The Ploughmen

August 15, 2014
Serial killer bonds with cop in a first novel with a high body count. The first corpse shows up in the prologue. Val Millimaki, only 12 and a devout altar boy, finds his mother in a barn on their Montana farm; she has hanged herself. Without missing a beat, the novel confronts us with an old man, in open country, shooting to death a man he's robbed, cutting off his head and hands and directing his accomplice to bury him. The old man, John Gload, has been burying anonymous victims for years. Then we're back to Millimaki, now grown and a sheriff's deputy, tracking a lost skier in the mountains with his dog; they find her dead. Subsequently they'll track down three more missing people, all found dead. The grim stats have taken a toll on the introspective deputy and strained his marriage to Glenda, an ICU nurse better able to handle death. Meanwhile, Gload has been arrested (the accomplice snitched), and Millimaki has been given the graveyard shift to guard him and pry loose details of old crimes. The two discover they were both farm kids, plowing the fields. Gload reveals he first killed during a home invasion at 14 and understood this would be his line of work, a remarkable insight for such a young dude. Their late-night talks, Gload hulking behind bars like a zoo animal, dominate the novel. Millimaki can't sleep; Glenda has left him; and his tracking results deepen his misery. His failure to press Gload on the mysterious disappearance of his live-in girlfriend, Francie, typifies his dullness of spirit. Gload will manage one last kill, monster that he is, but sadly, he's not an interesting monster.It's not the paucity of action but the flawed characterizations that hurt this oppressive work the most.

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July 1, 2014

In Zupan's riveting debut, lawman Valentine Millimaki and brutal killer John Gload form an extraordinary bond during Gload's incarceration in the Copper County, MT, jail. Gload calls them "a couple of hard-luck orphans" because they were both raised on farms in families deserted by their fathers. During a day out of his cell to help locate the victims he's buried, 77-year-old Gload murders Wexler, the sadistic deputy accompanying him, and is recaptured peacefully back at his farm. Millimaki works the jail night shift while also tracking lost hikers and the wandering elderly with his dog, Tom. His life-consuming job is a wedge in his marriage. Wife Glenda, an ICU nurse at the local hospital, finally rejects what he's brought to the marriage: $1,200-a-month salary, an 11-year-old car, and a primitive cabin in the woods. When she moves out, Millimaki's life spirals downward, and he finds peace only in the dark night in the company of caged men. Gload's revelations to Millimaki in their middle-of-the-night conversations prompt Millimaki, two years later, to do one last favor for Gload. VERDICT A fascinating first novel that examines the complexities of two men, opposites in every way, whose lives nevertheless intertwine. With such a strong debut, Zupan's literary future looks exceptionally promising.--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
First novelist Zupan tells the tale of two men: an aging professional killer, John Gload, who has finally been apprehended, and the deputy who guards him, Valentine Millimaki. Both men are insomniacs, and through the interminable nights, they find solace in each other's company. Millimaki is a nuanced, appealing character, and Gload is fascinating in the manner of Hannibal Lecter. No great crime is solved here, though, and Gload himselfeven when he escapesfails to show even a dram of goodness. What Zupan offers is a superb, retro prose style, channeling William Faulkner in long passages engorged with vocabulary, and meditations on what it means to be alive, if barely, in rural Montana circa 1980. Millimaki is sometimes drawn away on his specialty: tracking skiers and addled old people who have gone lost in the vastness of mountains and high plains. He takes along his marvelous dog, Tom, and that's when he's most alive, trailing death. Zupan provides a satisfying climax, but his debut isn't really about plot; it's mostly a rich, morose meditation on death, law enforcement, and friendship.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)