Welcome to 1930s Branson, Alabama, somewhere you’d probably leave if you could. ACROSS THE WAY from the home of the grocery store managers, Odell and Joyce Watson, live Milton and Yvonne Hamilton, a ne’er-do-well couple. Being neighbours makes them precarious friends. They tell the story in alternating chapters.
The author, Mary Monroe, tells us she is the daughter of Alabama sharecroppers and uses family memories to create historical fiction. Setting a story in the distant past is a useful tool to get writers off the hook, because ‘of course, it wouldn’t happen now’ or ‘people don’t talk that way anymore’. This is a way of warning that the 1930s were far from enlightened and some readers may be offended. Some of the incidents occur purely because of the times – discrimination and lack of communication. Others are probably still happening today.
Charming Odell manages Joyce’s parents’ grocery store, and they all trust him implicitly. He has been betraying that trust for years, skimming off money and helping himself to goods in order to lead a double life. I understand these characters previously featured in two earlier books, and in the third and final book in The Neighbors series, the small-time crooks and alcohol sellers Milton and Yvonne decide to blackmail Odell, starting a chain of terrible consequences.
The Depression is happening, Prohibition has ended but selling moonshine from home is still called bootlegging, and very many hard-working people can’t sit in the front of the bus. All this goes some way to explaining why the characters behave so badly. Everyone seems to be lying to everyone else, law enforcement is biased and far from trustworthy, and regular customers of a store are also regular shoplifters. Add blackmailing, and the mix becomes terribly sour, with dire crimes plotted and some carried out.
Some of the chapters will have you laughing, others are sardonic, and some are just shocking. And maybe it’s right to remind everyone of what life was like nearly a hundred years ago so that we can see how far we’ve progressed. ACROSS THE WAY and in the past, human nature and aspiration form a crime novel with a difference.
In this captivating Depression-era set novel by New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe, two couples find their grudges endangering more than their Alabama small town’s deceptive peace . . .
When good-time couple Milton and Yvonne Hamilton moved one house over from the respectable-but-restless Odell and Joyce Watson, it was a fast friendship of shared secrets—and secret jealousies and betrayals. Their alliance was bound to crash and burn, but the Hamiltons won’t quite let the flame die out, even after scandalous accusations get them arrested . . .
Odell would do anything to be free of his bootlegging, blackmailing, money extorting neighbors and recover the peaceful—and financially prosperous—life he and Joyce once had. But Milton and Yvonne seem to always bounce back from bad luck, and this time they’ve returned angrier, and greedier, than ever. Determined to get what Odell “owes” them, the Hamiltons have a big surprise for Joyce too, one that shows how far they will go to get revenge . . .
Now pushed past his breaking point, Odell is sure he’s got a foolproof plan to end the scheming once and for all. But it soon spirals into lies, shattering violence, and permanent damage that will roil their tranquil community, and alter his and Joyce’s world forever . . .
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