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Raildogs
Freight trains pound the rails, steel on steel, crisscrossing America. The dark and lawless freight yards are staging points for the homeless and the adventurous seeking a free ride.
But is anything really free?
There are rules to the underbelly of society, cruel and
horrifying. Battles are won, souls are lost. Some seek revenge, and some seek redemption.
To the Raildogs it's always been about the next score. There's never been enough. Or is there?
In the dead of night chaos reigns. In the grim darkness of the boxcars, we find hell.
But is anything really free?
There are rules to the underbelly of society, cruel and
horrifying. Battles are won, souls are lost. Some seek revenge, and some seek redemption.
To the Raildogs it's always been about the next score. There's never been enough. Or is there?
In the dead of night chaos reigns. In the grim darkness of the boxcars, we find hell.
265 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 16, 2015
Rejean Giguere grew up in Europe and Canada. He is an avid outdoorsman, adventurer, photographer, and artist. He enjoys fishing, hockey, golf, tennis, skiing, and snowmobiling. When able, he loves using his V-Max motorcycle and vintage Corvette. Giguere had a business career in Toronto and Ottawa.
Raildogs is story that is centered on a gang and its turf, railroads. It’s not always going to be easy to get from one place to another. In many cases, with no money at all, people are left to make decisions. This book focuses on the Raildogs as they fight for respect, redemption, hate, and life.
The core of the story revolves gang’s boss members. They are spread in a territory of Western America riding freight trains. They make their living by taking whatever they want from stowaways. In the process, they are beat to a pulp and thrown off the train. These all occur when the train is moving out in rural or open tracks of land. I felt dreadful for people they encountered because many of them were riding away from another sort of oppression. It touched on topics of theft, rape, violence, drug abuse, fear, and homelessness.
The trouble for the gang comes when someone begins murdering members. Giguere leaves little room for the imagination when explaining the methods that gang members were tortured. Each time a scene came up, I cringed thinking about how painful the situations must have been. I found myself saying, “He had it coming.”
The story is written from several other character perspectives. Each of them providing insight into the gang. The officer, Bill, came across the gang after his daughter went missing and presumably killed. Following leads, Bill was able to locate possible suspects to the case. Upon contact with a member, he stumbles into the gruesome scene of their death. He is lead to another suspect and ultimately another murder.
Raul and Maria are a couple taking the freight trains down to Mexico. Most of their trip is quiet until nearing the end, when encountering Raildogs waiting in a trap. The couple gets separated while forced to act being outwitted and outnumbered. Raul calls his fellow gang members to save Maria and he fights to protect himself. Maria is subjected to male aggression and raped by a Raildog boss.
Other characters such as Bart and Danny are riding south to Florida. They met through discovering they were traveling in the same direction. When in route, Danny begins the initiation process of becoming a Raildog. They go separate ways. In his first act, the guys came across the Raul’s gang after the rescue and were beaten to death.
Towards the end, tension builds and it comes into the macro-story. The reader is explained why gang members were murdered. This book is definitely suspenseful. The anticipation kept me going up until the last page. There were several points were I felt myself holding my breath. You knew something bad was going to happen, didn’t want to stop. I became engrossed with wanting to know how and understand the backstory. Another interesting aspect that I enjoyed about this book was that there wasn’t a feeling of justice. Few of the characters had true resolution. I felt like it was the end of the bloody tracks. I wish Giguere went into greater detail with the scenery and surrounding landscape. So much of the book occurs outside. It would add another level of tones to the story.
The story is based within the culture of violence. It opens a portal into the life of members of society who chose to trespass situations and take matters into their own hands. The book reminds me that sometimes you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to get their mind and heart racing. Get lost on along the railroads and find yourself in the hands of the Raildogs screaming “Raildogs Rule!”.
Raildogs is story that is centered on a gang and its turf, railroads. It’s not always going to be easy to get from one place to another. In many cases, with no money at all, people are left to make decisions. This book focuses on the Raildogs as they fight for respect, redemption, hate, and life.
The core of the story revolves gang’s boss members. They are spread in a territory of Western America riding freight trains. They make their living by taking whatever they want from stowaways. In the process, they are beat to a pulp and thrown off the train. These all occur when the train is moving out in rural or open tracks of land. I felt dreadful for people they encountered because many of them were riding away from another sort of oppression. It touched on topics of theft, rape, violence, drug abuse, fear, and homelessness.
