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DARK DELIVERY
by Stephen J. Clark
Berkeley, June 2003
320 pages
$6.50
ISBN: 0425191109


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In Southern Latitudes, the first in the Nelson Ingram series, Nelson is a reporter in the small town of Litchfield, Alabama who runs across a drug money laundering scheme. He winds up with money (most of which he gives away) a notebook, and some computer disks which he keeps as insurance. Now, a year later, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Nelson lost his job in the fiasco a year ago. He spends most of his time in his cottage by the river drinking. Someone tries to break in about the time he hears from an FBI agent that the crooked sheriff that involved him in the problem has been murdered. Someone does break into Doc Hartley's and kills his housekeeper William. Doc Hartley, a friend of Nelson's, was involved in the mess last year. Since then Hartley's prostate cancer has spread to his spine and there is little left to his life. He wants to be sure he gets William's killer before he dies. Before the story is over it involves an attractive widow, Cubans pro- and anti-Castro, and the CIA.

Clark's writing is good, occasionally lyrical, especially in describing the setting or his characters' internal monologues. Every chapter the viewpoint shifts between Ingram and Hartley. That is hard to do well, and jarring the first time or two, but Clark is a writer who can carry it off. It is best to read Southern Latitudes first, since Dark Delivery is a continuation.

Reviewed by Mary A. Axford, June 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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