Shadow Men: A Max Freeman Novel [Large Print] (Hardcover)

Mark Mayes is a college student in Atlanta, Georgia and is considering going into the seminary. But, before he can do that, he needs answers about a painful family legacy. Mayes has found a number of letters, yellowed and brittle with age, in his grandmother's attic. The letters seem to indicate that his great-grandfather and two uncles who died in 1923 while working for a private company trying to build the first road across the Everglades may have been murdered. That road became the Tamiami Trail and like his long dead relatives something rarely spoken of in his family. If they were murdered, possibly on behalf of the company that was the law to itself in the merciless swamp, Mayes wants to take legal action against the company assuming it or some form of it still exists.

The great building projects have always taken many lives. The Tamiami Trail is no different in that it too is built upon the bones of the dead. But, as Max reads the copies of the letters again in lantern light in his shack, he too is struck by the power of the letters and the message of fear and desperation they convey. Something sinister was at work then and is still at work today resulting on an attempt on Max's life and other efforts to warn him off even before he starts work. It soon becomes clear that there are some that don't care to have the past uncovered and will stop at nothing to keep it that way.

While little is added to the development of the Max Freeman character, the author manages to skillfully build on the characters of others by way of two engaging secondary storylines involving characters familiar to readers of this series. Written with a prose style that reminds the reader of James Lee Burke where a few words create a powerful mental image, Jonathon King consistently brings the beauty of the Everglades alive as well as the despair and evil that lurks in the hearts of some. This author is one of the very few that can pull the reader in so deeply into his world while he delivers a complex and twisting tale of murder and deceit. His books are escapist literature and instead are far from it as they leave mental images not soon forgotten.

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Billy, Max's attorney and best friend, has a client that found a bunch of letters from one of his ancestors who worked along with his two sons in the construction of the Tamiami Trail. The letters describe the hardships they had to go through, as well as a series of "accidents" suffered by some of the workers who decided they had enough and tried to leave the project and return to civilization. At one point the letters stopped and nobody ever heard from the three men again. Billy requests Max's help in investigating what happened, and this make some people very nervous.

At the same time, the DA is trying to evict Max from his shack in the Everglades and someone is going through the trouble of threatening Max and attacking his dwelling. Sherry Richards, the police officer Max "discovered" and fell for in the previous novel is still around and the relationship is still on track. However, a fellow female officer of Richard's is the victim of abuse by her lover, who is also a cop, and Max and Richards end up involved in the issue. These events are the ones that get Max to recall the events from the past that relate to his father.

Jonathon King is moving forward through this series with a sure step and without losing intensity. In my particular case, I enjoy the fact that the novel is set up in the Miami / Ft. Lauderdale area, since I lived there for a couple of years and can "see" the places the author describes very clearly. Also, I have driven through the Tamiami Trail several times, and it is interesting to know at least part of the history on its construction, even though some of the facts presented by King are fiction.

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