GRASS ROOTS

by Stuart Woods ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1989

Woods' reach exceeds his grasp in his third and least successful southern novel (Chiefs and Under the Lake)--an ambitious but confused potboiling down of the New South into a melodramatic stew of political jockeying, racial strife, and murder. Likable, 40-ish attorney Will Lee, son of Georgia's ex-governor, is at the dead center of Woods' stormy plotting, which turns Will's world upside down when Will's boss--US Senator from Georgia Ben Carr--suffers a massive stroke. Should Will run for the senator's seat in the next election? Complicating his decision are his secret affair with CIA honcho Katharine Rule and, more crucially, his being called back from D.C. to rural Georgia to act as a public defender for Larry Moody, a young white accused of rape-slaying a black woman. As Will ponders running and prepares Moody's defense--Woods flashes deep legal knowledge here--another plot line evolves: a white supremacist mercenary, Harold Perkersen, working for a shadowy charismatic leader named ""the Archon,"" is gunning down ""liberal"" targets--including the feisty owner of a dirty-book store who, after he recovers from his wounds, hires a cashiered cop to track down Perkersen. As the cop hunts Perkersen, who undergoes plastic surgery, Will works on the Moody case, leaps into bed with Moody's sexy girlfriend, and throws his hat into the ring Pitted first against the state's sleazy governor and then, alter the guy's found in bed with a married woman, against a racist evangelist, Will runs a hard campaign--until he's marked for death by the Archon--who backs the evangelist and doubts Will's commitment to Moody, by now revealed as a fellow racist. In the end, though, justice and true love triumph. Very engrossing scene-by-scene, with especially strong characters, but noisy, like watching three TV sets at once, with the campaign and trial finely focused but the Perkersen subplot a fuzz of clich‚d action writing. Not nearly Woods' best, then, but not his worst--and probably good enough, grudgingly, to satisfy most of his many fans.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1989

ISBN: 1410433641

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION