The Forsaken by Ace Atkins

‘The Forsaken’ is the 4th book in the Quinn Colson series by Ace Atkins, set in the fictional town of Jericho in the fictional county of Tibbehah in Mississippi.

37 years ago, two young girls were raped and shot. One of the girls survived. Days later, a wandering black man with nothing but the clothes on his back was hunted down and lynched. Dianne Tull has always felt guilty, firstly for surviving, and secondly because she has always known that the wrong man was murdered. But why has she decided to seek justice so many years later?

Sheriff Quinn Colson and Deputy Lillie Virgil are facing charges of murder and theft as a result of an earlier gunfight (see ‘The Broken Places’), and it looks as though the charges might stick. But that doesn’t stop them from trying to identify the murdered man and trying to identify the members of the lynch mob.

Meanwhile Chains LeDoux is about to be released after 20 years in prison. He was the head of a bikie gang in the area called The Born Again Losers. With the imminent release of Chains, a number of locals are scared including the corrupt politician and fixer Johnny Stagg. And the Born Again Losers are back together again preparing for the return of their ageing leader.

As Colson starts to investigate the connections between the events, he finds that his father, the famous stuntman Jason Colson, was a member of the Born Again Losers. He also finds out the real reason that Jason ran out on his family.

As the violence and tension start to increase, Quinn approaches the one person who can shed some light on what really happened 37 years ago.

 

Tibbehah County is such an amazingly corrupt place that it would be difficult not to give it up as a lost cause. As long as Johnny Stagg still has money and power and Quinn refuses to be bought the stories will continue to roll in.

The characters portrayed in the story were so real I could almost smell them (not very pleasant). This was an excellent book and I look forward to the next one.

 

Book Published 2014

 

See a full list of books by Ace Atkins

Leave a Comment

Filed under Atkins, Ace, Book Reviews, Crime, Detective, Series Fiction, Southern, Thriller

Comments are closed.