Too Much of a Good Thing

November 24, 2003
Curtis Black, the charismatic pastor with a taste for life's finer things (slick clothes, hot cars and even hotter women) who previously wreaked havoc in 2001's Casting the First Stone
, returns to the pulpit in Roby's sixth outing. Divorced and working at a teen center, Curtis longs for the good ol' days—the parishioners who worshipped him and the cash "love gifts," especially. So he marries meek, God-fearing Mariah and accepts a position at a new church. Mariah's thrilled—she never thought she'd be so happy—but why does Curtis always work so late? And why is he so into oral sex? Curtis is quickly up to his old tricks: grafting for money, pursuing Adrienne, an old flame from his previous congregation, browbeating Mariah and disappointing his 14-year-old daughter, who looks for love on the Internet. Inexplicably, Adrienne still loves Curtis, and so does poor Mariah, even when Curtis reveals that he married her only because it was a condition of employment at Truth Missionary Baptist. Curtis's manipulations, sexual excesses, and spousal and parental neglect just keep getting worse, and he can't believe it when people call him out: "God had forgiven him for every sin he'd committed, so couldn't everyone else?" When Curtis is shot by a jilted woman, some readers may wonder what took her so long. His deathbed conversion shouldn't count for anything, but apparently it does. The book's Christian message gets buried under all Curtis's wrongdoings, and the spineless women grow tiresome, but Roby's book about being bad but making good should, like its predecessors, see good sales. Agent, Elaine Koster.
9-city author tour.
(Jan.)

Forecast:
Roby has moved steadily from self-published debut to paperback to hardcover; she's also won the Blackboard Fiction Book of the Year award. Despite its tough subject matter (abuse, rape, attempted murder), this novel should be her biggest hit yet.