Book #60: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

I came about this book in a random way. Back in June, I read a memoir by Beth Ann Fennelly and really liked it. She talks about her husband Tommy in there (cute, she calls him Tommy!) and how he's also a writer, blah blah blah. So out of curiosity I looked him up and turns out this book had just come out. And then I forgot about it. And then I saw it at Costco randomly one day, and really wanted to buy it, but abstained, and then remembered about it and requested it through the library and yadda yadda yadda I finally read it. And really liked it!

This book felt more like Real Literature than some of the light stuff I've been reading lately (pop science and Maisie Dobbs books, etc.). It was a really great thriller story--with murders and supposed serial killers and stuff--but it was very well-written and thought-provoking as well. Short summary: Larry was accused of killing a girl back in high school and it was never cleared up, so everyone still thinks he did it, and so when another girl from the same town is kidnapped twenty years later everyone automatically blames him. Silas was Larry's friend when they were in middle school, but they haven't talked since they fought in eighth grade, but he's now a police officer in the town--and he helps to investigate and solve the crime.

The book was also pretty Southern Lit (set in Mississippi, which is where the name of the book comes from), which I've become more interested in since living here and going to NCSU (where the MFA program is pretty entrenched in Southern Lit like Flannery O'Connor and others). Not that I've read that much more of it, but I'm actually aware of it existing as a genre, and I'd like to read some!

I've had a lot of reading opportunities lately, now that I'm spending eight hours a day (or so) rocking in a chair and nursing the baby. So I still doubt I'll make my original goal of 100 books for the year, but I'm making some good progress anyways.