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I have difficulty rating this book for a number of reasons. I read the book in response to attending a discussion of the book led by the two authors themselves in, of all places, Quiberon, France. The authors are, as the French say, "très sympathique." Moreover, they are originally translators who did all translations in tandem and now have taken the unusual step to become fiction authors who continue to write side-by-side. On one level, this is a detective novel, using many of the conventions of that genre. On the other hand, it is a picture, quite convincing I think, of Alabama in 1963, a pivotal year in American history, particularly with regards to issues of race. Now, my judgment of books I read in French is influenced to some degree by how easy I find the reading and how successfully the story pulls me forward, thus improving my mediocre French by insuring that decent number of French pages--say thirty to sixty--pass in front of my eyes each day. In this respect, "Alabama 1963" was a complete success. Still, one can feel a little guilty for ranking this work so high. For one thing, it violates my notion of what is proper to a detective story by including a kind of deus ex machine to help solve the crime. Well, not quite a "deus" but an eccentric white woman who has strange dreams that lead to the murderer and the rescue of one of his potential victims. Moreover, the novel does recycle character types, both black and white, we have seen before. But perhaps we have seen so many stereotypes from works of this type that almost any character can be made to fit one or another. Oh well, I liked the novel, dammit . . . and it helped my French by adding some fairly informal vocabulary you just don't find in Flaubert or even Jules Verne whom I am reading just now.














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