About
On an early Sunday morning walk through the empty streets of the Faubourg Marigny downriver of the French Quarter, maverick journalist and Big Easy transplant Jack Prine discovers the body of a well-dressed black man with a bashed-in skull. Soon Jack is drawn into an emerging web of violence threatening Elle Meridian, the victim's beautiful, complicated sister, burdened with a past she can barely confess. They begin a dangerous, desperate flight through Alabama, the Delta and back to New Orleans searching for answers and evading button men, goons, racists and family secrets. Deadly ties extend to the Dixie Mafia, priceless stolen art and debased Southern aristocracy. A final, violent showdown in the Arts District of New Orleans uncovers one last nightmarish revelation that may bind Elle, Jack and a mob enforcer named Big Red for years to come-if anyone survives.
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Reviews
"Jack Prine is about as tough and gritty as Mike Hammer, especially when he has a lady to protect; corner him on a deserted back road at night and find out. A story that plays on black and white relationships over the generations, gay sexuality, the mean streets of New Orleans and the remote remnants of towns in the Mississippi Delta, South, America, is an honest, tough book and a riveting read. R
Tony Dunbar, author of Crooked Man, and Tubby Meets Katrina
"What Rod Davis tackles masterfully in this faux hard-boiled mystery is the capturing in a simple plot of murder, investigation, solution, and deserved punishment of the essential truths of what it is to be born, nurtured, schooled, and acclimated to existence in the American South. [Jack Prine's] struggle to understand the nature of where he truly lives provides this powerfully fascinating novel
Gerald Duff, Southern Literary Review
"A gritty, well-written new mystery. South, America is an engrossing tale alive with Southern landscape, thugs, family secrets, voudou, art treasures, racial tensions, sex…and love. And the book's ending offers an excellent setup for the next Jack Prine novel, hopefully coming soon from Rod Davis."
Si Dunn