Woodrell's (
Winter's Bone) hillbilly noir tale unfolds through Doyle Redmond, a crime writer of little (actually no) acclaim, who chucks his phony intellectual life at a California university when he discovers his wife openly cheating on him for the sole purpose of possibly getting her poetry published. Tossing a few measly possessions into a pillowcase, Doyle takes his wife's Volvo and drives that yuppie-mobile all the way home to the Ozark hills, where he is immediately welcomed with the loan of a .32 caliber "lady stinger" by his dad, General Joe, and cut in on a potentially profitable dope deal by his older brother, Smoke. Woodrell's novels are character-driven carnivals in which plots are incidental although always a wild ride.
VERDICT The dialog here is solid and the players unforgettable. Narrator Brian Troxell's accented presentation brings out both the humor and the sometimes deadly seriousness of each episode. The story also has as close to a happy ending as Woodrell musters. Both raunchy and dangerous, this will have listeners demanding a sequel.
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