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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Tom Franklin (Goodreads Author)

3.84 · Rating details · 39,203 ratings · 4,847 reviews

Tom Franklin's extraordinary talent has been hailed by the leading lights of contemporary literature—Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Lee Smith, and Dennis Lebanese. Reviewers have called his fiction “ingenious” (USA Today) and “compulsively readable” (Memphis Commercial Appeal). His narrative power and flair for characterization have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, Fl ...more

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Hardcover, First edition , 274 pages

Published October 5th 2010 by William Morrow

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Sep 02, 2011 karen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: appalachian-noir-southern-gothic, grit-lit

it is totally okay to float old reviews when you suddenly have a picture of yourself and the author to attach to them. also, when you are bored. but only once a day. anything more than that becomes boring. or desperate.

one of the best books i have read, ever.

and exactly what i was looking for when i posted my query in my very own readers' advisory group. so, thank you, james, this is a perfect suggestion to the kind of book i was looking for. and i am going to immerse myself in tom franklin's ba ...more

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Mar 17, 2017 PirateSteve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: southern

What does it say about a person when their mother feels the need for prayer they find a friend?
Scary Larry Ott won't blame you if you don't like him.
He knows what people say about him...
But the first ladies need support and Larry may as well be the one.

Another 5 star book from Tom Franklin. ...more

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Jun 06, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it really liked it

Shelves: southern

M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, humpback, humpback, I.--How southern children are taught to spell Mississippi

Tom Franklin

My wife's family is from Prentiss, Mississippi not far from where the action of this book takes place. When my wife's grandmother died a few years ago we went down for the funeral. This was my first time in Mississippi and I remember a couple of things about the experience. First, this is small town USA and there were two funeral ...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2006-2010, literature, signed-first-or-limited-edition, crime, 6-star-books, audiobook, all-time-favorites, mystery

Gorgeous...

Gorgeous and dripping with emotion and ache...

This story OWNED ME from the opening page and LARRY OTT is among the most endearing, heart-wrenching characters I've come across in a long, long time. That I connected so well with both the story and its main character surprised me because, being born and raised in Vegas, my own life experience is so vastly different from both Larry and the town of Chabot, Mississippi, where the story takes place. I give heaping mounds of credit to author ...more

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Oct 13, 2010 Will Byrnes rated it liked it

Worst first date ever. Poor Larry Ott, the bookish kid, the weak one, a smallish white boy, the bully-target at school, takes out the girl of his dreams, returns home alone, and gets blamed for her presumed rape and murder. Decades later, ostracized by the town, living alone in the same house he grew up in, tending his late, abusive father’s garage, another girl goes missing and all fingers point his way. Did he or didn’t he?

description

Tom Franklin - image from The American Academy in Berlin

But Crooked L ...more

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Jan 20, 2017 Rebbie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, 2017

Poor Larry Ott. He's a beautiful soul whose wings have been clipped; he's damaged and hurting after a lifetime of being ridiculed, being thrown to the wolves, being falsely accused of a horrific crime.

And yet he doesn't lose his sweetness or optimism, even after his only childhood friend, Silas, ditches him out of fear of losing his own newfound popularity. Silas has to accept how poorly he used to treat Larry while they were growing up, and it's not easy to do. The author did a magnificent job ...more

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Aug 16, 2017 Arah-Lynda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: lets-get-real, paperwhite, top, i-said

So often when I read a book I cannot wait to talk about it, eager to hear other people's takes and share my own thoughts, but sometimes, as in life, the unexpected occurs. A book has been read all right and it affected me but still I need to let it rest a while, need to think on it, recover from it.

I found myself looking back, being brutally honest in my reflection. Have I ever succumbed to group think and if so how often have I hurt others? And even though in truth I have never really fit in So often when I read a book I cannot wait to talk about it, eager to hear other people's takes and share my own thoughts, but sometimes, as in life, the unexpected occurs. A book has been read all right and it affected me but still I need to let it rest a while, need to think on it, recover from it.

I found myself looking back, being brutally honest in my reflection. Have I ever succumbed to group think and if so how often have I hurt others? And even though in truth I have never really fit in with groups or cliques or the like, that experience in itself, makes me more prone somehow to the lure of community. At what cost? I am not without blemishes. I strive to be a better person today. Each day.

Group think is dangerous, it holds open no doors for freedom, fairness, equality or justice. It just is.

I am humbled by Larry Ott. He seeped in somehow. He reminded me that others bore a cross heavier, less forgiving than my own. Of course I always knew that. Still that knowledge had lurked for too long in the shadow of my own fear, and uncertainties. Larry Ott can not be ignored and in not doing so, one must also consider Silas.

