Bay of Sorrows [Hardcover]

Gaylord Dold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1995

In a Texas setting where oil rigs stand idle and shrimp fishing has dwindled, Vietnamese refugees and locals exist in uneasy proximity, and sheriff Tom Poole is awakened from his sleepwalking existence by the death of an old fisherman.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Crime stories about angst-ridden antiheroes in rural settings may be commonplace, but little is ordinary or hackneyed in this story about a deputy sheriff on the Texas Gulf coast. The locale is palpable, exotic and painstakingly evoked. The action, sometimes dragging tortuously through the heat and humidity, fits the setting. Tom Poole works the area around Port Arthur, keeping the peace between the "bubbas" and the immigrant Vietnamese, both groups scrambling to extract a living from the dwindling shrimp industry. An old Vietnamese fisherman with two daughters and two drugged-out sons-in-law is found dead in his shack, the gunshot wound behind his ear inflicted by an expensive new handgun. Poole-sad, divorced and a Vietnam veteran-doesn't believe the old guy shot himself, but his bullying boss does, and takes him off the case. The deputy, livid, keeps on investigating, partly out of war-related guilt and partly to befriend Adrienne, an older woman with a terminally ill husband who has sparked Poole's belief that if his salvation exists anywhere, it is in her arms, in a cottage on the beach along the hot, blighted coastland. Poole finds drug activity, more death and more reason to go on. Dold's (Rude Boys) lyrical and stylized prose is of a quality rarely encountered in any genre.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Since Lisa Marie left him, Tom Poole has been emotionally adrift. A deputy sheriff in Port Arthur, Texas, he's sick of his job and his life. Then he investigates the alleged suicide of an elderly Vietnamese fisherman. Suddenly Poole is energized. Nguyen Bao Do was old and poor and an outsider, but Poole isn't going to let local sheriff "Daddy" John Lister write off the case as a "gook suicide." As Poole continues to investigate--over Daddy's strenuous objections but with the help of another department renegade and a sympathetic DEA agent--he finds himself battling bikers, dope dealers, and corrupt officials, all of whom played roles in Do's death. After a passing encounter with an old woman who tells Poole her life story and provides inspiration by example, Poole vows to make solving Do's murder his last act as a lawman. With each step he takes toward this goal, he moves closer to regaining his emotional equilibrium. A beautifully written story of spiritual rebirth disguised as a crime novel. Wes Lukowsky

Product Details

• Hardcover: 266 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1 edition (February 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312117515
• ISBN-13: 978-0312117511
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,789,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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