{"id":2583,"date":"2009-04-06T19:24:13","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T23:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2009-04-06T19:24:13","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T23:24:13","slug":"the-outside-man-by-richard-north-patterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2583","title":{"rendered":"The Outside Man, by Richard North Patterson"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is it with Southern writers?<\/strong> I\u2019m certain there must be a lot of inkslingers living in trailer parks south of Mason Dixon, banging out slop on second-hand PCs (as I myself did at one time), but again and again you come on these southern authors who display the same kind of technical brilliance combined with lyrical grace, like one antebellum mansion after another along a road in an exclusive neighborhood. Maybe the very experience of speaking with a drawl gives a person time to strategize word choice, while we northerners with our nasal, jackhammer diction just stutter our prose out like salt from a highway department ice control truck.<\/p>\n

In any case, Richard North Patterson, whose novels I\u2019ve never tried before, is a darn good wordsmith. The Outside Man<\/a><\/i> is an older novel of his (1981), so I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the liberal ideas this book suggests have metastasized into something that would give me a stroke if I read a more recent example, but for now I\u2019m highly inclined to try him again.<\/p>\n

The Outside Man<\/i> is narrated by the main character, Adam Shaw, a northerner and a lapsed Catholic who married a rich southern girl and moved to Birmingham, Alabama to join her father\u2019s law firm. He and his father-in-law don\u2019t get along, and he generally feels like an outsider in Birmingham society.<\/p>\n

As the book begins he is running an errand for the firm, delivering a document to Lydia Cantwell, the wife of one of their most important clients. Finding the door unlocked, he goes inside and finds her strangled to death. Police suspicion immediately falls on Henry, her husband. Adam is determined to prove him innocent\u2014not only because he\u2019s a client, but because he\u2019s one of the few local people Adam has found to be a true friend.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll have already guessed the general tone of what follows. The veneer of southern aristocratic respectability is found to conceal volcanic passions, poisonous hatreds and hypocrisy. In fact it\u2019s largely a question of discovering which passions, hatreds and hypocrisies are actually relevant, and which don\u2019t apply to the case.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s very well done. Recommended, with the usual cautions for language and adult subject matter.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is it with Southern writers? I\u2019m certain there must be a lot of inkslingers living in trailer parks south of Mason Dixon, banging out slop on second-hand PCs (as I myself did at one time), but again and again you come on these southern authors who display the same kind of technical brilliance combined … Continue reading The Outside Man, by Richard North Patterson<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}