The trouble for the gang comes when someone begins murdering members. Giguere leaves little room for the imagination when explaining the methods that gang members were tortured. Each time a scene came up, I cringed thinking about how painful the situations must have been. I found myself saying, “He had it coming.”
The story is written from several other character perspectives. Each of them providing insight into the gang. The officer, Bill, came across the gang after his daughter went missing and presumably killed. Following leads, Bill was able to locate possible suspects to the case. Upon contact with a member, he stumbles into the gruesome scene of their death. He is lead to another suspect and ultimately another murder.
Raul and Maria are a couple taking the freight trains down to Mexico. Most of their trip is quiet until nearing the end, when encountering Raildogs waiting in a trap. The couple gets separated while forced to act being outwitted and outnumbered. Raul calls his fellow gang members to save Maria and he fights to protect himself. Maria is subjected to male aggression and raped by a Raildog boss.
Other characters such as Bart and Danny are riding south to Florida. They met through discovering they were traveling in the same direction. When in route, Danny begins the initiation process of becoming a Raildog. They go separate ways. In his first act, the guys came across the Raul’s gang after the rescue and were beaten to death.
Towards the end, tension builds and it comes into the macro-story. The reader is explained why gang members were murdered. This book is definitely suspenseful. The anticipation kept me going up until the last page. There were several points were I felt myself holding my breath. You knew something bad was going to happen, didn’t want to stop. I became engrossed with wanting to know how and understand the backstory. Another interesting aspect that I enjoyed about this book was that there wasn’t a feeling of justice. Few of the characters had true resolution. I felt like it was the end of the bloody tracks. I wish Giguere went into greater detail with the scenery and surrounding landscape. So much of the book occurs outside. It would add another level of tones to the story.
The story is based within the culture of violence. It opens a portal into the life of members of society who chose to trespass situations and take matters into their own hands. The book reminds me that sometimes you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to get their mind and heart racing. Get lost on along the railroads and find yourself in the hands of the Raildogs screaming “Raildogs Rule!”.
April 6, 2015
Rejean Giguere’s Raildogs is probably the best novel about a gang of criminal hobos terrorizing railway free-riders in the Heartland of America you’ll read this year. Its premise is admirably bolstered by a realistic feel to both the setting and violence, but is bogged down by grammatical errors and a great deal of padding that does nothing to advance the plot.
The story is simple enough: the Raildogs, an organized crime organization, prey upon hapless train stowaways, robbing, raping, and occasionally killing them. The conflict comes when someone starts preying on the Raildogs themselves, murdering them in ways both gruesome and inventive. Without getting too deep into a discussion of genre classifications and how ludicrous they can be, this wasn’t really a horror novel but rather a violent, gory thriller. It didn’t quite veer into horror territory, mostly because it wasn’t terribly scary. Bad things happened to mostly bad people in Raildogs, so it was hard to develop any tension for the characters. Most of them deserved the terrible things that happened to them. The few not-bad people in the novel never really encountered any danger.
And that’s where the book fell short. The narrative was told from multiple points of view, but the only important events in the novel occurred to either the Raildogs or the person killing the Raildogs. Bill the cop whose daughter was killed by Raildogs did some investigating, but didn’t solve the case, catch anyone, or do anything to affect the novel’s outcome. Bart and Danny, a pair of young guys riding the rails to get to Florida, were entirely extraneous: their stories were simply padding. Raul and Maria likewise. Side-plots and bit characters can add complexity to a novel, but only if they’re worked into the overall narrative.
Some writers are capable of editing and proofreading their own writing. Giguere, unfortunately, isn’t one of them. Grammatical mistakes simply aren’t acceptable in a published work, no matter who the publisher is. While not as bad as some you’ll read, there were punctuation errors and wrong word choices throughout Raildogs, which was off-putting (fair instead of fare was a frequent example).
Despite that, there’s a good amount to like in Raildogs. Giguere’s skilled at describing violence, and the evil characters were admirably loathsome. There was a sick sense of inevitability to every scene with a Raildog in it: someone was going to be hurt. Or raped. Or worse. Without knowing a lot about freight trains, the setting of the novel seemed realistic (this is where an author’s note or similar message to the reader describing the research that went into the novel might have added credibility).
