The Burying Field
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“ABEL’S PROSE IS RICH AND HIS DIALOGUE SHARP.”
—Los Angeles Times
THE BURYING FIELD
“A FASCINATING PAGE-TURNER IN
THE TRADITION OF
JOHN GRISHAN AND GREG ILES.”
—Library Journal
His critically acclaimed debut, Cold Steel Rain, was "a complex, seductively dark story" (The Dallas Morning New’s) that proved Kenneth Abel "is more than able to write a gripping crime drama that will beguile readers" (Midwest Book Review).
Now Big Easy lawyer Danny Chaisson returns—to settle an explosive dispute between the Old South and the new. In a small town north of New Orleans, a forgotten slave cemetery has become a drinking hangout for a group of white teenagers. Racial tensions begin to spiral out of control, ultimately erupting in violence. And Danny—hired by a property developer to protect his property—finds himself on the wrong side of an emotionally charged struggle over land, power, and tradition.
"There's no shortage of literature depicting New Orleans as
a cesspool of sin and corruption. Kenneth Abel just
happens to do it better than most people....
His gift for language and storytelling
comes across on every page."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"This is the rare book that doesn't hit even one wrong note.
Abel nails dialogue...so well that you keep going back and
savoring the words and phrases. And there's plenty of action.
When I finished the last sentence...I said, 'Wow.' Out loud."
—The New Orleans Times-Picayune
"Among the best new crime series.”
—Booklist (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the second of his series featuring attorney Danny Chaisson (after 2000's Cold Steel Rain), Abel vividly evokes a Louisiana setting contemporary New Orleans in transition and its less progressive outlying areas. "This ain't the Old South," says developer Michael Tournier when he hires Danny as a "political consultant." But Danny learns that the New South is still beholden to its past, especially in St. Tammany Parish, where justice is slow for an old black man who was attacked by high school kids and lies in a coma waiting to die. He was trying to discourage the boys from desecrating a slave graveyard, a forgotten plot of land that is now the center of contention. Protests over the destruction of the graveyard, which doesn't appear on the parish maps, has effectively halted the building of a high-end residential/retail project that would have brought jobs and tax income to the area. Danny befriends the victim's wife and her grandson, pulls strings to get the State Historical Commission to evaluate the site and help protect it, and conducts his own investigation into the attack. When the archaeologist at the "burying field" uncovers the remains of a young woman missing since the 1970s, Danny has yet another death to look into, while the local authorities have a reason to dig up the entire plot, since it's now a crime scene. Abel's memorable, true-to-life characters play out a taut, multileveled story. His ability to paint his milieu with such depth and texture bodes well for future volumes in this series.
