Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter cover art

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

By: Tom Franklin
Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
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You can bury the past but it always seems to come back, one way or another . . .

WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR

Amos, Mississippi, is a quiet town, Silas Jones its sole law enforcement officer. The last excitement in Amos was nearly twenty years ago, when a teenage girl disappeared on a date with Larry Ott, Silas's one-time boyhood friend. The law couldn't prove Larry guilty, but the town's residents have shunned him ever since.

Then someone tries to kill the reclusive Ott, another young woman goes missing, and the town's drug dealer is murdered. Driven by deep-seated guilt, Silas throws himself into investigating the crimes. Woven through the tautly written mystery is the unspoken secret that hangs over the lives of two men - one black, one white.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, winner of the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year, is a masterful novel oozing with deep Southern menace.
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Critic reviews

Tom Franklin's heart-tuggingly melancholic Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter was a standout slice of beautiful writing. Superb dialogue, scuffed social realism and painterly description bring alive the Mississippi backwater where the tangled history between ostracised Larry Ott and popular police officer Silas Jones is exposed by the disappearance of a girl. Franklin's powerfully imagined characters are captivating, and the sadness of the story indelibly stains your soul.
This award winning crime novel that invited comparisons with To Kill A Mockingbird tells the story of white and black boyhood friends in rural Mississippi, separated by an apparent crime that changes their lives. A beautifully crafted thriller that explores the nature of friendship and bigotry.
Guilt suffuses the pages of Mississippi author Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter as well. Franklin's prose is startlingly beautiful, the novel worth reading purely for his evocation of Mississippi. But what sticks at the end is Franklin's shattering, heart-breaking depiction of loneliness. A deserving winner of the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year.
Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter deservedly won the Crime Writers' Association Golden Dagger for the year's best crime novel. It's a dark, brooding, beautifully written story of a cross-racial friendship dominated by two mysteries nearly two decades apart . . . Franklin's portrayal of small-town paranoia and racial politics is superb, as is his moving treatment of his main, damaged, characters.
Elegantly plotted, deftly characterised, superbly written, not a word out of place.
Beautiful writing, a spot-on sense of place, wickedly funny dialogue, and an emotionally potent story charge this highly original, literary crime offering. (George Pelecanos)
A new Tom Franklin novel is always a reason to get excited, but Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is more a cause for celebration. What a great novel by a great novelist. (Dennis Lehane)
Long after the other 75 novels of suspense you've read this year merge in your memory, you'll vividly recall this novel. Franklin has written not just a thriller of the first order, but a very fine novel, indeed. (Richard Russo)
This harrowing tale, told with ease and control, tracks back and forth across the adult lives and harsh schooldays of two Southern boys . . . Among the tensions in the book are humiliating childhood incidents and countervailing adult insights slow learning of and from early crimes and misdemeanours? It's a literary crime-mystery for dark evenings.
This book will have you enthralled for it is more than just another crime novel. Written in two timeframes, it explores the relationship between two young boys, the nature of suspicion and the solving of a mystery... The characters are engaging and there is just enough menace in the writing to keep you turning the pages.
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