A review by brackenmacleod
Lamentation by Joe Clifford

4.0

While there is no shortage of rural noir out there, there simply isn't enough of it set in New England. Joe Clifford captures both the claustrophobic everyone-knows-everyone sense of the Northeast while also nailing the contradictory Yankee value of staying out of other people's business. Top it off with a main character who is an excellently realized portrait of a man who is on the brink of giving up, but still cares just enough to get himself in too deep. Lamentation is an excellent entry in what I'd like to see become a growing crime sub-genre, New England Noir.