Welcome to Litsy!

The title of this book couldn‘t have been better. This is one of Percival Everett‘s earlier novels and it reads like a literary thriller. Protagonist Ogden Walker is deputy sheriff in a small town, solving crimes and driving around. I knew there had to be more to it - this is Everett after all. So I started making assumptions.
What a clever book. Read it!

I understand this one gets mixed reviews, so I feel fortunate to have been familiar with Everett before picking it up: this is not a murder mystery. It looks like a murder mystery, and for the first 80% it *feels* like a murder mystery, but it‘s a philosophical examination of human nature and - yes - assumptions.

The kind of book where after turning the last page, you instantly want to flip back to page 1 and start again.

It‘s the little details that make Percival Everett such a joy to read

This book has me thinking. Even when Everett‘s endings makes me angry, I love his writing. It‘s a mystery I‘ll reread.

Ogden Walker is a Black sheriff‘s deputy in a rural New Mexico county. These three connected novellas feature his investigation into three murders. Like in all the Everett books I‘ve read, things are not as simple as the seem. Walker‘s investigations take him to rough neighborhoods in Denver and meth-fueled hippie communes.

This was solid pick for me -- until the last few paragraphs. Everett ended this collection of novellas about Detective Ogden Walker by having him dld something so completely out of sync with the character he developed that it was really jarring.