‘The Hunger of Crows’ is a gripping, character-focused Alaskan political thriller.

“The Famine of the Crows”

By Richard Chiappone; Crooked Rail Books; 2021; 304 pages; $27.99

Homer, Alaska doesn’t spring to mind as an obvious setting for a political thriller, especially one where the outcome could determine an American presidential race. That’s why Homer makes a lot of sense. When someone has something to hide and someone to hide from, the legendary End of the Road is a tempting destination.

That’s how Carla Merino finds herself there in Richard Chiappone’s suspenseful yet light-hearted novel “The Hunger of the Crows.” Chiappone, who lives in Homer and clearly loves him, makes his town and the surrounding Kachemak Bay region the backdrop for Carla’s escapade after she stumbles across an incriminating photograph of an independent presidential candidate advancing on the polls.

The story begins in Phoenix, Arizona, where Carla is a waitress at a bar that caters to cops. Divorced and approaching 40, she fills in the gaps in her life by going home with street men. When she runs into Cosmo D’Angelo at the bar, she assumes he is a lawman and follows him to his house. Before she leaves, she does what she does with all the men she sleeps with, she takes something with her as a souvenir. In this case, a photograph from D’Angelo’s nightstand drawer of himself some 20 years younger, alongside another white American and two men who appear to be Latin American, one a military officer, the other possibly a Businessman.

The second white man in the photograph is Gordon McKint, owner of Sidewinder Security, a secret international firm that handles clandestine foreign affairs tasks and is moving into US border security. McKint is running for president on a nativist platform and has momentum. Carla sends a snapshot of the photograph to a reporter friend from The New York Times, who tells her that it shows McKint with a Colombian colonel who stole millions in American aid money. McKint, suspected of being involved in many clandestine activities, had testified before Congress that he never knew the colonel. Publishing the photo would prove him guilty of lying under oath, sinking his presidential hopes and his business empire, and possibly putting him behind bars. D’Angelo, whom Carla went home with, is McKint’s repairman. He removes trouble for the boss. And he’s going to want that photograph back.

With only a few belongings and the stolen photograph, an image The New York Times would love to publish, Carla gets in her truck and heads north. Which brings her to Homer, where most of the story takes place.

Carla finds refuge in the booze-fueled fishing village, working as a waitress at the Orca Grill, a popular watering hole for locals and tourists. He falls in love with George Volker, his owner, gets close to fellow waitress Shire Kaminsky, a single mother of twins, and is set upon by Scott Crockett, a painfully honest local general contractor, in the midst of an ugly divorce, and thus… , is available again. And she’s always looking over her shoulder at D’Angelo, who, being a political thriller, of course has figured out where she is and is on his way. Just like some of the other people at McKint.

I understand? I don’t want to reveal too many more details here, because Chiappone throws so many unexpected plot twists into this plot that any attempt to summarize them would not only fail to do the book justice, but would deprive readers of the sheer joy that comes from reading it.

I said at the beginning that “The Hunger of Crows” is a political thriller, but the emphasis is not on the politics, while the emotions are judiciously distributed as needed to move things forward without advancing the plot. It’s the characters that drive the story. Chiappone investigates their backgrounds and turns them into complex individuals. Most are in the early stages of middle age, dealing with the choices that got them where they are. Carla follows in her mother’s footsteps and runs away from her. Scott, who emerges as the main supporting character, was born in Homer and, like so many Alaskans, has a college degree but prefers to work with his hands. D’Angelo, who could easily have been cast as a soulless assassin, is a middle-aged man who has just lost his adult daughter to cancer. He is also struggling with his life choices. In Chiappone’s hands, past experiences drive the present motivations of all those in his leading roles. They make sense as people. Just like his decisions.

Homer and Kachemak Bay are also characters in a sense in that Chiappone employs them as living forces that provide more than just scenery. He knows these places well and wonderfully evokes the contrast of natural beauty with human intrusion in passages like this, when Carla stops to take in her surroundings:

“Along with the ocean’s natural scent of brine and fish, the harbor breeze reeks of diesel and dumpsters… Two mature bald eagles sit atop a tall construction crane, scanning the beach for an easy meal” .

Anyone who has visited Homer Spit will instantly come across that description again. And for those who have driven…well…anywhere in Alaska, Chiappone’s concise summary of one of the state’s most popular outdoor siding options will ring true:

“They go through another house mummified in Tyvek cloth.”

“Mummified”. One of the constants in Chiappone’s writing, whether it be nonfiction, short stories, or political thrillers, is his sense of humor. There are a lot of very amusing lines that slipped so easily into this narrative that distracted readers risk missing many, though a short paragraph on the fate of fly fishermen, which I’m not going to give away, is impossible to pass up. high, and will have both veteran anglers and those who have never cast a rod laughing out loud.

“The Hunger of Crows” is literary enough that those who generally avoid genre fiction will want to give it a read, but accessible enough that heavy readers of thrillers will also enjoy it immensely. That is not an easy gap to bridge. This belongs on everyone’s late summer reading list.