Mr. White's Confession

By Pico Iyer

Clark writes novels that could be movies in which Henry Fonda and Robert Mitchum steal scenes from each other. His 1997 debut, In the Deep Midwinter, established him as a sensitive and forgiving spinner of sepia-colored tales that find the tenderness in men. His new book is more of a morality tale dressed as a murder mystery. Mr. White is a painfully shy salesclerk who photographs showgirls in his room; his alter ego, Wesley Horner, is an anguished cop with unsolved mysteries of his own. As dime-a-dance girls start showing up dead in St. Paul, Minn., in 1939, the men's paths intersect, and a story of guilt and innocence turns into a pulsing tale of redemption and original goodness, pitting God against the devil. If Mr. White's Confession occasionally feels like an old-time movie, at least it's the kind of decent Capraesque affair that used to fill the seats at the Majestic.

--By Pico Iyer