Rednecks by Taylor Brown

 Set in the coal fields of West Virginia in the 1920s, Rednecks is a book of historical fiction recounting the Battle of Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Author Taylor Brown has mixed fictional characters--including one based on his great-grandfather Dr. Domit Simon Sphire--among those who witnessed and participated in this period of upheaval among unionized coal miners and the coal barons.

 

The Matewan Massacre occurred on May 19, 1920, in Matewan, West Virginia, when Chief of Police Sid Hatfield and union miners stood up to the cutthroat agents from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency who had just turned out the miners’ families and their belongings into the mud. The penalty for joining the union was firing from the job and eviction from mine housing. Among the dead were two of the Felts brothers along with five of their detectives, two miners, and one teenage bystander. Gutshot Mayor Cabel Testerman would be dead before the day was over.

 

A year later, the surviving detectives from the Massacre were found “not guilty,” and the union miners were still on strike, living in a downtrodden canvas tent camp. In the meantime, Hatfield, a relative of Devil Anse Hatfield, has had an encounter with one of the mine owners, for which he would be charged with assault.

 

Skirmishes between striking union workers and the Baldwin-Felts thugs paired with vigilantes continued, leading up to the Blair Mountain charge that is the largest labor uprising in United States history, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. Ten thousand coal miners fought the battle for miners’ rights against mine owners, state militia, and the federal government for five days from late August to early September in 1921. The miners wore red bandannas around their necks, giving origin to the term “rednecks.”

 

This May 14 release by Taylor Brown is the author’s sixth novel. His first three novels were all finalists for the Southern Book Prize: Fallen Land (2016), The River of Kings (2017), and Gods of Howl Mountain (2018). He grew up on the Georgia Coast and has lived in Western North Carolina. Currently a resident of Savannah, Georgia, he is the founder and editor-in-chief of BikeBound, one of the world's leading custom motorcycle publications.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 30, 2023.

I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

Camino Ghosts by John Grisham

 Readers return to John Grisham’s Camino Island off the coast of southeast Georgia in his latest novel Camino Ghosts being released on May 28. Bookstore owner Bruce Cable has an idea for  writer Mercer Mann’s next book: the history of deserted Dark Isle, an island just north of Camino.

Lovely Jackson is the last living descendant of Dark Isle. When Lovely and her mother are the last inhabitants of the island, the pair moved to The Docks area of Camino. Lovely has already written a self-published book about Dark Isle; excerpts are incorporated into the novel. Bruce knows that Mercer can develop the story further.

Dark Isle’s history is marred by the slave traders who were capturing Africans and bringing them to America and by those who hunted runaway slaves who had found exile on the island. However, the actions of the people of Dark Isle have made outsiders believe the island is cursed: no white man has left the island alive! Stories were told that the occupants of the isle were cannibals. Lovely stands by the curse, and when archeologists want to explore the island, Lovely insists she needs to accompany them to remove the curse.

Going beyond Lovely’s book, Mercer would explore the court battle that is brewing as a resort developer wants to ignore Lovely’s claim that the island is her own as the only survivor in order to develop the island. With Bruce and Mercer’s help along with a lawyer friend of Bruce’s, a court case is filed to decide who owns the title to Dark Isle: Lovely or the state of Florida? The powers that be in Florida have been considering the sale of Dark Isle to the developer.

John Grisham made a name for himself with his very first  novel, A Time to Kill (1989), followed by other court procedural novels that made him king of the modern legal thriller. Camino Ghosts is the third book in the Camino Island series.

I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay

 English teacher Richard Boyle will never forget the day he saw through his classroom window a former student outside the school building bundled up in sticks of dynamite and approaching the doors in I Will Ruin You, the latest thriller from author Linwood Barclay coming out May 7. While Boyle is able to secure his classroom and run to the doors to talk the man down from entering the building, Mark LeDrew trips over his shoestring as he is turning away to wait for the police to disarm him.

Before accidentally blowing himself up, Mark accuses three school employees of driving him to this point: a teacher, a school counselor, and “the lawnmower man.” In the aftermath of this tragedy, Mark’s parents are suing Boyle, claiming he is responsible for their son’s death.

