Ellory is possibly my 2nd favourite thriller writer, unlike Herron which has bits of the best of Dickens and Le Carre, Ellory is an expansive and religious romantic.
This is a very good novel about the deep South and the destructive power of a moneyed family. The body of a girl who was murdered 20 years ago is recovered from a riverbed preserved by the mud almost exactly as when she died. Her heart has been removed and a circular snake inserted in its place.
And so the local sheriff Gaines, a James Lee Burke like Vietnam vet spends 600 pages untangling the events that led to her murder and the family who were involved.
Towards the end the dying father, a pretty unpleasant guy himself, describes his progeny as ‘A bastard, a whore, a queer and a bitch. Those are the fruits of my loins’.
Another very good book.
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