Review: Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo

 

Somebody's Fool is the third book in Richard Russo's series featuring Donald "Sully" Sullivan and his family. The two preceding books are titled Nobody's Fool (1993) and Everybody's Fool (2016). I have to admit that the number of years between the sequels did make Somebody's Fool read more like a standalone at first, but once I became reacquainted with the characters and their relationships, it all started to feel like one big reunion. It was fun to catch up again with everyone in North Bath, New York. (Please do note that Somebody's Fool can definitely be enjoyed as a standalone.)

By this point in the story, "Sully" has been dead for ten years and he would barely recognize all the changes in North Bath. For one thing, the town is being annexed by the larger, wealthier community that abuts it - and the North Bath police department is being eliminated. Peter, Sully's son is still in North Bath, and is dutifully checking in on everyone on the list that Sully left behind for him while he renovates the old house Sully inherited shortly before his death. Sully would like that a lot. But things take a much less positive turn one day when one of Peter's two estranged sons suddenly appears on his doorstep carrying a grudge about the way that Peter abandoned him and his younger brother years ago to their crazy mother to raise. Now Peter worries that he has been as bad a father to his three boys as Sully was to him. And it looks like he's right.

As readers of the earlier books will remember, however, this series is not just about the Sullivans. All of the old characters, along with a few new ones, also get their day in the sun in this one. 

Ruth (Sully's married mistress) is struggling to find a reason to go on, caught in the middle, as she is, between her daughter and her granddaughter. Doug Raymer, the newly jobless police chief of North Bath, is wondering what will be next for him now that his former girlfriend has been appointed police chief in the annexing city, but he barely has time to figure things out before a body is found hanging in an abandoned North Bath hotel. Because Raymer is so familiar with everyone in town, it makes sense that he be hired to help figure out what that is all about - and he even inherits the mixed-up twin brother of his ex-lover to help him in the investigation.

Richard Russo (jacket photo)

As you can see, it is all rather complicated, but Russo does a masterful job telling the story by alternating chapters between the two main threads of the plot: what's going on with Peter and his sons, and what's happening with Raymer and his investigation while he tries to get back together with his ex. All of the secondary characters (some of whom prove not to be secondary at all in the end) come and go in both threads until everything merges beautifully by the end of the book. Russo has done it again. (I'm going to call this one a 4.5-star book, rounded up to 5 stars for rating purposes.)