A newspaper reporter returns to his Florida hometown to confront unsolved mysteries from his past in Parker’s debut novel.
In 1952, war hero Sam Williams is elected sheriff of Jasper County, Florida. Resolving to clean up corruption, he targets the bootleggers, gamblers and prostitutes running rampant throughout the county. Although his campaign against corruption is successful, he also becomes a target. One night, Sam and his wife, Jean, are killed in a car accident, which was staged by two notorious bootleggers. Sam’s colleagues believe it’s murder, but they lack the evidence to prove it. Sam’s son Tom goes to live with his grandparents in Monrovia, Florida, where years later his life is rocked by another tragedy: His best friend, Jimmie Lee Johnson, a black teenager, is lynched for the murder of a white woman named Dana Padgett. Tom and Dana were having an affair, and he’s certain that Jimmie is innocent. Tom goes on to become a newspaper reporter in Tampa, and later returns to Monrovia, where he confronts these unresolved mysteries and uncovers additional secrets about people close to his family. Parker’s sprawling narrative includes several interconnected subplots focusing on racism, drug kingpins and illicit relationships, which move at a brisk pace. However, some of the secondary characters get lost in the narrative tangle. Tom, however, is a surprisingly strong, complex character. He’s earnest and idealistic, and sympathetic toward his friend Jimmie and his family; at the same time, he indulges in a relationship with the flirtatious Dana, even though she’s married. Unfortunately, the multitude of other characters and plots means that some are more developed than others. For example, early on, Parker introduces a mysterious girl named Panky Carter, who seduces young Tom and then quickly disappears from the novel; she reappears toward the end, but with little explanation.
A fast-paced tale that leads its protagonist down some unexpected and dangerous paths, but the twists and turns come at the expense of secondary character development.
Pub Date: June 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497532946
Page Count: 348
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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