In the very first room he walks into, a boy with a gun is waiting to avenge the death of his mother. And she's not the only one.Īdrian Wall is finally free after thirteen years of torture and abuse.

But she's also a cop with a history, a woman with a secret. She is a cop who single-handedly rescued a young girl from a locked cellar and shot two brutal kidnappers dead. Add to that another woman murdered, the effect alcohol has on family, police corruption and the dangers of surviving the penitentiary – and you have a complex but compassionate view of life and death in the Carolinas.Elizabeth Black is a hero.

On the day of his parole, Wall finds himself on the wrong side of a gun barrel held by a teenager, Gideon the son of the woman that Wall had been charged with murdering.Įlizabeth Black, the younger Channing Shore and Gideon Strange share fractured relationships with their families and this theme, when written with an American Southern flavour becomes an important framing device for what follows, as does Black’s own feelings for fellow Cop Adrian Wall. A ritual killing that Wall had always protested his innocence over. Wall on the other had has been released on parole after serving over a decade in prison, following the murder of Julia Strange.

The problem being that Black and the teenager, Channing Shore are white while the two captors are Black, and what with Channing coming from what we term ‘white privilege’ did Elizabeth Black use excessive force in her rescue, for her weapon was discharged eighteen times? The press naturally have a bonanza with the conflicting opinions of “hero” or “angel of death”. Black rescued a teenager from the clutches of two men holding her captive with sexual assault on their mind. Weaving a complex plot with memorable characters which are painted into the narrative in a lyrical style we have a tale of two North Carolina cops, Elizabeth Black and Adrian Wall, both caught on the wrong side of shooting incidents. Hart’s Redemption Road layers a complex seriesof events, such as our current concerns on gun control and police shootings, the changing face of justice, family, and pushes them through a Southern Gothic Prism revealing a stunning story, that unfurls slowly with the precision of a craftsman to a startling and compassionate dénouement, that left me staring at the wall in contemplative silence. Redemption Road returns Hart to his rightful place as one of the most literary, of living crime writers and one that illustrates the power of genre fiction when placed in the hands of a master storyteller.

John hart redemption road review