East Jesus South — T.R. Pearson

Meet Buck Aldred, a former big-city homicide detective who has opted for a quieter and simpler life in the Virginia Blue Ridge. That was the plan anyway. When Buck noses around in an old missing persons case by way of returning a favor to a neighbor, he unearths more corruption and criminal mischief than he ever suspected the rugged uplands could hide. A departure for T.R. Pearson, East Jesus South is not a comedy. It's a creepy, unsettling look at the rot beneath the honeyed, Aw Shucks veneer of the American South.