I downloaded Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter on a whim from the library’s website, mainly because I liked the cover, but I’m also a sucker for anything set in the South, and this novel didn’t disappoint. After having finished it, I found a paperback copy at the library bookshop and picked it up for JB, who not only really enjoyed it, but passed it off to his dad, which is just about the highest praise a book can receive. Twenty-five years ago, Silas (“32”) Jones and […]
Southern gothic, done right.
I am often wary of Southern Gothic novels. I am a Southerner by birth, but often feel my southernness is buried deep in my psyche in a way that allows me to understand southern ways of thinking and doing, but I rarely think or do things that way myself. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin spoke eloquently to my inner Southerner and I enjoyed every minute of reading it. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter pretends to be a mystery story, but is really a story […]
If only he just had one special friend.
“Please, bring a special friend for Larry,” says Larry’s mother when she prays, despairing for her son’s lonely existence and wishing better for him. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a good, if somewhat predictable, mystery story that’s elevated by the quality of the prose and the character profiles of its two leads. From Goodreads: “In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32” Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son […]