The Good Detective

It was just a month ago that I wrote a very favorable review of John McMahon's third book with the protagonist, P.T. Marsh, "A Good Kill." After reading his third book, I promised to get to the first two books in the near future, so this is a review of the first novel, "The Good Detective." It was a year early that Marsh's wife and son were killed in an apparent car accident, and since then, he had lost himself to grief and alcohol. This is a very dark, ugly, and violent story about racism in the deep south.

        Marsh is the star detective in rural Mason Falls, Georgia. After his painful losses, there were those who still loved Marsh and were waiting for the real Marsh to surface again. His rookie partner, Remy Morgan, was one such person. Marsh and Morgan found the body of a teenage black boy who had been burned and hung. But Marsh had to shake off the effects of booze and grief if he was going to make sense of this matter, but there were sold old money forces that would prefer to continue in his drunken and dysfunctional ways. 

This book is about Marsh's recovery in the face of some very dark secrets. McMahon has not let me down. You don't need any more information dive into this story. Just for the background of the recurring characters and character development, I encourage  you to start with this novel. I'll get to McMahon's second novel in the near future.