October 1968 in New Long Lincoln, East Texas, a father turns to his 14-year-old son, Daniel, and says, "Sometimes you have to do what's best for all involved," before driving their Buick off a bridge into the icy waters below. The words turn out to be prophetic in the exceptional murder mystery Moon Lake by Joe R. Lansdale (More Better Deals; The Thicket).
Jeb Candles and his daughter rescue Daniel from the sinking car in Moon Lake and offer to take the boy in. But Daniel is white, the Candleses are Black and that living arrangement creates conflict with the city council, forcing Sheriff Dudley to relocate Daniel a two-hour drive away to live with an aunt he forgot he had.
Ten years later, when Moon Lake dries up, authorities discover two bodies in a car--one in the driver's seat and the other in the trunk. The police request that Daniel return to Moon Lake to identify the bodies. They suspect Daniel's father killed his mother and stuffed her in the trunk before driving off the bridge, but the trunk corpse doesn't match his mom's description. Then several more cars with dead bodies in their trunks are pulled from the lake, and Moon Lake becomes a bigger murder mystery than the town can keep secret.
Lansdale's descriptions ("He wore a thin smile like he had farted and thought it was funny") mesh nicely with the throat-grabbing plot, but it's Lansdale's mindful mixing of the bright and the brutal that keeps fans clamoring for more. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer