Deadly Sweet

When Corey Darrow's body was dragged from the canal where she had drowned in her truck, her hand was still clutching a cocked .357 Magnum. She had come to Eddie for help, a black Irish beauty who was being harassed for raising the ecological flag in the rich dark ooze of Okee County—land of sugarcane, migrant worker, neo-colonialists, and rattle snakes as big a your thigh. A botanist had disappeared after making enquiries at Corey's water management office. Corey asked too many questions of the wrong people, the menacing phone calls began, and she suspected she was being followed. Running on regret for not sensing a serious threat, Eddie Priest drove to Okee City to check out how she had died.He was downing Wild Turkey in the Cane Cutter Bar when Corey's double walked in—Sawnie Darrow, a senior aid to the governor. She had the same million dollar voice as her sister, and a dangerous taste for the truth. She didn't care about Eddie's wife, searching for her center in California, or his vaunted football fame. She wanted him to find out if her sister was murdered. This time Eddie couldn't say no.His first stop was Harry W. Feather, whose big white Caddy, Buck knife, and slimy silk shirts propped up his fantasy of tribal warrior prince. Fascinated by decay, sex, and clinical horrors, Harry was an elemental predator who saw meddling humans as a species of prey. Tow-truck operator Boner Harkness thought getting shot by a corpse's gun was bad enough. He didn't know what bad was. Lofton Coltis, a Harvard man with deep roots in his forebears' soil savored the hot Gulf winds that blew ten miles over his sugar cane land before reaching his house. Coltis was a two hundred octane Anglo supremacist, and in Okee County his will was law. Clinton Reynolds, Corey's boss, had warned her to shut up—but nothing could silence his dying ravings, caused by an untraced toxin. Moira Big Breath, a member of the Miccosukee Tribe and a Barnard graduate, was nursing a Florida panther back to health with road kill and special loving care. A fearless political activist, Moira wanted the White Man off her ancestors' lands.With the help of insurance investigator Raymer Harney, Eddie was heading into a tangle of vested interests, furtive passions, greed, and unleashed mania that could trap the most ingenious hunter. The truth about Corey's death—and the dirty secrets behind it—might be rotting under a rock too deadly to kick over.Of Sterling Watson's Deadly Sweet, Carl Hiaasen said, "It takes a fine writer to get a grip on such a mad place, and Watson does it. His best characters are mangy, menacing, and too true to life. I see them daily on Highway One, and keep a safe distance." Welcome to Sterling Watson's tour de force.