The Cutting Season: A Novel

Attica Locke

Sep 2012 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

From Attica Locke, a writer and producer of FOX’s Empire:

“The Cutting Season is a rare murder mystery with heft, a historical novel that thrills, a page-turner that makes you think. Attica Locke is a dazzling writer with a conscience.”—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times bestselling author of Wench

After her breathtaking debut novel, Black Water Rising, won acclaim from major publications and respected crime fiction masters like James Ellroy and George Pelecanos, Locke returns with The Cutting Season, a second novel easily as gripping and powerful as her first—a heart-pounding thriller that interweaves two murder mysteries, one on Belle Vie, a historic landmark in the middle of Lousiana’s Sugar Cane country, and one involving a slave gone missing more than one hundred years earlier. Black Water Rising was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an Edgar® Award, and an NAACP Image Award, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize in the U.K.

Ratings and reviews

Bought this on a whim, knowing nothing about it but the brief description. Honestly, one of the better books I've read in a long time. It's very well-written in all aspects: vividly descriptive but not to the point of boredom, easy flowing language and style, and an ever-suspenseful plot that keeps you on edge front to back (in the very best of ways). It incorporates quite a bit of culture, personal identity and emotional growth but not in a sappy or preachy way. Thoroughly enjoyed. 5 stars for sure.

A beautiful and historic tale of a plantation and the lives of all who passed through it. Very well written, not a word out of place and gripping to the very end.

Its starts slow, building up to a great and interesting middle, but the ending is not very good.

About the author

Attica Locke is the author of Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the UK’s Orange Prize, and also the national bestseller The Cutting Season, which won an Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. She is a producer and writer on the Fox drama Empire. She is on the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, where she lives.