Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
reviewed on + 1440 more book reviews


This is not your typical murder mystery. It's about humans - humans who abandon their friends, who are afraid to speak up when it might help someone else and finally, about a man who grew up when he finally told the entire story that had caused a town to ostracize his friend.

The story begins with Silas, a deputy, finding a body in the swamp and having the feeling that he should check on an old childhood friend, Larry. He asks another deputy to do so and Larry is found shot, laying in a pool of blood in his home. As Silas investigates, memories of their childhood experience flash through his mind over and over.

Silas, known in the community as 32, investigates the death of the man he discovered and follows his hunches. Larry is alive, but just barely. The book flashes back to Larry and his life prior to his being shot. More narrative flashes back as Silas recalls the past, too. Larry has been shunned by the community because a young woman disappeared during his first date with her. In fact, it was his first date ever. The incident colors his entire life as those in the community shun him, believing that Scary Larry as he has become known is a killer on the loose. Now another young woman has disappeared.