The Do-Right

Starred review from August 3, 2015
In 1973, Delpha Wade, the heroine of Sandlin’s impressive debut, is released from Texas’s Gatesville Women’s Prison (aka the Do-Right) after serving 14 years for killing a man who was raping her. Needing a job pronto, Delpha becomes secretary to fledgling private eye Tom Phelan, a former oil rigger and Vietnam vet who has just opened a detective agency in Beaumont, Tex. Phelan Investigations attracts a motley lot of cases, including one boasting a scenario worthy of the Coen brothers: a man retains Phelan because his prosthetic leg is being held hostage by his brother and sister. The romance, both torrid and touching, between Delpha and a 20-year-old college kid named Isaac adds emotional depth. Sandlin’s clipped prose style is pleasingly eccentric, and can become downright Chandleresque (“The nose had a curve a school bus’d run off of”). And while the narrative veers over the yellow lines several times, the novel wraps up with an exciting sequence that neatly knits together multiple story lines.

Starred review from August 1, 2015
A former oilman and a determined parolee form a detective team in Texas' bayou country. Delpha Wade is conscientiously following her parole officer's rules for finding a place to live and a job: act as polite as possible and ask for what she needs. This double-A advice lands her a room in the New Rosemont Hotel in exchange for looking after the owner's ancient aunt and a day job as secretary for Tom Phelan's brand-new detective agency. She does more than ask for the job: she greets the first customer, who's been drawn in by an ad in the Beaumont Enterprise, and starts acting like Tom's secretary before he's even agreed to hire her. Tom, who recently lost part of a finger on an oil rig, wants to keep the remaining nine digits and has put all his workers' comp into this new business. But Delpha's 14 years for voluntary manslaughter at the Gatesville Women's Prison, known locally as the Do-Right, taught her more than bookkeeping and typing. She learned more about what got her there in the first place for killing one of two men who were raping her-the will to survive. Now she's just what Tom needs to nudge him into taking the case of a missing boy and help with the stakeout of a cheating husband, the recovery of a missing artificial leg, and the mystery of a possibly poisoned dog. In her off hours, Delpha helps her landlady seek a mysterious Tiffany item and starts a love affair with a Princeton dropout. While the Watergate hearings blare in the background and Beaumont's colorful citizenry discusses them and every other topic large and small, Tom's admiration for Delpha grows, along with his unease about the adulterous husband and the only temporarily missing boy. But in his blossoming detective zeal to dig more deeply into the cases, he doesn't realize how much he's endangering his able sidekick. Despite plot pieces that fit together a little too snugly, Sandlin blends pathos, humor, and poetic prose in a strong debut.

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October 1, 2015
Delpha Wade needs a job, and Tom Phelan needs a secretary. She's newly free from prison after serving 14 years for the voluntary manslaughter of one of the two men who were beating, cutting, and raping her. He's a Vietnam vet who lost part of a finger on an oil rig and is just starting his own detective agency. Their connection proves fortuitous for both; Delpha's initiative wins Phelan over, while he treats her with respect. Some of their early cases are quick and quirky (a barking dog as neighborhood nuisance, a prosthetic leg held hostage in a family dispute). But others, notably finding a missing teenage boy and tracking an adulterous husband, are just the leading edges of much bigger problems. Sandlin captures time and placethe bayou country of Beaumont, Texas, in 1973beautifully as she fashions a coincidence-laden but compelling plot that darkens at its conclusion. Best of all are her characters, especially Delpha, who will have to get used to wearing sky over her head as she soaks in her freedom. An accomplished first novel and, one hopes, the beginning of a fine series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)