Pattison’s Bone Rattler is an unconventional mystery. There are no police. The “detective” is an indentured servant who only investigates the crimes in the book because he wants to save an innocent man. And while there is a trial at the end, it’s a parody of a judicial proceeding with two warring judges. I read Bone Rattler in two days. I didn’t mean to read it so quickly, but I kept reading because I just had to know how it all worked out.
The novel begins with the protagonist, Duncan McCallum, on a prison ship some days out of New York harbor in 1759. We learn that he’s been sentenced to seven years’ indenture for the crime of sheltering a Jacobite relative. For several dozen pages, this remains one of the few clear facts in the book. McCallum is in the middle of what turns out to be at least three interrelated mysteries and it takes him (and the reader) a while to get oriented to the strange deaths on and off the ship.
Before long, McCallum is pressed into duty as an investigator because he had medical training and a stubborn refusal to let official lies slide past. As if this weren’t enough, McCallum also find himself hip deep in some seeming supernatural weirdness. As they must, the different threads of the mystery eventually converge. The murder and suicides on the prison ship eventually trace back to a massacre some years before the novel and a truly impressive set of conspiracies. Unlike the more procedural kinds of mysteries, this book follows a winding path towards its resolution(s). McCallum picks up a part of the story from one character, another from a different character, and yet more from evidence scattered around what seems like the entire western half of the New York colony.
To his credit, Pattison doesn’t explain things overmuch. There is a character inclined to exposition but, for the most part, McCallum has to figure things out on his own. Thankfully, he’s a bright and observant man. He gives the reader a view of the New World that I haven’t encountered in fiction or in nonfiction. Anyone who’s been through American history classes has a basic understanding of what Colonial America was like: Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, French and Indian Wars, Intolerable Acts, Revolutionary War, and a lot of men in wigs and short pants. Because of that background, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to sail for months across and ocean, to settle in a wildly dangerous new land. And because of our global, connected world, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to encounter new peoples, with radically different cultures and philosophies. Following McCallum around, however, helped me to feel what it might have been like to live in an alien country.
I love books that can successfully blend genres. I’d recommend this to fans of mysteries, especially fans who like mysteries that can keep them guessing until the end of the book. And I’d recommend it to fans of historical fiction. Pattison does a terrific job of showing his readers just how dangerous colonial America could be. I lost count of the number of near death experiences McCallum has. In spite of the lack of explication, there are a wealth of details in the book that paint a very clear picture of McCallum’s New York. I could swear that I could smell the trees as our protagonist and his allies trekked through the wilderness.
I am so glad my library has the sequel.