When a writer you respect and enjoy reading writes a review of your own work, you want to share it. W. Ames Holbrook’s The Deporter is a rare look into the life of a deportation agent, and it’s a riveting read. I was lucky enough to read a very early draft and I was hooked within the first five pages. No lie. His review of Deep Blood:
Phillip Thompson is a Great Southern Writer (4 of 5 stars)
I first got hooked on Phillip Thompson through his Wade Stuart series of straight-ahead thrillers featuring the good-old-boy cashiered ATF agent solving crimes. Deep Blood is less about solving crimes and more about solving people and the complicated relationships that connect them. And while Deep Blood is less up my personal reading alley than the Wade Stuarts, it is a decidedly more ambitious novel. The layers are richer, the morality grayer, and the timeline far longer and loopier. In making this transition, Thompson gets these new pieces right. Reading this book is a sometimes-uncomfortable dusty-lane outing of flawed characters, families and friends, and bad situations, and I enjoyed the whole trip. This goes on the bookshelf between Frank Bill, another master of the brutal rural boil, and John Grisham, who has examined racial relations in the South with a similarly sharp eye.
I am willfully not giving it five stars, because I can’t give it that same rating I give his Wade Stuart novels, but, with Deep Blood, Phillip Thompson has given us an absorbing read of the kind that provokes thought and discussion.
If you’re on the fence, check out the sample on Amazon site or download the Kindle sample – the rest of the book is at least that good.
Phillip Thompson 