Miles Knox came home from his service in the Vietnam War forever changed. Decades later, he has a well-paying job in a rural Indiana factory, but still can’t shake the ghosts of the dead who haunt his daily life. He also hates feeling the increasing burdens of age, and resorts to steroid abuse in order…
The Savage by Frank Bill is an unnerving vision of a fractured America gone terribly wrong and a study of what happens when the last systems of morality and society collapse (available November 14, 2017). Vladimir Nabokov’s Bend Sinister was published in 1947, three years after the allies defeated the axis of evil and two years…
Here we are, fifteen years into a new century, and many authors are churning out noir novels as essential as anything from its heyday. If you’re like me, when you think of the 90s, it feels about five years ago, but the last decade and a half comprises the entire publishing career of many authors,…
If the popularity of writers such as Donald Ray Pollock, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell and Frank Bill is anything to go by, rural noir is a big deal in the United States. While it may not be anywhere near as well-known, for my money, the 1961 novel Wake In Fright by Australian writer Kenneth Cook…
When J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet brought back the crime cover contest this year, we were delighted—so here's more from him, including a chance to share with you! I come from a very visually oriented family—my father was an architect, my mother had worked in the field of technical drawing. And I…
Donnybrook by Frank Bill is a rural noir novel of drugs and violence (available March 5, 2013). The Donnybrook is a three-day bare-knuckle tournament held on a thousand-acre plot out in the sticks of southern Indiana. Twenty fighters. One wire-fence ring. Fight until only one man is left standing while a rowdy festival of onlookers—drunk and…
As I sat staring at my bookshelves, taking stock of the books that surround and inspire me, I started to notice some titles that seemed like maybe I should shelve them next to each other. I kept looking, dug deeper into the closet, and began playing a little game with titles. It killed some time…
Yesterday, Clare Toohey posted about the Anthony Awards, which were definitely a highlight of Bouchercon. But I thought those of you who weren’t there might like to know what this blogger learned by attending: I met a lot of men who are deeply afraid of Christa Faust, and she likes it that way. The St…
Not too long ago I was watching the documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia with a friend who found it so shocking that she made me shut it off after twenty minutes. Hardboiled rural noir stories, like the real life White clan, are difficult for some audiences to believe because there’s such…
