Queer Southern Suspense: ‘The Hunt’ Unveils Rural Secrets
Kelly J. Ford has earned wide critical acclaim for her gritty novels of queer southern suspense ever since the release of her award-winning debut, Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of the Year, followed by the Real Bad Things, which crime fiction critic Jon Land called “an outstanding literary crime thriller in all respects.” Ford, Southern by several generations and grew up in the foothills of the Ozarks, says, “Arkansas is in my roots and made me who I am.”
Ford returns to the rural South for the setting of her third novel, THE HUNT, which Thomas & Mercer will publish on July 25, 2023. Partly set at a plastics factory similar to where she worked as a press operator in college, the story centers on blue-collar workers in a small, insular town. It was important to her to highlight family influences and circumstances that can potentially lead people to become accidental criminals or to be perceived as such due to bias within the criminal justice system.
In the novel, a serial murderer nicknamed “The Hunter” has used the Presley, Arkansas Annual Hunt for the Golden Egg to find prey for the last seventeen years. Or at least, that’s what many people believe. Others, like the town’s devoted “Eggheads,” relish the tradition and think the deaths are just unfortunate accidents that happen to coincide with the annual tradition. For Nell Holcomb, the Hunt dredges up the trauma of her brother’s death, long believed to be the result of the Hunter’s first kill. Since then, Nell has been caring for her teenage nephew, trying to keep him safe while also concealing the choices she made that may have contributed to his being in harm’s way. To protect herself from the emotional pain, she’s determined to avoid this year’s Hunt- despite her best friend’s obsession with winning the big prize. As Easter draws near and the town’s frenzy escalates, Nell must confront how the past is weighing her down and why it’s holding her back.
Kelly shared in an interview for CrimeReads: “Everything I write seems to come from a nugget of my Arkansas upbringing that I can’t shake…[like] the sounds of my favorite local radio DJ revealing the latest clue to the annual Hunt for Golden Egg once Easter rolled around. For some reason, this family-friendly event and associated clues filtered through my mind and ears as creepy. I never even went on a hunt. As always, I was in the background as an observer, so I could only imagine what it was like. For years, I’ve been noodling on how to write a story about that feeling I got. THE HUNT is the outcome of all that noodling.”
ABOUT KELLY J. FORD
Kelly J. Ford is the author of the crime novels, Real Bad Things and Cottonmouths, which was named one of 2017’s best books of the year by the Los Angeles Review and featured in the “52 Books in 52 Weeks” by the Los Angeles Times. An Arkansas native, Kelly writes crime fiction set in the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley. She currently lives on Cape Cod.
Website: kellyjford.com
Instagram: @kellyjfordauthor
Twitter: @Kelly J Ford
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