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EUSTACE SAVES
Buford Loupe is simple. Or at least that’s how nice folks describe him. He’s 33 years old, tall and lanky, balding and slackjawed, with skin that always stays pasty-white despite the Carolina sun. Buford lives with his Gramma – his own Mama long-dead and his daddy never known – and spends his time cutting bait in a pier shop, changing lightning into sand glass with rebar rods he‘s planted all along the Outer Banks, and worshipping. Jesus is the only thing that can keep the red in Buford’s mind from coming into his eyes and taking over everything he sees, everything he thinks, and everything he does; Jesus, and sneaking into the woods late some nights with his bait knife in search of wild animals or wandering pets.
One of these nights when his red is throbbing like a heart Buford comes across two drunk men who just won’t stop picking on him. Like everybody else, they think they’re better than Buford because he’s simple, they think they can treat him like he’s nothing. But Buford isn’t nothing. Buford can do things. And that night with his bait knife, he shows the two men what those things are.
The next day when the bodies are discovered, Deputy Anson Ames is pretty sure who’s responsible, but Buford’s nowhere to be found. Anson has his own history with Buford, as well as his own thankless life dragging him down, so when state investigators take over the case and boot him from duty, he goes rogue and sets out with Buford’s grandmother, Eustace – herself dying of lung cancer – to scour the highways and country roads of eastern North Carolina hoping to find Buford before the vengeful manhunt does.
But Buford isn’t as vulnerable as Anson and Eustace think. Along his travels he’s been joined by Mackavee, an older man with a rollerskate on a lame foot who says he’s been sent by God to reveal to Buford his ridding the Earth of every single sinner he comes across. With Mackavee as his guide, Buford embarks on a series of ritualized killings that intensify the investigation on his heels, and draw the authorities, Deputy Ames, and especially his Gramma Eustace closer to a final, faith-shaking and unimaginable climax.
EUSTACE SAVES is a serial-killing road trip of philosophical Southern noir that intertwines violence, religion, godlessness, duty, family, and the myriad shades of morality within every one of us. It is as richly-populated and elegantly-plotted as readers have come to expect from author H. Perry Horton, whose previous literary thrillers RENEWAL and HERITAGE have captivated and kept awake fans worldwide.
One of these nights when his red is throbbing like a heart Buford comes across two drunk men who just won’t stop picking on him. Like everybody else, they think they’re better than Buford because he’s simple, they think they can treat him like he’s nothing. But Buford isn’t nothing. Buford can do things. And that night with his bait knife, he shows the two men what those things are.
The next day when the bodies are discovered, Deputy Anson Ames is pretty sure who’s responsible, but Buford’s nowhere to be found. Anson has his own history with Buford, as well as his own thankless life dragging him down, so when state investigators take over the case and boot him from duty, he goes rogue and sets out with Buford’s grandmother, Eustace – herself dying of lung cancer – to scour the highways and country roads of eastern North Carolina hoping to find Buford before the vengeful manhunt does.
But Buford isn’t as vulnerable as Anson and Eustace think. Along his travels he’s been joined by Mackavee, an older man with a rollerskate on a lame foot who says he’s been sent by God to reveal to Buford his ridding the Earth of every single sinner he comes across. With Mackavee as his guide, Buford embarks on a series of ritualized killings that intensify the investigation on his heels, and draw the authorities, Deputy Ames, and especially his Gramma Eustace closer to a final, faith-shaking and unimaginable climax.
EUSTACE SAVES is a serial-killing road trip of philosophical Southern noir that intertwines violence, religion, godlessness, duty, family, and the myriad shades of morality within every one of us. It is as richly-populated and elegantly-plotted as readers have come to expect from author H. Perry Horton, whose previous literary thrillers RENEWAL and HERITAGE have captivated and kept awake fans worldwide.
618 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 14, 2016
1 person want to read
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