Lake County by Edgar Award–winning author Lori Roy (Thomas & Mercer 2024) is a treasure of a historical mystery/thriller suspense novel. The story is well imagined, and charming, even with its violence. Exuberantly paced, it is a complicated work with a dash of noir and a righteous dose of historical Tampa, Florida. Many smaller stories combine to create an engrossing whole, and a beguiling array of characters lead the way. Roy deftly handles her characters with such insight, intimacy, and understanding that she hardly needed a plot to showcase them for the fascinating people they are. Yet and still, the plot is there and it’s an exciting plot, one that bolts about hither and yon before coming to both an inevitable and still surprising climate. Lori Roy can write! And she can tell a story!
The overriding plot is about eighteen-year-old Addie Anne Buckly, who is desperate to get out her small central Florida town. The fictional town Hockta is about forty-five minutes from Tampa. The time frame is the 1950s, where Addie Anne lives in an orange grove with her loving, multi-faceted parents and a little brother who might have a touch of OBCD or autism. While a small-town girl who dreams of escaping to a glitzy, bigger life might be a trope, this book is anything but cliched. Even if it were, which again it isn’t, the writing would lift it out of the ordinary.
Addie Anne’s boyfriend, Truitt supports his widowed mother with a newspaper route and by running his own private bolita game. Noble goal—to take care of his mother—but the gambling game of bolita is illegal. Worse than just being illegal, bolita is controlled by organized crime out of Tampa, and those mob men do not want some small town interloper competing with them. For all that Truitt mostly earns his money by illegal means, he is an innocent who only wants traditional things in his life. And one of those things he wants is Addie Anne as his wife.
Truitt is also honorable. He says of himself, “If a man’s word is useless,…so is the man. And I ain’t useless.” He also recognizes he belongs in Hockta because he fits: “Every step he took landed exactly where he knew it would. He liked that.”
So, yes, there’s this love story between the young people—Addie Ann wants to leave and make a big splash in the world; he wants to stay put. But there are so many twists to this tale of young love it’s hard to know where to start. For one thing, Addie Anne’s so-called aunt Jean is actually Marilyn Monroe. She is on the lam from her life in Hollywood. Seven Year Itch is soon to be released and Aunt Jean promises to take Addie Anne with her to Hollywood to see the movie premiere. Addie Anne figures this trip will be a good time to make her move, to never return to Lake County, and to become a big Hollywood star herself.
Addie’s mom and Jean met in a foster care facility. They formed a strong bond as children that carries over to adulthood. And in maintaining that relationship, Jean met and came to love Addie. This imagined Marilyn steals every scene’s she in within the story: “Aunt Jean sparkled, like she floated above the whole world, a single star in a dark sky.” The author’s artistic retelling of Marilyn Monroe captures some of the well-known aspects of the tortured soul prone to depression, simultaneously greedy for attention, yet wanting to hide in obscurity. Yet the imagined Marilyn /Aunt Jean, when the chips are down—and they get that way quickly—is a resourceful, capable woman, one driven to protect Addie and her little brother from a dastardly man, Siebert Rix. Though Monroe’s life did not turn out anything like it does in the book, author Roy is talented enough to convince her readers that Monroe’s life could have done so.
Siebert Rix is another survivor of the foster care system who knew Addie’s mom and Jean/Marilyn there and attached himself to Marilyn in a sycophantic and needy way. Once famous, she became his meal ticket, and he’d do anything to hang on to her. As he begins to lose control over Marilyn, he becomes more dangerous. Addie says of him: “He’s slippery and will make you doubt your better judgment. Always expect him where you least expect him. And never let him catch you alone.”
The other scene stealer in the book is Wiley Bishop, Lake County’s sheriff. He is everything the cliched small town sheriff of fiction isn’t. Wiley is slender, not good with a gun, and “most folks would probably describe him as bookish.” Despite these shortcomings, Wily “could sort things faster and better than most anyone. That meant he could solve problems with little fuss.” Wiley is devoted to keeping the peace—and to protecting Ilene, the woman he loves. Ilene just happens to also be Truitt’s mom.
Wiley’s quick mind is severely tested. When the mob starts out after Truitt, he runs to the sheriff because “Wiley was Truitt’s best chance to see home, his mama, and Addie Anne one more time.” Wiley will need all his wily ways, however, to save Truitt and Ilene. Oh, and wait, just wait, till you read the backstory and the connections between Wiley, Ilene, Truitt and what Wiley did years before to save Ilene and Truitt from the crooked, greedy policeman who was their husband and father. Lori Roy drops little hints along the way, but the final reveal on that subplot is still a stunning shocker.
When the story reaches that edge-of-your-seat climax and the Mob and Rix are both threatening Ilene and Addie Anne, the story briefly moves from small town Hockta to Tampa. More precisely to Ybor City in Tampa, the seat of the bolita empire in the 50s. Author Roy’s world-building strengths are as strong as her character-building talents, and she pulls readers right into the glamour, lushness, and dangers of that world. The author also creates a mob boss villain who is strangely likable and fair-minded.
All in all, this is a fascinating novel, full of compelling characters you will soon feel you know as well as your neighbors and friends. The plot twists that happen like lightning strikes. Above all, the cohesive flow carries readers seamlessly from one twist to the next.
Lori Roy
Florida resident and author Lori Roy’s debut novel, Bent Road, was awarded the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. She also won the 2016 Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Novel, making Lori the first woman to receive an Edgar Award for both Best First Novel and Best Novel, and only the third person to have accomplished that feat.
Educated and working in finance initially, she switched to a creative writing career after moving to the Tampa Bay area with her husband and children. She studied creative writing at Eckerd College. Since 2011, she has released six books and won numerous awards.
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