Post by joebill on Dec 28, 2018 19:05:54 GMT
By Stephen Hunter, I think the first and definitely the greatest "Earl Swagger" novel.
This is a rompin' stompin' novel set in 1948 in the deeeep south. A local attorney is hired by a wealthy yankee lawyer to either serve papers on or secure documents proving the man's death, a resident of a small town located far back in the swamps known as "Thebes Mississippi", also home to a colored penal colony of appallingly cruel and primitive nature.
The action is so varied and unique it would take a review nearly the length of the book to describe it so I won't even try, but suffice to say that on rare occasions I loan the book to trusted friends and cannot help but re-read it every time one returns it.
Our lawyer winds up in all sorts of trouble, gets his best friend captured and held prisoner in the prison, the only white inmate. He gets threatened by the HCUA (house committee on un American activities). The whole thing goes further and further into lunacy and violence, and towards the ending one stops and thinks from time to time that if this stuff had happened at the beginning of the book he would not have been able to suspend disbelief, but has now been sucked too far down the rabbit hole to back out.
Sent me on a quest for more Hunter books that lasted for years, none of which quite measured up to this one. Southern gentlemen, villains, fools and wise men, all presented with that special slow cadence and quirk of those who have lived there or spent a lot of time there.
I will be about a week or so on this third or fourth reading, so anybody who wants to borrow it instead of buying a copy after that is welcome to, with the understanding it is a loan and the return might be to another reader waiting in line......Joe
This is a rompin' stompin' novel set in 1948 in the deeeep south. A local attorney is hired by a wealthy yankee lawyer to either serve papers on or secure documents proving the man's death, a resident of a small town located far back in the swamps known as "Thebes Mississippi", also home to a colored penal colony of appallingly cruel and primitive nature.
The action is so varied and unique it would take a review nearly the length of the book to describe it so I won't even try, but suffice to say that on rare occasions I loan the book to trusted friends and cannot help but re-read it every time one returns it.
Our lawyer winds up in all sorts of trouble, gets his best friend captured and held prisoner in the prison, the only white inmate. He gets threatened by the HCUA (house committee on un American activities). The whole thing goes further and further into lunacy and violence, and towards the ending one stops and thinks from time to time that if this stuff had happened at the beginning of the book he would not have been able to suspend disbelief, but has now been sucked too far down the rabbit hole to back out.
Sent me on a quest for more Hunter books that lasted for years, none of which quite measured up to this one. Southern gentlemen, villains, fools and wise men, all presented with that special slow cadence and quirk of those who have lived there or spent a lot of time there.
I will be about a week or so on this third or fourth reading, so anybody who wants to borrow it instead of buying a copy after that is welcome to, with the understanding it is a loan and the return might be to another reader waiting in line......Joe