MRC RECOMMENDS: Hard Headed Woman by Howard Gimple
“Hard Headed Woman is a refreshingly original story, free of many of the tropes often associated with mystery novels. That alone makes it deliciously difficult for the reader to guess who did what, and that makes this story one of the better mysteries we’ve read recently.” – The Mystery Review Crew
Hard Headed Woman
By Howard Gimple
Genre: Thriller
No one but Hannah Johansson believes her father was murdered. Not even her mother. The doctors say he had a stroke but Hannah knows he was poisoned. She just doesn’t know who did it or why. One thing she does know is that the answers can be found at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a pristine 9,000 acre nature preserve where her father was superintendent.
When she goes back to the Refuge, instead of answers, all she finds are more questions. Ominous questions. Where are all birds? Why is there a heavily armed guard at the gate? What’s in the mysterious bundles being dropped off there in the middle of the night? When the police won’t investigate, Hannah is determined to find the answers herself and she won’t quit until she learns the truth. Not even after she is shot at, thrown in jail and beat up by a 300-pound lesbian biker.
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Review of Hard Headed Woman by Howard Gimple
Hard Headed Woman is a refreshingly original story, free of many of the tropes often associated with mystery novels. That alone makes it deliciously difficult for the reader to guess who did what, and that makes this story one of the better mysteries we’ve read recently.
The story follows the plight of New Yorker Hannah Johansson as she comes to terms with the idea that she likely killed her beloved father, the man who created the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. When she later learns that her father was poisoned, she sets off on a path to identify the person who killed him.
Hannah begins her search at the wildlife refuge, where her father was the superintendent emeritus until his passing. But things are very different: it is no longer open to the public, there is a tall fence surrounding it, and it is being guarded by a thug carrying a machine gun. She enlists the help of her cousin Phillip, a doctor from upstate, as well as her best friend Bette. She knew finding the culprit would be a daunting task because everyone loved her father. Hannah was told by her family to give up her quest, but she was too hardheaded to let it go.
We believe the driving force behind this story is the characters. They’re an amazing assortment of people who cross paths with Hannah on her quest. Hannah’s mother Olive, bless her heart, does her best to try and keep Hannah grounded despite so much upheaval in her life; Olive’s older sister Gilda—Hannah’s overbearing aunt—tries to bring as much discord as possible into Hannah’s life.
The character quirks are as unique as the characters who bear them. For example, when Olive gets nervous, she will either begin knitting furiously or shred tissues. As a six-foot-three-inch blonde, Hannah has a hard time blending into any background.
The author’s use of description is also top-notch. When Hannah is lumbering through some dense shrubs, the author describes them as bayberry, chokeberry, autumn olive, black pine, and rosa rugosa. Not forgetting the use of the sense of smell, the author described a character in Hannah’s path as smelling of sweat and cigarettes. The splendid description makes it easy for readers to insert themselves into the story.
The pacing added to our enjoyment of this story. As Hannah draws closer to discovering who poisoned her father, the pacing picks up to the point of making it hard to put the book down. Further, the author uses a very clever technique to keep readers engaged. It is common for dual storylines to merge into one, but in the last third of this story, the author does the opposite and takes one storyline and splits it into two. To put that another way, just when we think the story is over, we learn that it’s not.
Although this book contains several grammatical errors, the excitement of the story makes them easy to overlook. In this story, the concept of story conquers all!
We encourage everyone who enjoys a good story to give this one a try. Author Howard Gimple really delivers!
Our Concerns:
We have two overall concerns with Hard Headed Woman.
It is mentioned several times in the text that Hannah felt she killed her father because she fell on top of him. We feel that with the impact of this on Hannah’s frame of mind, this scene should be fully described somewhere, rather than letting the reader try to imagine how that happened.
The dialogue of Hannah’s mother Olive did not seem to fit the character, in our opinion. The dialogue seems to paint her as an Edith Bunker-type, but that sort of character is more appropriate to a comedy, which this story is not.
About Howard Gimple
Howard Gimple has been a penslinger for most of his adult life. He was a writer at Newsday, the editor of a newsletter for the New York Giants football team and a copywriter and creative director for several New York ad agencies. He has written English dialogue for the American releases of Japanese anime cartoons, reviewed books for the Long Island History Journal and movies for a pay-per-view television network.
Howard was Chief Creative Officer at TajMania Entertainment, a film and TV production company dedicated to creating socially conscious programming. He wrote ’The Garbageman,’ an award-winning documentary about a waste management executive who helped save the lives of more than 50,000 children with congenital heart disease.
Howard was a writer and sports editor for the Stony Brook University alumni magazine. He also taught two seminars at the university, ‘Rock & Relevance,’ about the political influence of 60’s rock & roll and ‘Filthy Shakespeare,’ exploring the dramatic use of sexual puns and innuendos in the Bard’s plays and poems.
Obviously unable to hold a job for any length of time, Howard turned to writing novels, where his chances of getting fired are minimal.
Howard grew up in Brooklyn, which became cool shortly after he departed. He now lives in Glendora, California with his wife, Chris and his goldendoodle, Brinkley.
