The Cutting Season

A Novel

By: Attica Locke

Narrated by: Quincy Tyler Bernstine

“The Cutting Season is a rare murder mystery with heft, a historical novel that thrills, a page-turner that makes you think. Attica Locke is a dazzling writer with a conscience.”
—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times bestselling author of Wench

Attica Locke’s breathtaking debut novel, Black Water Rising, won resounding acclaim from major publications coast-to-coast and from respected crime fiction masters like James Ellroy and George Pelecanos, earning this exciting new author comparisons to Dennis Lehane, Scott Turow, and Walter Mosley. Locke returns with The Cutting Season, a second novel easily as gripping and powerful as her first—a heart-pounding thriller that interweaves two murder mysteries, one on Belle Vie, a historic landmark in the middle of Lousiana’s Sugar Cane country, and one involving a slave gone missing more than one hundred years earlier. Black Water Rising was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an Edgar® Award, and an NAACP Image Award, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize in the U.K. The Cutting Season has been selected by bestselling author Dennis Lehane as the first pick for his new line of books at HarperCollins.

Phenomenal

Complex plot and characters. Part mystery part social commentary on race relations in the American south. Tight story (until the very end when it stretches the imagination). Excellent narrator.

LOVED THE STORY, LOVED THE NARRATOR

Enjoyed the Gothic feeling of the plantation and the spooky feeling I got in the pit of my stomach every time Caren had to race across the plantation in the dark. I thought Quincy Tyler Bernstine did a good job with the narration, especially Caren's internal dialogue. Might have wished for a better outcome for Caren and Eric, but then it would be a romance novel. It's well worth a listening.

I ALMOST bought this book several times...

I wish I hadn't hesitated. This story was a wonderful blend of mystery, love lost, culture and history. Truly a delight. The authors detailed descriptions really brought southern Louisiana to life. I also liked the narrator.

Another great book by author

Entertaining from the beginning. If you like this author the book will not disappoint. awesome

Lackluster second novel

After enjoying Attica Locke's first novel, Black Water Rising, I expected another fast-paced, tense, and action-filled story. The Cutting Season was a disappointment in all three areas. Aside from the finding of a body in a shallow grave, everything else in the first 3/4 of the book seemed like background or side-story. Very little happened to advance the plot.

As I started to listen, I groaned aloud at the narrator's voice. She sounded like a cranky child. But within a few minutes I got used to her, and appreciated her clear diction and the appropriate emotional content of her reading. Quincy Tyler Bernstine's narration actually improved the story.

A romantic scene seemed to be added for no purpose at all; it gave little insight into the characters beyond making me like them a bit less for their questionable encounter. As with much of the text, it had nothing to do with the plot.

I have already recommended Black Water Rising to many friends, and will continue to do so, but I've also started adding "but avoid Locke's second book."