Overall, it’s a short, entertaining read that could have been made shorter if the padding had been cut out. The bizarre, too-many-startling-revelations-in-the-last-pages ending didn’t do it any favors, but it all gets wrapped up in the end. Also, Giguere managed to not mention the word “hobo” at any point in the novel, which is both remarkable and frustrating, given the subject matter.
(Review posted at Ginger Nuts of Horror: http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/4/p...)
The story is simple enough: the Raildogs, an organized crime organization, prey upon hapless train stowaways, robbing, raping, and occasionally killing them. The conflict comes when someone starts preying on the Raildogs themselves, murdering them in ways both gruesome and inventive. Without getting too deep into a discussion of genre classifications and how ludicrous they can be, this wasn’t really a horror novel but rather a violent, gory thriller. It didn’t quite veer into horror territory, mostly because it wasn’t terribly scary. Bad things happened to mostly bad people in Raildogs, so it was hard to develop any tension for the characters. Most of them deserved the terrible things that happened to them. The few not-bad people in the novel never really encountered any danger.
And that’s where the book fell short. The narrative was told from multiple points of view, but the only important events in the novel occurred to either the Raildogs or the person killing the Raildogs. Bill the cop whose daughter was killed by Raildogs did some investigating, but didn’t solve the case, catch anyone, or do anything to affect the novel’s outcome. Bart and Danny, a pair of young guys riding the rails to get to Florida, were entirely extraneous: their stories were simply padding. Raul and Maria likewise. Side-plots and bit characters can add complexity to a novel, but only if they’re worked into the overall narrative.
Some writers are capable of editing and proofreading their own writing. Giguere, unfortunately, isn’t one of them. Grammatical mistakes simply aren’t acceptable in a published work, no matter who the publisher is. While not as bad as some you’ll read, there were punctuation errors and wrong word choices throughout Raildogs, which was off-putting (fair instead of fare was a frequent example).
Despite that, there’s a good amount to like in Raildogs. Giguere’s skilled at describing violence, and the evil characters were admirably loathsome. There was a sick sense of inevitability to every scene with a Raildog in it: someone was going to be hurt. Or raped. Or worse. Without knowing a lot about freight trains, the setting of the novel seemed realistic (this is where an author’s note or similar message to the reader describing the research that went into the novel might have added credibility).
Overall, it’s a short, entertaining read that could have been made shorter if the padding had been cut out. The bizarre, too-many-startling-revelations-in-the-last-pages ending didn’t do it any favors, but it all gets wrapped up in the end. Also, Giguere managed to not mention the word “hobo” at any point in the novel, which is both remarkable and frustrating, given the subject matter.
(Review posted at Ginger Nuts of Horror: http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/4/p...)
June 11, 2014
Mention people moving from city to city on freight trains, and most would probably think of the Great Depression and hobos riding the rails from one city to another looking for work. Those aren't the train-jumpers Giguere has in mind. This book is about a sub-culture in which people use freight trains for free transportation, about a gang of criminals who ride the rails preying on those travellers, about a man on a vendetta who is preying on those criminals, and about a cop who is pursuing both.
Giguere fans have come to expect a fast-paced and suspenseful read from his books, and Raildogs certainly doesn't disappoint. While it took a bit longer than normal for the narrative to get going, once it did I found I couldn't put it down.
There were a few rather gruesome scenes, but Giguere kept the focus on the suspense rather than the gore. And at the end of the book I was left considering the very different choices made by two men (each of whom had the same, heartbreakingly personal, reasons for hating the Raildogs), and about the relationship between vengeance and justice.
If you want a book which is both suspenseful and thought-provoking, you won't be disappointed in this one.
Giguere fans have come to expect a fast-paced and suspenseful read from his books, and Raildogs certainly doesn't disappoint. While it took a bit longer than normal for the narrative to get going, once it did I found I couldn't put it down.
There were a few rather gruesome scenes, but Giguere kept the focus on the suspense rather than the gore. And at the end of the book I was left considering the very different choices made by two men (each of whom had the same, heartbreakingly personal, reasons for hating the Raildogs), and about the relationship between vengeance and justice.
If you want a book which is both suspenseful and thought-provoking, you won't be disappointed in this one.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews