Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter in Pick-a-Shelf

Jan 02, 2013 Paul Perry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2013, crime, american, mystery, murder-mystery, murder, deep-south, racism, male-author

4.5 stars.

Franklin is an author new to me, and my first discovery of the year. His mystery set in rural Mississippi evokes the place wonderfully; every page is infused with the sticky heat and the resultant slow pace of life. The main character, Silas ‘32’ Jones (his nickname relating to his number of the baseball team at high school) is a black police constable in the impoverished county, who had moved to the area from Chicago as a boy, brought ‘home’ by his mother who had left when pregnant w 4.5 stars.

Franklin is an author new to me, and my first discovery of the year. His mystery set in rural Mississippi evokes the place wonderfully; every page is infused with the sticky heat and the resultant slow pace of life. The main character, Silas ‘32’ Jones (his nickname relating to his number of the baseball team at high school) is a black police constable in the impoverished county, who had moved to the area from Chicago as a boy, brought ‘home’ by his mother who had left when pregnant with him. Larry Ott was briefly his friend when they were children (although not at school, where black and white kids were separated by a gulf of socially-imposed segregation), but has been the local pariah for almost twenty-five years, ever since being linked with, but never convicted of, the disappearance of a girl he dated. When another girl goes missing, the community’s suspicion falls on Larry, and we begin to learn about the friendship between the two boys, how it started and ended, and of secrets that neither of them knew but profoundly affected both their lives.

This is neither a high-octane thriller or a tense noir-ish detective novel, but a meditation on prejudice within a community. The open racism of the boys’ childhoods in the early ‘80s poisons those on both sides, often building walls that seem all but impossible to break down. Added to that, the ostracism of Larry Ott on suspicion of being a murderer and rapist leaves him trapped in a slow, stagnating decline which seems to mirror the gradual decay of the community, filled with abandoned homes and closed businesses. Franklin uses many parallels in the novel, especially between Silas and Larry - for example, Larry drives the same thirty-year-old pick-up his father owned while the sheriff's office can only afford to equip Silas with an ancient, run-down truck for his duties. While not always subtle, the parallels are handled with a delicacy that means they are never clunking or heavy-handed.

One facet that is worth mentioning, which is of course vital to the book, is the treatment of skin colour. As most of the novel is seen through Silas’ eyes, the usual default of “white” is reversed, and more mention is made of the skin tones of the other black characters, while most white characters are simple “white” - again, a subtle but important reversal of the usual. This has been done many times before - and, indeed, is a common practice exercise for writers - but it is very well done, handled skillfully by the white Mississippian author.

All the characters are fully realised, sketched with sure strokes, products of their time and place, of experiences and actions that still resonate. Tom Franklin is a writer I will be returning to. ...more

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Sep 09, 2013 Carmen rated it it was amazing

Really enjoyed the writing style on this. Darkly southern

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Jan 02, 2016 Rosemary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This story gripped me, and I loved reading about the places and people, but I could have wished for at least one character to admire. There was hardly anybody. Angie? but she only appears in a couple of scenes.

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