Prudence Couldn't Swim
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
White ex-convict Cal Winter returns to his home in Oakland, California, one day to find his gorgeous, young, black wife, Prudence, drowned in the swimming pool. Prudence couldn’t swim, and Cal concludes she didn’t go in the water willingly. Though theirs was a marriage of convenience, he takes the murder personally. Along with his prison homie Red Eye, Cal sets out to find out who did Prudence in. His convoluted and often darkly humorous journey takes him deep into the world of the sexual urges of the rich and powerful, and gradually reveals the many layers of his wife’s complex identity. While doing so, Cal and Red Eye must confront their own racially charged pasts if the killer is to be caught.
Author James Kilgore has woven together strands of his own quixotic and complicated life—twenty-seven years as a political fugitive, two decades as a teacher in Africa, and six years in prison—into a heady tale of mystery and consequences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Kilgore's funky, funny first mystery, white ex-con Calvin Winter discovers the body of his black wife, Prudence, floating in the swimming pool of their Oakland, Calif., home. Winter didn't know much about Prudence (their marriage was one of convenience), but he knew she couldn't swim. Taking his wife's murder as a personal affront, Winter seeks rough justice in an unforgiving world, aided by a friend, Red Eye Cornell, and copious amounts of Wild Turkey. A nasty Oakland cop keeps the pressure on Winter, who works various con games to get more info out of those familiar with Prudence's past. The sad saga of Prudence's transformation from bright Zimbabwean schoolgirl to American trophy wife unfolds in fragments. Kilgore, who was involved with the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s, lived for 27 years in South Africa as a fugitive. In 2002, he was arrested in Cape Town, and later served six-and-half years in California prisons, where he wrote this and two other novels, We Are All Zimbabweans Now and Freedom Never Rests.
