Heaven’s Crooked Finger by Hank Early
My rating: 4/5 cats
Some people can reform, and some people just get by the best they can with their flaws. I’m the second kind.
this is the first book in a southern crime fiction series that i’m going to devour as soon as they are written. there’s a lot to appreciate here – good atmosphere and description, appealingly flawed antihero protagonist, southern gothic flourishes, and a little romance, if you’re into that sort of thing. it’s grit lit-adjacent by virtue of its isolated deep-in-the-mountains-of-north-georgia population, bound together by history, secrecy, and the influence of the snake-handling church of the holy flame, whose charismatic, recently-deceased preacher rj marcus has been seen – and photographed – after his body was buried, giving credence to his claims that he would conquer death itself and preserving the legacy of fear, awe, and power he inspired among his flock.
rj’s estranged son earl has been working as a private investigator in north carolina, cut off from his father and his brother lester for thirty years, vowing never to return to the hometown where he was humiliated, betrayed, and abandoned as a teenager. he receives a letter from a man named bryant mccauley, one of his father’s most devoted followers, containing photographic proof that rj is still alive, along with a plea to come help him track rj down – an invitation earl finds easy to ignore. less easy to ignore is the letter accompanying it, from mary hawkins, the biological granddaughter of the woman known to all as “granny,” who took earl in after his father cast him out. now over a hundred years old, the still-sharp granny has pancreatic cancer and would like to see earl before she dies, so he ventures back to coulee county to pay his respects and finds himself investigating a string of seemingly related crimes against teenaged girls that stretches back decades, struggling to find answers in a community still very much under rj’s influence, where he is plagued by visions, his own metaphorical demons, and some very real snakes.
it’s a very strong series opener. i like rufus (although his charm is somewhat compromised by his “describe to me all the boobies” insistence), i love goose the dog, and i love a good fire n’ brimstone community – so much potential for misguidedly criminal zealotry. so even though there are some iffy bits, like that first exchange between earl and ronnie thrash, where Tough Guys Talk Tough in a way that made my remaining ovary roll its eye, it’s also got some moments with a sharper descriptive edge, many of which involve earl’s relationship to his father and his version of god.
”He talks to you?” my seven-year-old self persisted, trying to wrap my head around the possibility.
He put me down. “He does. It started when I was a boy not much older than you. He told me it’ll happen with you or Lester too.”
I swallowed hard. I did not want God to talk to me. As bad as I feared hell, I’d come to fear God and heaven more.
The moment ended with him asking me to kneel and pray with him. When we rose, he was smiling again.
“What?” I asked.
“God told me where that pig was.”
And he was right, too. We found the pig a few minutes later, and I watched – memorizing the look of smug accomplishment on his face – as he picked it up by its legs, ignoring its pitiful squeals for mercy, as only a true man of God could do.
i’m not sure where earl goes from here, or if the ooOOOoo supernatural whispers are going to become a more prominent part of the action, but i’m certainly interested enough to stick with it and find out.
