Peter Thomson's Reviews > The Stopover: Tangled Business: Book Six: A 21st Century Historical Fiction

Continuing the captivating story of Greg Mitchell.
Tangled Business is the sixth book in the ‘Stopover’ saga of deposed tycoon, Greg Mitchell’s fall from grace that landed him by accident in the backward town of Bamptonville in rural Nebraska.
And what a disentangled mix it is.
There is so much detail here that surely explains the lapse in time since the fifth volume- Dark Diversions- appeared on our bookshelves. Time needed for extensive research that encompasses : tax, law, planning, election and the multitude of everyday matters affecting citizens lives.

Thankfully, the problems with the first issue of the ebook version have been swiftly sorted out with its replacement by a new edition.

The book takes us more closely into the lives and activities of the many supporting characters that Greg Mitchell’s arrival has affected. Yet there is no doubt that Greg remains the principal character.

There are joyful moments tempered with stressful and less than happy moments. IT is the life of the town and county and the playing out of the power struggles that were brewing before Greg’s arrival that he appears to have been indirectly associated by blame, or directly affected by the majority of the townspeople’s repugnance of him.
Yet a bare handful of them remain as his stalwart supporters.

We are reminded that this is the year 2007. The year before the major financial collapse engineered through avarice by the introduction of the hateful sub-prime mortgage scam.

Noxious events that really happened, and are happening still in some places, are played out in the lives of the characters who come across as real in the writing.

Any town has good and bad citizens and Bamptonville is no different to any other. The activities of the town’s gangster cum pimp cum pornographer are there in the text , but tastefully reported such that none but the most sensitive of readers should be offended.

There are indications that the series is closing in toward its finale. This book ends on the promise of big changes afoot for Fishers, the green energy ‘power from poo’ enterprise that Greg and Wayne Fisher are planning open and offer participation to the public through a forthcoming IPO.
Will it happen, or won’t it? Will Greg survive? Will Jess fall into the machinations of the evil Gleitner? Will Fawley become mayor? And so many other questions remain, yet to be answered - in future volumes.

This book covers most genres other than speculative fiction. It is more like a soap opera in writing. Whatever label it actually carries - it is a great read.