From Publishers Weekly

In Pearson's breakthrough sixth novel, a policeman's serene life in a small Southern town is disrupted by a fellow cop's murder. 
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A police officer is found brutally murdered in a small southern town, his head so disfigured by bullet wounds that he can only be identified by the distinctive smell of his hair tonic. A fellow officer vows to find the killer. Accompanied by a whisky-addled sidekick who functions as a backwoods Dr. Watson, the investigator assembles clues, interviews suspects, proposes and discards theories, and in the process paints the portrait of an entire community. Part of the considerable humor of this novel derives from its hilarious dichotomy of form and content. Pearson's meandering prose style, full of folksy digressions and extended reminiscences, is completely at odds with the hard-boiled, no-nonsense approach a murder investigation would seem to demand. A few paragraphs into the book it is clear that "whodunit" is not really the issue. Another strong performance from the author of A Short History of a Small Place (S. & S. , 1985).
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A book that marries high literature to the crime novel . . . Brilliantly ingenious . . . A taut, evocative, quite funny, and intermittently frightening novel by an extraordinarily gifted writer."

Entertainment Weekly

"Cry Me A River is a minor Middlemarch in its vivid delineation of a gallery of complex, driven figures." 

William T. Vollmann in The New York Times