Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter in Retro Chapter Chicks

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

Shelves: favorites, southern-lit, mystery-crime, kindle-book-i-own

"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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Oct 21, 2011 Book Concierge rated it really liked it

Shelves: sfe, southern-lit, concierge, library, crime

In a small Mississippi town, two young boys, one white and the other black, hide their friendship. When they are in high school a young girl goes missing after a date with one of the boys. Her disappearance is never solved, but the town assumes he killed her and they persecute him. Meanwhile the other boy moves away and goes to college. Now, years later, Silas has returned to Chabot as a police constable. Larry is still ostracized and tormented by the local teens. When another young girl goes mi ...more

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