description: A grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evilThe setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet—unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.
language: English
title: The Little Friend
titlecomplete: The Little Friend
characters: Libby Cleve, Hely, Danny Ratliff, Edie Cleve, Ida Rhew, Allison Dufresnes, Charlotte Cleve, Harriet Dufresnes
genres: Crime, Contemporary, Novels, Literature, Thriller, Fiction, Literary Fiction, American, Mystery, Mystery Thriller
ratings_count: 66503
places: Alexandria, Mississippi
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Shortlist, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: WH Smith Literary Award
publisher: Books on Tape