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Summary: Third In The Series: Shadow Men by Jonathon King
Review: This third novel in the series finds Max Freeman still living his self imposed exile deep in the Florida Everglades. Picking up a short time after the events depicted in "A Visible Darkness," Max is still able to live in his shack. His isolation, except for the occasional private investigator job for his friend and attorney, Billy Manchester, has allowed him to slowly come to grips with his actions extensively detailed in the first novel "The Blue Edge Of Midnight." However, the past still bothers him and he sees his pain reflected in the eyes of Billy's latest client.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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