Emma Stonex follows up her Sunday Times bestseller, THE LAMPLIGHTERS, with a top-notch literary thriller featuring complex, believable characters.

THE SUNSHINE MAN opens with a chilling statement from one of our narrators, Birdie Keller: “The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.” It will not be until the end of this tense novel that readers learn and fully understand the implications of that declaration. Let’s just say that Birdie is a middle-aged woman on a mission. She has been waiting 18 long years to find out that Jimmy Maguire is being released from prison. Jimmy was convicted of killing her sister, Providence, and she has never recovered from this trauma.

"THE SUNSHINE MAN is a true piece of literary fiction, written and plotted in such a way that allows the reader to feel and understand the emotions and motives of the characters."

Since this is partially a novel about grief and guilt, it is worth noting that the passage of time has not softened Birdie’s heart one iota. She literally walks away from her family in pursuit of Jimmy so she can confront him and end her grieving in a way that the penal system could not do to her satisfaction. Birdie takes a gun with her, even though she has never fired one. She watches Jimmy walk out of the prison where he most recently was being held and continues to follow him until the proper moment.

The novel switches narration between Birdie and Jimmy, in addition to traveling back in time to their childhoods, which surprisingly intersected for a brief time. Birdie and her much younger sister are being raised by their grandmother, Gamma, as their mother has all but completely abandoned them. It has been long rumored by the citizens of their town that the Maguire boys are no good. But Gamma takes a shine to Jimmy, who is a friend of Providence, and allows him to live in their home.

The events that will lead to Jimmy’s ultimate expulsion are primarily Birdie’s fault, although she thought she was protecting Providence. Readers will feel for Jimmy and continue to do so when the narrative covering his stay in various prisons shows that he is convinced of his innocence. In fact, he knows the older boy who was actually guilty of the murder, but he can’t get anybody to listen to him. It seems the same troubles that followed him from childhood continue through his trial as everyone has just made up their minds that all the Maguires are no good.

What drives this novel is that readers are allowed to see both sides of the story, which neither character ever has the opportunity to do, and wait for the inevitable confrontation to come between them, which does not look like it will end well.

When that moment does arrive, it cleverly takes place at the same field where Jimmy supposedly killed Providence. Be prepared to read somewhere quiet because even the dropping of a pin might make you jump out of your seat. Stonex does such a stellar job creating these characters and then putting them on opposite tracks, which are set up to meet head-on in a personal collision that cannot possibly end without any casualties.

THE SUNSHINE MAN is a true piece of literary fiction, written and plotted in such a way that allows the reader to feel and understand the emotions and motives of the characters. I also loved the use of symbolism and the imagery of the Sunshine Man, a scarecrow in the field that doubles as an advertisement for Yellowfields Seed Oil. This was brilliant and really stuck with me.