Dead Low Tide

October 3, 2011
A murder, a scandal, and a dangerous web of secrets make up Lott’s 13th novel, the sequel to 1998’s The Hunt Club. Huger Dillard, ever opinionated and vocal, narrates the story, punctuating the text with his commentary as he unravels the mystery of Landgrave Hall, a small wealthy community in South Carolina where something important seems to be brewing. Huger (short for Huguenot), at 27, lives in the family home, tending to his blind father, “Unc.” When the two of them sneak onto a golf course late at night so that Unc can practice his swing in private, they uncover a body in the mire of low tide, tipping off a series of events that brings armed forces, terrorist activity, and skeletons from the closet careening into motion. Through these events, Huger, initially complacent and seeming to have given up on life, starts to believe that things could be better. “Maybe I wanted to have my own life, to live on my own and not have to ferry Unc through his days, me his chauffeur and caddy and coffee bearer and eyes every day I was alive.” The initial discovery and premise of the novel is captivating, but the tale loses steam midway and falters into monotony. The final chapters arrive with a rush of events and information that assemble into a jarring and thrilling outcome, but more clues and tension leading up would guarantee that a reader might actually arrive at the end.

November 1, 2011
In Lott's follow-up to his coming-of-age/murder mystery The Hunt Club (1998, etc.), Huger Dillard, now a grown man but not exactly mature, confronts another murder 10 years later. Huger, 27, has never quite begun his life since the trauma of killing a man at 17. He dropped out of college and has no real career. He now lives with his newly rich mother and father "Unc" in the exclusive golfing community Landgrave outside Charleston and pines for his lost love, African-American Tabitha, now getting her post-doc at Stanford. Approaching the golf course by boat late one night--Unc likes to practice when no one is around--Unc and Huger find a woman's body floating in the marsh. Not only do the police show up, but also some intimidating naval officers from the U.S. Naval Weapons Station across the water. They were watching Unc and Huger in their boat through night goggles like the ones Unc won playing poker against base Commander Prendergast during a weekly game hosted by the father of Tabitha's current beau. After finding the body, Huger comes home to find Prendergast alone with his mother and creepily solicitous. Meanwhile there's another body found the same night, a man in the trunk of his car. Are the two deaths connected? Huger wants to figure out what is going on, but mostly he wants to get Unc to his weekly poker game where Unc intends to get those military-property goggles back to Prendergast--or does he? Up until a point, the novel leans toward the slightly hangdog humor of Huger's slacker life, but suddenly in a rush of plot background and forced dialogue comes a terrorism-centered plot full of traitors and stereotypically nasty Muslims in sleeper cells. Huger is an appealing narrator, but his story of finding himself is only moderately interesting, and the tacked-on thriller is cartoonish.

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August 1, 2011

Best-selling author of Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and a literate sort who has won Pushcart and PEN awards (among others), Lott turned out a literary mystery in 1998 called The Hunt Club. Here at last is a follow-up. When Huger Dillard rows his blind father over to Landgrave Hall, SC, golf course at 2:30 in the morning so that he can practice his swing unobserved, they find a body trapped at low tide. This little venture eventually leads them to the discovery of a terrorist cell. Juicy stuff not just for upscale readers.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2011
The lush and lovely South Carolina community of Landgrave Hall is steeped in military history and populated by citizens with money to spare. But when Huger Dillard and his blind father, Unc, arrive at the area golf course in their rowboat, they don't care a whit about the nearby Naval Weapons Station or the residents with their fancy cars and manicured lawns. Unc is there to practice his swing, far from the commentsand commentaryof his neighbors. But his backswing is put on the back burner when the pair finds a woman's body anchored deep in the mud at water's edge. Who is she and what is she doing there? Soon Huger and Unc are at the center of an investigation that attracts the attention of the navy, Homeland Security, and plenty of nosy neighbors. As facts about the dead body surface, so do harrowing truths about Landgrave Hall. This latest offering from the former Pushcart Prize winner and Oprah author is a bit less engaging than his previous novel, Ancient Highway (2008), but it will still appeal to readers who enjoy elegant prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)