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Overview
Moments after finishing a six-month sentence in the Roanoke jail for a crime he might not have committed, Baptist minister Joel King is served some unwelcome papers. His wife wants a divorce, and the teenage vixen everyone believes he seduced is suing him for five million dollars.Holding on to his faith with a white-knuckle grip, Joel accepts a ride out west with Edmund Brooks, a member of his former flock who has some Commandment-challenging ideas about helping Joel help himself. From the author the New York Times Magazine called “the drinking man’s John Grisham,” Plain Heathen Mischief ranges from the cross to the double cross, from Virginia to Las Vegas, from courtrooms to trout streams, as Martin Clark follows his Job-like hero through dubious choices and high-dollar insurance scams to a redemption no reader could possibly predict.Synopsis
Moments after finishing a six-month sentence in the Roanoke jail for a crime he might not have committed, Baptist minister Joel King is served some unwelcome papers. His wife wants a divorce, and the teenage vixen everyone believes he seduced is suing him for five million dollars.
Holding on to his faith with a white-knuckle grip, Joel accepts a ride out west with Edmund Brooks, a member of his former flock who has some Commandment-challenging ideas about helping Joel help himself. From the author the New York Times Magazine called “the drinking man’s John Grisham,” Plain Heathen Mischief ranges from the cross to the double cross, from Virginia to Las Vegas, from courtrooms to trout streams, as Martin Clark follows his Job-like hero through dubious choices and high-dollar insurance scams to a redemption no reader could possibly predict.
Publishers Weekly
Clark's second novel is a delight from start to finish, delivering resoundingly on the promise of his well-received The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living. The adventure begins when the Rev. Joel King is released from jail after a six-month sentence for the statutory rape of now-18-year-old gold digger Christy Darden. The question of whether Joel is actually guilty of the crime to which he confessed persists, but he keeps his lips sealed as he and parishioner Edmund Brooks drive from Roanoke, Va., to Missoula, Wyo., to be with Joel's recently single sister Sophie and his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. It turns out the irascible Edmund is into insurance fraud, among other things, and, with Las Vegas attorney Sa'ad X. Sa'ad, is capable of unimaginable deceit and criminal activity. Facing divorce, jobless and desperate, Joel gets wrapped up in their latest scheme and, before he knows it, the Feds, a corrupt probation officer, the state police and a detective are hot on his trail. Clark also throws in issues of spousal abuse, parental responsibility, and justice, to name but a few. Joel perpetually wrestles with issues of faith, but never in a way that is pedantic or overbearing. There is barely a false note in this comic novel of hope and redemption. Minor characters are rich and multilayered, and the dialogue is priceless ("This is some crazy shit, like the Marx Brothers or I Love Lucy when a person misunderstands one teeny fact and everything snowballs and builds on the wrong idea"). All in all, this is one of the year's most entertaining surprises. Fans of Elmore Leonard's meatier novels will not be disappointed. Agent, Regal Literary Inc. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewPlain Heathen Mischief -- equal parts Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, and Hunter S. Thompson -- pits a defrocked Baptist minister (who has just been freed after serving a six-month jail sentence for contributing to the delinquency of a minor) against the numerous temptations of secular life -- and his own wavering faith.
Minutes after being released from a Virginia jail, Joel King finds himself being served with divorce papers as well as a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit brought by the (by no means innocent) teenage girl who was the cause of his imprisonment. Faced with no other options, the good-hearted reverend is forced to move in with his single sister and her son in rural Montana, but with job opportunities for a convicted sex offender nonexistent, he soon finds his situation becoming desperate. When one of King's former parishioners, a slick con man named Edmund Brooks, offers him an opportunity to make some easy money in an insurance fraud scheme involving stolen jewels, he reluctantly agrees and -- like the wayward poet in Dante's Divine Comedy -- finds himself chin deep in a rising sea of sin…
< br> After the release of his breakthrough debut novel, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, the zealous fans who eagerly awaited Clark's second novel have been amply rewarded. Plain Heathen Mischief is a sometimes comical, sometimes profound look at faith, forgiveness, and the cold, hard reality of living with the consequences of moral lapses. The delightful dichotomy of realities -- sheltered and hypercritical holy rollers versus sleazy Vegas high rollers -- makes this an unconventional morality tale definitely worth reading. Paul Goat Allen