Principal Trent Wakely had started carrying a gun to school a couple of years ago for just this kind of scenario. He was coming up behind Boyle, trying to set up a shot to protect the teacher and the school. Because of Boyle’s ability to connect with Mark and disarm him of his plan to blow up his enemies, Wakely is spared making that decision, which would probably have brought some backlash about having a gun inside the school.

Boyle’s brave action has put him in the news media spotlight, but unfortunately, he comes to the attention of an extortionist. A former student formulates a plan to squeeze $10,000 from the teacher, accusing Boyle of fondling him on a school bus on the way to a wrestling match some years ago.

Does Boyle need to secure a lawyer? How can he defend himself against a molestation charge? How can he raise enough funds to pay the blackmailer so he does not lose his teaching license? What resources can protect him and his family from financial ruin in a lawsuit? What will it take to keep someone from ruining him and his family?

Linwood Barclay is the bestselling author of 27 other novels. He adapted his novel Never Saw it Coming for the 2017 movie starring Eric Roberts. Born in the United States, his family moved to Canada when he was a toddler. Prior to writing books full-time, he was a newspaper journalist and columnist. He lives with his wife in Toronto.

Summers at the Saint by Mary Kay Andrews

 Author Mary Kay Andrews has outdone herself with this seasonal offering of Summers at the Saint due out May 7. She has taken a predictable beach read and turned it on its end, incorporating crime, scandal, and family drama in this unputdownable novel.

Set on a private island off the coast of Georgia, St. Cecelia is a historic resort founded by the Eddings family. Traci, wife of the late Hoke Eddings, manages the hotel and all its amenities, while her philandering brother-in-law Ric runs the real estate side of the business.

Like most employers on the island, Traci is facing personnel issues as her chef and guest relations employees are off to higher paying positions, and she is struggling to fill their spots as well as have enough staff for the upcoming busy summer season. She decides she can solve housing for some of her staff by converting a building into a dormitory, making Ric irate about the money she is spending.

Traci is unaware of the mismanagement of hotel assets by the property’s general manager and his minions, going on right beneath her nose.  Before long, the shenanigans going on at the Saint will turn deadly as one of the employees has disappeared.

Worse, the business may hang in the balance as Ric tries to remove Traci from the Saint by creating a new will for his father Fred, who is dying from Parkinson’s. Trouble is, the last will and testament may not solve Ric’s attempt to wholly run the Saint and the real estate holdings, thanks to a scandal a couple of decades ago that his father was able to cover up by throwing lots of money at it to secure a non-disclosure agreement.

As if the in-fighting between Traci and Ric wasn’t enough, Ric’s second wife Madelyn knows about his cheating, and she has put into motion some plans of her own, hanging onto the marriage because the pre-nup would leave her with zilch.

While all these struggles are going on inside the Eddings’ world, guests enjoy a prosecco in the Saint’s ritual salute to the sunset, an elevated menu in the hotel’s restaurant, and the Saint’s signature pink beach chairs and sun umbrellas, oblivious to all that’s going on behind the scenes.

Andrews, known for using humor, twists, and insightful detail, makes this a beach read that will surpass all others this summer. Known as the Queen of Summer Reads, Andrews splits her time between Atlanta and a second home on Tybee Island.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 24, 2023.

I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky

 In the 22^nd volume of the V.I. Warshawski series, author Sara Paretsky hits Pay Dirt with a mystery that she traces back to the Civil War. Coming out April 16, the novel follows V.I. as she becomes involved in the search for a missing coed in Lawrence, Kansas, after having attended a basketball game there with her goddaughter Bernie. Bernie has to head back to Chicago for her classes at Northwestern University but she begs V.I. to stay and find the missing woman.

Having just come off a terrible case in which she found another missing teen only to have the irate father murder his son in cold blood then turn the gun on himself, V.I. was depressed. She had not been sleeping well, she was losing weight and muscle tone because she was not eating or working out. Telling herself she was not up to the task of finding the missing coed, she took the job on anyway, and found a drugged and injured girl in a house known for its drug parties.