Once they had been the best of friends, secretly of course, but still. Larry was white, Silas not so much. They met in private, had fun, explored. But that was before Larry’s father intervened, before the girl went missing, the girl that Larry had had a date with that night. The girl that no one has seen since. Larry of course maintains his innocence, and given the evidence was circumstantial at best, he also maintains his freedom. But the court of public opinion can be harsh, does not require the same hard evidence as a court of law and is unrelenting. Larry may be free but he is also cut off from any kind of society whatsoever. He is alone and he is ostracized.

And now twenty years later, another girl has disappeared.

Silas had long since left town, explored other options, moved on. But he has returned to this rural, Mississippi town, as their local constable. He can no longer hide from Larry’s private pain or his own past.

And Larry had called him.

This story gutted me and that can only happen if I truly care about someone, someone like Larry.

Who seeped in.

A Stunning Achievement!
...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Nataliya rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Nataliya by: Countless positive GR reviews

Shelves: 2012-reads, location-is-the-true-protagonist

Oh, small-town, rural America, why must you scare me so? Why must this book, written about you, kill something inside me with every page? Why does it, and you by proxy, need to crush me with loneliness and sadness and desperation?

This is a profoundly sad book about sadness in life, which is sad. And I'm not even being a brat here when I say that. There's nothing about this story that's even remotely optimistic, even the quasi-hopeful ending is very sad, if you think about it.

And why wouldn't it be sad? The background for the story is quite melancholic, quite depressing, really. Set in a tiny Mississippi town that is slowly dying, in the heart of poverty and little hope for the future, the story is full of racial tension, prejudice, bigotry, hatred, misogyny, and all the other little petty evils that lurk in the hearts of people. Like Stephen King, the author oh-so-frequently referenced in this book ((view spoiler)), Tom Franklin portrays small towns full of their secrets and prejudices as a perfect breeding ground for the monsters we carry within our souls.

"He passed a clothing store that had gone so long without customers it’d briefly become a vintage clothing store without changing stock."

The whole story is about the lives of two men, Silas and Larry, whose lives got mixed together a few decades ago, back when they were children. One white kid, one black kid, and the unlikely and short-lived friendship that followed. And now, a few decades later, Silas is a small-town cop and Larry is a small-town pariah convicted in the hearts of the locals of the crime he has not committed. And as Larry is struggling between life and death, it's up to Silas to figure out what happened and to revisit the painful moments from their past, the moments he would much rather forget.

"But that was his trouble, wasn't it? Letting himself off the hook had been his way of life."

Tom Franklin is very skilled at creating characters that are so human and flawed and likeable and pathetic and strong and fragile at the same time. He creates characters that we come to care about so much that when scary things happen to them it hurts like punch in the gut. He creates tension and suspense by making us truly CARE - and does that with the remarkably non-melodramatic sadness that resonates with the reader long after the book is finished and put aside. Something about the way he chooses to tell the story and to wrap it up is so unsettling and yet touching that this book is likely to stay with you long after the last page is turned and the events of the story have gone out of focus in your mind. Because it's not about the plot, or the easy-to-guess mystery, but about the simple human nature of Franklin's characters doing their best in this not-so-friendly world.

It's a masterfully written book, and the one I easily recommend. 5 sad, heart-wrenching melancholic stars.

"Was that what childhood was? Things rushing by out a window, the trees connected by motion, going too fast for him to notice the consequences?"

...more

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Apr 07, 2020 Susanne Strong rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020-five-star-books, goodreads-best-of-list-2020

5 Stars

An Atmospheric, Dark, Character Driven novel that Got me and Got me Good!

Larry Ott, You Break My Heart.

In High School, Larry Ott is accused of a heinous crime. The evidence is circumstantial and he is not convicted. He is, however, accused by a jury of his peers and spends the rest of his days alone, living in a cabin in the woods, never speaking to another soul.

More than twenty years pass and then another crime happens. Of course, Larry is the only suspect. It doesn’t matter that at ...more

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Oct 24, 2017 Candi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, favorites, southern-lit, mystery-crime

"The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house."

This book grabbed me from the beginning and never let go. I was mesmerized by the rural Mississippi setting and quickly connected to the main characters. Larry Ott, otherwise known as Scary Larry by an unforgiving and judgmental community, and Silas Jones, the former high school baseball star, have a history. A history that goes back more than twenty years to that difficult "The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house."

