Caren Gray is General Manager at Belle Vie, an antebellum sugar plantation which is owned by the Clancy family but run as a historic tourist attraction. One day a body is discovered in the plantation fields, a migrant worker, and the local Sherrif's Department focuses on a worker at Belle Vie. Caren is convinced of his innocence and also believes the death may be related to the ambition of one of the Clancy brothers. Caren grew up on the plantation, her family had been associated with the estate since before the Civil War, so how do the recent events link to the mysterious disappearance of her ancestor over a hundred years ago.This is the second Attica Locke book I have read and it is even better than the first (Black Water Rising). The plot is complex and therefore the book is hard to categorise, it's not a straightforward crime novel but it's also not really literary fiction. What is really engrossing is the power of the land and its hold over the characters. What is also carefully described are the relationships between the different groups of people. Caren is clever woman but she didn't complete Law School because of funding, her mother was a cook and her forebears were slaves, her ex-partner (and her father) were from middle-class African-American families, lawyers and doctors. The Clancy's are rich and powerful members of society as are the clients who book weddings at the plantation house. The workers at Belle Vie are poor white, poor black or poor hispanic, the workers at cane plantation are hispanic immigrants. Well-written mystery taking place on a New Orleans plantation, where one of the migrant workers is found dead. When the estate manager starts to investigate, she learns about a similar death of a freed slave almost 150 years before. The story was interesting, the characters were compelling, and the author did a good job of developing the atmosphere. However, I thought the plot was a little slow, and had fewer twists and turns than the average mystery.
What do You think about The Cutting Season (2012)?
Slow start, great end. Plantation drama
—Leighann13
