Touch of Redemption

In this second book in the Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective Novels, the two men embark on a difficult journey—an attempt to find the murderers of Joe’s father twenty-five years ago. It is 1948 in segregated Alabama, and Joe, a white man, and Sam, a black man, face numerous obstacles, the least of which is the racism and bigotry of the time, while struggling with the challenges of solving a murder case a quarter century old. The men face corrupt judges and law enforcement officials, and a secret fraternity of men determined to maintain the Southern way of life and their illegal liquor business called ‘the operation.’ All this occurs against a backdrop of a seemingly bucolic small Southern town, Montevallo, home to a college for women


A reviewer wrote, “To rightfully observe that Touch of Redemption, the second novel in Waights Taylor’s Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective series, is a page-turner—from first to last—fails to fully describe its considerable merits…As if straight out of an episode of HBO’s rural-gothic True Detective series, Joe and Sam encounter an intricate maze of small town graft, lakeside racist rituals, shape-shifting politicians and businessmen, and the occasional eccentric hero.”