Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Tom Franklin captures a perfect snapshot of the charged intensity of the laid back South.

His description of the bullying of the teenage and adult Larry Ott will make you burn with a red streaked sense of shame and humiliation if you have ever been bullied or didn't step up when you saw bullying occur.

For me there was rarely a misstep as this short brutal tale unwinds like a lazy Southern river.

Well done.

Well-crafted mystery that relies on deep, multi-layered characters and their thoughts and actions to drive the plot, rather than a roller coaster of violent crime or chase scenes.

I felt like I was living in rural Mississippi and seeing firsthand a cycle of poverty and despair that was beyond my own experience. Depressing reminder of flawed choices and their effects, no matter what the circumstances might be.

This is what happens when you apply fine writing to a compelling mystery and at the same time draw vivid, multi-dimensional characters. While readers will probably have a pretty good sense of how this turns out (mostly), the point of reading this book should be in the telling of the story, which is first rate.