The Hunt Club: A Novel - Hardcover

Lott, Bret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375500146 ISBN 13: 9780375500145

Publisher: Villard, 1998

Synopsis

It started with a body, the head of it pretty much gone, the hands skinned. We found it the Saturday after Thanksgiving, out to Hungry Neck Hunt Club. Uncle Leland owns the Hunt Club, which might make him sound important, or rich. But he's not.

Huger Dillard is no ordinary fifteen-year-old from the Lowcountry of South Carolina. He may not have a father to help him grow up, but day-to-day guiding of his blind Uncle Leland--Unc, for short--and weekends spent at the Hunt Club have made him an expert on the habits of deer, the pompous attorneys and doctors of nearby Charleston, and the ways of the world. But with Unc's discovery of a mutilated body, Huger suddenly learns that he is expert at nothing--least of all his own life. Everything he knows and everyone he loves--Unc, his mother, his foundering teenage romance--is at risk, and Huger must use every ounce of resourcefulness and bravery to stay alive and protect what he believes in. Yet, when he finally discovers precisely what happened that Saturday morning, there is still one more secret to uncover, this one too dark, too deep, for him to even imagine.

From Bret Lott, the critically acclaimed author the Los Angeles Times called "one of the most im-portant and imaginative writers in America today," The Hunt Club is a novel of deft pacing and remark-able detail, and a sultry evocation of a land and culture that has existed for generations but soon may be lost forever.

About this title

Review

"It started with a body, the head of it pretty much gone, the hands skinned." This eerie introduction to Bret Lott's The Hunt Club sets the tone for this novel of murder, violence, and sinister secrets. The settings are dark and sultry: ramshackle trailers, forgotten burial grounds, and the seedy Hunt Club itself, built on "trash land." Events are witnessed through the eyes of 15-year-old Huger Dillard, smart, precocious, and always at the forefront of some crisis or criminal activity. Huger is also the eyes for his uncle, the owner of the Hunt Club who was left blind from a fire that killed his wife. Huger and "Unc" are unwittingly entangled in a web of murder and deceit, and they must solve this classic whodunit. Assisted by a local cook and her young, deaf daughter, this is a fresh and innovative detective team. The Hunt Club is a thrill ride all the way, a mix of gloriously grotesque characters, forbidding landscapes, and rotten crimes.

From the Back Cover

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE HUNT CLUB

"I turned the pages of Bret Lott's The Hunt Club so insistently that, had there been pictures on the pages instead of print, it would have made a movie. It's that suspenseful. You care about the novel's fifteen-year-old protagonist that much. Lott, a writer you can always count on, adds another dimension with this, his first tango with mystery and murder."
--Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone

"Mystery fans who dote on stylish writing and strong characters will love The Hunt Club."
--Tony Hillerman

"Imagine Bret Lott's exacting and lyrical prose, combined with a body count that would send a serial killer under the bed: That's The Hunt Club, a gripping, wrenching, and devastatingly good book."
--Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives

"Bret Lott has written a suspenseful mystery that is also, for its young protagonist, an intense emotional journey into adulthood with all its dangerous secrets, its acts of grace and courage. As always, Lott writes with a fine feel for the landscape of his fiction, and a gifted generous eye for the memorable people who live there."
--Michael Malone, author of Handling Sin and Time's Witness

"Lott's characters are as vital as heartbeats, as is his sense of place. . . . As a portrayal of a boy's acceptance through suffering of a world riven by sin but grounded in love, the book is moving, memorable, even masterful."
--Publishers Weekly

Edition details

• Publisher: Villard
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0375500146
• ISBN 13: 9780375500145
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243