This book grabbed me from the beginning and never let go. I was mesmerized by the rural Mississippi setting and quickly connected to the main characters. Larry Ott, otherwise known as Scary Larry by an unforgiving and judgmental community, and Silas Jones, the former high school baseball star, have a history. A history that goes back more than twenty years to that difficult and often merciless time of life – boyhood and adolescence. Larry was always a loner. The white kid shunned by everyone else because he was different. He liked to read, wasn’t interested in sports, and just lacked the social skills necessary to be one of the popular kids. Sound familiar?! "Used to be, his mouth always hung open, giving the impression he was slow. But he wasn’t. He was smart. Knew the weirdest shit." Silas is black, new to town, and the son of a single, poverty-stricken mother. At one time, the two struck up a secret friendship, nurturing each other’s desire for another human connection. As often with ‘secret’ friendships, they don’t remain so for long. The two part ways, and when teenaged Larry is the main suspect in the disappearance of a local girl, Silas never looks back - until now, when another girl goes missing two decades later. Who better to incriminate than the town scapegoat? Silas is the town constable and Larry is eyed with suspicion once again. Silas is perhaps the sole keeper of some secrets that never came to light all those years ago. Will his conscience and his moral compass point him in the right direction?

This book will cause you to reflect on the choices we make when it comes to the inclusion of others. Especially those that seem so fundamentally unlike ourselves. Do we have a role in molding another’s future based on our narrow-mindedness or misguided notions of our fellow beings? Can we make an individual become the person we in fact believe them to be? How does one withstand the onslaught of animosity delivered repeatedly over a period of years… can it be overcome?

Larry Ott is on my list of the most memorable characters in literature. My heart broke for the young Larry, and I am full of affection for the older Larry. Likely we can all catch glimpses of ourselves in either Larry or Silas. And that is not a bad thing. How do we help our own young Larrys or Silases? Schools talk about inclusion, advocate for it in fact, but I regret to say that we still have not achieved this goal. Exclusion seems even more rampant in this day and age of social media. Sigh… well, I don’t want to go off on a further tangent here. We can only keep working in the right direction.

Highly recommend this slow-burning mystery to anyone that enjoys superb character development and excellent writing. This is my second Tom Franklin novel, and it will not be my last.

"It was country dark, as Alice Jones had called these nights, the absence of any light but what you brought to the table." ...more

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Jun 17, 2011 Kemper rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2011, rednecks, modern-lit, crime-mystery

The geeks may have seized a nice chunk of pop culture these days, but it’s too easy to forget that it wasn’t that long ago when reading and collecting comic books made you a bit odd. Long before remaking ’70s slasher films with as much blood as possible was considered mainstream entertainment, liking Stephen King novels or other horror books and movies might get your folks a closed door session with your teacher. Before Lord of the Rings made a gazillion dollars and won Oscars, you probably woul The geeks may have seized a nice chunk of pop culture these days, but it’s too easy to forget that it wasn’t that long ago when reading and collecting comic books made you a bit odd. Long before remaking ’70s slasher films with as much blood as possible was considered mainstream entertainment, liking Stephen King novels or other horror books and movies might get your folks a closed door session with your teacher. Before Lord of the Rings made a gazillion dollars and won Oscars, you probably would have gotten blank stares or called a nerd if you tried talking about hobbits and orcs to most people.

Larry Ott is a geek who was born just a bit too soon, and that’s why he completely broke my heart in this excellent book.

In a small Mississippi town, we meet Larry and Silas “32” Jones. Larry is a 41 year old white bachelor who lives in his parents’ house that he has preserved just like it was when they lived there, and he goes to work every day at the garage his father ran despite the fact he never has any customers. Larry lives with almost no interactions with other people and spends most of his time reading or visiting his mother in the rest home. When Larry was 16, he was a geek who read horror novels all the time and was considered a weirdo by everyone in his school. Larry finally scored a date with a hot girl, but unfortunately she was never seen again after he picked her up. He was never charged or convicted of a crime, but the entire community decided he killed her and he’s been an outcast ever since.

Silas is black and the local constable of a small town that is completely owned by a lumber mill. He was a baseball star in high school before tearing up his arm in college. For a brief time before Larry went on his ill-fated date, he and Larry were friends, but Silas now does everything he can to avoid contact with him. Now that a local college girl has gone missing, Larry is a prime suspect, and the events that happen will force both men to face their pasts.

I can’t say enough good things about this book. The depiction of life in a modern small town being choked out by large corporations was excellent as were the many supporting characters. It uses extensive flashbacks to set up our present day story and then fill in the blanks with the history. Even with the great setting and clever story telling, it’s the characters of Silas and Larry that really make this thing hum.

Silas is a former local hero who has returned back to the site of his previous glory, but even though most people still call him ‘32’ after his old baseball number, he spends his days directing traffic, writing tickets and riding around in a decrepit old jeep because the town can’t afford anything better.

