What if Mel Brooks and Jordan Peele wrote an Elmore Leonard novel? This is unbelievably good.
Published: 2018
This is only the second Everett book I’ve read (after James), and it’s almost impossible to believe it’s the same author. Everett is now on the must-read list.
It starts like an Elmore Leonard novel – a bizarre crime, laugh-out-loud dialogue and instantly memorable characters. It’s a barnburner of a crime novel, until the teeth come out and it becomes something unlike anything else.
In 2018, in a town called Money, Mississippi, it appears that Emmett Till has returned from the dead to murder those he holds responsible for his death. When his victims are found, Till’s dead body is found near theirs, but disappears every time they try to take it to the morgue. The racist White cops receive help in the form of two weary Black investigators from the State Police.
Here’s a pretty good short video of Everett taking questions. “I’m certainly envious of anyone who has mastered stagnation.”
At about 4:20 he does a reading from the book that’s really impactful.
Everett uses the crime novel as a way to look at America’s racist past and present, both within law enforcement and in society at large. And make the reader laugh with slapstick comedy and Mel Brooks-level eye-rollers.
It’s satire, it’s horror, it’s supernatural, it’s political, it’s incredible.
(ALSO: the baseballs in the photo are sheer coincidence, though a funny one)