Book Review: Wellton County Hunters
Wellton County Hunters. Simon A. Smith, Adelaide Books LLC, November 10, 2021, Paperback, 202 pages.
Review by Bob King.
Russ is lamenting, jilted by his former girlfriend, when he witnesses a murder in the alley behind his apartment building. But Wellton County Hunters is not just some formulaic murder mystery: instead, Russ makes one half-hearted attempt to search for the killer but abandons it rather quickly. The murder is then only occasionally mentioned again.
Instead, the story focuses on certain characters trying to make sense of life in small-town Wellton. It is a fight against creeping nihilism, an attempt by twenty-somethings to find purpose where none is apparent.
As a piece of literary fiction, character development, rather than plot, drives the story. We are introduced to several characters stuck in the rut that is Wellton.
Russ, the protagonist, is a poor high school student and a recent college dropout. He spends most of his time drinking and getting stoned with his best friend Richie, who is devoted to his invalid mother, but otherwise as aimless as Russ. However, things may change as Russ embarks on a new career as a bank teller. Additional characters are introduced: Russ’ new boss Wayne, who has his own nerdiness with which to contend; Natalie, a cheerful fellow bank teller; Darlene, a friend of Natalie with whom Russ begins a budding love relationship. In a chance encounter on the street, Russ meets a Mexican-American couple, Daniel and Teresa, trying to buy a burned-out home in Wellton to fix up as their new home.
In the end, the book abruptly finishes. But the story may not be over. The book’s cover states that it is “Book One of the Search Team Trilogy.” So, the author intends to finish the story in two more books, and we may yet find out who committed the murder that started this book. However, I believe that the author of a series has a responsibility to write each part of the series so that it can stand alone as a finished work. Unfortunately, in my opinion, book one of Wellton County Hunters fails in that regard. Its abrupt ending keeps it from feeling like a completed work, and the ending does not in any way foreshadow what lies ahead. It just ends.
Whether readers will ultimately read book two or three will depend on how captivated they are with the characters developed in book one. I was not so captivated, but that may be a generational issue. Younger readers may more readily identify with these characters’ angst.
On the other hand, the book excels at painting compelling word pictures of the town and its inhabitants. You feel the dreary loneliness and dead-end nature of life in Wellton and the heavy hand of inertia that traps the book’s main characters.