book review crooked letter crooked letter tom franklin

His parents have a few hundred acres of land, which do not seem to be used for anything agricultural apart from supporting some chickens. Larry is very close to his mother, but never manages to make friends at school. Larry’s father runs Ottomotive, a car repair shop, but is disappointed in his son’s lack of mechanical ability and treats him as if he’s a wimp because he is always reading (largely horror stories and comics). The story unfolds of Larry’s past as he grew up in the impoverished hamlet of Chabot, which boasts a lumber mill and not much else in terms of employment prospects. The first chapter pulls the reader in straight away, describing Larry’s lonely lifestyle in his parents’ house his childhood memories of family tensions the jobs he’s devised at home and “work” and his strange welcoming of what seems to be a certain death. The novel is set in rural Mississippi, telling the tale, switching back and forth in time, of two boys – Silas Jones, a baseball player who becomes a poorly paid traffic cop, and Larry Ott, an ostracised countryman and car mechanic. I hadn’t paid it any attention, though, until it won this year’s CWA Gold Dagger award the day before I spotted a copy in my local library – so I thought I’d give it a try. Since its original publication in the USA, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter has been a bestseller as well as being extremely well reviewed. This is a marvellous book one that, after you have read it, makes you want to go out and buy multi-copies to give to all your friends for Christmas, and one which inspires the sentiment: “if you only read one novel this year, make it this one”. Pan Macmillan, 2011 (first published in the USA, 2010)

Book review crooked letter crooked letter tom franklin