Bananaville

Rudolph Reed was wasted in Bananaville--murdered on the tiny Florida town's lush beach during his early morning jog. None of his fellow town council members, however, seem inclined to find the culprit in this stylized, atmospheric tale of power and corruption. It's not until local newspaper publisher, seersucker-clad Peter Fudd, lures 40-year-old investigative journalist Martin Grant from Iowa that the town's dark side comes to light. Martin, a soggily earnest recovering alcoholic with a sputtering marriage, hopes Reed's death is the big story he's been seeking to jump start his career. He discovers there are plenty of reasons some in town might want to see Reed dead--and nearly all are tied to the fact that Bananaville is ripe for development, which the charismatic Reed and his followers, the ""Reed-jects,"" vehemently oppose. Driven as much by his growing admiration for Reed as by his own ambitions, Martin risks everything to unravel the tangled threads of the crime--and knows he's come close when the house he's renting explodes. The story's outcome is predictable and Lilliefors has some annoying tics--such as introducing and discarding characters to advance his plot and describing everyone's clothes as if shirts were the windows to the soul. But the sum seems to be greater than its parts in this refreshing debut that has the moral compass and characters of a 1940s flick. (Oct.)