Book tip

Written in Blood

Layton Green

Green is a versatile and accomplished career novelist who gleefully and skillfully hopscotches from genre to genre — which is not the sneery complaint you'd get from someone who only reads "Gravity's Rainbow" (the latter of which I gave up when I realized "Gravity" wasn't a leprechaun and there was no pot of gold forthcoming). In "Written in Blood," Green introduces melancholy, anxiety-ridden homicide cop Preach Everson. He's just returned from Atlanta to the charming if hipsterish North Carolina hometown of his youth — based, I'm guessing, on Asheville. Preach runs into a series of grisly murders staged like scenes from great novels and forges an alliance — possibly leading to romance? — with a bookstore clerk. Sounds by-the-number, but Green creates wonderful characters with plenty of bubbling and sinister counter-plots to keep the reader mesmerized, happy and guessing. Great stuff.