THE DARK AND LONELY ROAD

A haunted vet plays private investigator in Gates’ debut crime novel.

King George County, Virginia, 1959: World War II vet Harry Cogbill has just lost his job at the pickle factory due to his disrespectful attitude and short temper. He’s been battling a recent case of insomnia, which means he’s awake when a woman pulls up to his house shortly after dawn. Ethel Burkitt, a 20-something local farmer’s daughter, wants to hire Harry as a private investigator—a job for which his only qualification is that he was once a prison guard. It seems Ethel’s uncle, Jack Pope, is selling the family’s small, rural airport, and Ethel doesn’t like the look of the men who are trying to buy it. Harry agrees to look into it—he’s got a bit of a crush on Ethel from the start, and he hasn’t got much else going on aside from caring for the fox cub he just adopted. As Harry starts inquiring into the sale of the airfield, it’s clear that everyone he speaks to is lying to him…and a few go so far as to threaten him. With fears of the Greek mafia’s incursion into the Northern Neck and his feelings for Ethel growing by the day, Harry sets out to prevent the Burkitts from losing their land—and their lives. But will the traumas of his wartime past prevent him from taking action? Gates writes with a great sense of local color and humor. When an outsider asks Harry, “What you guys do for fun around here? You got like, barn dances and stuff?” the protagonist deadpans, “You’re thinking of Oklahoma…This is Virginia. We mostly grow tobacco and write the Declaration of Independence.” Harry certainly fits an archetype, and much of the plot, like his and Ethel’s immediate attraction, feels a bit too preordained. Even so, plenty of readers will be attracted to this Southern tale of a broken man with something to prove and a reason for proving it.

A folksy, slightly formulaic crime novel set in mid-century Virginia.