A Single Shot by Matthew F. Jones
My rating: 5/5 cats
i was fooled.
i opened the book, as you do, and i started reading.
In a time when reliable standards of personal conduct have allegedly eroded and, no longer anchored by religious convictions or cultural cohesion, have diminished to irresolute situational postures and secular mumbles, an older, less elastic code of honor may seem vastly appealing, even heroic. To avert the confusions attendant on choice, such codes are simplified, starkly so, but clearly: do that to me, you can rely on me to do this to you. Do that to my kin, watch for smoke from your garage. Say that to my wife, and this is the bog where your worried relatives will find you facedown and at peace forever.
and i was like – “ooh, it’s going to be this kind of narrator – wonderful.” i like the twisty-wordy backwoods narrator with vengeance in his heart. and it wasn’t until i turned the page that i realized “of course i like this “narrator.” this is daniel woodrell, and i am reading the introduction.” fool. books, please label your introductions as such, because some of us will forget there is supposed to be an introduction and will read “six angles of wrath” as a chapter title and that will throw off our whole day, because this is not a similar voice to the narrator, and it is jarring to dummies like me to have to re-acclimate.
however – this book is fantastic. it came into the store before i got there one day, and greg set it aside because it had an introduction by daniel woodrell (yeah- i know – i just forgot, okay?? jeez), and was compared on the back to tom franklin, cormac mccarthy, and ron rash, who are three of my favorites (why can’t castle freeman jr ever get any recognition??) but, yeah – it is exactly my kind of book.
in his dizzyingly flattering introduction, woodrell compares jones to jim thompson, and if this book is any indication, this is a more perfect comparison than the others. this protagonist is a little scary. but not in the way you would expect from reading the plot: a poacher goes buck hunting in the woods and accidentally kills a young girl. he also finds a sackful of money. so he covers up the crime and takes the money (take notes here, greg). but you find a sackful of money, eventually the owners of that money are going to track you down, right? right. so that’s the plot, if you also throw in a wife and son who have left, a neighbor and his very confident teenage daughter, a physically damaged lawyer, some sexually uninhibited ladies, assorted thugs, a one-eyed ex-stripper, and a dog.
and that’s all well and good – those are the elements that make up any good woods-noir. but, oh john moon. he is such a dappled man. overall i think he means well, but there were so many times, because of this goodness that was in him, that i wanted to scream “why are you doing that??? this is a mistake!!” and the man seems to have no normal sense of fear, or apprehension or… precaution. so many things happen that should cause a normal man to pause and reflect and perhaps adjust his course, but not john moon, he takes it all in stride, and keeps on living, just doing what he does, despite the very scary things that are happening to him by the very bad men. that absence of fear in the face of threat makes for a scarier, darker man than the bad guys doing the terrorizing. you have no idea what a man like that is capable of, do you? ooooh, it’s good stuff. terrible all-around decisions, but good stuff.
of his other books, only boot tracks, on europa, is still in print, but i am going to read that next week, and see about getting the other four from my book-connect.
while i am doing that – read this book, you fans of the appalachia-noir. it is at the top of its genre.
