An Evie Blackwell Cold Case

“Wait, Elliot, you read Dee Henderson?”

That was your first thought, right? From my prolific history of reviewing books, you can tell that, No I don’t “read Dee Henderson”—though now I can officially say that “Yes, I have read Dee Henderson.”

I read Dee Henderson like I eat meatball subs at a potluck: not because I want to, but because someone told me, “You gotta try this!” as they place a heaping pile into my plate and stare at me while I take my first bites waiting for a positive reaction. That might seem oddly specific, but it just happened to me on Sunday, and it’s exactly how I feel.

I got this book (among others) from a friend’s friend as part of a book exchange, and since I definitely won’t read any of the other novels I got in the mail, this one appeared to be the most interesting of the bunch, so I gave it a go. Although throughout the book, I was thinking, “She writes like a female Nicholas Sparks!” I liked it enough to finish it.

Maybe I’m harping on the lady too much. After all, Henderson is a highly successful author of what appears to be cop-thrillers for Christian women. She’s got decent plotting, she gives her characters extensive backstories, and (at least in this installment) she ties up the mysteries and answers the questions satisfactorily enough to make it feel like “Case Closed.”

In this novel, the Governor of Illinois has created a task force to solve cold cases across the state, and so Evie Blackwell heads to a small county to work with the Sherriff’s office to dig through several old missing-persons cases that have run dry on new information. There’s the family of three that went missing and an unsolved kidnaping. And there’s also a troubled young woman who returns to the area from Chicago convinced she’ll find her parents’ bodies buried somewhere on the old family land before she sells it. In this mix of victims, witnesses, and police officers are a whole lot of troubled single people, which is really the main plot of the book.

What I definitely did not like about this story (and it’s probably why Dee Henderson is not “Everyman’s Favorite Female Author”) is her method of writing male characters. Every dude in this book thinks and speaks and reasons like a woman. Every conversation is deep—even when it’s man-to-man—dudes wearing their emotions on the sleeves and bearing their hearts at every turn.

I’m a man myself, and it’s not like I’m offended by Henderson’s writing, just incredibly confused. Men don’t even think as deeply as these characters speak.

I’m all for authors bringing backstory and plot-points into the book via conversation and dialogue, but dang! That’s all this book seems to be! Everything important comes out through speech. Every man dishes like a woman, and there’s not a secret left between any of them. I just had to laugh, for example, when the police officer bears his heart about relationships and marriage to his mother! It was Bizzarro World and was definitely not something that filled a hole in my life.

I’m sorry if you disagree, but my conclusion is that Henderson’s writing of male characters is unnatural, unrealistic, and 100% the reason why women love her books. They’re getting in fiction what they’ll never get in real life.

Of course, there’s a certain level where this can be dangerous—I’ve heard from 3 grown women in the past few weeks, in fact, how Christian fiction has actually harmed their relationships, filling them with ideals and expectations that simply aren’t realistic. It’s something to be aware of: just as men need to guard against pornographic images that debase women, so women need to protect themselves from stories that make them dissatisfied with reality. Men do not and never will communicate the way they do in female fiction, so women prone towards dissatisfaction in relationships need either to stop reading it or become more discerning.

Again, I’m probably harping on Dee Henderson too much, based off my one (and only) read. Things could have gone a whole lot worse for me in this book exchange: “meatball subs” could just as easily have been Amish romance, and then where would I be? Perish the thought!

©2024 E.T.