A Dark and Lonely Place by Edna Buchanan
Edna Buchanan said she had been wanting to write this book for years. She took the true story of a man named John Ashley and speculated what life would be like for his descendant, also named John Ashley.
The original John is accused of murder (which he said he wasn't guilty of) in Florida in the early 1900s. He gets thrown in jail, escapes, and ends up becoming a bank/ train robber, bootlegger and smuggler of some notoriety. All the while, his true love, Laura, is by his side. This part of the book I liked less than the story involving modern John, seemingly the only honest cop in Miami, who becomes the subject of a mass manhunt for killing someone (in what was clearly self-defense). He also falls for a woman named Laura, who is a witness in a case he's working on.
While Buchanan tries to make original John seem like a Florida version of Robin Hood, he was robbing and killing, which makes him less than sympathetic even though you do feel bad that he got so screwed over by the system. Modern John, on the other hand, is a genuinely good guy who stumbles into some heavy-duty police corruption, which almost gets him killed. I also liked modern Laura more than original Laura (who seemed like kind of a flake at times). The novel keeps bouncing between the two time periods, so you really have to pay attention since there are so many characters in each story with the same or similar names that it's easy to lose track of whose story you're reading.
It's a decent book but not my favorite Edna Buchanan. And I have to say, it made me really not want to live in Miami, which was probably not her intention at all.
The original John is accused of murder (which he said he wasn't guilty of) in Florida in the early 1900s. He gets thrown in jail, escapes, and ends up becoming a bank/ train robber, bootlegger and smuggler of some notoriety. All the while, his true love, Laura, is by his side. This part of the book I liked less than the story involving modern John, seemingly the only honest cop in Miami, who becomes the subject of a mass manhunt for killing someone (in what was clearly self-defense). He also falls for a woman named Laura, who is a witness in a case he's working on.
While Buchanan tries to make original John seem like a Florida version of Robin Hood, he was robbing and killing, which makes him less than sympathetic even though you do feel bad that he got so screwed over by the system. Modern John, on the other hand, is a genuinely good guy who stumbles into some heavy-duty police corruption, which almost gets him killed. I also liked modern Laura more than original Laura (who seemed like kind of a flake at times). The novel keeps bouncing between the two time periods, so you really have to pay attention since there are so many characters in each story with the same or similar names that it's easy to lose track of whose story you're reading.
It's a decent book but not my favorite Edna Buchanan. And I have to say, it made me really not want to live in Miami, which was probably not her intention at all.
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