SBT12: Review: Lowcountry Punch by Boo Walker

Southern Book Tour 2012

 

After the worst Christmas Eve of his life, DEA Agent T.A. Reddick leaves Miami for the magical city of Charleston, South Carolina, hoping a return to his roots will heal a broken heart and the guilt of killing a friend. The sleepy and sultry town of Charleston is filled with echoes of the Old South: genteel playboys, society debutantes, and quiet cobblestone streets. But as Reddick will soon discover, there's danger lurking under her charming veneer. When a movie star's death shines a national spotlight on Charleston's underground cocaine trade, he must go undercover to find the main supplier and shut him down. As a hurricane bears down on the port city and the DEA gets ready to spring its trap, Reddick must contend with more than he ever could have imagined.

Brash and bold, TA Reddick is a hero you won’t soon forget. Lowcountry Punch is an action-packed novel that will have you on your knees begging for more.

eBook
Published (first published October 28th 2011)
ASIN: B0060ZNSOE
url: http://boowalker.com/books
(Goodreads)

Review:

I don’t know if you’ve caught on by now.  I mean I have devoted the entire month of April to the literary South.  I am proud of my Southern roots and proud to be a South Carolinian.  Y’all, Lowcountry Punch is one of the reasons I am so proud.

Debut author Boo Walker (isn’t that  a great name?) leaps onto the scene with his hard-hitting, fast-paced, in-your-face Lowcountry Punch.  This ain’t your mama’s thriller. 

I liked the no-nonsense writing style, as if we’re reading T.A.’s police report or testimony on his life.  There’s a transparency about it that is unique among recent reads.  There’s a lot of foreshadowing that draws you in, makes you want to read the next page, paragraph, sentence, word, just to know what’s next.

Despite being the perfect blend of macho chauvinism and romantic leading man, T.A. is broken.  Even though he likes wine, jazz, cooking, he’s haunted and closed off.  It’s an odd and interesting combination of qualities that I haven’t seen in a lead character, and it kinda made me like T.A. a little bit more with each sentence.  Though he seemed slightly unrealistic in just how perfectly all his qualities meshed together.  I felt like I needed to like him, but had a hard time doing it.  In the end, T.A. is a likeable character and I hope that Lowcoutnry Punch isn’t the last we see of his character.

The book was full of laugh out loud moments, clever cuts, sarcasm, and wit.  Here’s on of my favorite lines:

We drank a Dundee Hills Pinot and dined on Mahi Mahi with salsa, scallops, asparagus, and my famous mashed potatoes. The way to a woman’s heart is mashed potatoes, I’d learned. Put ‘em on a tray with eggs and some fresh-squeezed orange juice and take it to them in bed one morning. See what happens. (pg 55)

I enjoyed reading, not just for the story, but for the humor Walker included.  T.A. never took himself too seriously.  And it kept things fun.

There was so much going on, it was hard to put the book down!  From beginning to end there was so much action!  I had to make the decision last night, whether to sacrifice sleep to finish, or wait until today to finish.  I sacrificed sleep.  It’s was the right choice.  There is very little break in the action, especially toward the end of the book.  I became obsessed with finishing.  I become obsessed with the book!

The settings are familiar to me, being from SC.  Fort Sumter, Charleston, Atlanta (even though that’s in GA).  The became vivid characters in the book.  The climate contributed to many of the scenes in ways that few climates can.  The summer air hangs thick with humidity here, and I could feel it as Walker wrote it.

Boo Walker is on my favorite authors list.  Lowcountry Punch is on my Best Reads of 2012 list.  Y’all, seriously, get your hands on this book…NOW!

5 Trees: This is a must read!

Get to reading,

About the author:

Boo Walker spent his College of Charleston years and a few after in Nashville as a banjoist and songwriter for the avant-garde punchgrass band, The Biscuit Boys. Some hand problems knocked him out of the game, and he stumbled into a position with Automated Trading Desk, a short term equity trading firm based out of Mt. Pleasant, SC. To feed his ravenous muse, he began writing his first novel, Lowcountry Punch. Around that time, what started as a passion in wine became a neurosis.
 
After six years of the Wall Street thing, Boo decided it was time to end his sedentary, computer-driven lifestyle. He grew out a handlebar mustache and moved clear across the country into a double-wide trailer situated on 5 acres of Malbec vines just down the road from Hedges Family Estate on Red Mountain in Washington State. The Hedges family took him in and taught him the art of farming and the old world philosophies of wine. He now travels North America peddling the family's juice, and chances are you can find him in an airport somewhere working on his next novel.
 
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