Strafexpeditie

by S. Craig Zahler

Rechercheur Jules Bettinger wordt verantwoordelijk gehouden voor de zelfmoord van een zakenman op een politiebureau in Arizona. Noodgedwongen verhuist hij met zijn gezin naar het koude, vieze Victory, Missouri. De stad doet zijn naam geen eer aan, met een van de hoogste misdaadpercentages van de Verenigde Staten en zevenhonderd misdadigers per agent.
Bettingers nieuwe partner, Dominic Williams, is net gedegradeerd vanwege zijn aandeel in een afstraffing die een drugsdealer invalide heeft gemaakt. Als er twee agenten worden vermoord en hun lichamen worden verminkt, zet de politie de jacht op de moordenaars in. Bettinger merkt al snel dat de dubbele moord niet op zichzelf staat, maar het voorspel is van een reeks executies van leden van het politiekorps ...

Genres: Crime, Thriller, Fiction, Mystery, Noir, Mystery Thriller, The United States Of America

364 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2014

About the author

"S. Craig Zahler is certain to become one of the great imaginers of our time." ― Clive Barker

Novelist and cartoonist S. Craig Zahler is also the screenwriter, director, and musical co-composer for the movies, Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete. His second graphic novel Organisms from an Ancient Cosmos was released by Dark Horse Comics as an oversized hardback in December 2022. He wrote and illustrated this large-scale sci-fi work.

"What a fantastic read!" ― Patton Oswalt

"I had the best time reading this graphic novel. I never knew where it was going or how." ― Brian Michael Bendis

His debut graphic novel, Forbidden Surgeries of the Hideous Dr. Divinus and his crime book The Slanted Gutter came out in 2021.

Praise for his other books:
"Whether writing westerns, science fiction, or crime, Zahler (Corpus Chrome, Inc., 2013) always manages to bring something new to the genre. [We fell] completely under Zahler’s spell... A bravura literary performance.” —Booklist, Starred Review

"Zahler tells a gripping story." ― Kirkus Review

"Five-plus stars to Hug Chickenpenny. Complex, well-drawn characterizations, compelling imagery and a well-ordered story..." ― Publishers Daily Reviews

"Zahler’s mean streets are bizarrely mean. But Mean Business is often mordantly funny, too—and not to be missed." Booklist, starred review

“CORPUS CHROME, INC describes one of the weirder post-singularity futures. The characters are very much alive. I was entertained throughout.” —Larry Niven, Hugo & Nebula award winning author

"Zahler's a fabulous story teller..." Kurt Russell, star of Escape from New York, Tombstone, and Stargate

My dark western Wraiths of the Broken Land is also available in trade paperback, hardback and ebook editions. Below is some praise from Joe R. Lansdale, Booklist, Jack Ketchum, and Ed Lee:

"If you’re looking for something similar to what you’ve read before, this ain’t it. If you want something comforting and predictable, this damn sure ain’t it. But if you want something with storytelling guts and a weird point of view, an unforgettable voice, then you want what I want, and that is this." –Joe R. Lansdale, author of The Bottoms, Mucho Mojo, and Savage Season

"It would be utterly insufficient to say that WRAITHS is the most diversified and expertly written western I’ve ever read." –Edward Lee, author of The Bighead and Gast.

"[C]ompulsively readable…. Fans of Zahler’s A Congregation of Jackals (2010) will be satisfied; think Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. [C]lever mayhem ... leads to a riveting climax." –Booklist

"WRAITHS always rings true, whether it's visiting the depths of despair, the fury of violence, or the fragile ties that bind us together for good or ill. It's a Western with heart and intelligence, always vivid, with characters you will detest or care about or both, powerfully written." –Jack Ketchum, author of Off Season and The Girl Next Door

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

And we have a winner for HOLY-CRAPiest book of the year!

______________________

Detective Jules Bettinger's mouth has gotten him into trouble, and now he's been banished to Siberia a crime-ridden shithole named Victory, Missouri, where 70% of the males have criminal records, and there's one cop for every thousand citizens. There Bettinger encounters a boss and coworkers who just can't get over how dark his skin is - "It's like . . . outer space, without the stars." - and a new partner he cannot trust. His first case? A grisly murder that turned into multiple acts of necrophilia.

Wow! I'm betting this place doesn't rake in a lot of tourists' dollars.

Before long, the necrophilia case has taken a backseat, as a pair of cops are brutally slain. Then a few more officers go missing. Bettinger and his partner must learn to work together, or they may be the next officers gunned down.

This book will send you through an emotional wringer - you'll laugh, be horrified, and maybe even wipe away a tear or two. It is gross, funny, and extremely violent. Be warned - bad things happen to people who deserve them, but horrible things happen to those who don't.

What starts out as almost a fish-out-of-water, comedy of manners tale quickly gets dead serious, and the last third of the book takes a truly dark turn that I was not expecting. I was on the edge of my seat, chewing my nails by the time I reached the slam-bang finale that's set in a nearly post-apocalyptic area of the city inhabited only by meth heads and the homeless.

You just know that when one of the characters says, "Watch out for pits." And another man adds, "And bear traps." that you're in for one hell of a ride.

[Ɗẳɳ 2.☊ · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a disastrous interview with a distraught businessman ends in tragedy, Detective Jules Bettinger is forced to transfer from sunny, western Arizona to a wintery, crime-ridden shithole in flyover country.

Exiled to the tiny police force in Victory, Missouri, where criminals outnumber policemen 700 to 1, Bettinger discovers a decaying community in desperate need of case closers. A place that feels more like Siberia than middle America, a place where police and pigeons(?) are endangered species.

Affixed to a pole on the right side of the road was a wooden plank that read WELCOME TO VICTORY. Human excrement had been smeared across the greeting.

“Classy.”

With such a shortage of detectives, it’s crucial to pick cases wisely, to prioritize where to devote his time to do the most good in the community. And boy, is Bettinger’s first case a real doozy—a grisly murder spree that devolved into multiple acts of necrophilia. But, after a couple of officers are slain in a brutal execution, he’s redirected onto that investigation.

