GONE TOO LONG

White supremacy and family secrets fuel the latest Southern gothic thriller by a two-time Edgar Award–winning author.

Imogene Coulter has spent most of her life in Simmonsville, Georgia, a small town named for her mother’s family—a family known for its connection to the Ku Klux Klan. Imogene’s great-great-grandfather helped to revive the Klan in 1915. Edison Coulter—the man Imogene calls Daddy—led the Knights of the Southern Georgia Order. Her brother, Eddie, her sister, Jo Lynne, and Jo Lynne’s husband, Garland, are active members. Imogene has tried to distance herself from this legacy, and, for her mother’s sake, she has tried to make peace with the full breadth and depth of her family’s cruelty and corruption. Then Edison dies and Imogene finds a small child living in a boarded-up house on the family's farm. As she struggles to find the identity of this child, she uncovers a host of other crimes. The closer she gets to the truth, the harder she has to fight to protect herself and everyone she loves against competing factions within the Klan. Imogene finally discovers that her terrible heritage is something she must fight against rather than repress. Roy (The Disappearing, 2018, etc.) takes her time weaving in backstory and letting her characters reveal themselves, and thriller fans who read for plot might get a bit impatient. But those who settle in will be rewarded with a riveting mystery, brilliantly crafted and weighted with real-world resonance. The fact that hate groups are resurgent in the United States emerges as an essential element of this novel. The narrative is interspersed with brief historical notes beginning with the origins of the KKK—and ending with the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

A timely thriller that will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned.