The Bottoms - Joe R. Lansdale

The Bottoms

By Joe R. Lansdale

  • Release Date: 2010-12-07
  • Genre: Historical Mysteries
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 126 Ratings

Description

This Edgar Award winner is "equal parts morality tale and page-turning thriller" (Denver Post)—classic American storytelling in its truest, darkest, and most affecting form, with echoes of William Faulkner and Harper Lee. 

Its 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man. Together with his younger sister, Harry sets out to discover who the real killer is, and to do so they will search for a truth that resides far deeper than any river or skin color.

Reviews

  • The Bottoms

    5
    By tutankuamen
    The Bottoms is one of those rare books that you don't want to end. Fantastic from beginning to end.
  • Winner of the Best Mystery Edgar Awards 2000

    5
    By jeff bilby
    Not your average mystery by any stretch of the imagination but by far the most satisfying read the year it came out "THE BOTTOMS" finds Joe R. Lansdale at the top of his game. Coming of age story with some flashes of folklore back woods, depression era mystery keeps the reader in suspense through out and as I stated right off, not your average Joe's tale from a time when racism, poverty and hard living were common and good decent people were few and far between. This is a master story told through the eyes of and old man, recalling in such detail his early pre teen years and a time that made hime grow up very quickly, that time featuring a young boy dealing with the local gruesome murders happening in his community and his dad, trying to figure it all out, a fresh& daring literary novel from one of the best writing today, THE BOTTOMS is a tale you won't soon forget and a writer with very few peers.