But Larry has it even worse. Over two decades as a local boogeyman have left him isolated and stuck in a past that wasn’t that good to begin with. He’s the kind of guy who feels bad for the chickens in his coop for having to spend every day on the same patch of mud so he rigs up a mobile trailer and rotates them around different parts of his field so they can spend time in fresh grass. He lives in his quiet routine without complaint even after 25 years of being harassed by the police, barred from local businesses and churches, and being the target of frequent drunken teenage pranks. The saddest thing is that he doesn’t even seem to realize how achingly lonely he is.

This was a terrific story about how people become trapped by the perceptions that others force on them, whether they deserve the label or not. ...more

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Jun 22, 2011 Nancy rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Nancy by: Kemper

Shelves: library-books, shelf-inflicted, crime-mystery-thriller, award-winners, race-relations

Posted at Shelf Inflicted

It was Kemper's review that made me add this book to my shelf. It was Stephen's that made me rush to the library after work and grab a copy.

After reading Shine and Winter's Bone, I was hesitant about reading another depressing story set in the south, but I’m so glad I did.

Larry Ott had a tough childhood growing up in rural Mississippi. He was sickly and he had a stutter. He never quite fit in among his classmates, usually the butt of a joke or the target of a bully. Hi ...more

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Oct 17, 2010 Lawyer rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Lawyer by: If Franklin writes it, I read it

Shelves: crime, fathers-and-sons, tom-franklin, signed-first-edition, group-read, 2010, 2012, on-the-southern-literary-trail, contemporary-southern-literature, race

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: Thoughts following a second reading

"The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house."

Read that first sentence. What? It doesn't grab you? Keep reading. It's like that long slow climb up to the peak of that first drop on the roller coaster. Hear the click of the chain pulling you to the top? After you hit the top, you're in for a ride.

First came this mean little collection of a novella a ...more

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Dec 26, 2016 Paula rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Paula by: Laura

Shelves: published-2010, read-in-2016, mystery, e-book, crime, southern-lit, edgar-award-nominee, barry-award-nominee, friendship

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is the first Tom Franklin book I have read and he is certainly a fine writer. Set in rural Mississippi in the late 1970's, this is a story of a friendship between loner, Larry Ott, and former high school sports star and local constable, Silas Jones or "32".

Back in high school, Larry, on his first date, takes a hot local girl to the drive-in and she never returns home. Although not charged with murder, Larry is ostracized by his community for the rest of his life. ...more

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Nov 04, 2011 Jason rated it liked it

Shelves: 2013, drunkenly-reviewed, for-kindle

I want to be clear on the 3-star rating, folks. I liked this book. I swear. I just don’t believe it lived up to the potential I arbitrarily ascribed to it when I saw on the shelf of my local Stop & Shop’s aisle 7.

Guys, I can’t review books anymore. I don’t know if “reviewer burnout” is a real thing or if I’m just miserable because it’s only the second week of July and I am going to die from this heat, or if I’m rip roaring drunk (which I somewhat am), but I came home from visiting some friends t I want to be clear on the 3-star rating, folks. I liked this book. I swear. I just don’t believe it lived up to the potential I arbitrarily ascribed to it when I saw on the shelf of my local Stop & Shop’s aisle 7.

Guys, I can’t review books anymore. I don’t know if “reviewer burnout” is a real thing or if I’m just miserable because it’s only the second week of July and I am going to die from this heat, or if I’m rip roaring drunk (which I somewhat am), but I came home from visiting some friends this afternoon with every intention of reviewing this book because El can’t get out of bed in the morning if I don’t, but then I got home and my wife asked me to make her a Long Island iced tea, which I can make like nobody’s bi’ness, and I decided to make one for myself, but then one became two and two became three (even though the Spice Girls taught me differently) and now I can’t focus. But I still maintain it’s because of reviewer burnout, not the drink.

So I’ll say it again. I did like this book. Larry is a reclusive white boy in 1970s Mississippi who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and spends the remainder of his adult life the subject of neighborhood gossip and small-town ridicule as a result of that poor timing. Silas is (or was) his best and only friend. Silas, a black boy, is in most ways better off than Larry, even while being a black boy in 1970s Mississippi and fatherless, as Silas was athletic and sociable and had friends and had respect and had a girlfriend and had a life outside his dreary home existence.

Generally speaking, the characters are not poorly drawn but sometimes it becomes glaringly obvious when someone (in this case Larry) becomes the author’s pet, and that pet status penetrates the character to the extent that he begins to resemble a two-dimensional stock: Larry is pitifully harmless, incapable of having a mean streak that would have otherwise given him a more rounded out character (and possibly made his involvement in the crime-in-question more ambiguous), and essentially can do no wrong. I realize this is sort of crappy of me, but I kept comparing this book to Winter's Bone and for me, it just doesn’t live up to that level of literary brilliance. Perhaps I expect too much from crime fiction these days, but I like to think that speaks more to how good crime fiction has gotten rather than to my being a demanding jerk about it.

