Sun 4 Mar 2018
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: WILLIAM L. HEATH – Temptation in a Southern Town.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
WILLIAM L. HEATH – Temptation in a Southern Town. Hillman #114, paperback, 1959. Reprinted in the UK as Blood on the River by John Long, hardcover, 1961.
W. L. Heath wrote several books about life and crime set in small-town rural south, the best known of which (because it was filmed) is Violent Saturday, but all of his work is worth reading for the sharply observed characters, well-knit plots and subtle atmosphere.
Temptation in a Southern Town follows two characters to their inevitable meeting: aging Sheriff Deparis, who learns late in the book that he has stomach cancer (a sentence of painful death in 1959) and Billy South, a strong, hard-working black man who got in with a crowd of rum-runners a ways back and messed up his life.
Heath does a compelling job of charting a collision course without making it look contrived. He picks out little bits of detail, highlights the bit players (a short interview with a mill foreman makes the character real for us, even though he’s never seen in the book again) and throws in the little details that make a story come alive without slowing the pace.
There’s an incredibly tense few chapters that occur when a run goes wrong, and another nice bit when Billy’s associates turn on him, but the quiet scenes in little shops, watching children at play or just hanging around an empty jail are no less entertaining.
And best of all, when the story gets to where we knew it was going all along, Heath goes for drama instead of melodrama. When the ending comes, it never seems stage-managed, but arises easily from the characters themselves.
I’ll add that Heath treats the racial prejudice of his time much as Jane Austen treated the plight of women in hers: He acknowledges its presence and patent evil, bases some of the plot on it, but makes the book more about individuals than issues.
If you’ve never read anything by William L. Heath, you should give yourself a treat.
Note: For a short biography of the author and a list of the books he wrote, go here: https://merrillheath.wordpress.com/w-l-heath/
March 4th, 2018 at 6:15 pm
Heath is an author I’ve always meant to read, but as far as I can recall, I never have. All I can do is remind myself that it’s never too late!
And if I ever owned a copy of the paperback edition of this one, I don’t remember that either, and I’m sure I would have. Dan, does the cover have anything to do with the book?
March 4th, 2018 at 10:27 pm
Great writer who constructed quiet suspense out of character, not the least his settings which always felt part of the plot and the characters.
March 5th, 2018 at 9:41 am
Steve, looking at that cover, I can say for sure the young lady doesn’t appear in the book, though the two guys in the background may have been bit players or extras.
The title TEMPTATION IN A SOUTHERN TOWN sounds so generic as to be meaningless. BLOOD ON THE RIVER captures the spirit of the thing, much of which has to do with coaxing an old boat full of illicit hooch to a hidden stash upriver.
March 5th, 2018 at 11:32 pm
A girl who looks and dresses like that is implied in every novel about a small sultry Southern town that is written for adults. They are there even if you don’t read about them, usually living on the wrong side of the tracks in something called Shanty Town, much as every old house of castle has a ghost by implication whether they are written about or not.
The real thing never looked anywhere near that good.
December 9th, 2022 at 10:37 pm
British mystery bookseller Jamie Sturgeon has just sent me a photo image of the UK cover, along with a couple of small corrections not spotted by anyone until now. Thanks, Jamie!