Southern Discomfort: Novels of Crime from Today's South | Livestream Zoom

Course Description:

Southern literature has a distinctive flavor, often exploring themes of race, class, morality, and tradition through a characteristic regional voice. Crime fiction emanating from the South is no exception. In this probing discussion class, we will read and parse two award-winning novels that blend classic elements of crime fiction with the eloquence of the best literary fiction from the South. Tom Franklin's "Crooked Letter"—Edgar Award nominee and winner of the "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize—finds two boyhood friends brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town. In "Holy City" by Henry Wise, winner of the 2025 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, a Richmond man returns to the rural Virginia of his youth and takes a job as a deputy sheriff in a once-familiar landscape now given way to crime and defeat. As we explore the Southern particulars of these works, we will consider their place in the wider continuum of crime fiction as well.