Pop 1280 by Jim Thompson

 

You can buy Pop 1280...Here

You can find out more about Jim Thompson...Here

• The Blurb...

Nick Corey likes being the high sheriff of Potts County. But Nick has a few problems that he needs to deal with: like his loveless marriage, the pimps who torment him, the honest man who is running against him in the upcoming elections and the women who adore him.

And it turns out that Nick isn't anything like as amiable, easy-going or as slow as he seems. He's as sly, brutal and corrupt as they come.

• Our Review...

I decided to read this book after seeing Charlie Higson (of The Fast Show) recommend it on the BBC book show "Between The Covers"

I believe this tale is set in the southern states of the USA prior to WW1

What a character Nick Corey, our protagonist is. To the world he is a bumbling, verbose possibly mentally, slow well meaning good old southern boy. Nick Corey is the small town sheriff. He keeps getting elected because he isn't offensive or confrontational and works hard to keep it so. 

But Nick is different on the inside. He is a cunning and ruthless sociopath. He manipulates others around to solve his (mostly women) problems. Oh and he is violent.

He is Forrest Gump on the outside but Niccolò Machiavelli on the inside.

The other characters are well developed also from Myra his harriden of a wife and her Hung like a horse halfwit brother, to Rose, Nick's potty mouthed married lover amongst others.

Nick's plotting is inventive. Each victim deserving their fate, at least in Nick's eyes. He often plays one problem off against another to find an elegant, if horrific solution. Each victim greedily heading towards disaster because of their misguided, base desires. Some passages make you reflect on human nature and how we treat our family, friends and neighbours.

All this plotting and killing and duplicity takes its toll on Nick's mental and he starts to view himself and his actions in a different light. 

If you can handle Nick's round the houses, Dukes of Hazzard type internal monologues this is a very good book. Great main character, well developed minor chatacters, great plotting.  

 

• Selected Quotes...

"About all a fella would be able to do, without getting arrested, was to drink sody- pop and maybe kiss his wife. And no one liked the idea very much, the wives included."

"I’d been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever’s got tail at one end has teeth at the other,"

"I loved was myself, and I was willing to do anything I god- dang had to to go on lying and cheating and drinking whiskey and screwing women and going to church on Sunday with all the other respectable people."

"And I don’t suppose you’re at all responsible, are you?’ ‘Not a speck,’ I said. ‘Just because I put temptation in front of people, it don’t mean they got to pick it up.’"

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

Sins of The Father by Lawrence Block

They Shoot Horses Don't They? by Horace McCoy

The Black Dhalia by James Ellroy

• About The Author...

Jim Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He began writing fiction at a very young age, selling his first story to True Detective when he was only fourteen. Thompson eventually wrote twenty-nine novels, all but three of which were published as paperback originals. Thompson also co-wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory). Several of his novels have been filmed by American and French directors, resulting in classic noir including The Killer Inside Me (1952), After Dark My Sweet(1955), and The Grifters (1963).

Snap by Belinda Bauer

282 Pages

You can buy Snap...Here

• The Blurb...

On a stifling summer's day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack's in charge, she'd said. I won't be long.

But she doesn't come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed for ever.

Three years later, Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother . . .

• Our Review...

Snap is the companion book to Exit. They are set in the same literary universe and roughly the same geographic area. Snap is the precursor to Exit. They are not technically a series and can be read quite independent of each other. You can find our review of the excellent "Exit"...Here

Belinda Bauer is such a gifted writer. If you love clever, colourful use of language. Descriptive metaphors that just seem intuitively to hit the nail on the head. Stories with a dollop of sadness with a thin thread of hope and a slightly wry, sarcastic observance every so often then I heartily recommend her books. She just has a wonderful way with words.

Jack is the young hero of the story. After his mother is murdered and his dad can no longer cope. He has to develop into an artful dodger type. Burgling homes across the west country just to look after his younger sisters. 

But on one job, it all goes wrong. If he is caught he will go to prison and his sisters will go into care. But there is a chance that he can catch his mothers killers.

The plot is cleverly written and developed. The characters are larger than life but only just so. The disgruntled inspector Marvel seconded from the Met, who can be arsed with a burglar. The fussy and fastidious DS Reylands. All wonderfully drawn.

But as I said earlier the real gift of this book is the writing. She has a way of describing something without describing that something but you will straight away feel exactly what she is talking about. See selected quotes below. 

In addition the extremes of writing can make good bedfellows if done correctly. eg at the most extreme ends we have horror and comedy. Mix them in the right proportion and you can get Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland etc. But Bauer pulls back slightly from those outliers of horror and comedy to lovingly craft tales of sadness on end  and subtle witty sarcasm on the other. She does a wonderful job. A unique style that is a pleasure to read.

• Selected Quotes...

The breathless air twitched in the wake of each car, then flopped down dead in the dust again.

‘My hands are fat,’ her mother grumbled. She had arthritis, which meant that sometimes she experienced the agony of her diamond rings not fitting. She complained to the doctor about it constantly; she’d paid good money for those rings and somehow felt that the NHS simply didn’t want her wearing them– socialist cartel that it was.

the pillow under his cheek smelled of childhood. Like gym ropes and sparklers, and Marmite sandwiches in warm Tupperware.

Marvel had found his share of bodies during his years in homicide, but you never got used to that initial shock, even if you were expecting it. It was like a balloon you were blowing up bursting in your face.

• If You Liked This, Then You May Like...

The Liars Lullaby by Meg Gardener...link here

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy..link here

• About The Author...

Belinda Bauer grew up in England and South Africa and now lives in Wales. She worked as a journalist and a screenwriter before finally writing a book to appease her nagging mother. With her debut, Blacklands, Belinda was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year. She went on to win the CWA Dagger in the Library for her body of work in 2013. Her fourth novel Rubbernecker was voted 2014 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2018 her eighth novel, Snap, was longlisted for the Man Booker prize. Her books have been translated into 21 languages. She has also written the thriller High Rollers under the pen-name Jack Bowman.