To reiterate, though: I really did like this book. Anyone for a Long Island iced tea? ...more

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Jan 09, 2014 Florence (Lefty) MacIntosh rated it really liked it

Recommended to Florence (Lefty) by: Jeffrey Keeten

Shelves: mystery-crime, awards, 2013, 2014, reviewed, suspense, lit-southern-gothic

It’s got a lot of heart, dark and dramatic with ambience in spades, does a great job depicting rural Mississippi. "A few paved roads and a lot of dirt ones, a land of sewer ditches and gullies stripped of their timber and houses and single-wides speckled back in the clear-cut like moles revealed by a haircut."
The point of view alternates between Silas Jones & Larry Ott, flashing back to their boyhood friendship - a friendship that ends when Larry is suspected of murder. Now Silas is back in town It’s got a lot of heart, dark and dramatic with ambience in spades, does a great job depicting rural Mississippi. "A few paved roads and a lot of dirt ones, a land of sewer ditches and gullies stripped of their timber and houses and single-wides speckled back in the clear-cut like moles revealed by a haircut."
The point of view alternates between Silas Jones & Larry Ott, flashing back to their boyhood friendship - a friendship that ends when Larry is suspected of murder. Now Silas is back in town this time in the capacity of constable, returning to a moral dilemma. There's another murder and Larry's the prime suspect, how can he live with himself if he turns his back on his friend again.
For me the idea of small town life both attracts and repels. If you fit in there’d be nothing warmer or more embracing - if you didn’t it could be a living hell. From day one Larry doesn’t fit. As a boy he has nose bleeds, stutters, reads too many damn books. While not found guilty by a jury he might as well have been, the town sentences him to a life of friendless isolation. In his place I’d have left without a backward glance, feet don’t fail me now…But not Larry, he stays. Undecided if that choice was cowardly or courageous, whatever. There’s a quiet dignity to how every day he’s at that garage, just sitting and waiting, I mean who’s gonna give their business to ‘Scary Larry’? But you can set your watch by him, he’s always there, always on time. And not a drop of meanness either, like how he cares for his chickens, rigging up that moveable pen so they get a change of scenery, some fresh air, a few bugs to eat. My heart went out to him, this guy who’s never experienced kindness treating a bunch of birds, chickens no less, with more compassion than he’s ever been shown.
While both Silas & Larry's characters are richly defined, it’s Larry I’ll remember - the world’s loneliest mechanic.
Cons: The mystery is pretty obvious, the outcome predictable - in fairness legs only to what’s really a character study. Short on thrills some find it slow paced – I didn’t.

A book to immerse in; for the genre of Southern Gothic Lit – 4 shiny stars. ...more

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Jul 30, 2018 Phrynne rated it liked it

This was an interesting read, more for its social commentary than its mystery which was actually only there because it explained what had happened to poor Larry Ott. I spent a lot of time at the beginning mentally adjusting to the fact that Larry was white and Silas black. All my instincts from reading books about the deep south wanted them to be the other way round.

There are a lot of very unpleasant people in this book and I was never quite sure whether I actually liked Silas at all. All of the ...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Melki rated it it was amazing

Shelves: hillbilly-noir

My son came home from school last week with his outrageously overpriced yearbook. A lot of people had a lot of nice things to say about him, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. One kid wrote something that struck me as particularly nice:

In a few years I see you with a house, wife, and babies.
They will be stupendous, and we'll still be friends.

What I liked, besides the kid's use of the word "stupendous," was the "still be friends" part.
Will they still be friends? Who knows? Like much o ...more

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Oct 23, 2010 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

The descriptive and narrative power in this book is what hooked me. Rural Mississippi, two boys, one black, one white will become entangled in each others lives for years to come. The amazing thing to me is I kept thinking that Silas, who is black grows up respected, very unusual in the south during this time, while Larry, who is white is treated as the towns albatross. Due to a missing girl years back and a missing girl in the present. Very strange mixture of characterizations and yet Franklin ...more

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Feb 19, 2019 Kelli rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An atmospheric, character-driven masterpiece that puts the reader squarely in the middle of this ambling story. Beautifully descriptive and deeply sad, this story unfolds slowly like a long, deep sigh of regret. It’s the kind of story that stays with the reader long after the reading is done.

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Jan 17, 2017 Margitte rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-author, community, crime-novel, detective-story, drama, family-sagas, fiction, thriller, 2017-read, american-novel

Two boyhood friends, now 'non-friends' in adulthood, are forced to face their individual bags of bones in their closets, when a serious crime strikes their small town in Mississippi. Thrown together, the skeletons screamed their stories to a world who refused to acknowledge their truth. Instead, the people around them preferred to believe their own versions and acted upon it all these years.

For Silas Jones, or '32', as he was known as a high school baseball hero, it could have been different if Two boyhood friends, now 'non-friends' in adulthood, are forced to face their individual bags of bones in their closets, when a serious crime strikes their small town in Mississippi. Thrown together, the skeletons screamed their stories to a world who refused to acknowledge their truth. Instead, the people around them preferred to believe their own versions and acted upon it all these years.

For Silas Jones, or '32', as he was known as a high school baseball hero, it could have been different if he only had the guts to do the right thing. But how could he, if social norms dictated devastating consequences for both him and his mother if he followed the terms of human kindness, integrity and honor. Those rules applied to everyone else. He had no right to it. The only symbols he could safely allow to define him was his status as the sole law enforcement agent of Chabot, population 500; driver of an ancient '76 four cylinder Jeep with its clip-on flashing light, it's emphysemic air conditioner, its leaky master cylinder, its audiometer stuck on 144,007 miles, and addict to both Freon and brake fluid. Silas was also a registrant for three firearms and a Taser; and a badge he usually wore on a lanyard around his neck.

Larry Ott had only an umbrella on the gun rack in his 1970s Ford pickup; nurtured the egg -laying First Ladies in his chicken pen; had more books stacked all over his remote home than the town library, owned a two-bay shop on Highway 11 North, and could not call anyone a friend under any circumstances. Larry was a mechanic, but only in theory. His Ford had only 56,000 miles on its original six-cylinder, with the rest of it being immaculate factory part replacements.

What they did not force upon themselves, the town did for them, through discrimination, prejudice, ruthless gossip and justified moral corruption. However, what the town refused to fuse, destiny would, when the teenage daughter, Tina Rutherford, of the wealthy Rutherford Lumber Company's mill owner, disappears one night. The collective memory of the town recalled another unresolved disappearance twenty years earlier of Cindy Walker ...

When M&M, the drug dealer in town is found dead, a new chapter begins in a town where change is forced upon them like the necessity to rebuild a carburetor. All they had to do was fix what was broken for all of them and find the culprit who left snakes in women's letter boxes ...

COMMENTS
Oh dear, of course I LOVED my first experience of the author Tom Franklin's books. A soul-wrenching read of a richly textured, compassionate tale, with a positive ending. The ending determined the rating in this case, since I needed something good to restore emotional equilibrium after tough previous reads.

There's enough body added to all the skeletons to make this a literary suspense thriller, a perfect murder mystery. A must-read for aficionados of this genre.
...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Dem rated it really liked it

Crooked Letter Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin is a gripping and extremely well written mystery novel.

The story is set in a small town in Mississippi where boyhood pals Larry Ott and Silas 32 attend school. Larry was the child of lower white class white parents and Silas the son of a poor, black single mother. Larry took a girl to a drive in movie and she was never seen o heard from again. He never confessed and was never charged. More than twenty years pass and another girl has disappeared, forc ...more

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May 18, 2014 James Thane rated it really liked it

Shelves: crime-fiction, tom-franklin

This is a very well done atmospheric novel set in rural Mississippi. The story is told in scenes that alternate between the 1970s and the present day. At the heart of the story are two men, one white, the other black, who for a brief period of time as boys were secretly close friends in a time and place where their friendship, if public, would have only brought them trouble.

The white man is Larry Ott, the only child of a lower class family. His father was a mechanic who seemed to have little pat This is a very well done atmospheric novel set in rural Mississippi. The story is told in scenes that alternate between the 1970s and the present day. At the heart of the story are two men, one white, the other black, who for a brief period of time as boys were secretly close friends in a time and place where their friendship, if public, would have only brought them trouble.

The white man is Larry Ott, the only child of a lower class family. His father was a mechanic who seemed to have little patience for or interest in his son. Even as a boy, Larry was quiet and withdrawn. With no athletic or social skills, he had no friends at all, was ridiculed at school, and gradually withdrew into a world of books. In high school he had only one date, which ended tragically when the girl he had taken out disappeared and was never seen again.

The entire county believes that Larry raped and killed the girl and then buried her body. Since the body was never recovered and since there was no physical evidence to connect Larry to her disappearance, he was never prosecuted. But now derided as "Scary Larry," he is even more ostracized and his family disintegrates in the wake of the tragedy.

Twenty-five years later, Larry is still living in the family home, alone now, tending to the chickens and still reading his books. Every day, he drives into the garage he inherited from his father and waits in vain for any customer to appear, but no one in the small community will have anything to do with him. Then another young woman disappears and all eyes turn to Larry as the obvious suspect.

