Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Maren Wiederhold
Categories
Crime & mystery fiction

HOLY CITY

Henry Wise

HOLY CITY is the captivating debut from Henry Wise about a deputy sheriff who must work alongside an unpredictable private detective.

After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his mother, Will Seems leaves genteel Richmond and heads back home to rural Southern Virginia. Will had been ostracized from the Richmond sheriff's department over his unwillingness to look the other way when an innocent man was arrested for murder. But policing is what he knows, so he takes a job as deputy sheriff in a bleak landscape given way to crime and defeat. Impoverished and abandoned, this remote land of tobacco plantations, razed forests, and boarded-up homes seems stuck in the past in a state that is trying to forget its complex history and move on. Will's efforts to go about his life are wrecked when a mysterious, brutal homicide claims the life of an old friend, Tom Janders, forcing Will to face the true impetus for his return: not to honor his mother's memory, but to pay a debt to a Black friend who, in an act of selfless courage years ago, protected Will and suffered permanent disfigurement for it. Meanwhile, a man Will knows to be innocent is arrested for Tom's murder, and despite Will's pleas, his boss seems all too content to wrap up the case and move on. Will must weigh his personal guilt against his public duty when the local Black community hires Bennico Watts, an unpredictable private detective from Richmond, to help him find the real killer. It would seem an ideal pairing - she has experience, along with plenty of grit, and Will is privy to the details of the case - but it doesn't take long for either to realize they much prefer to operate alone. Bennico and Will clash as they each defend their untraditional ways on a wild ride that wends deep into the Snakefoot, an underworld wilderness that for hundreds of years has functioned as a hideout for outcasts - the forgotten and neglected and abused - leaving us enmeshed in the tangled history of a region and its people that leaves no one innocent, no one free, nothing sacred. Henry Wise is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA Program. His work has appeared in Shenandoah, Nixes Mate, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, and elsewhere. HOLY CITY is his first novel.

Available products
Book Published 2024-06-04 by Atlantic Monthly Press

Comments

Stunning. If there was one word to describe this fantastic debut, stunning. Will Seems, I sure hope there is more of him. Please read this important novel.

A heinous crime tests a freshly minted deputy sheriff's allegiances in Wise's stylish debut... Bold characters and splendid prose further enhance the proceedings. Wise knocks it out of the park his first time up to bat.

A devastating first novel... Henry Wise arrives with a powerful new voice in the rarified air of truly literary crime fiction. Deeply rooted in the complex natural and cultural landscape of southern Virginia, Holy City is an engaging, original, and sometimes explosive take on what it can mean to go home again. Wise gives us a suspenseful crime story rich with lyrical flourishes and populated by tough, courageous, complicated people struggling with the power and burden of lifelong guilt, of unpayable debts... ultimately Holy City is a searching exploration of the fraught space between revenge and redemption where no choices are easy or even right. Not only wise, but brave as well, Holy City is a compelling and affecting read, not to be missed.

An impressive debut by a great new voice in crime fiction. Henry Wise balances a bold literary voice with authentic storytelling in the kind of gritty Southern thriller that's right down my alley. From page one, you'll be absolutely hooked into this evocative world.

An amazing piece of work. A Southern novel that examines the pathos and ethos of small-town life and the weight of both grief and hatred. Love it.

Henry Wise is a talented storyteller who brings a poet's ear to the southern landscape he knows so well. The dialogue crackles with authenticity and the characters are drawn with great compassion.

Henry Wise's striking debut is a haunting story of crime and the myriad ways that one can be punished. Set deep in the rural expanse of southern Virginia, it's both a thriller and a dark fairy tale, filled with danger and menace, loss and longed-for redemption.

A debut to be relished. Henry Wise writes like he's been around forever, masterfully weaving together a tapestry of flattened forests and sprawling tobacco plantations, along with intimate portraits of the people who populate rural Southern Virginia. Rarely does a first-time novelist come along with such a bold, singular voice. I've got a feeling Henry's here to stay.

A dense, brilliantly rendered novel by a new master of Southern gothic.