Lightwood

After serving seven years in prison for robbery, Judah Cannon, the protagonist of this downbeat crime novel from Post (A Tree Born Crooked), returns home to rural Silas, Fla., where he reconnects with Ramey Barrow, once his childhood best friend, who soon becomes his lover. Judah wants to go straight and make a new life for himself and Ramey, but his father, Sherwood, and other members of his notorious family, who earlier pressured him into crime, have other ideas. They force Judah into helping them hold up the Scorpions, a biker gang, for $150,000 of ill-gotten loot that the bikers scored by drug-dealing for Bible-banging Sister Tulah Atwell. Betrayals and revenge ensue amid passages of revivalist harangue from Sister Tulah and bloated introspection from her nephew and sidekick, reptile-loving Fulton. Over-the-top brutality, unmitigated religious hypocrisy, and superficial characterizations, especially of the loathsome Scorpions, make this a simplistically grungy read. (Jan.)