Scorched Earth

Less a mystery than a finely crafted, poetic meditation on justice, race, love, and hate in a small Virginia town, Robbins's intense though occasionally overwrought novel compounds one tragedy--the birth and death of an infant--with another. In the smoking ruins of a church whose deacons demanded that Clare and Elijah Waddell's baby be disinterred and reburied elsewhere because of her mixed-race parentage, the discovery of the charred body of the teenage daughter of the powerful local sheriff turns a case of arson into one of murder, and possibly rape as well. When Roanoke lawyer Nat Deeds is assigned to defend Elijah, he knows he faces a lawyer's worst nightmare: a truly innocent man.

Returning to the home town he left after learning of his wife's infidelity, Nat encounters a community that seems turned against him, except for his closest boyhood friend, now the charismatic pastor of destroyed Victory Baptist church. Pastor Tom Derby is a man with a secret, a man whose efforts to conquer his own demons fuel the flames of the town's hidden rage and hatred. These forces drive this atmospheric and involving read to its denouement. Scorched Earth is a novel that will appeal to readers who ordinarily eschew the mystery genre as well as to fans of legal thrillers--Scott Turow's admirers would do well to try it while they wait for his next one. --Jane Adams