Book Review: Whiskey Wars

Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

The stakes just keep climbing in this satisfying prohibition-era mystery series.

When moonshiner Delores Bailey returns from a trip to Virginia City to find her moonshine still destroyed, her world falls apart. For almost two years, she’s made a good living in the Montana mining town, Pony Gulch, running ’shine for the locals. Now that’s gone, and she has no idea how to proceed. Staying comes with high risks. Without finding who took her still out and stopping them, there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again. Delores is nothing if not resourceful, but she fears this problem may be more than she or her best friends Lucie Santoro and Sheriff Sam Brown can handle. 

With the mayor running a re-election campaign based on temperance, an out-of-town brewing magnate closing in on her territory, and the local moonshine competition upping their game, Delores needs an ace up her sleeve. 

She turns to Mickey Duffy, a mobster friend from her past, but she is soon wondering whether the person she’s asking for help may just be the greatest threat of all.

Whiskey Wars is the fourth book in the Moonshiner Mysteries series. All these novels can be read alone, but they work much better when read in order. Each of the major characters has their own internal lives and goals, and all of them grow through the series, so starting at the beginning feels like falling in with old friends.

The thing I’ve admired in every one of the Moonshiner Mysteries so far is the fact that the formula changes so drastically. The characters grow in each novel; there’s no systematic paint-by-numbers plot line. The story follows whatever trajectory it needs to reach a satisfying conclusion. This one is no exception. In the previous novel, Soiled Dove Murder, the story branched out by introducing two of the main characters to the big city. In Whiskey Wars the big city comes to Pony Gulch.

Stakes are higher than ever in Whiskey Wars, and as the novel progresses, all they do is rise. Delores has more on the line than she has had before. In the first novel, skipping town only means that she’ll have to set up elsewhere. Here, she’s lost everything she’d need to move and leaving would also mean losing the friends she’s become so close to and the closest place she’s had to a home. This happening during an election year means that Sam’s job is uncertain and that the choices he makes will mean the difference between keeping and losing his livelihood, which throws Lucie into a precarious position too.

While I admire that Moonshiner Mysteries doesn’t regurgitate the same plot into new books, having sleepy Pony Gulch branch out into wider mob politics makes it lose some of its charm. I liked Mickey Duffy as a character, but, while he is around, the other characters pale in comparison. He’s seen and done so much that his presence is enough for Delores to take a backseat and let him drive the story. The balance between the three main characters feels more equal in the other novels. They each have their areas of expertise and their ways of handling things, and each of them play vital roles. In Whiskey Wars, that balance is thrown off a bit by Mickey.

All the characters that readers of the Moonshiner Mysteries series love are back in Whiskey Wars, along with the shady politics, bar fights, and big open sky. In short, the latest book in the series has all the charm and excitement that fans will expect and enough historical clout and action to hook new readers. 

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