Holy City by Henry Wise

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on June 4, 2024

“Dark” doesn’t begin to describe some of the scenes in Holy City. Child rape mostly takes place offstage, but necrophilia plays a prominent role. Holy City — the latest entry in the genre of redneck noir — is not for the faint of heart.

Tom Janders was stabbed to death, his body left in a burning house. He was living there with Ferriday (“Day”) Pace and their child, but they weren’t present when the fire was set. Deputy Will Seems happened to see smoke coming from the house and managed to retrieve Janders’ body before it was consumed by the fire. He saw Zeke Hathom running from the back of house. Sheriff Mills gave Will no choice but to arrest Zeke, even though Will has a history with the Hathom family and doesn’t believe that Zeke is a killer.

Like the sheriff, Will is white. Zeke is black. Zeke’s son Sam was Will’s childhood friend. Will has long blamed himself for not taking action to protect Sam from a vicious assault when they were both kids. He also feels that he owes the Hathom family for trying to take care of his mother. His guilt and sense of obligation seem a bit overblown to me, but they form the motivational background that explains many of Will’s actions during the novel.

Will and his father, an attorney who committed an unsolved crime that keeps him indebted to the sheriff, moved to the Holy City of Richmond more than a decade before the novel begins. Will recently returned to Euphoria County against his father’s advice. He took a job as deputy sheriff after the last deputy was encouraged to resign. Will hopes to obtain revenge against the people who assaulted Sam, but his quest is delayed by Tom Janders’ murder.

Zeke’s wife hires Bennico Watts, a private detective, to find the true killer. Bennico is a former police officer who was kicked off Richmond’s force for conducting warrantless searches in her zealous belief that catching lawbreakers is more important than obeying the law. Bennico seems out of place, contributing little to a novel that would be just as good without her.

The story eventually circles back to Sam and to the people who assaulted him in his childhood. Family secrets complicate the lives of several characters, either by burdening their lives or by changing their lives when they discover hidden truths.

The story’s darkness assures that not every character will survive. Yet it offers glimmers of light in unexpected places. One character decides that he is fated to perform menial jobs for the rest of his life, “knows this emptiness is the life he was born to complete, is soul, is what he has always known he would follow like a blood trail.” Yet he finds a measure of peace in that certainty, in achieving the daily goal of sobriety, in making vague plans to eventually reunite with people who helped him.

Another character thinks “What is life if not one unheroic sacrifice after another, until all you saw was your own failed selves like trees against the horizon.” Yet those sacrifices define his character and his memories give him comfort.

Redneck noir is often characterized by strong prose that offsets the rough dialog of characters who lack refinement. Holy City is a pleasure to read simply because the story is well told. Characters have a satisfying depth of personality and the plot is interesting, even if the killer’s surprising relationship to Will is a bit forced.

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