Much Madness

About the Book

much madness is the eighteenth and final book in the Garth Ryland mystery series, which has taken him from the graves of Navoe Cemetery to the wilds of Mitchell’s Woods to the cave of Matatomah to the edge of Wampler’s pit, and in and out of the arms of some of Oakalla’s most beautiful, intriguing, and dangerous women. Called “an exemplary series hero” by Publishers Weekly, Ryland lives and works in the small town of Oakalla, Wisconsin (“Lake Woebegone made sinister”), where passions run high and secrets go deep and nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems. When Larry “Pug” Hanson, former basketball star and current small-business owner, suddenly left town without a backward glance, all in Oakalla assumed it was to escape the cloud of scandal then hanging over him. But when his skeleton turns up in the root cellar of Ryland’s farm on a bright mid-March day ten years later, it raises the question of whether he ever left town at all. Ryland has gone to the farm in the hope that it might provide a suitable home for Abby Airhart and him, following their marriage in July. What he finds, along with Pug Hanson’s skeleton, is the realization that not only is the farm not suitable, but he doesn’t want to live there anyway. He’d rather live in town, exactly where he is now living, but not in the company of both Ruth, his longtime housekeeper and confidant, and Abby. On his way home from the farm, Ryland picks up a tail that continues to shadow him in the days ahead with ever-increasing menace, as Ryland, with Abby’s invaluable assistance, first has to identify Pug’s skeleton and then determine who, if anyone, killed him and why. He does all this while at the same time trying not to arouse anyone’s suspicion into the nature of his investigation and while solving his own personal dilemma of where he and Abby are eventually going to live. In this ever-deadly game of cat and mouse against an adversary who is as ruthless as he (or she) is unpredictable, Ryland again dives beneath the surface calm of his beloved Oakalla to reveal an underbelly of violence and deceit that swallows all who swim there, even, and especially, those innocents who put their lives and trust in the wrong hands. However, it is not misguided trust but obstinance that leads Ryland too much into the melee and to the brink of his own death.

About the Author

John R. Riggs is the son of Samuel H. Riggs (1913-2002) and Lucille Ruff Riggs (1918-2000) and the brother of C. A. Riggs, Prescott, Arizona. John was born February 27, 1945 in Beech Grove, Indiana, and in 1949 he and his family moved to Mulberry, Indiana, where they owned and operated Riggs Dairy Bar for a number of years. John attended Mulberry Schools (1951-1961) and graduated from Clinton Prairie High School in 1963. He credits his teachers at Mulberry and Clinton Prairie for their direction and inspiration and for grounding him in the fundamentals of thought and action so necessary for meeting the challenges of life. John then entered Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and rode in the Little 500. While there he earned a BS in social studies and an MA in creative writing. He later attended the University of Michigan, studying conservation and environmental communications. On September 2, 1967, John married Cynthia Perkins (1945-2002), and their children are Heidi Zimmerman, Mansfield, Ohio and Shawn Riggs, Colorado Springs, Colorado. On July 1, 1988, he married Carole Gossett Anderson and their children are Flint Anderson, Coatesville, Indiana and Susan Shorter, Spencer, Indiana. Since 1971, John has lived in Putnam County, Indiana, currently on a small farm southeast of Greencastle. While in Putnam County, he has worked as an English teacher, football coach, quality control foreman, carpenter, and wood splitter. From 1979-1998 he assisted James R. Gammon of DePauw University with Gammon’s landmark research on the Wabash River. He recently retired from DePauw University Archives, but continues to mix chemicals for Co-Alliance, Bainbridge. John is the author of 17 published books in the Garth Ryland mystery series, and the 2001 Bicentennial History bulletins for the Indiana United Methodist Church. He has also written River Rat, a coming of age novel; Of Boys and Butterflies, his ongoing memoirs; and numerous essays. Me, Darst, and Alley Oop, a travel odyssey and his first extended work of non-fiction, was published in 2016.