The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house.
-Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter*
A girl disappears in small-town Mississippi. Suspicion falls, unsurprisingly, on the last person known to have seen her, but there's not enough evidence to try a case. The years go by--decades, even--and the trail runs cold. Then there's another disappearance.
What are the odds, someone notes, of the two cases being unrelated? With no other leads, the police are suspicious of Larry Ott, the town loner--and the chief person of interest in the older case. Things get more complicated when Larry is rushed to the hospital, the victim of a gunshot wound. With Larry in a coma, it's difficult to tell if the wound was self-inflicted or not. While Larry lingers in unconsciousness, the police are forced to wait.
One officer's wait is particularly grueling. His name is Silas Jones, and, once upon a time, he and Larry Ott were friends. It's not a fact he advertises, considering the low regard in which Larry is held in town, but it does color his feelings about the case. He wrestles with his feelings as he waits awkwardly at Larry's bedside.
The reader waits as well, but there's plenty to keep you occupied until you finally learn the particulars of Larry's shooting. The narrative shifts between past and present, between Larry and Silas, and slowly we work out how things turned out as they did. While it's not hard to figure out the perpetrator of the present-day crime, it's still interesting to see the details filled in--and the cold case draws the reader in quite well. All in all, it's pretty riveting, and I admire the way Franklin was able to tie things up.
It's impressive to me that the most striking part of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is the characterization. Both Larry and Silas are well-realized and believable, sympathetic and flawed. While I was undoubtedly absorbed in the book because I wanted to know the resolution to the cases, I also became more and more deeply invested in Larry and Silas as the story went on. I would definitely be interested in reading more by Tom Franklin.
Up next: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
*I was totally unaware that this mnemonic device was regional. I don't normally think of myself as Southern in any way, but I've long enjoyed this trick for spelling Mississippi.
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