Heaven's Crooked Finger
An Earl Marcus Mystery
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD WINNER
An eerie and intense Southern Gothic, this “twisty, page-turning” mystery transports readers to a secretive community in the Georgia mountains (Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts)
Earl Marcus thought he had left the mountains of Georgia behind forever, and with them, the painful memories of a childhood spent under the fundamentalist rule of his father RJ’s church—a church built on fear, penance, and the twisting, writhing mass of snakes. But then an ominous photo of RJ is delivered to Earl’s home. The photograph is dated long after his father’s burial, and there’s no doubt that the man in the picture is very much alive.
As Earl returns to Church of the Holy Flame searching for the truth, faithful followers insist that his father has risen to a holy place high in the mountains. Nobody will talk about the teenage girls who go missing, only to return with strange tattoo-like marks on their skin. Rumors swirl about an old well that sits atop one of the mountains, a place of unimaginable power and secrets. Earl doesn’t know what to believe, but he has long been haunted by his father, forever lurking in the shadows of his life. Desperate to leave his sinful Holy Flame childhood in the past, Earl digs up deeply buried secrets to discover the truth before time runs out and he’s the one put underground in Heaven’s Crooked Finger, Hank Early’s thrilling series debut.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Earl Marcus, the narrator of Early's highly atmospheric debut and series launch, grew up in the North Georgia mountains, where his father, Ronald Jackson Marcus, the preacher at the Church of the Holy Flame, encouraged snake handling. As a teen, Earl nearly died after he was bitten by a cottonmouth and his father "refused to take me to a hospital and had instead left it to God to decide my fate." Earl left home and now, years later, works as a PI in Charlotte, N.C. A month after a body identified as Roland's is found in the woods, Earl gets a letter from Bryant McCauley, one of his father's most fervent supporters, with a photo suggesting that Ronald is still alive. Earl reluctantly returns to his birthplace, where, over much opposition, he seeks McCauley, who's disappeared, and his elusive father. Earl also gets on the trail of some missing teenage girls. Readers with a taste for raw, intense mysteries will be rewarded.)
