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  • Published: 14 June 2005
  • ISBN: 9781400034116
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $55.00

Plain Heathen Mischief




Moments after finishing a six-month sentence in the Roanoke jail for a crime he might not have committed, Baptist minister Joel King is served some unwelcome papers. His wife wants a divorce, and the teenage vixen everyone believes he seduced is suing him for five million dollars.

 

Holding on to his faith with a white-knuckle grip, Joel accepts a ride out west with Edmund Brooks, a member of his former flock who has some Commandment-challenging ideas about helping Joel help himself. Plain Heathen Mischief ranges from the cross to the double cross, from Virginia to Las Vegas, from courtrooms to trout streams, as Martin Clark follows his Job-like hero through dubious choices and high-dollar insurance scams to a redemption no reader could possibly predict.

  • Published: 14 June 2005
  • ISBN: 9781400034116
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $55.00

About the author

Martin Clark

MARTIN CLARK is a retired Virginia circuit court judge, who served twenty-seven years on the bench.  His novels have appeared on numerous bestseller lists and have been chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a New York Times Best Thriller of the Year, a Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year, a Bookmarks magazine Best Book of the Year, a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, a finalist for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award, and the winner of the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award in 2009, 2016, 2020 and 2024.  Martin received the Patrick County Outstanding Community Service Award in 2016 and the Virginia State Bar’s Harry L. Carrico Professionalism Award in 2018.   He and his wife, Deana, live on a farm with dogs, cats, chickens and donkeys.

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Praise for Plain Heathen Mischief

"Outstanding....Delightfully deceitful characters and a perfectly imperfect zinger ending....One of the season's most entertaining yarns." --Miami Herald

"Juicy characters and memorable dialogue are what make this book as pleasurable to inhale as a Krispy Kreme doughnut....Clark's tracing of King's moral arc, from a flawed man of the cloth to a hardened pragmatist, is a thing of beauty. " --Newsday