Larry's black boyhood friend was Silas Jones, a gifted athlete known as "32," the number he wore on his baseball uniform. Silas was raised as the only son of a black single mother and never knew who his father might have been. For a brief time, Silas and his mother lived in an abandoned shack on property owned by Larry's father, which is how the two boys briefly became friends.

Shortly after the first young woman went missing, Silas left the area to go to college and pursue his dream of a career in baseball. Now he's back, serving as the town constable, and he sees no reason to make an effort to renew his friendship with Larry Ott. But the disappearance of the second woman will throw the two men together again, whether they like it or not.

The crimes at the heart of the story serve principally as a backdrop for the larger story of the relationship between Larry and "32," and watching that story unfold is a very rich and rewarding reading experience--one of my favorite books of the year thus far.

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Sep 04, 2011 Trudi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: crime-mystery, a-sense-of-place, modern-lit, 2011, rusa-reads, good-country-people, all-in-the-family, prose-that-sings, on-my-kobo, secrets

Guh! This book ... (flails helplessly) ... it is a gut puncher, heart-wrencher. Franklin is a poet, his prose sings, his characters walk off the page, and he puts the reader into a time and place that absolutely resonates with a vibrancy and brutal honesty all its own.

I was so sad -- so emotionally invested -- that I found the reading painful to bear at times. Franklin's descriptions of human isolation and loneliness are so raw and uncompromising I forced myself to take breathers between readin Guh! This book ... (flails helplessly) ... it is a gut puncher, heart-wrencher. Franklin is a poet, his prose sings, his characters walk off the page, and he puts the reader into a time and place that absolutely resonates with a vibrancy and brutal honesty all its own.

I was so sad -- so emotionally invested -- that I found the reading painful to bear at times. Franklin's descriptions of human isolation and loneliness are so raw and uncompromising I forced myself to take breathers between reading sessions. I don't think this is a book meant to be read in one gulp; it is made up of so much complexity and depth that it's better to sip from its well, savor what you've tasted, and then go back for more. The water can be frigid cold, and if you drink too much too fast you're bound to get excruciating brain freeze.

This book had me at hello: it's set in the American south, it features the mess of family dynamics, and secrets big and small stalk its pages. It is a coming-of-age story and at its center are two boys -- Silas and Larry. Their lives intersect in ways neither could have predicted, and one of them must carry the pain and punishment of that connection his entire life. It is a heavy burden, but I will say not without redemption.

I love Larry Ott -- not only is he a die-hard Stephen King fan, despite years of being ruthlessly cast as town pariah, Larry quietly goes on about his business. He is not consumed by bitterness, or enraged by the unfairness of the abuse that has been heaped upon him. That takes a strong man, and this is what probably made me the most sad is that Larry doesn't know how great and kind a man he really is. Beaten down first by his father, then by the town, he is prevented from discovering his true qualities of inner strength and dignity.

Read this book. It is beautiful. So very sad, but beautiful.

And because they are so good, and do the novel such justice, I will refer you to the reviews of Stephen and Kemper.

First line fever: The Rutherford Girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house. ...more

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Sep 14, 2016 ☮Karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2016, book-club, nook

M, i, crooked letter, crooked letter, i, crooked letter, crooked letter, i, humpback, humpback, i. That spells Mississippi if you're from the South, so they say. Not sure if I ever heard the humpback version before. The Mississippians in this book are probably not much like most folks you know, with highly dysfunctional families, a mean or absent father in every one, kids that are oppressed and depressed. Then we have snakes in mailboxes, preteens playing with guns, in a town where blacks are i ...more

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Oct 23, 2011 Annet rated it really liked it

Shelves: have-to-read-again, coming-of-age, wilderness-books-can-usa

Read this book in 2012, remember it's a great, have to re-read soon! ...more

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Jun 15, 2012 Bill rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, favorites

I didn't sleep well last night.

It was one of the very rare occurrences where I finish a book in bed without another one to pick up right away. You see, I hate being between books. When I finish one, I immediately choose another and begin it right away. But last night was an anomaly. Just the way things worked out.

So. Turning out the light immediately after finishing this left me
thinking about the whole thing for much of the night. I kept going over what it was that Franklin did that made me care ...more

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Nov 12, 2010 Shelby *trains flying monkeys* rated it it was amazing

Shelves: appalachia, favorites, read-2013

Larry Ott's character in this book just broke my heart. I mean took it out and threw it on the ground and stomped it kind of broken. His character was a little bookworm who just didn't fit in with the other kids. When he dared to think he had a date with a cute girl and took her out she never returned. So his whole life has been "Scary Larry".

Silas is his one time black friend who is now constable in the town they life in. One time friends. But this story is of their friendship and the way we a ...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Madeline rated it it was ok

Something I learned about myself while reading this book: I am incapable of reading books that include a murder mystery but don't focus on the mystery aspect.

