The Good Detective

Det. P.T. Marsh, the narrator of McMahon’s ambitious if flawed first novel, set in rural Mason Falls, Ga., has promised to help Crimson, a stripper he met at a strip club, whose boyfriend has physically abused her. One evening, he drives over to Crimson’s house, where he punches and threatens the boyfriend. When the boyfriend is strangled that same night, Marsh—who’s struggling with alcoholism and still reeling from an accident that killed his family—wonders whether in a drunken stupor he might have murdered the guy. Later, when a 15-year-old African-American boy, a Baptist preacher’s son, is lynched, the chief suspect turns out to be the man Marsh may have strangled. Investigating the boy’s lynching takes Marsh into an intricate, decades-old conspiracy. McMahon tends to explain too much, and this debut reads at times like an earnest message novel wrapped in the guise of an action-packed Hollywood thriller. Still, he’s a talented writer with a good sense of place, and readers are sure to look forward to Marsh’s next outing. [em]Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Assoc. (Mar.) [/em]