Fools in Bath

A decade or so after Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool ends, his Everybody's Fool (2016) begins. Sequels don't come any better.

If the title character in the earlier novel was Sully, an aging working man who discovers his place in the world is more important to more people than he ever realized, the title character this time has several contenders, for there are many fools here, but "everybody's fool" would seem to best describe Doug Raymer. the incompetent young police officer in the first book who by now has become the incompetent chief of police. He campaigned for the office with the slogan "We're not happy until you're not happy," yet was chosen anyway, suggesting perhaps that everybody's a fool in Bath, N.Y.

That the police department operates with any efficiency at all is due to Charice, his young, black dispatcher, on whom Raymer has a crush even as he still mourns for Becka, his wife who died in a fall down a flight of stairs while hurrying to run away with another man. His only clue to the identity of that man is a garage-door opener. Finding which door that device opens distracts the chief from his duties, even as those duties escalate with a series of crimes in normally placid Bath. One of those crimes, digging up a judge's grave in the middle of the night, is committed by Raymer himself, with the help of Sully and Carl Roebuck, the playboy builder whose business hangs by a thread.

Sully now has a serious heart problem and is given just a year or two to live, at most. Other characters, some of them reprising roles from the earlier novel, include Rub Squeers, a simple-minded man who only wishes to be Sully's best friend; Jerome, Charice's hot-shot brother who turns out to have even bigger problems than Raymer; Ruth, the woman who operates the local diner and whose not-so-secret affair with Sully is now on hold; Zack, her seemingly worthless husband who may actually be worth more than she realizes; and Roy Purdy, their son-in-law, who constantly updates his grudge list of those upon whom he plans violent revenge.

Russo keeps his story moving spritely, humor and pathos alternating and sometimes striking the heart at the same time. These novels are as pleasurable as any one is likely to find. You'd be a fool not to read them both, preferably in order.