Bestselling author Martin Clark’s latest book is set in Patrick and Henry counties and Martinsville.
It even opens with a woman you may feel you recognize, with a slightly different name.
Judge Christina Leventis is tough and stands her ground with a quiet yet firm authority. I would certainly not be up to any monkey business around her. In fact, I was a slight bit afraid of her even as I read the book.
And that was a funny – and fun – experience.
Because I’ve never encountered her (or should we say, the local woman this character reminds me of) in the courtroom. I’ve only ever known her from our time together in Charity League, and running into her here and there in the community, where she’s been friendly and helpful and cheerful.
Later on in the book I came across attorney Janine Jacob, who was advocating for a character in a case. I’ve known the real Janine through Charity League and garden club, and from how I’ve seen the real Janine tackle charity and garden club matters it was no surprise to me that not only did the book’s Janine win another character’s case, but it was with a grand slam victory.
As well as the hometown feel, the book moves along with a strong and exciting plot. It starts with Andy, a public defender who is “forty-three years old, stuck and stymied.” There’s his son, who goes to the Martinsville YMCA, and his son’s mother, who works at Patrick & Henry Community College, who are not together but do a great job in co-parenting, and a love interest. The characters shop at Food Lion, have meals at Old Bay and Wild Magnolia and Leonardo’s Pizzeria and Checkered Pig, and don’t tell Joe Keiper this, but Andy and his date also sneak into the Virginia Museum of Natural History after it’s closed by bypassing the security system (the security guard, a friend, had given his lady friend the secret code), just to have a special time.
There’s a whole slew of “the Reliables” – Dancin’ Ben, General Gene, Zeb, Porter – called that because “they’ve been to every rehab, every shelter, every program, every church and halfway home, and they weren’t fixable, weren’t ever going to stop drinking and raising Cain, and they lived on the court dockets, with almost daily charges of drunk in public, curse and abuse, disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, larceny and battery.” While I can’t say I recognize any of them specifically, I certainly know the type, and folks who would fall into that category, and I bet you do, too. The Reliables spring to life on the page.
It seems each Martin Clark book has a dog, some cur who needed a home and ended up being the fine companion of a main character. I love Martin Clark’s dog characters. They remind me of my own fine dog, who came to me from the Patrick County Animal Shelter, after having been picked up roaming, skin and bones, along the roads of Ararat. When Andy’s new dog Patches gets lost, he puts an announcement on WHEO radio’s “Pet Patrol.”
There are the out-for-themselves law enforcement officers and aspiring politicians – I didn’t recognize who they were based off of, of course – and the good guys, such as Sheriff Dan Smith and Judge Jimmy McGarry, whom I both know in real life to be trustworthy and dependable.
There are plenty more characters that make me wonder if they’re based off real people. Certainly the names are familiar – Ballard, Baliles, Hubbard, Craddock, Pruitt, McAlexander – and if I don’t know them, maybe you do.
The book has our local atmosphere, and a background explanation of the closing of the textile mills that led to 20% unemployment and Trade Act classes and desperate people whose houses were foreclosed on.
A woman is murdered, and Andy is assigned to defend Damian, the suspect. Even though Andy finally had decided to quit his job, he hangs on to see the case through (and maybe he’ll stay on after all?). It’s a case full of legal intrigue and twists and turns which have you convinced of one thing at one moment then doubting yourself the next.
In fact, that’s where the name “The Plinko Bounce” comes in, from a game on the TV show “The Price Is Right.” A disc drops down randomly through pegs: “On rare occasions in our cut-and-dried, predictable, turn-the-crank justice system,” Andy tells Commonwealth’s Attorney Vikram Kapil, “we catch a Plinko case … and the bounces start and the whole infallible process goes haywire, becomes a chaotic spectacle, and there’s no telling what the payoff will be.”
The book would be excellent in any setting. Here, on our home turf, it springs to life vividly. We matter. We are a place where things happen, even if we’re small. It’s not like reading other books set in small towns, which are described in saccharine sentimentality, or as cultural and economic wastelands. It’s just – it’s just right.
