Gavin Stevens, the wise student of crime and folkways of Mississippi's Yoknapatawpha County, plays the major role in these six stories of violence.
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Gavin Stevens, the wise student of crime and folkways of Mississippi's Yoknapatawpha County, plays the major role in these six stories of violence.
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This book is a collection of five short stories and one novella, all involving mysteries unraveled by Gavin Stevens, the county attorney of Yoknapatawpha County. The stories follow Gavin Stevens?s life and career, from his first criminal trial right out of law school in the story Tomorrow to his late-in-life marriage in Knight?s Gambit.
With one exception, the stories in this collection are lighter fare than most of Faulkner?s works. The exception is Tomorrow which is, by far, the best story in this book and ranks with the finest of Faulkner?s fiction. Unlike most of the stories, it is not a murder mystery. Rather, Gavin Stevens tries to understand the reasons behind the lone hold-out juror?s refusal to vote to acquit a defendant. Stevens?s investigation takes him forty miles and back where he interviews the juror?s neighbors and former employer. He pieces together twenty years of the juror?s heartbreaking life story which he sums up in the phrase ?the lowly and the invincible of the earth ? to endure and endure and then endure, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.?
Hand Upon the Waters is another fine story, not because of the mystery but because of the character of the murder victim. When the story opens, Lonnie Grinnup is already dead. The reader learns about him through the reactions of the community and the recollections of Gavin Stevens. Lonnie was the last of his family and was feeble-minded. He lived in a fortified canvas tent beside a river and showed up at neighbors? houses when nights got too cold. Like the biblical parable of the widow who gave her last coin to help people poorer than herself, Lonnie used all that God gave him. He took in a deaf and mentally-disabled orphan whom no one else wanted and raised him as his son or little brother. I desperately wanted the story to end in justice and retribution.
In the title novella, Gavin Stevens tries to stay one step ahead of someone who is planning a murder. The novella involves a chess motif of a knight double-checking a queen and a castle. Figuring out the chess parallel turned out to be more of a challenge than the mystery itself.
Faulkner was not a lawyer and his courtroom passages aren?t always convincing. Nonetheless, there is much human appeal to these stories. There is some evidence that Faulkner based the character of Gavin Stevens on himself, particularly in regard to Gavin?s understated romance in Knight?s Gambit. Those who are familiar with Faulkner?s biography may recognize Estelle Faulkner in Mrs. Harriss of Knight?s Gambit.
