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Hundred Proof: Stories
- GenresShort Stories
270 pages, Hardcover
Published June 26, 2025
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About the author
Scott Wolven
15 books22 followersScott Wolven lives in upstate New York. His work has been selected three years in a row for The Best American Mystery Stories (2002, 2003, and 2004).
See also: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com...
See also: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 28, 2025
Not finished yet. Read about half the stories in this anthology and will continue reading this well into the New Year.
The stories in this anthology are harrowing at times.
Violent crimes are committed and the acts are often perpetrated by a narrator in a kind of off-handed manner while the words & the sentences used by the author shake the foundations of conventional crime writing. It’s almost soul shattering poetry.
Best way to describe the hardbitten characters in these stories is the sense of perseverance they maintain despite the futility of going on given their assorted miseries and agonizing memories. They’re all waist deep in big trouble- trouble in the past, trouble to come.
Hard-bitten lives told in a plain, almost tender voice.
This is where writers like Larry Brown, William Gay, Daniel Woodrell, and Nelson Algren live—people whose characters don’t wisecrack their way through corruption; they carry it in their bodies. It’s what threatens to consume their souls.
The stories are all mostly set where I now live or close enough to drive in a hour or two. Or even twenty minutes in a couple of the stories.
Upstate New York.
Many of the characters are working odd jobs, off-the-books jobs -hunting game out of season, cutting timber, proxy bidding on old growth trees, stealing what trees they can by undercounting. Many of the characters are ex-cons and their friends are all ex-cons or bent lawmen. Some are drug runners. Some are drug addicted or alcoholic. All of the most interesting are just simply dogged by memories of bad decisions made in a misspent youth.
Scott Wolven is a scary ass talent.
I highly recommend seeking out his two anthologies.
The stories in this anthology are harrowing at times.
Violent crimes are committed and the acts are often perpetrated by a narrator in a kind of off-handed manner while the words & the sentences used by the author shake the foundations of conventional crime writing. It’s almost soul shattering poetry.
Best way to describe the hardbitten characters in these stories is the sense of perseverance they maintain despite the futility of going on given their assorted miseries and agonizing memories. They’re all waist deep in big trouble- trouble in the past, trouble to come.
Hard-bitten lives told in a plain, almost tender voice.
This is where writers like Larry Brown, William Gay, Daniel Woodrell, and Nelson Algren live—people whose characters don’t wisecrack their way through corruption; they carry it in their bodies. It’s what threatens to consume their souls.
The stories are all mostly set where I now live or close enough to drive in a hour or two. Or even twenty minutes in a couple of the stories.
Upstate New York.
Many of the characters are working odd jobs, off-the-books jobs -hunting game out of season, cutting timber, proxy bidding on old growth trees, stealing what trees they can by undercounting. Many of the characters are ex-cons and their friends are all ex-cons or bent lawmen. Some are drug runners. Some are drug addicted or alcoholic. All of the most interesting are just simply dogged by memories of bad decisions made in a misspent youth.
Scott Wolven is a scary ass talent.
I highly recommend seeking out his two anthologies.
July 23, 2025
A masterpiece of American crime fiction, "Hundred Proof" is a series of tales featuring working-class, casually amoral men enterprising on the fringes of various rural, low-level criminal networks. Or just scrounging up a few extra bucks by subtlely crossing the line from legal labor to illegal capering. Many characters and locales recur throughout the stories, giving "Hundred Proof" a cohesiveness that is not typically found in most short story collections. I loved Wolven's previous release, "Controlled Burn," and in the years since had been on the lookout for new work. This was worth the wait, and solidified my fandom of his writing. Charting these various criminal pursuits from the criminal's POV reminded me of the Richard Stark "Parker" novels (my all time favorite crime fiction), although these are grittier, less tidily plotted, less glamorous, bleak. There's no filler here; every story launches the reader into a new and unexpected predicament. At times hyper-realistic and surreal, none of it feels "written." Each one feels like an authentic, highly detailed excerpt of a man's opportunistic, self-destructive tendencies and willing courtship with disaster (with occasional moments of introspection). There is a complete absence of contrivance in "Hundred Proof," which is the highest compliment I can think to give a writer.
January 9, 2026
About halfway through. Another very strong collection of stories by Scott Wolven.
From some of the publishing data in the book it appears these stories have come out across the last twenty years or so, spanning the time from his last collection(Controlled Burn) until 2025.
Bearing in mind that I am only half of the way through the book, I see a change in his writing and I see three elements to that shift. One, the failures and corruption of law enforcement take a prominent role in the stories. That's new. Two, there is a slightly more cliched feel to the stories; the ubiquitous beer drinking, the doomed ex-cons, the cops and crazies all feel a bit trite. But I'm not find fault here, it serves the stories, because the third change is stylistic. Wolven's writing here is more poetic than in Controlled Burn. Some portions of these stories, perhaps entire stories, are actually prose poetry. Wolven is using noir elements of character and narrative to reach at elemental emotional and existential truths of life, perhaps specifically as it is lived in the U.S.A. And I think he does it very well. Mostly because of his economy. He knows his rhythm and he keeps it clean, tight and moving.
In think highly of Wolven's writing. He's received some accolades and he's written for Hollywood, but he deserves greater recognition.
From some of the publishing data in the book it appears these stories have come out across the last twenty years or so, spanning the time from his last collection(Controlled Burn) until 2025.
Bearing in mind that I am only half of the way through the book, I see a change in his writing and I see three elements to that shift. One, the failures and corruption of law enforcement take a prominent role in the stories. That's new. Two, there is a slightly more cliched feel to the stories; the ubiquitous beer drinking, the doomed ex-cons, the cops and crazies all feel a bit trite. But I'm not find fault here, it serves the stories, because the third change is stylistic. Wolven's writing here is more poetic than in Controlled Burn. Some portions of these stories, perhaps entire stories, are actually prose poetry. Wolven is using noir elements of character and narrative to reach at elemental emotional and existential truths of life, perhaps specifically as it is lived in the U.S.A. And I think he does it very well. Mostly because of his economy. He knows his rhythm and he keeps it clean, tight and moving.
In think highly of Wolven's writing. He's received some accolades and he's written for Hollywood, but he deserves greater recognition.
December 21, 2025
A solid collection of inter-connected crime stories. 3.5/5
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews