Passing Judgment

Ferrell, Keith

ISBN 10: 0812555376 / ISBN 13: 9780812555370

Published by Forge, 1998

About this Item

No Stock Photos! We photograph every item. spine creasing, edge wear; As the national debate between Hollywood and the Christian Coalition heats up, one man must battle an entire town's prejudice to find a fundamentalist killer. With the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign upon us and the players ranging from the Hollywood elite to the Religious Right, Passing Judgment is a novel poised on the border between politics and religion. In this charged atmosphere, New Spirit stands at the center of Southern Christian fundamentalism, a high-profile showplace where everyone knows one another but no one is quite what he seems. And these followers and residents of New Spirit are clashing with their local devil.Baird Lowen. A highly acclaimed Hollywood director forced into early retirement as a result of tragedy on the set of his last masterpiece, Baird is content to fish for bass in the nearby pond and write incendiary articles about New Spirit. But when the fiery death of a fellow detractor spurs Baird to find the murderers, he must first uncover a plot of extortion that circles back on his own troubled past. National anti-drug crusader and gubernatorial hopeful Roy Duncan is the right-hand man to New Spirit's Reverend Frederick Prescott, and both are suspects in Baird's private search for the killers. But it is Roy who seeks Baird out with an offer he really can't refuse: Find Roy's blackmailer or suffer the exposure of his own tragic secret.

Seller Inventory # 031230

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Passing Judgment
• Publisher: Forge
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812555376
• ISBN 13: 9780812555370
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 6 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • General Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

The former editor-in-chief of Omni magazine offers a morally charged, debut crime novel featuring a man who fights the prejudice of an entire town to find a Christian fundamentalist killer. Reprint.

From Kirkus Reviews

A wunderkind film director forced into early retirement becomes embroiled in old causes and ancient crimes in this too- tentative thriller from Omni editor-in-chief Ferrell (John Steinbeck, a 1986 YA title, etc.). Having distanced himself from Hollywood in the wake of a hushed-up scandal that threatened completion of his last picture (the commercially successful Moonstalk), world-weary Baird Lowen wants little more than to return to his Deep South roots, dabble in journalism, and fish for bass on his rural farmstead. But old high- school buddy Roy Duncan comes out of the past to pressure him into frustrating a blackmail scheme. An upwardly mobile attorney with gubernatorial ambitions and a pillar of the New Spirit for American Morality movement, Roy has received a pointed warning that he'd better withdraw from political life, complete with for-sale photos of his wife Ellen making whoopee with Baird when both were teenagers. Baird returns to Samson, N.C., in pursuit of the extortionist. Once back in his hometown (where New Spirit is headquartered), he finds certain of the natives surprisingly friendly--including Frederick Prescott, founder of the multinational ministry. As crafty and good-hearted as he is charismatic, the TV evangelist makes a low-key effort to enlist Baird in his crusade. Meantime, Baird manages to identify the shakedown artist, but before he can deal with him, the suspect (a ne'er-do-well classmate) dies in a fire that local authorities refuse to label suspicious. This dubious finding sets Baird off on another hunt, during which he takes some lumps from born-again heavies. At the close, he is off the hook, and the presumably culpable New Spirit disciples have either perished or been banished from Eden. A tepid, tedious tale that fails to capitalize fully on a potentially intriguing theme: apostles of the Religious Right finding themselves at odds with their own values as well as with those of secular society. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.