Dixie Noir

Publishers Weekly

College football star Ennis Skinner, whose reckless love affair with a drug addict, Alice “Faye” James, ruined his gridiron career, hopes for another shot at happiness in literary critic Curnutt's dark crime drama set in Montgomery, Ala. After Ennis, the son of a white civil rights hero, serves a 10-year prison sentence for drug dealing, High C, a former meth king who now peddles books like The Hit Man Handbook on the Web, asks Ennis to locate his missing, mentally challenged 19-year-old daughter, Dixie, whose mother was the now deceased Faye. Adding heat is the Montgomery mayoral race between white incumbent Amory Justice and African-American Walk Compson, who may have a link to Dixie. The author sensitively explores still simmering racial tensions in the South and inserts a lovely tribute to Zelda Fitzgerald, but a murky ending and an unconvincing twist to do with Dixie dissatisfy. This is Curnutt's second novel after Breathing Out the Ghost (2008). (Nov.)

Kirkus Reviews

A disgraced gridiron star emerges from ten years in prison for a final showdown with the man he shot. Everyone in football-mad Alabama hates Ennis Skinner. Booted as quarterback of the Crimson Tide after telling a TV reporter he used cocaine, he spent a decade at the Kilby Correctional Facility after gut-shooting meth manufacturer High C, whom he blamed for the death of his girlfriend and fellow addict Faye James. Ennis has been paroled, but it looks as if his whole life is about to repeat itself. C, now a publisher who sells counterculture manuals on the Internet, demands that Ennis discharge his debt by finding Faye's missing 19-year-old daughter Dixie, who's not exactly retarded but none too quick either. The search plunges Ennis and Red, the comely bartender he's hooked up with, into the middle of a racially charged race for mayor of Montgomery. Both the incumbent, Amory Justice, and his challenger, former Freedom Rider Walk Compson, are well-stocked with highly combustible ammunition; the death of Dixie's grandfather, apparently of autoerotic asphyxia, provides the match that sets the whole town aflame. To dramatize the final confrontation between Ennis and C, Curnutt (Breathing Out the Ghost, 2008) uses flash-forwards that may seem to give too much away, but he still keeps plenty of shocking revelations. Jim Thompson in the Deep South. Proof that noir will never die, which is more than you can say for the cast.