When working in Chicago, V.I. has acquaintances in the police department as well as a few informants, but she has to work alone—and often in conflict—with the local police and the FBI, which has jumped in because the missing woman was thought to have been kidnapped. With no touchpoints in an unfamiliar city, V.I. doubles down and finds the local opioid distributers quickly, but the police turn a blind eye to her discovery.

V.I. turns up another dead body, this one belonging to an annoying woman from out of town who has been picketing the local school for the dismissal of a teacher accused of having a woke curriculum. The protester demanded that the real history of indigenous people and black settlers in Kansas be told. V.I. finds herself in the middle of a land-use battle over a piece of property that may still be titled to a black family in the 1860s. This tale will not end until V.I. finds herself kidnapped and beaten not once but twice.

Sara Paretsky never disappoints with her multi-layered detective fiction. Kansas raised, Paretsky has been living in Chicago since 1968. She has a Ph.D. in history and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Private investigator Warshawski is the protagonist of all but two of Paretsky's novels; the author is credited with transforming the role and image of women in the crime novel.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 19, 2024.

I would like to thank William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

 

Southern Man by Greg Iles

 Fifteen fictional years have passed since readers got to peek into the life of Penn Cage, and things have changed, as told by Greg Iles in Southern Man (Penn Cage 7), which comes out May 28. Iles recently announced that he needs a stem cell transplant, just like his character Cage, saying “This should explain the multiple postponements of the release that generated so many emails and which I was unable to answer candidly at the time.”

The series started in 1999 with The Quiet Game. In 2024, Cage is a different man—no longer a hot shot attorney active in local politics—and his writing career has been set aside to tend his mother who is dying of multiple myeloma, the same disease Iles has suffered from for years and that is now escalating. Over the years, Cage has also lost his physician father in a prison riot and nearly his own life in a serious traffic accident that took part of his leg, the very same thing that happened to Iles.

Daughter Annie has grown up and is working as a civil rights lawyer in Jackson, Mississippi, while Cage is living quietly on a former cotton plantation above the Mississippi River. Before she succumbs, his mother Peggy has made a deep dive into family history, and she is encouraging her son to put off his next book until he reads all the work she has pieced together.

Meanwhile, Cage is drafted into advising local government when a police action shooting at a hip-hop concert not only injures his daughter but threatens the community structure of Bienville, Mississippi. Quick action by third-party presidential wannabe Robert E. Lee White, who moves in to re-inflate Annie’s collapsed lung, gives her some relief  before an ambulance reaches her backstage at the concert.

Besides the shooting dubbed the Mission Hill Massacre, a  radical group is setting fires to antebellum mansions in Bienville and Natchez that the black community sees as concentration camps for slaves. The city and county governments are challenged to find answers to calm the county-wide panic. Before all is said and done, Bienville is on the verge of a race war.

Cage theorizes that the fires are not historic retribution by radicals but what he calls “false flag strikes” that have triggered the chaos in the streets of Bienville. Worse, the white county police and the black city police are at odds as county leaders begin to dissolve the city government made up mostly of black citizens including the mayor.

The situation deteriorates as the black community is fuming over the assassination of one of their own and the lynching of a teenager who witnessed that bloody event. The white community in the divided town is outraged by the continuing destruction of its antebellum mansions. Before the story ends, lives will be lost as Cage and Annie find themselves in the midst of events triggered by Bobby White as he seeks a national stage for projecting himself as the man of action destined for the White House.

Chockful of local history and a family history narrative, Iles has created his magnum opus in a multi-layered story that stretches more than 900 pages. The work seems to be a culmination of everything Iles has wanted to say about politics, race relations, and civil rights as he plumbs the depths of United States history, especially the Civil War and its aftermath. The whole nation has its eyes on the unfolding events in Bienville as anarchy threatens the state of Mississippi.

Greg Iles has penned standalone books as well as his Penn Cage series. He was set for a stem cell transplant to take place before Southern Man was published, and at this time, there has been no further announcements regarding the author’s health. Born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War, Iles lives in Natchez, Mississippi, with his wife and children.