Once he figures out that the act was retaliation for alleged misdeeds by his fellow officers, and merely the opening salvo in a much larger war, he doesn’t know who he to trust. And, when things get personal, he’s forced to set aside his moral code and engage in the same ruthless, homicidal tactics that are being deployed against him.

Much madness ensues.

. . .

This book got off to a rocky start for me. What with the author’s peculiar turn of phrase and strange phobia of names and straightforward description—often referring to his main character as simply “the detective” or “the man from Arizona” and his partner as “the big fella”—along with his annoying penchant for using twenty words when two would suffice. Like so:

❅The young officer who had received a vomit crown and matching epaulets had departed early, shaken by the experience while the lobotomized corpse was taken to a place that had steel doors, an astringent smell, and digital thermometers that displayed low temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.

❅“How’s that angry ex-wife of yours?” asked the thing that lived inside of Bettinger’s mouth.

❅“What’s weed?” Curvature appeared on the young woman’s chin.

❅Tires screeched, and the long, four-wheeled organism shot past the policemen.

Honestly, this showy, pretentious style seemed out of place for a rather straightforward crime novel. But, eventually, the worm turned and I was able to forgive the author for being a little too in love with his own voice when I came across a dialog-driven chapter about a twenty-year-old girl named Kimmy that was so well-written it had me weeping for humanity.

Then, as I rounded into the second act, things went pear-shaped so quickly and so dramatically that I began to tear through the pages like a madman. My heart was racing, I broke out into cold sweat, and nearly chewed my fingernails down to the quick. That part of the storyline was so compelling and intense that you couldn’t have pried the book outta my hand with a crowbar.

However, by the time the explosive third act arrived, and the story shifted to the fringes of the crumbling rustbelt city that seemed more like a nightmarish post-apocalyptic wasteland than anywhere in the continental U.S., I was anxious to escape from this mad world with some semblance of my sanity left intact.

In the end, it was a bit of an overwhelming experience—one that I won’t soon forget, but one that I was happy to finally be able to set aside.

Bottom line: If a gruesome, crude story, shot through with dark humor and violent individuals that come in only two forms: bad and worse, set in a nightmarish, wintery landscape, sounds like your idea of a good time, then you’ve come to the right place. After all, this is the same sick and twisted mind behind films like Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99.

[Dave Edmunds · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There are three things that close cases: work, luck, and bad-guy stupidity. You can only control the first thing, and lots of times, it isn't enough."

4.25 🌟's

Initial Thoughts

S. Craig Zahler is an author who's really got hold of my attention in 2023 after reading his two fantastically violent westerns, Wraiths of the Broken Land and A Congregation of Jackals. Brutal and uncompromising, they both injected life into a genre that has pretty much been left on the scrapheap. As a big fan of westerns, I fully appreciated his fresh outlook and the passion that dripped off every page

But this was no surprise to me as Zahler had already done this on the big screen with his directorial debut, Bone Tomahawk, which he also wrote the screenplay for. Yes, he is a man of many talents and also plays in a band. But his ability to take a concept and twist it into something new and fresh was clearly evident.

So when I discovered he had branched out into the world of hardboiled crime I was in an absolute frenzy to get my hands on it. It's literally going to take an army with a nuclear payload to stop me reading this one. So here it is, my review of Mean Business on North Ganson Street. And before we start a round of applause for another fantastic title.

The Story

Mean Business follows detective Jules Bettinger, who's redeployed when a man commits suicide right after an interview with him. Life it seems is about to get a whole lot worse for the aging cop. Held responsible, and lucky to keep his job, he's exiled to Victory, Missouri, dubbed "the worst city in America." And that is no exaggeration.

He soon finds his new beat is a freezing dump that's a serious health hazard. Cold, violent and very dangerous it's so bad that the cops here worse than the crooks, willing to bend or break the law in order to get the job done. Bettinger's new partner, Dominic for instance, has recently been demoted for crippling the local drug dealer. Well it looks like the criminals have had enough and the police in Victory are about to become an endangered species.

"If a civilian wants to blow his brains out, let him. I approve. So would Darwin."

When two cops are brutally murdered Inspector Zwolinski is focused on finding the perpetrators. But this is only the beginning and a full scale war is on the cards. The tension is mounting and there's going to be a whole load of carnage before this one is over. If only Bettinger had kept his mouth shut.

The Writing

So this books see's a departure for Zahler from writing intense, brutal westerns to fast-paced, hardcore crime. It's different from all other novels in the genre due to the authors unique style of prose, which aren't for everyone. Its both rich and beautifully told. But I admit, he does like to throw in a lot of unusual words, almost as if he's got a thesaurus on hand. For some this can be a bit much. I get that. But for me it added a little extra flavour that I appreciated.

The description of Victory, Missouri, was fantastic. A frozen version of hell that you as the reader are transported to. Its a hostile environment and I got the feeling that Bettinger and his beloved family weren't getting out of there in one piece. Those dark, dingy streets are about as unwelcoming as you get but it's certainly somewhere I'd like to spend more time in. As a reader of course.

"It's like the shittiest heaven ever."

The tone is unremittingly violent. It doesn't stop and pulls no punches. A gritty storyline and high level of brutality looks to be a signature of Zahler's in both his novels and movies and is something I'm very fond of. It all helps to keep the story moving with an intense vibe where you're wondering what's going to happen next. Like a severed hand slapping you in the face.

The only real problem I had was the author penchant for using certain words. Again and again and again. When some are quite outlandish it sticks out a mile and gets a bit destracting. There's that word again! Like 'Phalanx'. There's a range of other words you could use so why the need to repetitively use that one is beyond me. But there you go.

The Characters

Some pretty damn good characters in this one as you'd expect. Jules Bettinger is a decent lead, who does come across a bit cliché being a cracking detective with personality issues. But his blunt, snappy, sometimes rude dialogue kept me engaged and the contrast of his family, who were wholesome, with the depravity that invested the streets of Victory was well-done.



