'Decent People,' De’Shawn Charles Winslow's propulsive second novel, concerns a triple homicide in a seemingly sleepy segregated Southern town.
West Mills, the small, segregated North Carolina town where “” unfolds, is a hotbed of gossip and long-simmering recrimination. The residents have plenty to talk about as the novel opens: The Harmon siblings — Marian, a prosperous doctor; Marva, who works as Marian’s nurse; and Lazarus, her driver — have been found murdered in their luxurious home. Nobody liked Dr. Harmon much; she was the kind of stuck-up professional who looked down her nose at everyone.
Either way, she has no qualms about kicking the hornet’s nest. West Mills is a town teeming with carefully kept secrets, most of them connected to societal neuroses. Eunice Loving, who owns the local grocery store, lives in shame of her gay adolescent son, La’Roy, and she apparently asked Dr. Harmon to help “cure” him. It didn’t go well.
Almost nobody here is innocent, which is largely the point. Racism and segregation, still thriving in the ’70s South, corrode everything and everybody they touch in one way or another. “Decent People” adds homophobia to the mix, which scarcely needs more toxicity. Winslow has written not just an investigation of a crime, but also a diagnosis of a nation’s ills. Jo’s investigation needles nerves already worn thin — class resentments, racial distrust and transgressions swept under the rug.
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