Many of you may know Beaufort’s own T. D. Johnston as a true
modern master of the short story, his Friday Afternoon and
Other Stories the winner of the 2017 International Book
Award for Best Short Fiction. Others may know him as the founder
and host of the local Short Story America Writer’s Conference,
or as the editor of the acclaimed Short Story America
anthology series now seven volumes strong, showcasing not only
Lowcountry writing talent but writers from across the world.
Now, in delivering nothing less than a knock-out punch with his
debut novel Reciprocity, he can claim mastery of the long
form too. It is a brawny, unflinching and full-bodied book, yet
it reads quickly like the very best of Johnston’s short stories
– simmering with suspense and surprise, a heart-pounding sprint
not compromised by surplus narrative detours. Those who read a
Johnston story also know this: although there is a moral center,
it is less the fixed beacon we may want it to be than something
shimmering and fading like a distant highway mirage on a hot
summer day. Look closely, he tells us, things might
not be what they seem, with moral ambiguity lurking along
the margins of even the most careful of lives. And sometimes
much closer – from say, an otherwise unremarkable fall Thursday
in the quiet mill town of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, where this
story begins, all the way to the most powerful corridors of
power in Washington, as it ends.
This time out, he has a novel’s acreage to dig around, and
deep, along the fault lines of the most American of ideals, what
we call "justice." Wrapped in an explosive 5-star yarn – and
those who choose to do so can enjoy the book as pure high-octane
entertainment – Reciprocity also circles tightly around
the hard questions which have challenged the great minds for
centuries: can "justice" be distinguished from "rightness?" Does
it exist as an exclusive property of the legal institutional
order? Or is it up for grabs by the individual as well?
When Dominic Cianciolo is murdered in Milwaukee, the third
Mafia boss slain in three different cities, FBI organized-crime
agents Jack Hanratty and Neville Parker set out to investigate
what the media call "The Godfather Assassinations." As the
murders continue, the leadership of the mob – La Cosa Nostra’s
ruling "Commission" – imports the legendary, and ruthless,
Sicilian hit man Fingo to track down the killers across America.
When Fingo kidnaps Hanratty’s pregnant wife Rachel, the agent
faces a soul-shattering ransom demand: to save his wife’s life,
the two FBI agents must deliver the Godfather Assassins to Fingo,
rather than arrest them. In this race against time, the agents
cope with enemies and obstacles and twists popping up with "paper-cutting
speed," as the talented author Mathieu Cailler describes the
novel’s grip on the reader.
While few readers will want this dizzying roller-coaster of a
ride to end, sadly it must. But Johnston drives us to a
conclusion worthy of the very best writers of the modern
suspense thriller: Nelson DeMille in his Detective John Corey
novels, especially Night Fall; Robert Ludlum in just
about everything he wrote; and Gillian Flynn in Gone Girl,
which still blows me away. Like each of these authors – and
especially Robert Ludlum in his Jason Bourne series – Johnston
challenges the reader to see a world where the shadows seemingly
play at will, and what is whispered and unseen along the margins
of power is the stuff that really counts.
Reciprocity is not for the faint-hearted, and when
Johnston gets the movie deal – and he must – you can be
assured it will not sport a happy-talk PG. But for those
who like their whiskey strong and top-shelf, and who aren’t
afraid of tackling the hard questions of choice in the shadows
of a sinful and often broken world, this is a must-read book.
2017 International Book Award For
Friday Afternoon and Other Stories