Where Zahler excelled was with the side characters who were unique and entertaining. Particularly those dirty cops. I'm an officer myself, but on the very straight and narrow, although I would say that. Particularly to the judge. But reading about dirty cops who break the law while they're enforcing it is always entertaining. You never know if you should be rooting for them or not. That age old question...do the ends justify the means? I'll let you decide.

But one of the key features was that snappy back and forth dialogue that brought these characters to life. Zahler's experience as a screen writer really showed and the conversation was a highlight of the story. Sharp as a razor, watch out or it'll slice you up.

Final Thoughts

Safe to say I enjoyed this one immensely. No, it's not perfect and did have a couple of aspects that turned me off. Particularly a crazy trudge through a blizzard that went on for three chapters with a boatload of descriptive writing and very little else. That's twenty minutes of my life I want back S. Craig Zahler!

But everything else was top notch and just my cup of tea. It really demonstrated that there is more to this authors talents than writing those fantastic westerns that I love. He really is becoming one of my favourite authors and I'm salivating at the prospect of reading more of his bibliography. In fact I'm eyeing up The Slanted Gutter next. Anyone read that one? Answers in the comments.

If you made it this far you'll be glad to know it over. Thanks for reading and...cheers!

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

After his smart mouth inadvertently lands him in hot water, Detective Jules Bettinger finds himself and his family exiled from the warmth of Arizona to the frozen wasteland of Victory, Missouri - a charming place littered with pigeon bones, dead cats nailed to posts and faeces-covered signs. His first case? A serial necrophiliac. But before he can kick himself into oblivion for fucking his career up so badly, a war between the gangsters who run the town and the shady police, hardly much better themselves, is about to erupt. And then the cop executions begin. Mean business indeed… !

I’m not a huge fan of crime fiction as I find the stories too contrived, limited and formulaic while the writing tends to be bland and dull (police procedurals – ugh!). S. Craig Zahler’s Mean Business on North Ganson Street though is different for its lively, unique prose style that lends the story an unexpected, but not unwelcome, playful tone. It’s also the novel’s downfall.

Zahler is an extremely verbose writer deeply in love with his extended vocabulary and eager to constantly show it off. This makes for a very plodding pace to what should be a zippier read given the exciting subject matter. There were so many scenes that, after I finished them, I wondered “What the hell was the point of going through all of that?”.

Without going into specifics that might spoilerize, Zahler can’t ever leave anything to the reader’s imagination – everything has to be described in excruciating detail. He can’t say that the character went to the place and then pick up the story at that place; no, we have to read about the drive over there where nothing really happens!

Then, scenes between characters that you’d take as read – ie. one character telling another, “I’ma git them for this!” etc. – are similarly pointlessly written up. We can’t have characters say they’ll go somewhere and then show up there, or say they’ll pick up something and just deal with it in a sentence, we have to see them do everything in extensive detail and it becomes so wearisome to read! Maybe he thought he was building tension by taking this approach but I just found it frustrating. This modestly-sized 300 page novel would’ve been so much better at 200 pages or less.

I also wasn’t taken with the main character, Bettinger, who was a rather bland good guy. He’s good at his job, he has a loving family – yawn. I just found him such a boring person to spend any time with. The villain was underwhelming too and, given that he was off-page for nearly the entire book, the showdown with him at the end felt rushed and slightly anti-climactic.

But there were many parts I enjoyed. The scenes without Bettinger were cracking, particularly once the cop executions begin. I liked the Victory police, a hard-boiled murderers’ row of crazy anti-heroes fighting for a semblance of justice in hell on earth and who you’re never quite sure to root for or not. Bettinger’s partner Dominic was very memorable, as was their boss, the boxing-mad larger-than-life Inspector Zwolinski, and the dialogue throughout was near-as-dammit perfect, always giving the reader a strong idea of the characters.

Mean Business on North Ganson Street is an extremely violent and graphic genre novel that suffers from overwriting and pacing issues. But it’s also unique for Zahler’s style with enough compelling material in the characters and story to keep from becoming a bore. Given how good his movies are – Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, both of which I’d highly recommend if you’ve not seen them – I’d hoped this would be as high quality but it seems that the movies are so good because of the 2 hour run times. Take those constraints away and Zahler’s otherwise enthralling storytelling becomes sprawling, to its detriment. Mean Business isn’t a bad read but I’d caution anyone expecting the same level of awesome as his movies. And I can’t wait for Dragged Across Concrete out next month!

(Hat tip to Dan 2.0 for the rec)

[Metodi Markov · Rating 4 out of 5]

С криминалната интрига се е справил много добре авторът, не толкова добре с героите, но като цяло резултатът е повече от приличен.

По-ниската ми оценка е заради опитите за остроумничене на Залер, особено в началото на книгата, липсата на способен редактор вероятно още за оригинала и за средния превод на български.

Историята е мрачна, на моменти брутална и доста добре написана - романът е увлекателен и с голям потенциал за филмиране.

Изобщо, тая гадна работа на улица "Гансън" надмина очакванията ми.

[Still · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast paced crime-thriller. Intensely violent.

After being indirectly responsible for a suicide, Lieutenant Detective Jules Bettinger from Arizona is banished to the fictional town of Victory in Missouri that has the highest murder, rape, and other crime rates in the United States.

He moves with his family (his wife, an acclaimed artist and his two children) to Stonesburg, Missouri which is the only family-friendly town within driving distance of Victory, Missouri.

When he arrives in Victory he discovers what a rat-hole of a place it is. The temperature never seems to rise above freezing and the wind howls non-stop. His first case is the rape/murder of a hooker. Her body has been found mutilated and raped posthumously, on North Ganson Street- a section of Victory known to locals as "Shitopia".
Unpleasant section of the novel to read but forget about it -there's worse to come.

This is a remarkably brutal novel as was the previous Zahler novel I read, ...no - - - ahhhh, wait a second. It's brutal but not quite as sadistic as the acts perpetrated upon the citizens of a small town by the bad guys in "Jackals".

