Dixie Noir

College football star Ennis Skinner, whose reckless love affair with a drug addict, Alice “Faye” James, ruined his gridiron career, hopes for another shot at happiness in literary critic Curnutt's dark crime drama set in Montgomery, Ala. After Ennis, the son of a white civil rights hero, serves a 10-year prison sentence for drug dealing, High C, a former meth king who now peddles books like The Hit Man Handbook on the Web, asks Ennis to locate his missing, mentally challenged 19-year-old daughter, Dixie, whose mother was the now deceased Faye. Adding heat is the Montgomery mayoral race between white incumbent Amory Justice and African-American Walk Compson, who may have a link to Dixie. The author sensitively explores still simmering racial tensions in the South and inserts a lovely tribute to Zelda Fitzgerald, but a murky ending and an unconvincing twist to do with Dixie dissatisfy. This is Curnutt's second novel after Breathing Out the Ghost (2008). (Nov.)