Blue Hole

G. D. Gearino, Blue Hole (Simon and Schuster, 1999)Gearino returns with his third novel about small-town life in Georgia, this one a mystery about a missing teenager, a Utopian commune, and a well-meaning high school boy who tries to connect the dots.Charley Selkirk finds himself kicked out of high school and girlfriendless after defending a black football player with his own brand of off-the-cuff justice. Faced with a lifetime of nothing to do ahead of him, he hires on as temporary help for town photographer (and Gearino regular character) Tallassee Tynan. The two of them, while visiting one of Tynan's subjects, are told the woman's grandson is missing. Tynan wants to drop it; Selkirk (probably still staring that lifetime of nothing to do in the face) wants to investigate. He wins; complications ensue.The plot gets stretched pretty thin in places in this book (having not read Gearino's previous work, I'm not sure exactly how thin it is; some things that look like major coincidences here may have popped up in his two previous novels), but the plot should be taking second seat to the characters and descriptions in this one. Blue Hole is peopled with the kinds of characters one always hopes to find in real life, but never quite does-- they look like stereotypes on the surface, but there's a level beneath that makes them anything but. The good-ole-boy sherriff has a collection of oddities he's come across during his time in office; the paranoid vet may have very good reasons to be paranoid. Etc. When the book slips in place A, it's always made up for in place B. That leads to inconsistency, but doesn't make the book any less worth reading. *** 1/2

This is his latest novel, peopled with some of the characters from What the Deaf Mute Heard. Story of Charley Selkirk who gets kicked out of school for dealing with prejudice in his own way. He meets up with and works for Tallasee Tynan, a photographer who needs a hand with organizing her studio. They stumble onto a missing person. In the process of unraveling the mystery, the reader gets to know both characters pretty well and is privy to some of Gearino's dry and witty insights into life in the South and other matters. Don't read it too fast to find out how things are resolved because you will miss the humor. Well worth reading. Can't wait to see who he writes about next.