Son of Andalusia Farm

Son of Andalusia Farm by Thomas K. Mathews

(Sorry, I've had trouble downloading the artwork which is one of the best covers I've seen.)

I’ve read and reviewed five books by Thomas K. Matthews in this blogs, and he is one of those talented writers who somehow has not caught on with the reasonably large following that he deserves. He has a project that may come to pass with a large movie production company, so maybe that will bring his talents to a bigger audience. My favorite novel of his was one of his early ones, Rejection, a thriller murder mystery. Check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

 

This novel is a literary fiction entitled Son of Andalusia Farm. This story began in 1918, but mostly takes place during the 1930s and 1940s on a former cotton plantation near Montgomery, Alabama. The plantation had been converted to one of the notorious southern prisons which housed both black and white prisoners although those groups were mostly segregated in this story. It’s about the mysterious history of the Bradley Family and it’s hidden past. The Warden of the Andalusia Prison Farm, Hollister Thatcher, was married to Elizabeth Bradley who desperately wanted a child although the warden really had no interest in having a baby. When Elizabeth proved to be barren, she stole the baby of an inmate who had received a 17-year sentence for tenuous reasons. The prisoner was already pregnant at the time of her incarceration. Since the warden had dictatorial powers over his prisoners, and since the birth mother Mariah had been threatened if she ever spoke of this matter, it was Elizabeth who raised James as her own child.

 

This story is about the unfair and sociopathic practices of the warden. James turned out to be a good man, actually a godly one, and when Elizabeth died when James was about 14, the warden perceived him as a threat to his own significant misbehaviors against the prisoners who were in his custody. Warden Thatcher did all he could do to harm his son, falsely declaring that he had stolen money so James could become a prisoner. It was the warden’s attempt to break James’ spirit that led to such sadistic decisions. Guilt about his behaviors led the warden to mismanagement of the prisoners and extreme alcoholism, and his alcoholism only led to more poor judgments which finally came to the attention of Bureau of Prisons in Alabama.

 

I’ll leave the unveiling of the plot to the next reader to discover. This is a very well-written novel with a timely plot development and compelling characters. I give this book my strong recommendation.

Ragged Justice

Ragged Justice is the second Lou Drake book, following Rejection which is one of my favorite crime novels of all time. This well-titled book (and you’ll have to read it to understand that) is a worthy successor. Rather then New York City, this book is set in San Diego and in the course of the books action, Matthews does a great job taking the reader on a tour of the city. The cast of characters is as diverse as any book that I’ve read, from the city elite in government, development, law enforcement, porn, and religion to the inner workings of and the diversity in San Diego’s homeless population. Wow! There are a lot of people to keep tract of but it’s worth paying attention as you get pulled in the mysteries.

Matthews’ premise is that there is vast corruption at the heart of the deals behind the development of important areas in the city. This is a complex plot that artfully unfolds – I didn’t see the conclusion coming until the very end. There are real heroes and villains in this story. The author writes with words that evoke emotion for the cruel and murderous reality behind corruption, with compassion for those innocents caught in the crossfire (both literally and figuratively), and with frustrations for those whose ultimate punishment does not fit the crime. Matthews’ captures the importance of choosing leaders in all aspects of life who can be trusted and the incredible difficulty of figuring out who those people might be.

This is a prepublication review. If you haven’t yet read Rejection, jump into that one now (January 2018). The publication of this second Lou Drake novel is about a month away.

The Son of a Sharecropper's Son

The Son of a Sharecropper’s Son is the fifth book I’ve read from Thomas K. Matthews, and as inferred by the title, it’s a three-generational story. This is a very different murder mystery. Rather, it’s about a man, Kyle Lee Bradley, who is already a husband and father, trying to tract his own family history as a means of understanding his own emotional struggles. He has a psychologist who suggested this journey. Kyle know his family’s origins were in Alabama, that his grandfather had abruptly moved the family to Michigan, and then his own father had migrated to California, completely cutting himself off from the family he left behind. Kyle’s own father would talk about none of it, but he had become like his own abusive father, so he had only run away geographically and not emotionally. Kyle wanted to know more. As a psychiatrist, I thought this story captured exactly what I do with patients when I do a psychic archeological dig. The goal is not to find someone to blame, but to see patterns in the past so those patterns can be recognized in the present – and then managed differently. Matthews insights are remarkable. This is a story worth reading – best done in a single session. Where’s the murder and who was killed? You’ll have to read the book to find out, and it should be released by the publisher in the next few months.

Son of Andalusia by Thomas K. Matthews

Son of Andalusia is a powerfully written work of historical fiction, starting with the author’s forward about the difficult life his father had growing up in Alabama, an early life that contained too much pain and shame. The power of this story, told through the narrative and biting dialogue, lasts through the final page. The tale takes place in an Alabama prison starting in 1926 when a child is born to an inmate, Mariah Christianson. Matthews’ first sentence and the following lines in the book are beautiful and dramatic: “Nothing could stop the birth or the storm. Both mother and sky joined in a state of expulsion that could not be deterred by God or man. The rain and the wind came from nowhere and joined the drama unfolding in barracks one.”

