HELL'S HEART

To fulfill a last request from his dying father, a small-town Florida cop takes on the murder case that nearly tore his family apart in Summers’ crime novel.

It’s 2019, and Officer Jake Long is revisiting a decade-old unsolved murder that he already feels robbed him of time with his dad, Bart, “the closest thing to a homicide detective the department had had” in the small town of Oakley in 2004. Frank Jackson was bludgeoned to death with a wrench and Guy Fowler was convicted when his prints were found on the weapon. The two men hardly knew each other, and a second victim, Diane Ferguson, found in the same room, wasn’t known by either of them. Jake tracks down Cecil Jackson, the murdered man’s son, and Dwayne Fowler of Oakley Feed and Grain, whose dad was arrested. Jake, who’s barely tolerated by Oakley Police Department’s Chief Hill since his father helped him get on the force, has an even worse relationship with fellow officer Al Stanton, whom he recently caught in bed with his wife, Toni. After one of Dwayne’s employees, Odell Byers, is reported missing, Jake finds himself caught in a wave of violence. In Summers’ style of Florida noir, action drives both plot and character. The economical but potent prose is as sharp as Sabal palm leaves, as insistent as Florida heat, and as twisty as a live oak’s branches. The effect of the past and present coming together is captured succinctly: “I drove. Back through town, past people going about their business, unaware that a woman was dead, murdered, past my old high school…past my street where I’d climbed trees and thrown baseballs, past empty fields and clumps of palms and yards with rusted wrecks.” The novel is especially notable in how quiet and precise its most violent moments are, and when it comes to the conventions of the genre, Summers has the recipe right, even when he delivers it with a grain of salt.

A fast-paced collision of small-town violence and delayed justice.