Wednesday, May 29, 2019

A Swollen Red Sun by Matthew McBride


A Swollen Red Sun by Matthew McBride   243 p.

Author Chuck Wendig calls McBride’s particular brand of fiction Chainsaw Noir. While that’s a beautiful term, I will stick with “Missouri noir”, putting it firmly into Daniel Woodrell territory while taking nothing from this unique piece. Gasconade County is a contender for Missouri meth capital, and not so very far from here. Deputy Sheriff Dale Banks keeps the $52,000 he finds, knowing it’s drug money, knowing it’s wrong, but Dale is not a bad guy. Unfortunately, our actions do come back to haunt us, sometimes with a vengeance. McBride starts out with a number of disparate story lines, gradually weaving them together with brutal black humor, so that the finale is as inevitable as it is surprising.

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