Beginning this week, just in time for the official start of summer, we pledge to post one summer reading pick per week for the duration of the season. Fine literature is turning up all the time, so it should be no problem. Just consider our advice and check back regularly.
Your quintessential summer read is a fast-paced, juicy tale you can stop and start, flip into your beach bag, and read with bored children scrambling across your lap or while driving down the interstate as your eyes dart from the page to the road.
John Hart's new novel, The Last Child, fits the bill, so he's our first summer reading choice. Hart's personal story is familiar: a lawyer turned young hot-shot novelist with three books under his belt, each subsequent release receiving greater acclaim and readership. But there's nothing ordinary about his fiction. Hart's novels are character-driven thrillers with expertly wound tension and family drama, the sort that has won him comparisons to Truman Capote and Harper Lee.
In The Last Child, Hart boldly casts a 13-year-old boy — last seen fishing by the river, a happy child without a care in the world, in a flash scene from his Edgar Award-winning Down River — as his protagonist. Young Jimmy Merrimon's life has been turned upside down. It's been a year since his twin sister was kidnapped. No leads and no body. His family has unraveled — his dad wandered off and abandoned the family, while his mother has taken to pills and shacked up with a rich local slimeball. All of the adults in Johnny's life have failed him, but he still believes his sister is alive.
Concurrently, local detective Clyde Hunt, who admires Johnny's determination and harbors a strong attraction to the boy's distraught mother, has not given up on the case. When a second child disappears and new clues turn up, Johnny resumes his hunt in earnest, as does Detective Hunt, who begins to believe the culprit is closer than anyone believed. There is much family dysfunction, inner turmoil at the police department, creepy townsfolk, and meddling news media to confound our pair of heroes. Add a clever twist and a blind-sided ending, and you have a cracking tale that rises well above the pale of your average thriller. Hart has literary aspirations and a deft touch with character, all without forsaking momentum. Like the best summer reading, this book defies you to put it aside, even to refill your drink or get out of the sun.
We were finally able to get John Hart in the store last week, per requests from many customers who are addicted to his books. He spoke at an author luncheon we hosted in our upstairs cafe. As readers sipped their carrot ginger soup, munched their shrimp salads, and scarfed down red velvet cupcakes, Hart reported his rise from disgruntled criminal defense attorney to best-selling novelist. He left the legal profession after being creeped out by one too many clients, stared abject poverty in the eye, and finally wrote a successful debut, The King of Lies, which Pat Conroy described as "a book on fire."
Despite his past, Hart doesn't write legal thrillers. Grisham and Turow have that territory covered just fine, he said. You can look forward to a different book each time from him, Hart promises, and likely there will be some family in turmoil, a subject that always provides a deep well of drama. He confessed to being most proud of The Last Child, which he called "easily my best work ... I may never top it."
Believe us, you'll want to get a signed first edition of this fine potboiler.
