9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Master returns, January 4, 2010
This review is from: Cemetery Road (Hardcover)
The long awaited return of one of crime fiction's top storytellers is worth the wait. Gar Anthony Haywood is one of the very best crime writers working. His Aaron Gunner series is a classic and his latest work CEMETERY ROAD is as good as anything he's written. The characters are authentic, the story is tight, and Haywood's voice is there throughout, which is a welcomed sound in today's weak crime fiction market. The story builds like a freight train leaving the station, growing more powerful and moving faster with each chapter, until the climactic end that hits with full force.
I highly recommend this book, and if you haven't read Haywood's earlier work, pick them up as well. You won't be disappointed.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wake Up, Everybody!, February 13, 2010
This review is from: Cemetery Road (Hardcover)
Buy this book. Gar Haywood, one of the best writers in the mystery/thriller genre, is back with his finest novel yet. It's already been nominated for a few awards, and it will be nominated for a bunch more, and will almost certainly win some of them. CEMETERY ROAD is one of the five or six best books I've read in the past year, a nuanced, deeply felt meditation on getting older, on trying to outlive the reverberations of the past, on dealing with the consequences of our deeds and misdeeds, and on the nature of friendship. And it also grabs the reader by the back of the neck and practically pushes his or her face into the page. When Errol "Handy" White comes back to Los Angeles for the first time in more than 25 years, it's to attend the funeral of RJ Burrow, one of the closest friends of his youth, someone who joined with Errol and another friend, O'Neal Holden, in an act of revenge that had disastrous unforeseen consequences. The aftermath of that act has shaped Errol's life ever since, but the ghosts it created have not been laid to rest. Errol's inquiry into how RJ really died brings all of them barging into the present, seeking the resolution Errol both needs and dreads.
Great story, great characters, great setting, prose that just seems to burn itself into the page. Just buy the damn thing and see for yourself.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
http://pattimccoyjacob.typepad.com, January 21, 2010
This review is from: Cemetery Road (Hardcover)
Errol "Handy" White has a terrible secret. It is one he and his two friends have kept for twenty six years, one resulting from a robbery gone bad. A secret so terrible, the three young men agree to never see each other again for fear of being found out. To ensure this pact, Handy sets off to start a new life in Minnesota, leaving Los Angeles - along with R.J. Burrows and O'Neal Holden - behind for good...
...until R.J.'s body is found riddled with bullets in the trunk of a car twenty six years later. Far more than the desire to pay his respects, Handy flies back to LA to try and discover whether R.J.'s murder has anything to do with their secret... and if Handy is next in line to fall. O'Neal, long since the mayor of Bellwood, does not share Handy's concerns, believing instead the evidence pointing to a drug deal gone bad. Nothing would make Handy happier than to agree, but the clues he keeps uncovering while in LA prevent him from doing so. That, and the fact that while in town, he is followed, beaten up and icily dismissed in response to his questions for those who seem to know more than they will admit. Even though the physical evidence found at the murder scene points towards only one alleged killer, Handy refuses to believe the case is that cut and dry. Paranoid or not, the list of possible suspects in his mind goes far beyond just one. And he has no desire to do nothing in case his paranoia turns out to be justified.
On every level, this book hits the mark. Gar Anthony Haywood does a superb job in his presentation of Cemetery Road, maintaining the reader's high interest throughout as he takes us back and forth between the present and the past. Filling in two puzzles piece by piece - who killed R.J., and what was the terrible secret from so many years ago that might have led to his murder - with both puzzles completed and colliding at the climactic ending.
The story is told in first person, and Haywood is a master at giving the readers an intimate look inside the protagonist's mind, allowing them to feel Handy's conflict, his guilt, and his intense fear about possibly having to pay for a sin he committed twenty six years earlier. Quite possibly pay with his life. Haywood makes Handy human to readers, makes him relatable. As a result, readers find themselves fully invested in his outcome, eager to discover his fate at the end. But at the same time, finding their stomachs tighten a bit as the terrible secret is about to be revealed, wary of how their opinion of Handy, a positive one throughout, may change once his secret is revealed. But too invested in the answer to close the book before finding out.
Additionally, Haywood's descriptive style is definitive and illuminating, giving readers a clear picture of the characters and the poor Los Angeles neighborhood in which Handy and his buddies grew up, allowing readers to easily imagine those distinct areas of southern California as Handy makes his way through them. And the characters' dialogue is authentic, believable. Nothing stiff or false rings through their words, their conversations, their slang, even their thoughts.
At 216 pages, CEMETERY ROAD can be polished off in one weekend. And should be... absolutely.
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