The Righteous Cut [Hardcover]

Robert Skinner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2002

December 1941: Jessica Richards, daughter of corrupt New Orleans councilman Whitman Richards, is the victim of a sensational daylight kidnapping from the grounds of a Catholic girls' academy. Richards, a man with many enemies, outrages both his wife and police Captain Frank Casey by throwing the police off the case. Is it because the kidnapper is a familiar enemy, returned to settle an old score, or has Richards faked the kidnapping to further some aim of his own? The desperate mother turns to the one person who might help her old boyfriend Wesley Farrell.
Farrell, a Creole club owner passing for white, freshly returned from a self-imposed exile to Havana, prowls the city's bars and streets, familiarizing himself with a growing list of Richards's enemies while he tries to decide which of them might have the brains and guts to stage a coup against the corrupt councilman. Meanwhile, Negro Squad Sergeant Israel Daggett searches for the sole witness to the kidnapping, young black custodian Skeeter Longbaugh, unaware that the kidnappers have sent Easter Coupi, the most feared killer in the Negro underworld, after Skeeter...
This new entry into an atmospheric, well-reviewed noir series follows Daddy's Gone A'Hunting, Blood to Drink (list as Best of 2000 by january magazine), and Pale Shadow.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Although the primary roles in Robert Skinner's sixth crime novel, The Righteous Cut, all belong to men, it's the secondary female characters--good, bad, and indecent--that one remembers best from this tautly contrived saga of greed and retribution. On the eve of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, Wesley Farrell, a mixed-race nightclub owner and irregular sleuth, returns to New Orleans from Havana, only to find the city erupting in an apparent gangland coup. Flagrantly corrupt councilman Whitman Richards has already lost two top henchmen to murder, and his teenage daughter, Jessica, has been kidnapped. Believing he knows and can stop the old enemy directing these acts, Richards eschews police assistance. But his defiant wife, Georgia, turns to Farrell for help, having known him during his younger days as a "two-bit hood." Even Farrell, with his criminal contacts and the backing of his Irish police captain father, may not be able to rescue Jessica, prevent the slaying of a naive young witness to her abduction, and keep Richards breathing.

Skinner's pre-war New Orleans is a piquant gumbo of whorehouses, jazz dives, and quotidian street violence, a place where "anything goes if you got the price of the ticket," and where the desperate acts of a kidnap victim or a hit man's sudden bout with his conscience seem only to be expected. The Righteous Cut is less bleakly consuming than an earlier Farrell outing, Blood to Drink, and its final resolution exalts convenience over credibility, yet the balance of human emotions against action here is remarkably satisfying. --J. Kingston Pierce

From Publishers Weekly

In his fifth literate, intelligent, if overly busy WWII-era noir to feature Creole nightclub owner and part-time dick Wesley Farrell (after 2001s Pale Shadow), Skinner has included enough characters to stage Aida and enough plot twists to give the conscientious reader a migraine trying to keep track of the cast. When shady New Orlean's councilman Whit Richards receives a phone call from a man who addresses him as Rico, an old nickname hed rather forget, he knows he's in trouble. Richards's enemies have a foolproof scheme to get even for the truly rotten things he's done to them, though its no surprise when the bad guys best-laid plans backfire. When Richard's won't cooperate with the police after his teenage daughter is kidnapped in broad daylight from her Catholic school, his wife, an old flame of Farrell's, asks the Creole to find the girl. A young African-American nebbish, the only reliable witness to the kidnapping, becomes the quarry of a fearsome hired gun, Easter Coupe, easily the best character in the book. Eventually, like Joshua before Jericho, Farrell brings the walls down on them all. Skinner's 1940s New Orlean's underworld is effectively murky, while his period details and topical references are, as usual, pitch perfect. Established fans should be pleased, but others may find that there's not enough depth or development to care about the fates of any of the major players.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 275 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; 1 edition (August 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159058029X
• ISBN-13: 978-1590580295
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,599,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Skinner has a B A in American History from Old Dominion University and a Master of Library Science Degree from Indiana University. He also studied creative writing at University of New Orleans. He has authored or co-authored four different books dealing with the career of African-American novelist Chester Himes and six novels set in Depression-era New Orleans. His stories have appeared in Xavier Review, War, Literature & the Arts, Louisiana Literature, STORYGLOSSIA, and PlotsWithGuns.com. He is a regular contributor to FIRSTS: The Book Collector's Magazine, for which he has written essays on Elmore Leonard, A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Benjamin Capps, Bernard Cornwell, and Robert Morgan, but to name a few.

For the past 23 years he has served as University Librarian at Xavier University of Louisiana, located in New Orleans.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lot of action and bloodshed, but quite a thriller, September 1, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Righteous Cut (Hardcover)

Councilman Whitman Richards is a force to be reckoned with in New Orleans in the days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He has his hands in every racket in the city and he uses the money from his dirty dealings to fill his political coffers. He's madly in love with his mistress and plans to marry her once he divorces his wife Georgia.

Whit's perfect world begins to crumble the day his daughter Jessica is kidnapped from her local high school. When the ransom call comes in, the Councilman learns that the kidnapper is his half brother Pete Carson, a person he set up on a murder charge years ago and thus ran him out of town. Sick of her husband's action, Georgia goes to Wesley Farrell, a dangerous man who works both sides of the law. They had a fling two decades ago and Wes can't resist Georgia's pleas to help her rescue Jessica. Even though he makes himself a target from one of Whit's unknown enemies, Wes goes to the wall to find Jessica.

The fifth installment in the Wesley Farrell series is a thrilling reading experience. The protagonist goes the extra mile to help out a former friend and in the process gains a priceless gift. There is a lot of action and bloodshed in THE RIGHTEOUS CUT so fans of cozies will want to avoid this novel. Readers of historical urban noirs will find Robert Skinner's latest novel a very entertaining experience.

Harriet Klausner