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Kevin Stevens
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Reach the Shining River Paperback – April 26, 2014

by Kevin Stevens (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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Kansas City, 1935. Emmett Whelan, an idealistic county prosecutor who has left behind his Irish roots and married into the country club set, takes on the city’s corrupt political machine when he investigates the brutal murder of a black musician. As Emmett probes the case and meets another outsider, a black jazz singer Arlene Gray, he discovers the city’s underbelly of racism and criminality. His personal life deteriorates. The closer he gets to the heart of the corruption, the more he sees that it is deeper and closer than he has ever suspected. And when the truth unfolds – about the killings, the machine, Emmett’s wife – a surprising and devastating climax reverberates at every level of the city.
"Reach the Shining River" is an urban crime drama about money, race, and class. Tense and full of memorable characters, it has the smell of a big river, the atmosphere of 1930s America, and a soundtrack that is pure jazz and blues.
“With the rhythm and cadence of the prose, echoing the blues soundtrack that underscored the whole book, Stevens easily achieved that balance between crime fiction and literary fiction due to his exceptional characterization and engaging prose.” —Raven Crime Reads
Previous page
  1. Print length
    306 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    April 26, 2014
  4. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.77 x 8.5 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0992655250
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0992655259
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kevin Stevens is the author of two novels published by Simon & Schuster UK, "Song for Katya" and "The Rizzoli Contract", and of two children's books. "The Cops Are Robbers", his true crime account of New England's largest bank burglary, was made into an NBC Movie of the Week. Kevin lives in Dublin and Boston and writes about jazz and American politics for The Irish Times and other publications.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Betimes Books (April 26, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0992655250
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0992655259
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.77 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

About the author

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Kevin Stevens

Kevin Stevens

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Kevin Stevens is a Montana native who divides his time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Dublin, Ireland. Visit him at www.kevinstevens.net.

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
7 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Carto1540
5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric, pacy crime novel - a great read
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2014
I really enjoyed this tense tale of murder in 1930s Kansas City. The main character, Emmett, is a prosecutor on the hunt for the killers of a jazz musician. The case takes him on a swift, desperate journey from high-class hotels to hopping jazz clubs. At every turn he runs into racial tension, class snobbery, greed and sex - all sparking off one other like flint on steel. The characters he encounters take solace in booze, jazz and blues - all of which pervade the novel - until he starts to close in on the mystery and violence flares.

While reading this I was reminded of the TV show True Detective in that the book has great set pieces, intense characters and a story loaded with atmosphere (but the ending is far better!).

Stevens does a lovely job casting the city as a character too. Its streets, bars and backwaters rise fully-formed from the page and stay with you long after the story ends.

The novel is compelling and highly readable without being formulaic. A terrific read - I was hooked from the start.
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Iseult McLister
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent crime novel with substance
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2014
Reach the shining river impressed me in both the quality of its prose and the vividness of its place. Reading the novel, you are shunted back to another time: a time of corruption, of small-town politics, and the blues. It has the feel of noir, but with a complexity that transcends its stylism. It is a murder mystery but it's characters' flaws, desires, and struggles within an unequal world come first.
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Top reviews from other countries

shaneb
4.0 out of 5 stars "With the .45 in his pocket and alcohol in his blood, Emmett was right at home"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2014
Verified Purchase
Opening with the discovery of a dead body on a muddy riverbank, Kevin Stevens' crime novel broadens into an atmospheric portrayal of Depression-era Kansas City on the cusp of radical change. The murder of jazz musician Eddie Sloan is investigated by assistant county prosecutor Emmett Whelan, an Irish-American who grew up in West Bottoms--the wrong side of the tracks. Caught between his gritty upbringing and the country-club pretensions of his current position, Whelan finds his marriage heading towards the rocks just as his father-in-law asks him to do a very big favour.

Emmett's sense of being an outsider is echoed and amplified in the story of the other central character, Arlene Gray. Arlene cleans hotel rooms by day and by night she sings of heartbreak in a blues club. Arlene knows what she is singing about: Sloan was her lover for two years before his disappearance. Dreading the next tragedy, Arlene bestows her dwindling hopes on her young son, Wardell. But Wardell is also at risk as long as ruthless factions tussle for control of a corrupt city machine.

Stevens' prose pulls off the trick of being both evocative and concise. For example, a man's glowering appearance is sketched in a single line: 'His eyes were like bullet holes in a roadsign.' Some readers may find the casual racism of some characters difficult to absorb but the language rings true to the times. And re-creating those times is where this novel shines: anyone interested in America in the 1930s, jazz and the blues, or the dynamics of race and baseball will find plenty to divert them while "Emmo" struggles to unearth the truth in a city where the powerful profit from lies.
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