Chiefs / by Stuart Woods.

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Title:

Author:

Woods, Stuart

ISBN:

9780393014617

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Norton, c1981.

Physical Description:

427 p. ; 24 cm.

Abstract:

When a teenaged boy is found dead, the chief of police in a small Georgia town in 1920 begins an obsessive hunt for the boy's tormentor, which leads him to two former chiefs of police, one a murderer and the other the concealer of a secret

Subject Term:

Teenage boys -- Crimes against -- Fiction.

African American men -- Fiction.

Police -- Georgia -- Fiction.

Police chiefs -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Georgia -- Fiction.

Genre:

Detective and mystery stories.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Adult Fiction Book Hardback	120791001905860	F WOO	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In the bitter winter of 1920, the first body is found in Delano, Georgia; the naked corpse of an unidentified teenager. There is no direct evidence of murder, but the body bears marks of what seems to be a ritual beating. The investigation falls to Will Henry Lee, a failed cotton farmer newly appointed as Delano's first chief of police. Lee's obsession with the crime begins a story that weaves through the decades, following the life of a small southern town and the role of three police chiefs in unraveling the crime. Chiefs is the best kind of thriller, where the investigation plays out against the drama beneath the surface of a seemingly placid community, seething with the pressures of race, love, hate, and; always; political power, extending from the town fathers all the way to Washington, DC. With a new foreword by the author, this volume will be a collector's treasure for all fans of Stuart Woods.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Police chiefs, that is--in an episodic five-decade tale of three chiefs and many connected murders in one tiny Georgia town. The first chief is cotton farmer Will Henry Lee, who escapes the boll-weevil plague on his farm by asking for the job of sheriff in Delano, a new 1919 town devised in part by a banker-politician. But very soon Will is handed the worst case of his career: a naked teenager is found dead under a bluff from which he's fallen, and nearby is the house of Foxy Funderburke, a weirdly immaculate, crazy military type and gun fanatic who seems to be the likeliest suspect. But nothing can be proved--as is also the case with two subsequent teenage-boy deaths. And just as Will is about to break the case, he's killed--by a delirious (malaria) black man. So, while Will's son Billy Lee grows up to become a WW II bomber pilot and later lieutenant-governor of Georgia (with a shot at replacing Southerner Lyndon Johnson on JFK's reelection ticket), the murder-mystery lies fallow--despite subsequent missing teenagers--until bully-boy war-hero Sonny Butts, a black-baiting Klansman, becomes a police chief: he confronts Foxy. . . and gets himself shot and buried along with his motorcycle. Thus, it's up to Delano's first black police chief--Tucker Watts, who happens to be the son of the man who killed Will Henry--to close in on the maniac-murderer. Considering the current horror of murdered black children in Atlanta, this tale of mass slaughter is all too timely. But even without that topical hook, Woods' first novel is strong, decent, and suspenseful--especially rich in its varied, appealing characterizations. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.