Look guys, I love detective novels. I love seeing how an author puts together a crime, presents the circumstances, and shows us the investigation process while disguising the real solution until the moment they're ready to give us the answer. It's fun to read about mysteries, so when I get a book that features a mystery but tries to distrac Something I learned about myself while reading this book: I am incapable of reading books that include a murder mystery but don't focus on the mystery aspect.

Look guys, I love detective novels. I love seeing how an author puts together a crime, presents the circumstances, and shows us the investigation process while disguising the real solution until the moment they're ready to give us the answer. It's fun to read about mysteries, so when I get a book that features a mystery but tries to distract me with Big Issues, I just get frustrated. I do not care about your racial tolerance message, there has been a murder.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a good book - I want to establish that right off the bat. Its chapters alternate between the perspectives of two men, Larry Ott (a white man) and Silas Jones (a black man) in a small town in Mississippi. The two men were friends growing up in the 70's, but as adults they haven't spoken in years. When they were in high school, a girl disappeared, and the last person to see her was Larry. He was never arrested or accused of having something to do with the disappearance, but the suspicion has followed him his entire life, making him a pariah in his town. Years later, Silas is now a police officer, and another girl has disappeared. Everyone suspects Larry, and he and Silas are forced to confront their past together.

So obviously, the point of the story is not the disappearance; the point is the strained and complex relationship between these two men. It's a good story, but I was distracted the entire time because I was too busy trying to figure out who killed the two women who disappeared (the solution, I should add, will be plainly obvious to anyone who has seen even one episode of Law and Order: SVU). I had the same issue with Donna Tartt's The Little Friend: the mystery wasn't the point of the book, but I hated the story because she didn't provide a satisfying solution to the mystery that the plot revolved around (Franklin, at least, ties up his mystery's loose ends, so I didn't have to throw the book against the wall). I can't help it, guys - I'm incapable of turning off my detective-novel brain, and it meant that I didn't enjoy this book as much as I should have. ...more

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Apr 16, 2016 Cheryl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Crooked Letter, the crooked lives we live. Those crooked thoughts that alter trajectories, oh if only someone—a friend, a parent, a community, a town—could reach out and position a person's marred ways of thinking. Oftentimes, it doesn't happen this way, not if one lives in a crooked town.

Imagine a life in ruins, simply because a person has been misunderstood. Imagine having a friend you could never publicly claim, a girlfriend you would always keep hidden, because of a small town's shortsighte Crooked Letter, the crooked lives we live. Those crooked thoughts that alter trajectories, oh if only someone—a friend, a parent, a community, a town—could reach out and position a person's marred ways of thinking. Oftentimes, it doesn't happen this way, not if one lives in a crooked town.

Imagine a life in ruins, simply because a person has been misunderstood. Imagine having a friend you could never publicly claim, a girlfriend you would always keep hidden, because of a small town's shortsightedness. Imagine making one wrong turn and being blamed for an egregious incident. Imagine lives destroyed because of racism and sexism, those isms that still feed on parts of the small town life today.

Imagine a life of forced solitude.

Their lives had stopped, frozen, as if in a picture, and the days were nothing more than empty squares on a calendar.

There is only so much I can say about this novel without ruining it for you, for every word seems so intricately placed, every thought deftly illuminated, every story structure profoundly rendered. The mystery and pacing unfolds without obstruction. Structurally, this is one of those perfectly written books.

When he left, Larry lay amid his machines, thinking of Silas, how time packs new years over the old ones but how those old years are still in there, like the earliest, tightest rings centering a tree, the most hidden, enclosed in darkness and shielded from weather. But then a saw screams in and the tree topples and the circles are stricken by the sun and the sap glistens and the stump is laid open for the world to see.

Imagine painfully bearing other people's lies and secrets, yet being unaware you're doing so.

Sure, the story takes place through interesting dialogue, a heartrending plot, and neatly developed characters, but to truly know Larry and Silas is to be engrossed within a nuanced tale of two Southern men who are very different, and yet quite similar, men shackled by similar heritage, shackled by more than they'd imagined.

Imagine time distorted and bruised, time forgiven and healed. ...more

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About Tom Franklin

Tom Franklin

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Tom Franklin was born and raised in Dickinson, Alabama. He held various jobs as a struggling writer living in South Alabama, including working as a heavy-equipment operator in a grit factory, a construction inspector in a chemical plant and a clerk in a hospital morgue. In 1997 he received his MFA from the University of Arkansas. His first book, Poachers was named as a Best First Book of Fiction b ...more

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“Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he'd been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was was a sponge for the wrongs other people did.” — 13 likes

“Was that what childhood was? Things rushing by out a window, the trees connected by motion, going too fast for him to notice the consequences?” — 13 likes

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