Lightwood

October 31, 2016
After serving seven years in prison for robbery, Judah Cannon, the protagonist of this downbeat crime novel from Post (A Tree Born Crooked), returns home to rural Silas, Fla., where he reconnects with Ramey Barrow, once his childhood best friend, who soon becomes his lover. Judah wants to go straight and make a new life for himself and Ramey, but his father, Sherwood, and other members of his notorious family, who earlier pressured him into crime, have other ideas. They force Judah into helping them hold up the Scorpions, a biker gang, for $150,000 of ill-gotten loot that the bikers scored by drug-dealing for Bible-banging Sister Tulah Atwell. Betrayals and revenge ensue amid passages of revivalist harangue from Sister Tulah and bloated introspection from her nephew and sidekick, reptile-loving Fulton. Over-the-top brutality, unmitigated religious hypocrisy, and superficial characterizations, especially of the loathsome Scorpions, make this a simplistically grungy read.

December 1, 2016
The Cannon boys are known as bad news in their hometown of Silas, Florida. Only Benji, the youngest of the three adult sons of widowed patriarch Sherwood Cannon, is innocent of the lawlessness that frightens townspeople and that put Judah, the middle son, in prison for three years for driving the getaway car in a pharmacy heist. But shortly after he's released, Judah is back in the family game, this time robbing the Scorpions motorcycle club just after it made a $150,000 drug deal. While the scheme goes off without a hitch, it spawns retribution against Benji and raises the dreadful ire of Sister Tulah Atwell, the fearsome pastor of Last Steps of Deliverance Church of God, who financed the Scorpions and wants her money back. Judah wants to make a new start with Ramey Barrow, the love of his life since childhood, but he alone is driven with the desire to avenge Benji as the warring factions collude and collide. With spot-on characterizations and dialogue, Post explores the strength of family, religion, and vengeance in an absorbing literary mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)