- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Forge Books; First Edition edition (Feb 23 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0765301652
- ISBN-13: 978-0765301659
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.7 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 499 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
In his third novel, following Cutdown and Causes of Action, Miller creates a memorable and original portrait of a rural southern sheriff. A native of Hopewell, Va., Sheriff A.G. (Augustus George) Farrell has left his hometown only to attend college at Charlottesville. Highly educated "in a county where fewer than 25 percent of the population could boast of so much as a high school diploma" and available (a congenital defect a missing kidney keeps him out of WWII), Farrell gets appointed sheriff in 1942. To his surprise, the 34-year-old bachelor finds himself still sheriff 12 years later. An anonymous phone tip leads to the discovery of a murder victim, a young soldier from a nearby military base, and thrusts Farrell into a mystery as hot and dangerous as the sweltering Virginia heat. The cast of characters occupy traditional roles, from the victim's sensuous widow, to the local pharmacist, to Farrell's hopeful girlfriend. But Miller has imbued them with depth and weight, and while his hero nimbly sidesteps some of the pitfalls hindering the investigation, the reader watches him move toward a greater disaster with the inexorability of a Greek tragedy. The author draws the 1950s perfectly, from physical details such as the rarity of air conditioning and the new fad of television to the social realities of women's status and the racial and social stratification of Virginia society. The resolution and denouement may be the least satisfying elements of this rich mystery, at least for those who crave neat endings, but this is a finely crafted, superbly written novel that deserves wide readership. (Feb. 15)won the California Book Award for First Fiction.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
When an army officer is found dead in the small Virginia town of Hopewell, the murder sets in motion a sequence of events that will forever change the life of Sheriff A.G. Farrell. A.G.'s investigation is hampered by a strangely hostile provost marshal from the murdered captain's base and by the captain's enigmatic widow, Theresa Fitzgerald, whose beauty, like the terrible heatwave that hangs heavily in the Southern summer air, leaves soldiers and civilians alike gasping for relief. When a thin thread ties together the otherwise unsuspicious deaths of four young women over the past four years, A.G. struggles to retain his sense of objectivity and propriety as sexual tension grows between Theresa and himself, while facing down the provost marshal whose rush to judgement will get the wrong man hung for murder.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The cardboard fans fluttering restlessly throughout the chapel of the Calvary Baptist Church of Hopewell, Virginia, reminded A. G. Farrell of nothing if not the tattered souls of his neighbors struggling to slip their earthly bonds. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
The cardboard fans fluttering restlessly throughout the chapel of the Calvary Baptist Church of Hopewell, Virginia, reminded A. G. Farrell of nothing if not the tattered souls of his neighbors struggling to slip their earthly bonds. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended,
By A Customer
This review is from: Tropical Heat (Hardcover)
I found this book accidentally, what a nice surprise! It's got a little bit of everything, one of the best books I've read in a long time.
4.0 out of 5 stars
complex and introspective work,
By
This review is from: Tropical Heat (Hardcover)
Hopewell, Virginia is a sleepy little town where nothing ugly ever happens and race relations seem to be fine. Sheriff A.G. Farrell had planned to stay in the big city but when war broke out, he was asked to serve a term for Sheriff. Twelve years later, he is still the sheriff although he doesn't wear a uniform or carry a badge. He has gotten into a routine and lives up to the town's expectations of him.A.G.'s complacency is about to be shattered by the scandalous murder of Captain Fitzgerald, a soldier stationed at Ft. Lee. With just a little digging, the sheriff learns that Private Carbone's wife was having an affair with the captain and that the enlisted man possessed the murder weapon. Carbone is arrested for the homicide. A.G. thinks the case is wrapped up a little too neatly but before he can dig any deeper, he meets the captain's wife, a beautiful and seductive woman and begins an affair with her. The unprofessional behavior clouds his judgment so that all his future actions involving the captain's death are skewed by his desire for the lovely widow. John A. Miller has written a complex and introspective work that reflects the social morals and values of the fifties. The key characters in TROPICAL HEAT are people that are unforgettable. Though one sub-plot add nothing to the main story line, overall the mystery is designed for the reader to see the truth right away, but cleverly executed to keep the audience's attention till the end. Harriet Klausner
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews) 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
TROPICAL HEAT BY JOHN A. MILLER,
By Ann W. Abernathy - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Tropical Heat (Paperback)
I can only assume that those professional reviewers who reviewed this novel were not in any way familiar with the setting that Miller uses for this novel. The Hopewell of the WWII years and the post-war period in no way resembles the one depicted in this book. As someone who grew up in the Petersburg-Hopewell-Fort Lee (then Camp Lee) environs, I am fully aware that Hopewell, far from being a sleepy little rural town, was a thriving manufacturing center with a fully staffed
police department, a good educational system, and law enforcement was not in the hands of a one-man sheriff's department. I picked this up to read because of the local setting and the further I read, the further my jaw dropped. I can only guess that Mr. Miller picked up on the town name and its proximity to a large military base and wrote his book without doing any actual research. If one chooses to use an actual locale as the setting for a work of fiction, one is then obligated to maintain the integrity of the setting even though the people and plot are fictional. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Tropical Heat (Hardcover)
I found this book accidentally, what a nice surprise! It's got a little bit of everything, one of the best books I've read in a long time.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
complex and introspective work,
By Harriet Klausner - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Tropical Heat (Hardcover)
Hopewell, Virginia is a sleepy little town where nothing ugly ever happens and race relations seem to be fine. Sheriff A.G. Farrell had planned to stay in the big city but when war broke out, he was asked to serve a term for Sheriff. Twelve years later, he is still the sheriff although he doesn't wear a uniform or carry a badge. He has gotten into a routine and lives up to the town's expectations of him.A.G.'s complacency is about to be shattered by the scandalous murder of Captain Fitzgerald, a soldier stationed at Ft. Lee. With just a little digging, the sheriff learns that Private Carbone's wife was having an affair with the captain and that the enlisted man possessed the murder weapon. Carbone is arrested for the homicide. A.G. thinks the case is wrapped up a little too neatly but before he can dig any deeper, he meets the captain's wife, a beautiful and seductive woman and begins an affair with her. The unprofessional behavior clouds his judgment so that all his future actions involving the captain's death are skewed by his desire for the lovely widow. John A. Miller has written a complex and introspective work that reflects the social morals and values of the fifties. The key characters in TROPICAL HEAT are people that are unforgettable. Though one sub-plot add nothing to the main story line, overall the mystery is designed for the reader to see the truth right away, but cleverly executed to keep the audience's attention till the end. Harriet Klausner |
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