This is a fast-paced, suspenseful novel full of dread. The descriptions of the tortures the main characters endure are hard to read. It's phenomenally violent and that last third of the book when the lead character, "Lieutenant Bettinger", and his partners chase the bad guys north of "Shitopia" to an abandoned area known as "The Heaps" is a page-turning marathon of violence and ultra-mayhem.

If cop thrillers spiced with descriptions of sickening rapes, maimings, beatings, bear-traps, eye-gougings, teeth smashing and other delightful descriptions of harrowing punishments dealt upon human bodies is your thing then here's a 12-pack to go.

Recommended!

[E.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mean Business on North Ganson Street is like a kick to the face that you never see coming. You read the log line expecting it to be just another cop drama and then wham, it grabs you by the short hairs and never lets go.

I've read two books by S. Craig Zahler, both of which were hardcore, noir westerns. The type Zane Grey would have read, got on his horse, and made for a safer town. Now, Zahler segues to modern day crime with the same in your face, no-holds-barred writing style that readers of the gritty nitty like me love. Don't get me wrong. This isn't some street torture porn. This is MAN ON FIRE, SEVEN kind of stuff. It's smart, it's dark, and it will whip your ass if you stay up too late reading it.

Basic idea is a cop from the big city gets in trouble for doing his job right (politics, biotches) and the only gig he can find is in some violent little town in Missouri. His partner doesn't like him. His wife doesn't like the area. And that's as upbeat as things ever get. Pretty soon, someone starts executing cops and these two have to find those responsible and stop them before they become targets themselves.

If you like your stories cutsie and all tied up, stop here. This isn't for you. If you like your reads raw, the kind that has you muttering "holy S$%@" in bed, prompting your spouse or lover to ask again and again, "what are you reading?" then dive right in. Mean Business pulls no punches. The characters are dark, but real. The dialogue is like Mozart fresh from the hood. And when it's all done and you're taking a shower to clean up and thank the stars you don't live anywhere near a town like that, you'll be running to the computer to see what Zahler has next. Go ahead. Pick it up. And get ready for a whole new ride.

[William M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author S. Craig Zahler, after an incredibly successful pair of westerns and a groundbreaking science fiction novel, tries his hand with a straight crime story in the form of a very dark police procedural novel. As always with Zahler's work, his characters shine with originality and infused with a history that reinforces their decisions and motivations.

Violent and graphic, the author does not shy away from making the reader feel uncomfortable, immersing them in a world of dark secrets and spontaneous brutality. There is a point in the story where all the pieces of events become clear and when you discover the intent of the antagonist, the book becomes impossible to put down.

Even though I enjoyed the author's westerns and science fiction more, this is a welcome addition to an already impressive body of work from one of the truly rare voices in today's fiction. Zahler doesn't just crank out pages to meet a publisher's deadline. He meticulously crafts a thriller that, at times, leaves you breathless. Highly recommended.

[DaViD´82 · Rating 4 out of 5]

- Černoši bejvali cool... iks krát víc cool, než mohl běloch doufat, že kdy bude. Co se s nima sakra stalo, čoveče?
- Stali se z nich Afroameričani.

Zlá kniha. Nikoli ve smyslu špatná, ale rochnící si v hnusu, výkalech, špíně, mrtvých holubech, dávno padlých charakterech či penisy uřezávajících Češích. Temnota je to komiksová, nikoli byť jen náznakem realismu zavánějící, a přepálená až na hranu parodie sebe sama. Co jí zachraňuje je, že Zahlerův styl je plný černého humoru stavícím na jízlivosti, sarkasmu, cynismu a pro hlášku nikdy nechodící daleko. Popravdě on ty "humory" cpe do každého popisu i každého dialogu a někdy už to je dost za každou cenu. Někdy, ale naštěstí většinou ne.

Výsledek má blíže k stylizovaným tarantinovkám než-li klasicky střiženým drsným kriminálkám, ale ono to funguje a musím říci, že jsem se dlouho tak dobře u knihy nepobavil takovým tím zlým "muhehe" způsobem. Na druhou stranu, je to svým způsobem škoda, protože pod vším tím sebe shazovačným nánosem je znatelný více než solidní nekompromisní základ drsné školy. Zahler již prokázal, že vážné pokleslé žánry/látky a charaktery s tím spojené zvládá výtečně. Kdyby se trochu více soustředil na žánrovost a naopak tolik netlačil na "odlehčenou" strunu, tak to mohlo být i něčím více než "pouhou" oddechovkou na nejedno kruté zasmání, kde náhlý příklon čistě na vážnou strunu v závěrečné třetině (od pogromu policistů) působí jak ze zcela jiné knihy. Ne nutně lepší či horší, ale vážnější knihy.

- Nemá jeden z vás bejt hodnej policajt?
- Vyhodili ho v sedmdesátých letech.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly awful. Couldn't look away, a bit like watching a car crash. I picked up this book on one of the recommended lists I trawl through looking for some inspiration (and new authors) and while some are diamonds, others are just garbage. This is one of the latter.

What this guy does with language is unforgivable. I will quote a few of his lines and if by some bizarre chance you think it is acceptable, or even great, then dive right in ... but OMG, it's like wherever he could use 2 words, he would grab the Thesaurus and use 10 instead... here you go -

(describing 3 men blowing some dog whistles) - "Abdominal muscles constricted, and six lungs shot carbon dioxide through half as many whistles. The detective and his associates blew until they ran out of air, at which point, they pocketed their instruments and listened."

(describing cold hands) - "Bettinger discarded his latex gloves and replaced them with their woolen superiors, but the insensate pieces of meat at the ends of his arms did not apprehend any change."

(somehow managing to describe how I felt by the end of the book) - "Eleven hours had passed since he had awakened in the Sunflower Motel, but the elapsed time felt like a century"

The writing is like this ----- all the way through the very long book.

Just .. don't ... do ... it.

