A Better Kind of Hate by Beau Johnson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Beau Johnson is possibly the nicest author on Twitter. I lead with that because if you read this book without knowing that, his characters might lead you to assume he is a professional hit man or a serial killer. I'm sure all that disturbed earth in his backyard is just composting from an autumn pumpkin patch. Yes, that's got to be it.

A Better Kind of Hate is a short story collection about anti-heroes, and bad people, and vengeful victims, and assorted other human monsters stuck on one end or another of malignant desperation. Johnson left "brutal" and "unflinching" in the rear-view mirror about 20 miles back and he has a full tank of gas and a passenger seat full of energy drinks.



Most of these stories are very short—some only two or three pages—but their power lies in an inverse proportion to their word count. Do not misunderstand: they are not mindless gore or the novelization of an exploitation film (though if you like either get your favorite bookmark and dig in, because you'll like it too). No, these stories are often profoundly cerebral, walking a fine line between hardboiled noir and psychological horror. They are taut, mean, and not a single unnecessary word survived the editorial blade...and there are plenty of blades, and axes, and baseball bats, and cardboard compactors, and, well, you get the idea.

Johnson's stories give you what you don't get when your morally gray but unsatisfyingly anodyne television procedural fades to black. Beau's world is less Law & Order, and more True Detective (nihilistic monologues and all). And of course Beau's most interesting creation, Bishop Rider, starts to stretch his legs here in A Better Kind of Hate. And Bishop, well, he's kind of what Batman would be like if someone that psychologically damaged were real—equal parts boogeyman and angel of vengeance. So, if you like him, Bishop Rider goes on to rampage through several of Johnson's subsequent books, the newest being Old Man Rider, which at the time of this review is about to debut on October 24, 2022.

So if you enjoy seedy crime stories, tales of a town's darker underbelly, and the bleakness that comes when a city eats itself, I highly recommend you add this to your list.

Goodreads Blog & Reviews | Amazon | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | Linktree