The Occidental Book of the Dead

George Washington Jonson has been in the Atlanta police force for a decade, patrolling the streets he grew up on and building relationships within the force – especially with Tucker, the veteran officer and self-described ‘redneck’ who taught him the ropes.

Now it’s 2005, and Jonson is training hot-headed rookies. One night on patrol, a split-second confrontation with a white teenager turns violent, and his trainee, Utner, shoots the boy dead. As the furore mounts, it threatens to expose the nest of lies that seethes beneath the whole city.

So far, so Hollywood. But then a dizzying twist in the novel’s structure upends the story, opening onto an even darker and more provocative tale of racism, power and corruption – an audacious, darkly funny literary crime novel and a portrait of a nation divided.