BookBrowse Reviews Holy City by Henry Wise

BookBrowse:

A prodigal son returns home to rural Virginia after a decade of exile only to step into a murder investigation that begins to unravel the town's complicated past, and his own.

Having returned home to Euphoria County, Virginia, after a decade in the "Holy City," aka Richmond, Will Seems is the new deputy sheriff when a shocking murder implicates the father of a friend. In his debut novel, Holy City, Henry Wise goes beyond formulaic mystery tropes to deliver a satisfying—and deeply dark—story of faith, forgiveness, and redemption.

Growing up in Virginia's rural Southside region, Will, who is white, was close to many in the area's Black community, including his friend Sam Hathom. After the death of his mother, Will left the tobacco fields and razed forests of Southside to forget; but after ten years in the Holy City, he is done with forgetting and wants to pay back a debt he owes to Sam, who once took a beating that nearly killed him when he stood up to a ring of bullies at the creek where the two boys often swam. While saving Will, this courageous act left Sam physically scarred and disfigured…and put him on the road to drug addiction. Sam himself was saved that night by Tom Janders, an older Black boy and Southside football jock.

Now, ten years later, Will uses his new badge to get information about the boys (now men) who perpetrated the act, not entirely sure of what he will do when he finds them. But it is the murder of Tom Janders, stabbed and left to burn in an arson fire, that will merge the puzzle pieces of the past with the mysteries of the present. Tom's association with Sam makes the sight of Zeke Hathom, Sam's father, running away from the Janders's property shocking. Forced by his boss, Sheriff Jefferson Mills, to arrest Zeke, Will protests that he is innocent…he knows the man as well as his own father. Disagreeing with Sheriff Mills—a "celibate, monk-like figure" married to the law—Will is at cross-purposes, and when Mills refuses to look at other suspects, including Tom's girlfriend and the mother of his child, Ferriday Pace, Will goes off to investigate on his own.

Wise adds another fly in the ointment as Will shelters Sam at his secluded childhood home, Promised Land Plantation, after apprehending him a month earlier in a robbery attempt. Refusing to send Sam to jail, the guilt-ridden Will is a complex protagonist who breaks laws to find justice; in this case, to help Sam get clean of his drug habit. The notion of justice is a theme that Wise peppers throughout Will's thoughts:

"It took him a few more years to come to the belief that justice had no meaning, only consequence. And it did not just happen. It never just happened. It had to be made to happen, forced."

Wise's characters are all, to one degree or another, compromised by their secrets and shame. As Will comes up against Mills's obstructionism, he gets help from Floressa Hathom, Zeke's wife and Sam's mother, and Tom's mother, Claudette, when they hire an unorthodox private investigator from Richmond, Bennico Watts, to find answers. Bennico is eager for the job in Southside, since she is grappling with the possible dissolution of her marriage with her attorney husband, Custis. During her fact-finding, Bennico and Will mix as well as oil and water in their preferred investigative methods, but they nevertheless make a solid sleuthing team bent on clearing Zeke's name. Since Wise invests a compelling backstory for Bennico, it would have been nice to see more of her in the storyline—will she return in another novel? Readers can only hope, as she is a blunt, brave, and keen-eyed PI all about her business.

What makes Holy City unique for its anodyne "mystery" appellation is its evocation of a Southern town gone to seed, mirroring declining industries, crime, and poverty. Wise's vision is a hopeful one, and themes of faith and forgiveness are redolent throughout, as Will continues to hope that the past does not have to control the future, especially in the heart of the ex-Confederacy:

"People around here seemed to live in a cloud of defeat, self-wrought and inherited. Whites had the lost cause; Blacks had slavery. It would seem they should be pitted against each other, but they were really dug in behind the same trench…"

Using multiple POVs from a colorful assortment of characters, Wise captures a range of diverse insights that illuminate the tangled relationships among Southside's residents. And as Will and Bennico get closer to uncovering the shocking truth of Tom's death— and his killer—readers will race to the finish, if only to find a light in the dark narrative that includes instances of profoundly disturbing violence. If readers can transcend the overwhelming feeling of despair and cynicism, they will find the mustard seed of hope delicately placed among the brambles of derelict houses, drug abuse, and damaged souls.

Holy City is a literary mystery that eschews the "cozy" for the gritty and serves up a satisfying (if not necessarily unexpected) murder resolution, while saving a knockout punch of a surprise for the last pages.

This review first ran in the July 17, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.