Matthews explains that this child, who is the Son of Andalusia, could be raised by an inmate and is destined to be taken in by the State’s child services. But Elizabeth Thatcher, the wife of the warden, had desperately wanted a child but had ben childless, and she demanded that her husband give her the child to raise as their own. Warden Hollister Thatcher hated this idea, but he was hopelessly in love with his wife and he gave into her demand. The book explores the effect of this tension between the warden’s love for his wife and his hate for this child. As the author explained in the forward, in this saga, there is ample pain and shame to go around.

James Thatcher/Christianson is a remarkable boy and young man as the reader follows him for the first 17 years of his life. Meanwhile the warden is effectively the tsar of the prison and can get away with anything, including murder. James, a forgiving, honest, and charismatic young man, is the perfect foil for his drunken and evildoing father. When Elizabeth succumbs to an illness, that leaves the warden free to ignore his wife’s deathbed pleas to continue the boys education and nurturing.

This is the fourth book I’ve read by Matthews and it is different than the others. I’ve favorably reviewed his other books, but this is not just a murder mystery, although there is plenty of crime that occurs. There is a stark quality to this dark novel which only heightens the experience of reading it. Had I not been flush with too many other tasks to get done, this would have been a book that I read in one sitting. This novel gets my strongest recommendation.

Premium Life by Thomas K. Matthews

Premium Life is another excellent crime novel by Thomas K. Matthews, but you’ll have to wait a little while to get your hands on this one. The author forwarded this book to me in a rough and relative unedited form, so the story is still in pre-publication format. Collectively, you can eat your hearts out that I’ve gotten first dibs on this one. I’ve already read two of Matthews’ books, and this one clearly lives up to the standards that led to my highly favorable reviews.

The author’s intent in this one is to introduce a new detective character for what I hope is the beginning of a long series of stories. We’ve seen other authors create such men who are talented detectives but who must live with great flaws. Matthews has created Robert Jacobi, a police detective who cannot walk away from a case once he’s involved, no matter what. But, Jacobi has a different backstory, and his handicaps are both physical and emotional. After generations of Jacobi cops in San Francisco, this very large and scary looking Jacobi was injured on the job. He was in the midst of rescuing the teenage daughter of a city council member when the girl’s abductor pulled the trigger on his shotgun, thereby vaporizing Jacobi’s left hand. He replaced it with a hook, which certainly adds to the formidable image that Matthews invented. While Jacobi remained an able bodied guy, without a left hand, he no longer could be a cop. After retirement, a year of drowning himself in booze, and a divorce, he got sober and reluctantly accepted a job as a life insurance fraud investigator.

In his new role, Jacobi is assigned to take a cursory look at a $500,000 claim in which a man was apparently murdered, but no body was ever found. The insurance policy was new and would be voided if death was due to suicide, and the claimant, David Franklin, was in serious debt, had a family to support, and was dying of pancreatic cancer. For a crime novel, that’s enough of a teaser except to say that the characters are interesting, believable, and well-developed, and the plot lines are riveting. My only frustration with the novel was that I started it when I had too much real work to do, so I couldn’t just finish the novel in one sitting. Don’t you hate it when life intrudes on fantasy? This book gets my strong recommendation, so just be patient until it hits the shelves.

Ancient Anger by Thomas K. Matthews

This novel brings together several genres: crime novel, mysticism, historical fiction, and travelogue. Albert Poliska and Richard Halden, are anthropologists who have been independently studying as-yet undeciphered hieroglyphics from the ancient Mayans. They both hit roadblocks in their research and needed to collaborate with each other to advance their academic understanding. For them, it’s a collegial and happy union of forces. They learn that there are still a few Mayans alive who believe in and practice their old beliefs, who might be able to help them read the old symbols. However, Padre Mio, the 105-year-old keeper of the Maya secrets had a vision of the Mayan ancient forces needing to destroy the world in order to give it a rebirth. The anthropologists find Mio as he is in the process of bringing his vision to fruition. Mio needed a warrior to carry out the human sacrifices that his ancient directives demanded. The warrior he chose was none other than Carols Javeda, a Los Angeles drug dealer, a psychopath who underwent a remarkable conversion in the face of the mystical power of Mio.

I thought the first few pages were a bit choppy as the author set up the characters and plot, but I was hooked by page 30. I usually steer clear of this much mysticism, but I’m sure it is right up the alley for East Coast Don and his love for author Robert McCammon. With the mystic side of the story, it’s possible to buy into the conversion of Carlos. The author’s well-written travelogue took the reader from Los Angeles, to the Yucatan, New York, Louisiana, and Sedona. There was a Cussler-like quality to the grand adventure of the anthropologists, although all of Matthew's characters were more three-dimensional and real than Cussler’s stereotypic and predicable ones. I thought Matthews did a wonderful job of intertwining the several story lines and bringing them to a surprising conclusion. There were twists that I did not see coming until they happened in the last few pages.