[Sam Kench · Rating 5 out of 5]

S. Craig Zahler has proven himself to be one of the best new auteur filmmakers. He made his directorial debut in 2015 with Bone Tomahawk, a top notch western with an extremely effective horror turn in the last act. This put him on my radar to watch closely and his second directorial effort did not disappoint. The rule breaking, grindhouse throwback Brawl in Cell Block 99 cemented Zahler as one of my favorite filmmakers. I am eagerly anticipating his next film Dragged Across Concrete which should be coming out later this year, hopefully it gets a wide release.
Being a fan of Zahler’s work it was a pleasant surprise to learn that he had already established himself as a successful author in advance of his film career. The writing within his two feature films are absolute standouts of the years in which they were made and both Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99 had some of the best dialogue and character work around. It was exciting to learn that he had more material for me to experience.
I’d like to take a moment to admire how goddamn good Zahler is at titling his works. Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell block 99, Dragged Across Concrete, Wraiths of the Broken Land, A Congregation of Jackals, and the subject of this review; Mean Business on North Ganson Street, are all badass titles.
Mean Business follows Detective Jules Bettinger as he is forced to relocate from Arizona to Victory Missouri, dubbed the worst city in America. The relocation takes place after a short scene that brilliantly sets up the protagonist. Bettinger is a great detective but he’s blunt, witty, rude, and has little patience for those on the other end of conflict. A business man speaks to Bettinger at the police station about the disappearance of his wife and the blunt detective gives it to him straight that she isn’t in danger, she skipped town with his money and never loved him. On his way out the door, the businessman steals an officer’s gun and kills himself, thus Bettinger is relocated as punishment.
Our protagonist has an excellent way with language, he’s chock full of smarmy comebacks and witty jabs, but he doesn’t use this clever language to dress up or soften the intent behind his words. He is direct and to the point and doesn’t mind being seen as an asshole.
This is a character trait that could be cliché. There are a great many protagonists who are constructed with a similar formula, particularly in procedural television. The number of protagonists who can be described by the line; He’s great solving cases but he has personality issues, is a little overwhelming. A lot of these are good, but the formula is apparent, he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (Sherlock) he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (House) he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (Rake) he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (Backstrom) he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (Bosch) he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (Monk) he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (Psych) he’s great at solving cases but he has personality issues (Inspector Morse) He’s great at solv- honestly this list could go on and on.
This is all to say that while the Mean Business on North Ganson Street protagonist could potentially fit this mold, he never feels cliché. His personality comes across wonderfully and he makes for a really fun, well-defined character to follow through this incredibly dark story. Bettinger’s family is also well developed, especially his wife and the relationship that the two of them share. There’s a bit of characterization that I love for the wife’s character where evey time she laughs it sounds like there’s an old man in her chest having a fit, and Bettinger loves to get that oldster chuckling. Their relationship is sweet and provides an excellent balance to Bettinger’s disposition. She’s a great character in her own right as well, not just in relationship to the story’s lead. She’s a painter and as the story progresses we learn more about her as a person and an artist. The trajectory of her career, with a highly lauded gallery to feature her work, provides a good foil to the dangerous and consuming work of her husband. In many detectives stories an aside to explore the protagonist’s family can feel like little more than a distraction to the central plot, but here, every time Bettinger took a minute to call home while on the job, I was fully invested and grew to like the characters more and more.
The novel is host to a bevy of antagonistic characters, the main baddie left a mystery for a good chunk of the book, and even after the reveal they are exclusively referred to without actually being present until the very end. This isn’t an issue as there is a strong cast of secondary antagonists with a mysterious man called E.V.K being particularly menacing, partly due to his horrific actions, but also due to how little we learn about him as a reader. A great example of how to create intrigue by withholding information.
In addition to the antagonistic characters, the book is also set in an oppressively antagonistic setting. The fictional setting of Victory is easily the most engrossing aspect of Mean Business on North Ganson Street. Victory is a city comprised almost exclusively of criminals, not even police maintain order, the police that are present are largely corrupt and the entirety of the law force is a constant target to violent killers. Victory is the kind of city where the street signs have all been decapitated and you gauge which turn to take by the severed cat head nailed to the telephone pole. It’s a brutal place and Zahler’s description of it is rich and consuming in the best way. It’s a setting that I could spend much more time in as a reader. There are a few smaller confrontations between Bettinger and the cop hating locals and more of these instances would have been welcome. The world building is incredibly strong and contributes greatly for my desire to see this story as a feature film, or even the setting as a television series.
I looked into it after finishing the book and according to Deadline the film rights were actually acquired by Warner Brothers back in 2013 with Zahler set to write the script and the film set to star Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. I would hope Zahler would be able to direct it as well but the is no director attached and it doesn’t look like the production has moved forward. As much as I like DiCaprio and Foxx, I don’t think they fit the roles. According to Deadline, Dicaprio is supposed to play Bettinger, which is definitely not right since Bettinger is described as having skin as dark as outer space but without the stars, and Jamie Foxx is set to play his parter who is constantly described as being absolutely massive, but Foxx is only 5’9, far from a behemoth, still that’s an easier change than a complete race swap which is pretty important to the character. If I were casting, I’d go with someone like Lance Reddick or Michael K Williams as Bettinger and someone like Tiny Lister JR. or Terry Crews as his partner.
I would like to see Mean Business on North Ganson Street as a novel, the entire story is very cinematic and the short chapters, many lasting only a page or two, made the pacing feel considerably more film-like than your average book as it moved from scene-to-scene.

Mean Business on North Ganson street pulls no punches. It’s mean, it’s brutal, it’s cool, it’s witty, and one hell of a read. I was reading it quite late one night and had to put it down before I fell asleep, I had a dream in the book’s world, then finished the rest of the book first thing in the morning. A novel hasn’t grabbed me like that in a long while. I highly recommend it.

[Charlie Grusin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a couple of hard-hitting novels last year, most of them horror: Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ was a great psychological novel that probed a little too close to comfort in its findings of growing up into an uncomfortable world; Dathan Auerbach’s classic Penpal built its creeping horror steadily before hitting you with a one-two punch towards the end of it; and I’ve also read the second-biggest kahuna of modern horror, Jack Ketchum’s Off Season (the first, I suppose, may be Jack Ketchum’s own Girl Next Door), which not only has one of the strongest build-ups of foreboding dread ever featured in a novel’s first half, but was also one of the most fever-pitch reads I’ve ever experienced that felt the closest to what I would describe as undergoing a heavy mental whiplash.

