Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin – The quiet life of rural North America does not mean life is simple. Judgments of neighbours can be harsher than in major urban centres.  From knowing everyone, community reputations are assigned early in life with a permanence that is almost unshakeable. No one is anonymous in small places.

Franklin’s description of life in southeastern Mississippi reminds me of growing up in east central Saskatchewan. I knew all the residents of the area. I knew their family histories. They knew mine. Fortunately, the reputations around Meskanaw were positive. Not so in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.

Larry Ott, the odd awkward country boy, who loves to read, especially horror, never fits in at school or in the tiny town of Chabot. His ostracization by the community is sealed when a girl he took on a date in high school, Cindy Walker, goes missing and is never found. There is not a doubt from anyone beyond his mother that Larry must have sexually assaulted and killed her.

While there is no proof and he has never been charged Larry is shunned. No one comes to the garage, Ottomotive Repair, he has carried on since his father died. No one calls him or visits him. He is barely tolerated in area churches.

Now 41 Larry lives alone, eats KFC suppers by himself, watches some T.V. and reads his horror novels.

Silas Jones is bright and sociable and handsome and athletically skilled. Though he only came to town as a young boy, he is designated a good guy. Since high school, when he was a talented shortstop, he has been known as 32, his uniform number. 32 is Chabot’s police department.

While he is unmarried and without children 32 has a good relationship with his girlfriend, Angie. She is clearly looking to build that relationship.

In the transformation of the South during the 1960’s and 1970’s it is a twist that the solitary Larry is white and the popular 32 is African American.
 
Each of Larry and 32 are living out their lives as expected by the community.

Life grows even more isolated for Larry when the Rutherford girl, university aged daughter of the leading town businessman, goes missing. Larry is the primary suspect. Many think he is a serial killer.

At the same time local drug dealer, M & M, the second baseman for 32 also disappears.

As investigations proceed the plot moves seamlessly back and forth between current times and the youth of Larry and 32.

It is a rare talent that Franklin has to make the lives and characters of people just getting by and the poor intriguing.

I have enjoyed those John Grisham books set in rural northern Mississppi. Both Grisham and Franklin evoke the feel of the country and the people who live there.

While Franklin’s book does not have the same racist confrontations as Grisham there is still in the late 1970’s when Larry and 32 were teenagers a continuing racial strain. Much has changed in the South since To Kill a Mockingbird.

I understand why so many reviewers have loved this mystery. Franklin draws you into the lives of Larry and 32 to depths uncommon in crime literature. He builds tension as lives are unfolded in ways I did not see coming in the plot.

I expect Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter will be a crime fiction classic read and appreciated for decades to come around the world.

6 comments:

  1. Bill - It's very good to hear you thought this was well-done. I agree with you that Franklin has done an excellent job of depicting the community, the people and the physical setting. The story line is strong too, and gives the reader a lot of 'food for thought,' I think.

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  2. Margot: Thanks for the comment. I thought you would have enjoyed the book.

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  3. Another good review for this one - I must put it on my list. Thanks Bill.

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  4. Moira: Thanks for the comment. I look forward to a review.

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  5. I loved this book. It said so much about the human condition, about friendship lost and found, about alienation and loneliness. I cried at parts of this book about Larry Ott's loneliness and his missing Silas and other friends. And then later because it's Silas to reaches out to Larry, even though Larry had hurt him years earlier.

    There are episodes of racism in the book, which include the reasons why the friendship of Larry and Silas severed. Also, the descriptions about Silas' mother and the circumstances of employment and pregnancy say a lot about life in the South for Black women years ago.

    Tom Franklin has the John and Renee Grisham Chair at U. of Mississippi. He follows in Grisham's traditions in being a good story teller about life in the South years ago and now, and being able to write well about human emotions and relationships. That interested me even more than the mystery.

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  6. Kathy D.: I agree Franklin took us deep in the lives of Larry and 32. (I did not know whether to use "Silas" or "32". I chose 32 as that is how people knew him in the area.)

    I appreciated the stories of the lives of the characters in the same way I appreciate Gail Bowen writing about her characters in the Joanne Kilbourn series.

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