Assumption

Ogden Walker is a deputy sheriff in a sleepy New Mexico town where little ever seems to happen. That begins to change when an old woman he has just visited is murdered and a young woman is later found dead in a remote cabin. Walker finds himself traveling from Denver to Dallas and throughout New Mexico to investigate a baffling and bloody series of crimes involving drugs, guns, and a mysterious box of money. His task is complicated because he's African American, and this provokes suspicion even from townsfolk who have known him for some time. The novel is ultimately a loosely linked group of three stories unified by a central character, with the title referring as much to the reader's expectations as to the process of investigating a crime. Pen/Dos Passos award winner Everett (I Am Not Sidney Poitier) is making a major point about overturning assumptions, taking a genre novel—a fairly conventional murder mystery—and forcing readers to question their own expectations regarding character, plot, and fictional conventions. VERDICT A work of metafiction that targets the literary rather than the genre reader but may not fully satisfy either. [See Prepub Alert, 6/6/11.]—Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, North Andover, MA