{"id":1863,"date":"2022-12-01T21:15:52","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T21:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=1863"},"modified":"2023-03-11T16:33:37","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T16:33:37","slug":"the-wrong-good-deed-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=1863","title":{"rendered":"The Wrong Good Deed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Clemmie and Muffin, friends in an active senior community (it\u2019s not a retirement home!) are attending church together, content in their matching jackets and cozy friendship. Then Clemmie spots someone she knows from the past and is terrified and desperate to get out NOW. In flashbacks to the 1960s, when Clemmie was married to a man from their small South Carolina town\u2019s most prominent family, we find her in a quandary. The men in her husband\u2019s family are violent racists, but she\u2019s too afraid of them to do anything about it\u2026until she must take action and then run away forever. In the present, things are heating up as a white reporter makes an incendiary claim about something that happened to him in the town and a Black resident wants answers on her nephew\u2019s disappearance. Then there\u2019s a death among the seniors and history can\u2019t be swept under the rug any more. This is a compelling read on many levels. The senior community\u2019s friendship, backbiting, and the everyday indignities of growing \u201cless active\u201d are portrayed with wry accuracy by Cooney; Muffin\u2019s disdain for Clemmie\u2019s casual racism is a highlight. The author raises important questions: Can people really change? What is the responsibility of the bystanders to a crime? How can small-town residents from opposite sides of the fight for Civil Rights deal with one another today? <strong>For those who like a controversial mystery and fans of Richard Osman\u2019s retirement-community-set The Thursday Murder Club<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clemmie and Muffin, friends in an active senior community (it\u2019s not a retirement home!) are attending church together, content in their matching jackets and cozy friendship. Then Clemmie spots someone&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[111,53],"class_list":["post-1863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-southern","tag-women"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/The-Wrong-Deed-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/The-Wrong-Deed.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}