton, a nurse, Sydney Harrison, a police detective, and Beth Moreno, a rookie officer in a fictional town near Cleveland. Claire became addicted to opioids after a car accident and began stealing pills from the stock in the pain management department at the hospital where she worked, but the thefts were noticed and she transferred to the emergency room, which forced her to look elsewhere. Now she’s going through her co-workers’ lockers.
One rainy day, Claire sees a pain management patient sitting at a bus stop. Knowing that the woman takes oxycodone for arthritis, she uses a rain poncho to disguise herself, sticks a gun in the woman’s face and steals her purse. The plan seems to be going well and Claire is on her way home to change for work when she has an unexpected opportunity: A young father on his way home from the pharmacy with antibiotics for his infant son. In her attempt to rob him, Claire ends up injured and the man ends up dead, shot by Officer Moreno.
Claire escapes, having hurriedly identified herself as one of her co-workers, using a driver’s license she had stolen months before. Because she had made it appear as if the dead man had been robbing her, the case seems simple enough. Then Detective Harrison starts seeing discrepancies.
Claire becomes increasingly concerned with avoiding detection and securing drugs, while Beth’s notoriety as the shooter is turning into a frenzy: In one scene, she is trying to buy groceries and a crowd surrounds her, throwing canned goods. Meanwhile, Sydney closes in.
“Raining Tears” (286 pages, softcover) costs $17.99 from Wild Rose Press. Laura Freeman also is the author of the solid 2014 Civil War-era romance “Impending Love and War,” set in a town that resembles Hudson, and its four sequels.
‘The Dug-Up Gun Museum’
A boxed-set replica of the Derringer used to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, up for auction on eBay. A weekend D-Day reenactment in Pennsylvania with 5,000 paintball-wielding combatants, some with visible swastikas. Poet Matt Donovan, who grew up in Hudson, addresses America’s gun culture in his devastating collection “The Dug-Up Gun Museum.”
Donovan says in his notes that he “began traveling around America and speaking to people about guns ... [with] little idea what shape this book would ultimately take.” He meets the father of a survivor of the Sandy Hook school shooting whose life would be ruined by harassments and conspiracy theorists, and writes about the fate of the Cleveland gazebo in which 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed in 2014.
Donovan watches the video of an unarmed Black man shot to death while walking in a West Virginia street and views a memorial wall of photos dedicated to victims of gun violence in Chicago.
There are no solutions offered, only suffering and sorrow.
“The Dug-Up Gun Museum” (94 pages, softcover) costs $17 from BOA Editions. Matt Donovan is a professor at Smith College, where he directs the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center. There is a real Dug-Up Gun Museum, in Cody, Wyoming, with displays of rusted artifacts; the website promises “fun for the whole family.”
Award nominees
The 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Award nominees include “American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper” by Cleveland native Daniel Stashower, in the Best Fact Crime category. It’s about the Torso Murderer, who may have claimed more than a dozen victims in the 1930s. Stashower has won in this category once before, and twice in the Best Critical/Biographical Work category. Nominated for the Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award is “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Tallmadge author Amanda Flower, about Emily Dickinson’s crime-solving maid. The winners will be announced April 27.
Events
Loganberry Books (13015 Larchmere Blvd., Shaker Heights): Kathy Schulz discusses “The Underground Railroad in Ohio,” 1 p.m. Sunday.
Hudson Library & Historical Society: Washington Post writer Mary Beth Albright talks about “Eat & Flourish: How Food Supports Emotional Well-Being” in a Zoom event at 7 p.m. Monday. At 7 p.m. Tuesday, nutritionist Daniella Chase talks about “Home Detox: Make Your Home a Healthier Place for Everyone Who Lives There.” Register at hudsonlibrary.org.
Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library: Randall Munroe, creator of the webcomic xkcd and author of “What If? Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems,” joins the Online Author Talk Series at 2 p.m. Tuesday. Register at smfpl.org.
Medina County District Library: Chuck Wendig, author of “Star Wars: Aftermath” and the Miriam Black fantasy series, makes a Zoom appearance at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. Register at mcdl.info.
Visible Voice Books (2258 Professor Ave., Cleveland): Poets Austin Davis (“Celestial Night Light”), Damian Rucci (“The Former Lives of Saints” and John Burroughs, U.S. Beat Poet Laureate (“Dogging Catastrophe”) read from their work, 7 p.m. Friday.
B-Side (2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights): Poet Danny Caine launches “Picture Window,” with readings from Raechel Anne Jolie, Philip Metres and Aumaine Rose Smith, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Saturday.
Email information about books of local interest, and event notices at least two weeks in advance to BeaconBookTalk@gmail.com and bjnews@thebeaconjournal.com. Barbara McIntyre tweets at @BarbaraMcI.
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: ‘Raining Tears’ by Laura Freeman is detective tale with modern themes
