A story about a decent man. The author wants you to know that he's a decent man, notwithstanding that he's the main suspect in a murder. He's a doctor who risks his own safety and reputation to help indigent Mexican immigrants. A kindly liberal soul, supportive to the outcast and the pariah. Husband to a Mexican refugee and adoptive father to her mentally disabled son. But trouble does not spare decent men. Everyone is vulnerable. And the investigation of the murder will uncover many old secrets, old infidelities, old betrayals. Everyone is fallible.

It's one of those books that takes you by the hand and leads you wherever it wants you to go, and you trust it completely. Told in the first person, as the doctor recounts the tale to a journalist, decades later, it's sometimes a slow who-dunnit and sometimes a pacey character study. One is quickly caught up in his emotional world as criminals start to close in around him and his family, and in a state that still has the death penalty, he faces the possibility that the fingers pointing at him will succeed in pinning the blame.

I don't know Texas, or anywhere remotely close to it, but reading the book I had a strong sense of place, landscape, culture. The characterisation is superb. The book has a large cast, but each character is vividly distinct and compelling. I wanted a different outcome, but when the outcome came, it was deeply satisfying.