All of these books are good, and I believe they all deserve the amount of praise given to them already. However, if I were to tell anyone what was the most hardest-hitting, brutal and unforgiving read I’ve read last year, I would probably still say Off Season… but not before I mention this book first, S. Craig Zahler’s 2014 novel Mean Business on North Ganson Street.

Let’s put it this way… while a straight-up novel about a depraved cannibal family may dig deep to the point of questioning your own mortality and time already spent on this world, the thing about Mean Business is not that it is more depraved than something like Off Season - it’s just that while Ketchum’s novel had its own small cast of well-developed fleshed-out characters stuck in a little unlucky spot by the coast of Maine, Mean Business has a whole canvas of colorful characters tied to an entire city of toppled structures and aerosol-tagged complexes that simultaneously bursts with life and blasts with horror in equal strokes. You care about both casts from each novel in similar ways, but because of how rich and deep the environment of Mean Business is - and also by how easy it is to be picked up and absorbed by it - every execution and blow hurts a lot more, feeling more like a fabric of this world’s existence and history had been torn apart rather than it being just a fictional slaying.

It’s easy to compare the levels of horror reached in this novel to other crime novelists like James Ellroy and Shane Stevens - writers who knew how to portray the horrific ways our fellow humans can commit atrocious acts upon each other - but with the amount of attention and detail given to creating this world right from the pages, it is also one of the most uniquely immersive pieces of fiction that I’ve read in a longtime; that’s the kind of feeling I tend to associate from reading any good work of sci-fi or fantasy, not necessarily from anything tied to the crime genre. It’s nasty and ugly, but it’s also big and beautiful.

I could probably stop there. I could also probably talk further about the character dynamics at play, specific key moments in the story (oh boy is there a lot of them!), or even how much spotlight is given to nearly every minor character that pops in and out of the narrative, but I would rather not disclose anything else about this novel - this is one of those stories where going off the premise alone is all you really need to know beforehand - and I also think there are a couple of good reviews written here that dive more into that stuff already. What I do like to make note of here, however, is how incredible the writing style is.

To note, I am familiar with Zahler’s film work - in fact I think his films are probably some of the best films ever produced in recent years - so a lot of the characterization work and his heightened reality dialogue are things that I’ve expected to appear here. What I was surprised by, however, was how sparse and sharp Zahler’s writing style actually is.

You watch something like Bone Tomahawk or Dragged Across Concrete, right, and you listen to the flow of dialogue from any of the characters or see how much time is dedicated to even the littlest moment on screen - Bone Tomahawk’s exchange about reading books over a bath and Dragged Across Concrete’s epic sandwich-munching scene, for example. Not only do you think to yourself Man this feels like something you would read in a novel but following that, This would be jam-packed with paragraphs upon paragraphs of detail if it was!

Not that I am against anything like “purple” or “bloated” prose, mind - a lot of Lovecraft’s stories are effective and fun in that way, and I love the approach of it taken in some of Stephen King’s earlier novels - it’s only that after seeing these Zahler-directed joints, I’ve expected extensive detailing in a Zahler-written novel to be the case. But it isn’t really, since it’s rare that a page of this novel contains a hefty paragraph in the form of something taken from Lovecraft or early King. The writing, or rather the structuring of it (sentences, paragraphs, lines of dialogue, etc.), follows closely to the traditional custom of crime-thriller writing to be straight and sharp to the point. But it really isn’t like that either, is it? Because while that tight structuring is there, so are some of the flourishes that one would expect to come from a Zahler novel:

The waiter departed, and the detective opened the menu. Underneath the rugose lamination were photographs of shining, vibrant delicacies that could not possibly exist in Victory, Missouri. Sipping tea, he perused fabrications until his partner entered the restaurant and sat on the opposite side of the table. The big fellow’s troubles were remarkably well concealed. (pg. 63)

“Rugose lamination”... “shining, vibrant delicacies”... and perusing fabrications on top of all that… some may think writing like this - of which is an absolute constant in this novel, just so we’re clear on that - is worthy of empty air trying to pass itself as a material thing, but I think there is something magical involved in this that extends beyond the characters and the settings of the story; not only do these choices create these odd, interesting textures within the sentences that make them more “chewable” to read - rather than making them easier to glaze through - but it also gradually makes the novel feel more grander than its length may suggest. This novel runs close to 300 pages, but finishing it feels like you’ve read a 500 page novel instead… that has to be a pretty impressive feat somewhere, right? I think so.

Mean Business on North Ganson Street is a great novel - it might even surpass Zahler’s own films - and is one I would gladly recommend to anyone with a kick for rough crime-thrillers or who is seeking for something really special. I will be checking out more of his written work very soon.

[Jess ☠️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up

I love Zahler. I love his hard-boiled characters, his exposition of settings, his gritty storylines, and his remorseless, unrelenting style. 𝘔𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘉𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 had all of these qualities but I did not love it.

Detective Jules Bettinger from Arizona says the wrong thing to the wrong guy and gets sent to Siberia (Victory, Missouri). It's a freezing cold, violent, dangerous shithole where the cops are just about as dirty as the criminals. When cops start being executed, he has to figure shit out.

It's a (mostly) pacy story with decent enough character development. It also has his signature brutality of which I'm a huge fan. But it gets bogged down with some classic Zahler bullshit.

Zahler has a painful addiction to the thesaurus. I'm all for an extensive vocabulary but he has a seemingly unquenchable thirst to find the most arcane word when a dozen simpler ones would do the job and also serve the sentence/scene better. This has always rankled me but in other books I've read by him it was easier to overlook due to the storylines. Not so here. Honestly if it weren't so fucking annoying and distracting it would almost be laughable. Here's a glaring example that literally made me groan:

𝘉𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘹 𝘨𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘥 ���𝘯𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦.

I mean, come the fuck on. The dude's hands were freezing and he put on some gloves. It's not that deep.

