A Fine Dark Line Joe R. Lansdale | ISBN : 0-89296-729-3

A Fine Dark Line

Author: Joe R. Lansdale

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Publication Date: 08 January, 2003

ISBN: 9780892967292

Pages: 320

Subjects: Mystery, Action and adventure, General

Available as: , Trade Cloth, 978-1-58724-419-3 Trade Cloth, 978-0-89296-729-2 Trade Paper, 978-0-446-69167-3 E-Book - EPUB, 978-1-936666-17-1 E-Book - Sony Format, 978-0-446-40922-3 E-Book - GlassBook; Adobe Ebook Reader, 978-0-7595-9853-9 E-Book - Mobipocket, 978-0-7595-7104-4 E-Book - Peanut Press; eReader (AKA Palm Reader), 978-0-7595-4785-8 E-Book - Gemstar REB 1100, 978-0-7595-0782-1 E-Book - Microsoft Reader: Pocket PC & Desktp/Laptop; Microsoft Reader Level 5, 978-0-7595-8792-2 E-Book - Open Ebook; EPUB, 978-0-7595-2824-6

Description:

"The time is the summer of 1958. The place is Dewmont, Texas, a town that the great American postwar boom has somehow passed by. A sad, hollow beat trails the kids who tune into rockabilly on the radio and waste their weekends at the Dairy Queen. And an undetected menace simmers under the heat that clings to the skin like thin molasses." "For blissfully ignorant thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchell, the end of innocence comes with his discovery of an old trove of passionate yet troubled love letters that lead him to a long-ago house fire and the tragic deaths of two very different young women. Obsessed with investigating their fates, Stanley finds a guide and mentor in black, elderly Buster Lighthouse Smith, a retired Indian Reservation policeman who now runs the projector at the drive-in theater owned by Stanley's parents. The laconic Buster tutors Stanley on the finer points of Sherlock Holmes, the blues, and life's lost dreams." "But not every buried thing stays dead. And in one terrifying night of rushing creek water and thundering rain, an arcane, murderous force will suddenly rise from the past to threaten the boy - and test the limits of Buster's strength and wisdom. In the end the old man teaches Stanley a lesson that will haunt him always, about the forever short distance between living flesh and the dust from which it came."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

PW Publishers Weekly

Review Source: Publishers Weekly

Review Date: 2002-12-02

The atmosphere is as thick as an East Texas summer day in Edgar-winner Lansdale's (The Bottoms) engaging, multilayered regional mystery, which harks back to 1958. Thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchel, Jr., has enough on his hands just growing up in Dewmont, Tex., when he literally stumbles on a buried cache of love letters. Stanley pursues the identity of the two lovers with help from the projectionist at his family's drive-in, an aged black man who quotes Sherlock Holmes and doesn't mince words about the world's injustices. As the truth of a gruesome 20-year-old double murder comes to light in the sleepy town, so do the facts of life, death, men, women and race for young Stanley. Unfortunately, this wealth of experience sometimes strains credulity. For instance, Stanley, his sister, Callie, and friend Richard witness a secret burial, see a local phantom, are chased by a murderer and barely miss being hit by a train-all in one night. As the older and wiser Stanley says of the past, "More had happened to my family in one summer than had happened in my entire life." The "down-home" dialect is occasionally overdone, too, with more ripe sayings than Ross Perot on caffeine. But Lansdale clearly knows and loves his subject and enlivens his haunting coming-of-age tale with touches of folklore and humor. (Jan. 8) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved