Thank you Atlantic Crime, #partner, for the finished copy of Holy City in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: June 10, 2025
Summary:
No one innocent. No one free. Nothing sacred.
Holy City is the captivating debut from Henry Wise about a deputy sheriff who must work alongside an unpredictable private detective after he finds himself on the outs from his sheriff’s department over his unwillingness to look the other way when an innocent man is arrested for murder.
After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his mother, Will Seems returns home from Richmond to rural Southern Virginia, taking a job as deputy sheriff in a landscape given way to crime and defeat. Impoverished and abandoned, this remote land of tobacco plantations, razed forests, and boarded-up homes seems stuck in the past in a state that is trying to forget its complex history and move on.
Will’s efforts to go about his life are wrecked when a mysterious, brutal homicide claims the life of an old friend, Tom Janders, forcing Will to face the true impetus for his not to honor his mother’s memory, but to pay a debt to a Black friend who, in an act of selfless courage years ago, protected Will and suffered permanent disfigurement for it.
Meanwhile, a man Will knows to be innocent is arrested for Tom’s murder, and despite Will’s pleas, his boss seems all too content to wrap up the case and move on. Will must weigh his personal guilt against his public duty when the local Black community hires Bennico Watts, an unpredictable private detective from Richmond, to help him find the real killer. It would seem an ideal pairing—she has experience, along with plenty of sand, and Will is privy to the details of the case—but it doesn’t take long for either to realize they much prefer to operate alone.
Bennico and Will clash as they each defend their untraditional ways on a wild ride that wends deep into the Snakefoot, an underworld wilderness that for hundreds of years has functioned as a hideout for outcasts—the forgotten and neglected and abused—leaving us enmeshed in the tangled history of a region and its people that leaves no one innocent, no one free, nothing sacred.
My thoughts:
I am so glad I was given the push to pick this one up…I absolutely loved it. Plus, with a blurb by one of my favorite authors, S.A. Cosby on the cover, I should have known I would love it!
This is literary crime fiction at its best. From the beautiful prose to the heavy, dark topics it covers, this book had a hold on me much like S.A. Cosby’s books do. I loved the grittiness of it as much as I loved how layered it was. These characters we meet, especially our main protagonist, Deputy Will Seems, have so many secrets they are holding on to…secrets that weigh on them.
I loved that Wise takes his time unraveling the plot, never in a rush to get anywhere, but always letting us see that no one is ever all good or all bad. This is one story that will stay with me for some time and definitely be one I pick up again and again. I have a feeling each read will bring something new to light.
I loved this debut novel from Henry Wise and cannot wait to see what he writes next!!
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