On the flip side is Zahler's penchant for certain specific words/phrases. One such example is "violescent sky" which is used repeatedly over the course of 20 or so pages. Oddly Zahler didn't bother to find a single other word for "purplish" despite having obvious access to a thesaurus. It's downright confounding.

The final thing that let this one down for me was a bewilderingly lengthy voyage in a blizzard toward the climax. The book moved at a fast pace until this exceptionally long and uneventful lead up to the Big Boss Battle. And then that actual scene was bizarrely anticlimactic. Which is SO un-Zahler-like. His books and movies are normally loaded with tension until the final explosive scenes you knew were coming but are still atrociously brutal.

I'm not sorry I read it but it's my least favourite of anything he's done by far. But I'll still read anything he puts out.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not some expert on writing reviews but I loved this book. This is the first ever book I've read in only one day. I tore through those pages like no other book I have ever read. I think the short chapters helped with that. Funny, gruesome, sometimes disturbing and all around a great book.

[Петър Панчев · Rating 3 out of 5]

Черна полицейска история
Цялото ревю тук: http://knijenpetar.blogspot.bg/2015/0...

От време на време ми идва да казвам: „американска му работа“. И много често ме разбират от първия път. Това става, защото в Съединените щати властва мултикултурно общество, често описвано в романи и екранизирано в киното. В Холивуд също обичат да налагат темата за различията от всякакъв характер, които – визуализирани в киното – да напомнят на богатата на различни култури страна, че всички трябва да живеят в мир и разбирателство. Това предполага в почти всеки сценарии да присъстват чернокож, латинос, азиатец и бял. В крими трилърите и полицейските екшъни това си е дори стандарт, а и ролите са добре разпределени, за да не се получи комплицирана ситуация. В „Гадна работа на улица „Гансън“ („Бард“, 2015, с превод на Асен Георгиев) това не е основната тема, но си личи отвсякъде, че схемата е все същата. Самата книга е непретенциозна като замисъл и сякаш е излязла от „литературната копи-пейст вселена“, предназначена да захранва Холивудските студия с поредния полицейски екшън. Той пък скоро ще бъде по екраните и ще се гордее с две ярки звезди – Джейми Фокс и Леонардо ди Каприо.

Основният персонаж тук е нахаканото ченге Джулс Бетингър – мъж с две деца и готина съпруга, който не си поплюва когато става въпрос за полицейската работа. Един ден го посещава човек, на когото Бетингър не държи да покаже повече от необходимото уважение и след куп типични полицейски закачки, без да го е искал в действителност, го принуждава да си тегли куршума. Инцидентът става достояние на всички и шефът му е принуден да го накаже. Уволнението е избегнато, но се налага Бетингър да напусне приятната Аризона и да се засели и работи на север – във Виктъри. Самият Виктъри се оказва едно от най-долнопробните градчета в Америка, в което престъпниците са повече от всички останали, полицаите не достигат и не е чудно, че и те самите не са „чисти“.
(Продължава в блога: http://knijenpetar.blogspot.bg/2015/0...)

[Katherine Tomlinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In S. Craig Zahler’s new book, a good detective’s bad judgment earns him exile to the heartland where his investigation into a murder opens up a very nasty can of worms.

MEAN BUSINESS is a great example of "heartland noir" where we know something is rotten in Missouri even before disgraced detective Jules Bettinger arrives. Bettinger is a well-rounded character who comes across as a good man in a bad, bad job. He's cynical, but there's a reason for it, and what we see of his private life--his relationship with his family members--tells us he sees them as a refuge and a respite.
The writer also does a good job of making stone sociopaths understandable. They're still chilling characters but we understand what motivates them.
The plot is twisty and complicated but never quite gets … convoluted. It does get kind of random a bit, though. We know some of the pieces of the puzzle up front (and that means we know more than Bettinger does at first) and we may suspect we know what else is going on, but there are a number of surprises here. The resolution of the mystery is a bit ambiguous, though. We genuinely don't know how it's all going to end, and that's something that rarely happens in this kind of book.

[Ben Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The city in this book is about as realistic as Detroit in RoboCop. This was a comic book type of story, very over the top and cartoonish but I gotta admit I found it entertaining. My biggest issue I do think it’s over detailed, I don’t need to know every movement or every thing the characters are doing.

[Donna Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book shocked me!

[Cindy Landes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un vrai roman noir. J’aimais vivre la vie de policier dans un milieu défavorisé où la criminalité est extrêmement élevée. Les personnages sont dérangeants, mais l’auteur réussit à nous les faire apprécier et comprendre leurs réactions. Quand même quelques longueurs qui font la différence entre un 4 et un 5 étoiles 🤩

[Artsalnov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Вот он, слабоэкранизируемый, но вызывающий неутехаемый интерес в Голивуде автор!

Что ж, по прочтению стало понятно почему. Пишет чувак очень кинематографично, остросюжетно, книга из тех, что читается залпом!
Но, нужно отметить самоповторы, которые есть в уже снятых картинах по сценариям Крейга Залера: типа пуленепробиваемой маски в «закатать в асфальт», трипа на задворки цивилизации а-ля «костяной томагавк»....

В любом случае, книжка порадовала, спасибо @sipovic, за подгон!

[David Bjorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've enjoyed all of Zahler's work, and this was no different. He definitely scratches that hardcore noir itch.

[Francis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let's see besides the gratuitous violence there was ....? Hmmm, I guess that was about it.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone make this into a movie please. Brilliant.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Очень бодро, жесть и мрак, но концовка недокручена.

[Martina Wolfová · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jestli existuje peklo na zemi, tak je to městečko Victory z této knihy. Vynikajícím způsobem napsaný příběh drsný jako šmirgl papír. Pokud se nebojíte a nejste policista, tak určitě doporučuji :-)

[Jeffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

S. Craig Zahler's "Mean Business on North Ganson Street" lives up to its title in spades. This is a bloody book, which is soon to be a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Fox.

