Akel Dama

On the strength of eight spare, powerful Mystery/Thriller novels, J.C. Simmons has come to be regarded as a legitimate master of Southern American prose. Now, in Akel Dama, which is already a subject of a chorus of praise, Simmons' stylistic gifts are deployed to full advantage, allied to a subject of tragic consequence; the lives and fate of his closest friends. An aged ex-airliner loaded with five tons of marijuana lands on a newly built, but unpaved, section of roadbed in rural central Mississippi. Apprehended by the local sheriff, the pilot refused to shut down the idling engines. A call to Jay Leicester, Aviation Consultant, for help, the sheriff brings our protagonist into a situation that ends with his evolvement with the CIA, terrorists who plan to set off a nuclear device in the United States and the deaths of his closest friends. A work of international intrigue with connections to the Middle East, to South America, to south Florida, and rural Mississippi, this is a powerful story of determined men and women exposed to horror beyond their control. Akel Dama is above all a novel about decency, good and evil, about courage we build inside ourselves to govern our behavior and how that courage is eroded--one of the strongest novels yet from one of the South's most admired and prolific writers.