Trees’ by Percival Everett was published in 2021 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.
He has since written other books to great acclaim (look him up!) so I was a little surprised when a customer attending an event last year asked me to order ‘Trees’ in as a great example of a crime novel. Well, I am a bit partial to a good crime novel, so I ordered two.
Trees is set in deepest Mississippi, a town called (ironically) Money, in the not-too-distant past. A man is murdered and alongside his fresh corpse lies another, not quite as fresh dead body with the first body’s testicles gripped in his fist. He also bears a striking resemblance to a young black man, lynched after being falsely accused of being inappropriate to a white woman. Falsely accused it turns out, by the freshly dead man’s mother decades ago. More identical murders follow, then detectives, the MBI (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) the FBI, a 105 (at least) year old woman with a record of every lynching to take place in the South and a ‘not so fresh’ dead body at every crime scene. This book did not go where you think a murder mystery might traditionally go but it makes great reading. The book starts fast and gathers pace until you find yourself just like the law enforcement officers – unable to believe your eyes.
This book (as long as you aren’t too squeamish) is a great read – the writing is so good it had me held in the thrall of horror and laughing out loud all on the same page.
Well worth a dip back in time for a book that should be a film and probably should have won the Booker Prize.