Zahler casts a wide net, showing a grim and disturbing portrait of an inner city gone terrible. The helpless are often victims, from the abused child beaten in the bathtub and forced to eat feces, to the murderous drug dealer who has hired a hit man to take out cops and anyone else. Faced with impossible odds of dealing with rampant crime, the cops had resorted to an unholy alliance with a local drug dealer, but that plan goes sideways, when the drug dealer stops cooperating. But in Zahler's attempt to show crime at its worst, the women victims of the depicted violence suffer particularly odious wounds or are tortured to reveal information. The ends seems to justify the means. It is a grim book, and the hero cop suffers greatly. While it starts out pretty good its goes south big time. It was hard to ride it to its violent conclusion.

Jules Bettinger is a no nonsense detective forced to relocate from Arizona to Victory, Missouri after an interrogation in Arizona goes bad. Victory is such a grim location that Bettinger and his family are forced to live miles away from his job. Bettinger immediately proves his skills as a detective by figuring out that someone is killing young women in particularly heinous ways and filming it. Bettinger's young partner seems to want to spend most of his time on the telephone texting his cold partner. In Zahler's capable hands, Bettinger is revealed as a caring family man, with a deep love for his wife and younger daughter and slightly estranged from his teenage son. But are these scenes of love and family in the novel to augment Zahler's portrait of his hero, or merely a way to make the last third of the book even more gruesome. The reader is definitely manipulated.

Two cops are killed their bodies dismembered gruesomely. Bettinger thinks his partner knows something about the murders, and learns about the drug dealer alliance that has gone sideways. It seems the drug dealer was beaten and withdrew his complaint against cops, but shortly thereafter the cops are being targeted and killed by hitmen. It does not take a genius to figure out the connection.

Bettinger has to figure out where the drug dealer is hiding out and stop the hitmen before the cop killers strike again, but the killers are going after cops in their homes and their loved ones are at risk. Bettinger will be forced to confront one killer in the worst possible place, and then team up with his partner as they go after the drug dealer in his lair.

This is a excessively violent story and some of the violence is particularly over the top.

The real world has its share of horrors, but Zahler's vision of Victory, Missouri is hard and mean.

[Katri Mei Lightdeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Като любител на трилърите не мога да кажа, че има лош трилър, всяка мистерия си е нещо завладяващо, нещо странно, което може да подхване читателя си и да го помъкне по дирите на престъпника, бил той един или няколко, със своите съучастници или...дори и да е престъпление, извършено от един, но свързано с още дузина извършени от друг.
Нещо подобно е и в тази книга.

На детектив Бетингър му остават още пет години до пенсия, но заради прекомерното му чувство на справедливост, много говорене и много действия е наказан и преместен от хубавата Аризона на север, в град на беднотия, на гнила престъпност и на брутални полицаи. Това е Виктъри, град, едва ли не забравен от всичко живо. Но там полицията се бори със зъби и нокти, дава всичко от себе си, за да държи нещата под контрол. Понякога малко нелегално, понякога с повече усилия, от колкото е необходимо, понякога и с заченки на престъпност у самите органи на реда...Но всичко си изглежда в реда на нещата, нали? За да се държат истинските престъпници, наркодилъри, мошеници, изнасилвачи и...изобщо всичко ��орочно и гадно, което може да представлява един човек, под контрол. И в онзи град живеят нормални хора, които от време на време съвсем случайно се оказват потърпевши във войната между престъпността и властите.

Всичко започва именно с едно убийство на проститутка, по което се откриват много особени доказателства, но нищо конкретно, което да повече полицаите по следите на извършителя. В техния ред на действия и мисли, Доминик Уилямс и Джулс Бетингър поемат по следите на други престъпления и от там се развива техният най-тежък и брутален случай.
Виктъри се залива от трупове на полицаи, шефът им е в безизвестност, Бетингър губи член на семейството си, а Доминик и тримата му приятели от управлението се оказват не толкова лоши, колкото са в началото на книгата до към средата.

Продължава в блога - http://ekaterinaes.blogspot.bg/2015/1...

[Milena Tseneva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Всяка книга, за която прочета, че предстои да бъде филмирана, винаги представлява интерес за мен. Правата за филмова адаптация на романа „Гадна работа на улица „Гансън“ (изд. „Бард“) вече са закупени. За участие в проекта са проявили интерес Джейми Фокс и Леонардо ди Каприо. Дотук звучи интересно, нали? Да видим за какво всъщност става въпрос.

Американският автор С.Грег Залер не ми беше познат досега. След кратко проучване научих, че Залер е доста популярен отвъд океана не само като писател, но и като сценарист, режисьор, певец и текстописец на песни. „Гадна работа на улица „Гансън“ е последната му книга, в която Залер ни запознава с няколко типични американски ченгета.

В главната роля е афроамериканецът Джулс Бетингър – един от онези читави и справедливи полицаи, които си вършат съвестно работата, но понякога устата им е по-бърза от мисълта. Няколко откровени реплики от негова страна водят до крайно неприятни последствия и един самоубил се човек. Това самоубийство прави Бетингър неудобен за някои хора и шефът му се вижда принуден да премести Бетингър от Аризона в замръзналия северен град Виктъри, Мисури. А Виктъри е възможно най-неприятното място, в което може да попадне един полицай.

Още от ревюто- тук: http://azcheta.com/gadna-rabota-na-ul...

[Daniel Hartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the opening chapter S. Craig Zahler paints a vivid picture of a nightmarish city of violence where even the good guys have quite a bit of bad in them. Victory, Missouri is a city I'm glad doesn't exist, but to be honest some cities aren't too far off from it now. Mean Business on North Ganson Street is a hard-hitting crime/thriller in which a detective finds himself and his family in danger when someone begins systematically hunting and killing every police officer in the city. This novel is at the same time darkly funny and brutally violent, filled with interesting characters and crackling dialogue. I could literally close my eyes, open the book, stab my finger down on the paper, and I'd touch some amazing dialogue. I would recommend this novel to anyone who is a fan of crime/thrillers with dark humor and shocking violence.

[James Oxyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mean-spirited and gross for the sake of being mean-spirited and gross, but it's a damn good hard-boiled read.

If there's one universal truth Zahler hits the nail on the head with, it's that Missouri sucks ass.