Tidewater Blood - Hardcover

Hoffman, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565121872 ISBN 13: 9781565121874

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1998

Synopsis

Set in Virginia in the 1980s, Tidewater Blood opens at the annual LeBlanc family celebration. Rich, pretentious, and proud, the LeBlancs operate a prosperous plantation and celebrate their heritage each year in grand old Southern fashion on the mansion's portico. But this year, the front of the mansion explodes and everyone on the portico is instantly killed. As the dust settles, all fingers point to embittered brother and ex-con Charles LeBlanc, who lives as a hermit outside town. When it seems he's going down on a murder rap, Charley flees to begin his own investigation. Charley must win the trust of one person after another--from his frat-boy lawyer to an old backwoods woman harboring a special hatred of the LeBlancs. Charley solves the crime moments before he faces imprisonment, but not before he learns long-hidden secrets about that illustrious LeBlanc blood. Crisp and cinematic, Tidewater Blood is a riveting and tightly constructed thriller.

"A first rate, page-turning thriller." --George Garrett

"Limpid and swift-moving, with a full complement of understated surprises: an exemplary presentation of the innocent man on the run for readers who want more texture then they can find in The Fugitive." --Kirkus Reviews

"This is a gripping read." --Library Journal

A MYSTERY GUILD SELECTION

About this title

About the Author:

William Hoffman was born in West Virginia and, after living in Washington, D.C., and New York, returned to the South to live in Charlotte Court House, Virginia, population 566. He lives on a fifty-acre farm with his wife. Alternating between teaching at Hampton-Sydney College and taking leaves to write, William Hoffman has published ten novels, as well as three short story collections. His writing has won numerous awards over the years, including the Andrew Lytle Prize, the Goodheart Prize, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the Hillsdale Foundation Fiction Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His short stories have been featured in Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, 1996.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Murder, injustice, flight, detection, a disappointingly, though expertly, formulaic tale from Hoffman (Follow Me Home, 1994, etc.). Only two misfortunes mar the festivities when the LeBlanc family, the doyens of Tidewater, gather at Bellerive, the family manse, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jean Maupin LeBlanc's arrival in Virginia. One is the absence of black-sheep brother Charley LeBlanc, still persona non grata at Bellerive even though he's been released early from Leavenworth on account of good behavior. The other is an explosion that kills John LeBlanc, the head of the family, and his wife and son. (Middle brother Edward's family, a few minutes late in arriving, live to celebrate other anniversaries.) The police naturally assume that Charley, whose feud with his family goes back to a time before his father's death, is responsibleit's exactly the sort of poke in the family eye that would have struck him as appropriateand so they send a deputation to his subsistence camp in Lizard Inlet to haul him in. The King County sheriff and the Commonwealth's Attorney assume he's guilty; ditto his court-appointed lawyer. But they can't find any physical evidence that would tie Charley, long banished from Bellerive, to the scene, and while they're looking they agree to widen Charley's confinement to the county limits. It's Charley's cue to tug at his leash and hell around, of course, and in a series of memorable vignettes he sweet-talks rides from strangers, swaps lies with country fisherman, brawls with jealous barflies, and casually begins to pick up information about the fatal blastinformation that implicates him in quite a different role than killer, and points to a dead man as the real bomber. Limpid and swift-moving, with a full complement of understated surprises: an exemplary presentation of the innocent man on the run for readers who want more texture than they can find in The Fugitive. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1565121872
• ISBN 13: 9781565121874
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304