Neo-Gothic Southern

I raced through John Hart's Edgar award-winning mystery Down River in less than a day. (A much better investment of time than engaging in Black Friday bedlam.) The Slackers did not select that many murder mysteries as they tend to be our "default" genre when we don't have another reading theme. But this story is captivating. It faintly echoes The Sky Fisherman in its focus on the importance of a river to a family's history. It is more tightly written with more changes in its flow than Cache of Corpses. I have already reserved the two other Hart mysteries from the library, both set in North Carolina as well.

Like so many of our other books, Hart has his main character, Adam Chase, leave home -- actually driven away by his father's choice to side with Adam's stepmother. (Clever pun in the name, Adam being expelled from his paradise and then chasing his family history and sins.) The gentility of his Southern aristocratic estate bucks violently against the marginalized population of the county who live in swamps, manufacture meth, and incur outrageous gambling debts. As these allures tempt and encroach on his family and friends, providing motivation for several acts of violence, Hart also interweaves a motive of financial opportunities, the siting of a nuclear power plant along the river, as a force of evil to not only the status quo but to the land itself.

And like the best of murder mysteries, Adam has his own devastating back story to deal with, whether to reconcile himself to being ostracized by almost everyone in the county, to redeem his destroyed reputation, and to reconnect with the woman he left behind.

While North Carolina does not play as critical a role in Down River as Florida does in The Orchid Thief, it does come across as vitally important to plot development and intrudes more than say Alabama does in Crazy in Alabama. The place does not make the characters act as they do, but the location colors the perspectives of the inhabitants, and constrains the choices they can make.

December 5, 2009: Surroundings as Facade: The King of Lies

This is John Hart's first murder mystery, also set in Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina. Once you've read two books by the same author, you tend to see if there are any recurring themes, plots or characters. Like Down River, TKOL is high neo-Gothic, with a "genteel" wealthy Southern family that is controlled by a Tennessee Williams' type of Big Daddy; and in which the son comes to not only despise him but nearly to die from his hatred. However, I my thoughts comparing this book to others on the States' list, I find it evocative of Hotel New Hampshire, with violent rape, sibling's attempts at suicide, and deceased, idolized mother.

It is an excellent mystery, just a tad below Down River if only for its too pat ending. As far as place affecting the tale, North Carolina is less vital in this book. Hart portrays surroundings as highly constructed facades and his lead character, Work Pickens, as a too willing participant in the charade. All characters have been assigned roles by the despotic father, Ezra Pickens, with the town also under his mystique. Hart uses the simile of a frog staying in a pan of boiling water and not jumping out as long as the frog was put in when the water was tepid and only gradually heated. But because Work and his sister Jean are so emotionally destroyed by Ezra, a better simile might be the progressive ingestion of lead paint from the old peeling family manor. They are driven crazy, one to alcohol, the other to bouts of self-destruction. Ezra, his money, his estate all have to be obliterated for the characters to become whole. Jean moves from away from North Carolina but Work finds peace in farming the land nearby.