From the Stacks | review by Mary Emrick
Guilty Secrets Past Haunting Souls Present Crooked Letter Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin rooked Letter, Crooked Letter, the third novel by Edgar-Awardwinning author Tom Franklin, was released in the fall of 2010 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Franklin grew up in the small town of Dickinson, Alabama; but now as a professor at Ole Miss, he resides in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly, and their children. Franklin, admits that he “used a lot of autobiographical stuff for Larry, the mechanic” who is one of two central
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characters in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. The other central character is Silas, a “friend” from Larry’s childhood. The boys, one black and one white, grew up together in rural Mississippi on land owned by Larry’s father. However, this was an era when black and white children were not allowed to be friends, so their friendship had to be kept a secret— even from their parents. Set in the small, fictional Mississippi town of Chabot, Tom Franklin’s Gothic novel begins when Larry is 41 years old; but the darkness in the novel’s plot began 25 years earlier.
Franklin builds the suspense in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by transporting the story between past and present. In the present, Silas “32” Jones is the town constable. The residents of Chabot have been searching for a missing young lady for eight days when a masked gunman enters Larry’s home and shoots him in the stomach. Twenty-five years earlier, Larry was the last person to be seen with another girl, one who had been abducted, and was accused of her murder. Though never found guilty, Larry has lived a sad life of isolation in his small hometown where he struggles as an auto mechanic with few customers. While investigating the present disappearance, Silas shows up at Larry’s home soon after the shooting and saves Larry’s life. The two former friends, both guilty with secrets, have been estranged for decades. They are now forced to confront the past they’ve buried and ignored. While reading this well-crafted novel, two clichés came to mind: “Be careful what you pray for” and “no good deed goes unpunished.” If you are looking for a whodun-it novel that will hold your interest and remain in your memory long after you put it down the last time, I recommend Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.