In this tragicomic novel, a troubled cop with a reputation for bumbling wrestles with the choice of arresting a murderer he pities or pinning the crime on a tyrant he despises. An extravagant blend of comic and tragic, Benedict is an isolated bayou town with a fascination for bloodshed. A brutal, ritualistic murder is discovered in the nearby woods, and the bizarre crime is all the more sensational because of the involvement of voodoo practices. Several residents of Benedict have ample motive and knowledge to have performed the ceremonial killing, but the evidence is contradictory and the police investigation goes nowhere until a bumbling cop stumbles upon the truth. Suddenly, justice rests in the hands of an unlikely paira strangely quiet child with a despicable secret and a child-like man with a haunted past. The two have histories interwoven with that of the murder victim, but in the peculiar town of Benedict, the past is always a living presence, and violence has a habit of e