The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies: A John McIntire Mystery

Kathleen Hills
Poisoned Pen Press (2007)
ISBN 9781590584767
Reviewed by Tara Hammack (age 16) for Reader Views (10/07) 


This book was very interesting; in a way, you can’t put the book down. It started out with this young girl named Claire up in a tree just trying to have a minute of peace. While she was in that tree, she heard a loud boom of a gunshot. “People were always shooting at something around here…” she had thought. She didn’t even think of the possibility of her father sitting on his tractor with a bullet through his head. The story is all about finding Reuben Hofer’s killer. We find so much about Mr. Hofer like the way he treated his family, what “friends” he had, and the people who hated him which is a lot of people. Ms. Hofer is a very sick person who weighs over three-hundred pounds and when you’re overweight you have heart problems. She has four kids, three sons named Jake, Sam, Joey, and a daughter Claire. They all were also Reuben’s kids. He was really strict on all of them. He was mean all the time and made all the kids do chores from sunup to sundown.  If Ms. Hofer needed something, she would call for Claire.

McIntire is one of the people who are trying to find out and understand what happened to Mr. Hofer. He would go back and forth between suspects. Of course the family members are suspects; at least, the two older boys are. Also two people Hofer was “friends” with when he was at the CPS camps are suspects. Their names are Wanda Greely and Bruno Nickerson. They had a deal with Reuben Hofer, but Reuben betrayed both of them and ran away; then he moved back in that area with his family. Hofer came from a real protective, religious community and he left because he hated it there, but he treated his family the way he was treated in the community.

Well, “The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies” was a little confusing. At times I didn’t know who was talking so I would have to read it again. Also, I didn’t know where the character was in parts of the book. There are a lot of things to keep track of like names and who they were. The storyline was good.  I liked the part when Claire was up in the tree and talking to herself about her father. “When she got high enough she’d be able to see it, too; then she could keep an eye on the old bastard.” I like that part because it was the third sentence of the book and it showed how much she hated her father. I would recommend this book to ages over 18 because I’m 16 and I couldn’t really relate to anything in the book. Though I couldn’t always follow the book and had to reread parts, I really liked it.

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