Billie Letts - Shoot The Moon

Review written by Ro Bennett & read live on the bookshow august 2015

 

I love Billie Letts books. This is the third one I have read and I previously reviewed The Honk and Holler Opening Soon and Where the Heart is. I have enjoyed them all tremendously. They are full of suspense but they are also heart-warming, feel good books which I like. 

This is the synopsis:

In 1972 DeClare, Oklahoma, eighteen-year-old Gaylene Harjo was stabbed to death in her trailer and her month old son Nicky Jack disappeared. The only trace of him were the pajama bottoms near the creek. The sheriff O Boy Daniels arrested someone for the murder of Gaylene and her son but many people thought he went after the wrong man, who died in prison. 

Almost thirty years later wealthy Hollywood veterinarian Dr. Mark Albright checks into the motel in DeClare. Three weeks earlier he had discovered that he was adopted and his birth mother was Gaylene. He did not know that she was killed and that he was presumed dead. He seeks information about his mother, his biological father and who transported him to California to be adopted. Instead he is shot at and jailed while a person is murdered, another commits suicide, and a third arrested, convicted and is sentenced to death row - but is this a miscarriage of justice - is he innocent? 

Shoot The Moon is more than a murder mystery; it is the story of one man's need for answers surrounding the circumstances of his birth and adoption. Readers get to know Gaylene through the pages of her diary.  The murder of Nicky Jack's mother affected the whole community in different ways and three decades later, many of them are still living with the consequences. 

This is an excellent book - the characters are well portrayed - I loved the goodies and disliked the baddies. As I read,  I simmered and seethed at injustices and corruption and felt relief and dismay and dread. I really got caught up in the plot and its outcome. I thoroughly recommend the book.