Legacy’s burden

Master of the Delta by Thomas H. Cook

Quercus 2008, 336 pages

Jack Branch has returned to his home town of Lakeland, Mississippi, to teach history at the local high school. In addition to his regular class he offers a specialist course on the history of evil, in which he sets his students an assignment: they must each write a paper about a historic perpetrator of evil. One of Jack’s students is the son of a muderer: Luther Ray Miller (aka the Coed Killer). With Jack’s help and encouragement Eddie Miller makes his father the subject of his study, unaware of where the investigation will ultimately lead.

Relayed through a series of flashbacks to the 1950’s and beyond, what begins as a little book of horrors slowly develops into an atmospheric Southern Gothic mystery. As the tension builds, the story line twists and turns its way to a totally unexpected conclusion. Thomas H. Cook has a backlist of twenty one novels and I can’t for the life of me think why I haven’t read one before.

Suck it and see

The Poison That Fascinates by Jennifer Clement

Canongate 2008, 246 pages

Emily lives in Mexico City with her father. She works at the orphanage founded by her great-grandmother and studies history at University- her thesis is on the lives of saints. Emily likes mysteries, detective stories and true-life crime, and she has filled two notebooks with facts on female murderers. Her father has his own interest; he is compiling a list of things no longer seen in the city, but his list does not include his wife who has also disappeared. So the two of them live seemingly happy, with their obsessions and passions until a visit from a cousin brings about passion of a different kind.

Working in a library is for me like working in a sweet shop. In the pick ‘n mix of books this one, I have decided, is a chocolate lime. The writing is sharp, refreshing and entirely to my taste. But I knew there was more, something else is at the centre of this story and when it eventually seeped out, though expected, it was still dark and intense.