The Righteous Cut (Wesley Farrell Novel) - Softcover

Skinner, Robert

3.9

10 ratings by Goodreads

9781590580448: The Righteous Cut (Wesley Farrell Novel)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590580443 ISBN 13: 9781590580448

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Pr, 2007

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December 1941: Jessica Richards, daughter of corrupt New Orleans councilman Whitman Richards, is the victim of a sensational daylight kidnapping. Richards is deliberately throwing the police off the case. Is it because the kidnapper is a familiar enemy, returned to settle an old score, or has Richards faked the kidnapping to further some aim of his own? The desperate mother turns to Wesley Farrell for help. Farrell, a Creole club owner passing for white, prowls the citys bars and streets, familiarizing himself with a growing list of Richards enemies while he tries to decide which of them might have the brains and guts to stage a coup against the corrupt councilman.

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Review:

It's December 1941, and Creole nightclub owner Wesley Farrell is back in New Orleans after retreating to Havana, where he hoped to resolve a laundry list of dilemmas, including the implications, personal and otherwise, of his passing for white. Matters are only complicated further when a former lover, now the wife of notoriously corrupt New Orleans politician Whit Richards, shows up on Farrell's doorstop, asking for help in finding her kidnapped daughter. As Farrell questions the numerous gangsters whom Richards has conned, black cop Israel Daggett searches for the lone witness to the kidnapping. Skinner, a librarian and scholar, has used historical New Orleans to good advantage throughout this series, but his skills at plot construction and character building have grown dramatically through five episodes. Farrell, impeccably cool but awash in an ongoing identity crisis, has always been a compelling character, but the villains and supporting players are noticeably more complex now. This has become a first-class series, every bit as deserving of the same attention as Walter Mosley's similar but more celebrated Easy Rawlins novels. --Booklist

About the Author:

Robert Skinner has degrees in history (Old Dominion University) and library science (Indiana University) and studied creative writing at the University of New Orleans. He's widely known for his non-fiction writing on the career of African-American novelist Chester Himes and on the American hard-boiled crime story. He's the author of two previous Wesley Farrell novels, Skin Deep, Blood Red, (1997) andCat-Eyed Trouble (1998). He makes his home in New Orleans where he's University Librarian at Xavier University of Louisiana.

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