The Cutting Season
By Attica Locke 
(Harper)

The intertwining of the past and the present is an ongoing theme of mystery fiction. So many of our actions have a foundation in the past, whether it be a personal history or that of a country.

Attica Locke illustrates the changing face of racism and classism in her superb second novel. The inventive plot of “The Cutting Season” is matched by complex, believable characters, some of whom are motivated by the need to have full lives while others have succumbed to greed. Everywhere they turn, their past and present intersect.

The Louisiana antebellum plantation Belle Vie has thrived for more than a century because of two families. Caren Gray’s great-great grandfather was a slave who, along with his family and fellow slaves, worked the land and took care of the plantation’s “big house.” Now Caren manages Belle Vie where the largely African-American staff caters the many weddings and parties on the premises and performs full-dress reenactments about plantation life for tourists and school children. On the other side are the Clancys, whose distant relative obtained Belle Vie shortly after the Civil War. Now Raymond Clancy owns the plantation, which receives a stipend as a historical landmark from the state. At the same time, this artificial look at the past may be impinged by a corporation that has been buying up the surrounding land and hiring illegal laborers instead of local workers.

Caren is pulled into a murder investigation when the body of a female migrant worker, employed by the adjacent sugar cane farm, is found in one of Belle Vie’s old slave cabins.

Locke gracefully chronicles the history of the South, the legacy of slavery and shift in the cultural paradigm. Caren continues her family’s connection with Belle Vie, and, by extension, her presence there makes her feel closer to her late mother. The irony that Caren believes Belle Vie is a safe place to raise her 9-year-old daughter is not lost on this African American woman where her ancestors were slaves. Nor can Caren ignore the fact that she has to force herself to come near the restored slave quarters, or forget what the presence of these buildings represent.

As she did in her first novel, the award-winning “Black Water Rising,” Locke deftly juggles several plot threads for an insightful look at society. (MCT)