Review: Broken Pledges by Kevin Kilgarriff – A 2022 Indie Author Review Program Selection
Description • The Review • Author Interview • More About the Author
Description (from Amazon.com)
A Kappa Chi Rho pledge dead. A pledge brother investigated for murder. A father with a secret intent on proving his son’s innocence.
Broken Pledges tells the story of how a father and son learn that they’re related by more than just blood.
In 1993, while attending South Cuthbert University, Chase Dempsey made the fateful decision to pledge the Kappa Chi Rho Fraternity. That’s when a hazing event gone wrong would change his life forever.
His pledge brother, Chris Wilbanks, was now dead, and many believed that Chase was to blame. The stigma would follow him for years, even after he was cleared of all wrongdoing.
Nearly thirty years later, Chase is now a Homicide Detective in Philly, and has put the events of that night behind him, or so he thought. One phone call would thrust Chase back into a world that he hoped to never see again.
His son, Scott, now himself a student at SCU and pledging Kappa Chi Rho, has found himself fighting the same battle that his Father fought so many years before. He is being investigated for the murder of his own pledge brother.
Chase is now working the most important case of his life – a case that will lead him right back to the one responsible for the death of Chris Wilbanks. Can he uncover the truth before it’s too late?
The Review
My college experience was atypical. As such, I was never in a Greek fraternity, but several of my friends from high school were. I’d heard stories from them, but I suspect there were a lot more that were left out. I have been fascinated with the Greek life, however, and Broken Pledges by Kevin Kilgarriff certainly satiated my need to know more.
The novel begins with a history lesson, one that I was most appreciative of. You can skip that part if you’re already super knowledgeable about Greek fraternities and sororities, but I do not recommend it. I believe the introduction sets the scene perfectly and immediately immerses the reader in the Kilgarriff’s world so that when first chapter kicks off, we’re already there.
Broken Pledges is a mystery/thriller novel, one of the few genres I enjoy which are not rooted in speculative fiction. The story follows two paths which intersect right away: the false accusations of murder suffered by a fraternity pledge and the mirror accusations levied against his own son twenty-eight years later. The set up is nicely done and left a mystery that stayed with me until the end.
Unlike some mystery novels, I was not able to guess the ending until, well, the ending. To me, this is the hallmark of a good mystery novel. If I figured it out by the middle, I’m left skimming to the end. I did not do that with Broken Pledges. I had to know what really happened and I had to have a resolution I was satisfied with. Kilgarriff weaved in enough red herrings for me to keep wondering about who did what and, more importantly, why.
The only story fault I could find with the novel had to do with the town police and the reporter While it is not always necessary to fully flush out side characters, these were too one-dimensional and not as convincing as I would have liked. Nevertheless, it did not detract too much from the story.
Overall, Broken Pledges is a quick, engaging and exciting read, one that I fully recommend to fans of straight-forward mystery novels. I look forward to more from Kilgarriff in the future.
Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098M993YK/
Author Interview
Broken Pledges is set within the college Greek fraternity world. Were you ever a part?
Yes I was actually. I’m a brother of Alpha Chi Rho. I pledged the fraternity in 1993 at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.
How did you come up with the idea?
My mind tends to work in “what ifs”. There have been a number of hazing deaths reported in the news in recent years. Some were very high-profile. At one point a few years ago, after catching up with some fraternity brothers from college, I thought to myself “what if one of our pledges died while we were there in college?”. No one did die, to be clear. But it made me start thinking about what would’ve happened if it had, and the story began to come to life in my mind.
Did you base the setting on a place you know well?
Yes, the book is (very) loosely inspired by my time at West Chester. South Cuthbert University is a fictionalized version of West Chester University. And Kappa Chi Rho is also a fictionalized version of Alpha Chi Rho.
What kind of research did you do for the novel?
Well, I knew the locations very well already. That didn’t take much research. I did need to look up some of the history of West Chester to help build some backstory for South Cuthbert. The history and current state of the hospital required some online research as well.
Do you have a writing routine?
Writing is unfortunately not my full-time job. So I need to get it in whenever I can. I’ll generally try to sit down and get some writing done either before or after work (sometimes both) and I definitely make sure to devote as much time on the weekends as possible. From the standpoint of actually doing the writing, I try to make the scenes play out in my head first. So I’m going through the dialogue in my head and then getting that down on paper. Often a first draft is filled with mostly dialogue so that I can just get everyone from point A to point B. Then I go back and fill in the details and descriptive text around it. I feel like that helps me with the flow as well.
I’m a fan of easter eggs in movies and novels. Did you have any in this one?
The majority of street names and building names have been changed in the book. But the geography is all there. Anyone who is from the area is going to recognize what is standing in for what. But one thing I did keep in was Jake’s Bar. Jake’s is iconic in the area. It’s a hole-in-the-wall bar that every student frequents and has a love for. Same goes for the bartender. He’s been there forever and everyone knows him. It was something that needed to be included. If I didn’t, I never would’ve heard the end of it from my friends from college. Another easter egg for the locals is Yuengling Lager. Yuengling is a brewery in Pottsville, which is a couple hours outside of Philly. It’s actually the oldest, consistently running brewery in the country since it didn’t shut down during prohibition. It stayed open by selling ice cream, which you can still purchase today. They’ve begun to fan out and the beer is now available outside of the Philly region. But it’s still the most well-known local beer in the area. You won’t find a bar around here that doesn’t have Yuengling Lager on tap. You do not even need to say the name Yuengling to order it. You can simply order a Lager, and they’ll know what you mean.
Did you edit out anything you wish you would have kept in?
Actually, no. I was very happy with the end product, thankfully. I didn’t feel the need to cut anything out at all.
How has this writing journey been for you?
It’s been pretty amazing. I was not much of a writer growing up. My brother was though (real life brother…not fraternity brother). But sadly he committed suicide about 20 years ago. It was very tough for me to deal with, and I took to writing as a way to cope. The first story I wrote was about someone whose brother died. But it turned out that he had faked his death. It was my way of bringing him back for a bit. It helped. But it also gave me the writing bug. So I would write, off and on, for years. Nothing major. When this story idea came along, I knew I had something I could run with. The response has been so rewarding. I’m just so happy to hear that people are enjoying themselves with it. That’s my main goal – to entertain people and help them escape for a bit. That’s what’s happening. So mission accomplished.
What’s next?
A couple of things. I’m working on a follow up to “Broken Pledges”. It’s called “A Murder of Crows”. It’ll be based mainly down the Shore in South Jersey. I’m aiming to release that to the public at some point in 2022. I’m also working on another book called “Polar Opposites”. It’s unrelated to Broken Pledges. It’s got a Christmas theme so we’ll see what the timing looks like and if I can get that completed in time for the season.
More About the Author
Kevin Kilgarriff is a fiction writer and the author of Broken Pledges, Available Now. He currently resides in Bucks County, PA with his wife and daughter, two cats, and two hamsters, whom he has had no success in telling apart (the hamsters, that is). Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, he was the youngest of three brothers. With his closest sibling being five years older than him, and the other seven years older, Kevin would often be forced to “use his imagination” when it came to entertaining himself, and he often found himself visiting strange worlds within his mind. It would be these worlds that would end up being the foundation for his writing today.
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