Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

June 21, 2010
Franklin's third novel (after Smonk) is a meandering tale of an unlikely friendship marred by crime and racial strain in smalltown Mississippi. Silas Jones and Larry Ott have known each other since their late 1970s childhood when Silas lived with his mother in a cabin on land owned by Larry's father. At school they could barely acknowledge one another, Silas being black and Larry white, but they secretly formed a bond hunting, fishing, and just being boys in the woods. When a girl goes missing after going on a date with Larry, he is permanently marked as dangerous despite the lack of evidence linking him to her disappearance, and the two boys go their separate ways. Twenty-five years later, Silas is the local constable, and when another girl disappears, Larry, an auto mechanic with few customers and fewer friends, is once again a person of interest. The Southern atmosphere is rich, but while this novel has the makings of an engaging crime drama, the languid shifting from present to past, the tedious tangential yarns, and the heavy-handed reveal at the end generate far more fizz than pop.

Starred review from July 1, 2010
In 1970s Mississippi, bookish white boy Larry Ott befriends poor black Silas Jones, who has moved to the area from Chicago. During high school, they drift apart, as Silas excels at baseball and Larry is a nerdy outsider. One night, Larry has a date with a girl who is much too popular and good-looking for him. The girl vanishes mysteriously, and Larry is blamed, although no evidence of foul play ever turns up. Years later, when another local girl goes missing, all eyes focus on Larry, including local law enforcement, of which Silas is now a member. Larry is then discovered almost dead of a gunshot wound, and the investigation into all these crimes begins to heat up, producing buried bodies that would seem to incriminate Larry. But Silas remains loyal to his former friend and begins to unravel a twisted tale of murder that will reveal things he never knew about himself and Larry. VERDICTA ripping good mystery, this novel also has depth and a subtle literary side, as the local area comes to life through the writer's cinematic descriptive phrases and a large and colorful cast of supporting characters. Highly recommended.—Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2010

There are murders in this Mississippi melodrama, but pay them no mind; its core is the brief friendship of two boys, one black, one white.

Larry Ott has been ostracized by the small town of Chabot for 25 years. Back in 1982, the white high-school student took his neighbor Cindy Walker out on a date. She was never seen again. The town assumed Larry had killed her, so though no body was found, no charges brought, Larry was punished. When the time came for Larry, a mechanic, to inherit his father's shop, he had no customers. He survived by selling off parcels of the family's woods to the timber company. Now, in 2007, another disappearance: the daughter of the company owner. While we're absorbing this, a masked intruder shoots Larry on his porch. He survives, thanks to quick thinking by his erstwhile friend Silas Jones, a black man and the town's only cop. Silas has been having a busy day: finding the decomposing body of a local drug dealer (not heard of again), removing a rattlesnake from a mailbox. These dramas share space with frequent flashbacks to the childhood of Larry and Silas. The result is a sluggish story, a surprise after Franklin's two hell-for-leather historicals (Smonk, 2006, etc.). Silas and his mother once lived in a hunting cabin in the Ott woods. Larry taught Silas how to hunt and fish until a racial slur ended their friendship. Turns out Silas was also involved in Cindy's disappearance, though absolutely not as her killer. There's no lack of mysteries here, and no lack of red flags either, but other mysteries—of character—go unexamined. Why hasn't Larry, instead of living like a zombie all these years, just left town? And why has Silas, after bigger assignments elsewhere, returned home to a nothing job?

There's little suspense in a novel that's most notable for its heavy-handed treatment of race.

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Starred review from September 1, 2010
Rural Mississippi in the 1970s was rife with racial tension, but skin color didnt matter to boyhood companions Silas Jones and Larry Ott. Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother, and Larry, the child of white lower-middle-class parents, were both outsiders, Silas because of his color, Larry because he was quiet and a little odd, his nose always buried in horror novels. The young mens bond strengthened over time, until the night a pretty local girl went on a date with Larry to the drive-in movies and was never heard from again. No body was found and Larry never confessed, but that didnt keep the townspeople from suspecting him. Estranged from his friend, Silas heads off to college in Oxford, Mississippi, and more than 20 years later, returns to take a job as town constable. He sees no reason to contact Larry, whos settled into a lonely existence as a mechanic, unable to escape the relentless whispers and dirty looks. The disappearance of another girl brings the two former friends back together, forcing them to come to terms with buried secrets and dark truths. Edgar Award winner Franklin (Hell at the Breech, 2003) renders luminous prose and a cast of compelling characters in this moody, masterful entry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)