Review by Booklist Review
Thomas Wolfe wrote that "you can't go home again," and in this highly anticipated debut, Wise explores what happens when you do and nothing--and everything--has changed. After a decade in Richmond (the titular "holy city"), Will Seems has returned to his southern Virginia hometown to work as a sheriff's deputy. When Will retrieves a victim from a burning house, then discovers the man was murdered, the investigation dredges up old prejudices. Sheriff Mills insists Will arrest Zeke, who is Black, based on circumstantial evidence and resists deeper scrutiny beyond him. Conflicted between his obligations to his job and his personal tie to Zeke's son, Sam, Will struggles with his identity as a white member of this divided community and the secrets and grudges rife there, questioning his true motives for coming home. Wise's writing is strongly evocative of its unique setting, redolent with the sights and sounds of small-town Virginia. Fans of both Southern and crime fiction will welcome this new voice, a hybrid of Faulkner and Grisham, to the genre.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A heinous crime tests a freshly minted deputy sheriff's allegiances in Wise's stylish debut. When Will Seems's mother died 13 years ago, he fled rural Euphoria County, Va., for the "holy city" of Richmond. Now, he's returned to take a job with Euphoria County's police department, and he finds that his old neighborhood remains mired in poverty and crime. Soon after Will dons his badge, his childhood friend, Tom Janders, is murdered in an arson. Zeke Hathom, father of another of Will's boyhood friends, is spotted running from the burning building, and authorities swiftly place him in custody. Substantial evidence implicates Zeke in Tom's death, and Will's boss wants to send Zeke to prison. Will, however, owes a deep adolescent debt to Zeke's son and sets out to prove the older man's innocence. When Zeke's friends and family hire PI Bennico Watts to help exonerate him, she and Will enter into an uneasy alliance and plunge together into Euphoria County's underworld. Wise propels the plot forward with flashbacks to the violence of Will's past and the shame that motivates his return. Bold characters and splendid prose further enhance the proceedings. Wise knocks it out of the park his first time up to bat. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
On the outskirts of the holy city known as Richmond, VA, lies long-suffering Euphoria County, where residents and lawmakers are anything but saintly. When Deputy Sheriff Will Seems discovers Tom Janders's house aflame with Tom's body inside and Zeke Hathom, the father of Will's childhood friend Sam, fleeing the scene, a homicide investigation ensues. Will doubts Zeke's involvement, but Sheriff Mills, eager to close the case because of the upcoming election, isn't looking to explore the possibility of additional suspects. Private investigator Bennico Watts, with her marred police-force past, teams up with Will to spur the investigation, courtesy of contravening local laws. Once the murder is solved, author Wise navigates the characters toward their resolution and reconciliation with personal histories in a locale cautiously called home. With a talent for writing place, Wise weaves his grim debut around topics of revenge, drug addiction, small-town politics, and the complications of returning to one's hometown. Actor/narrator Chris Henry Coffey's gravelly voice complements the scuffed-up, imperfect characters and the novel's atmospheric setting. VERDICT This notable Southern noir debut is a welcome addition to the genre. For fans of gritty, small-town crime fiction and S.A. Cosby.--Kym Goering
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Deputy Sheriff Will Seems--who's recently returned to his faded Virginia hometown a decade after escaping to Richmond--investigates a murder with links to a horrific incident that still torments him. When he was 16, Will, who is white, stood by while Sam Hathom, a Black friend, withstood a brutal beating by a gang of taunting kids that left him with physical and psychological injuries and a drug habit. Driven by guilt, Will has come back to deal with personal demons and to look after his strung-out friend. He also has to deal with the murder of a local man whose body he drags from a burning house. When his corrupt boss arrests Sam's father for the crime based on circumstantial evidence, Will staunchly opposes him. Suspended from the force, he teams up with Bennico Watts, a strong-willed female investigator with a spotty history, who is hired by the murder victim's angrily grieving mother. Knowing Bennico is a reckless spirit who was fired by the Richmond police for an illegal search, Will keeps his distance--until he starts breaking rules himself and finds her presence helpful. Relentlessly dark, with one wrenching exchange of violence, Wise's impressive debut deeply penetrates the history of Will's cursed family and equally cursed town. Streaming with and sometimes choked by rapturous imagery--a burning house "melting inward like blossom-end rot on some strange fruit"--the novel supports Bennico's notion that "understanding a crime...had almost as much to do with the setting as the act itself." In expanding the setting to Richmond, a prospering college town infected by a hateful right-wing presence, the novel conveys how American dreams can be defiled even in a place called the Holy City. A dense, brilliantly rendered novel by a new master of Southern gothic. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
