Kraj the Enforcer: Stories

by Rusty Barnes

Meet Kraj—pronounced krai—a low-level errand boy and hitman masquerading as a bouncer for Tricky Ricky Gutierrez, nefarious owner of the Twist, a club in upstate Elmira NY. A place that has both a LGBTQIA night and a cowboy country night, this cockeyed corner bar in northern Appalachia supports Ricky’s illegal schemes, and serves as a rural balm for Croatian-war refugee Kraj. Kraj plies his trade over a short span, moving from petty theft to strong-arming tips from people at the door, breaking up redneck fights, protecting the club’s nubile female staff and collecting gambling debts owed Tricky Ricky. Kraj eventually gets sucked further and further into Ricky’s underworld plans, where he wants to be seen as a man on the come-up, but he has problems moving up in Ricky's organization will never solve. His sister Ana, missing since the Croatian War for Independence, never strays far from his mind. Kraj, together with his sometime girlfriend Cami, newly become manager of a franchisee McDonald’s, and his manager Mikael. negotiates his way through underground fight clubs, prostitution rings, drug deals, petty thievery, and of course, murder. Tricky Ricky gives Kraj a great deal of rope and autonomy to operate. Will he hang himself with it or swing? Praise for KRAJ THE “Kraj is a human wrecking ball, hiding a tactical mindset, along with his sense of humor. Barnes’ Croat knockaroud guy is masterfully subtle, yet amplified by the colorful characters around him.” —Scotch Rutherford, Switchblade Magazine “Rusty Barnes leads us on a pulpy underworld adventure populated by toughs, scumbags, henchmen, double-crossers, pimps, and con men of the first water with his latest collection The Kraj Stories. Opening the book is stepping into the cage and each turn of the page is a quick jab to the face. You’ll close the book and find yourself with a bloody nose, a crushed larynx, and, if you’re really lucky, that you’ve been set on fire.” —Eryk Pruitt, author of What We Reckon

182 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 23, 2019

About the author

Rusty Barnes is a 2018 Derringer finalist and author of the story collections Breaking it Down (Sunnyoutside Press 2007) , Mostly Redneck (Sunnyoutside Press 2011), and Kraj The Enforcer: Stories (Shotgun Honey 2019), as well as four novels, Reckoning (Sunnyoutside Press, 2014), Ridgerunner (Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books, 2017), Knuckledragger (Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books 2017) and The Last Danger (Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books 2018), His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, like Dirty Boulevard: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Lou Reed (Down & Out Books 2018), Best Small Fictions 2015, Mystery Tribune, Goliad Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Red Rock Review, Porter Gulch Review and Post Road. His poetry collections include On Broad Sound (Nixes Mates Press, 2016) and Jesus in the Ghost Room, (Nixes Mates Press 2017). He founded and edits Tough, a journal of crime fiction and occasional reviews. Find him on Twitter @rustybarnes23

Reviews

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like your crime fiction raw, hard, and bloody, this collection of stories is for you. They detail the exploits of one Kraj, an expatriate Croat with leftover trauma from a war zone.
Kraj is of a type with Don Westlake's Parker, a ruthless career criminal with few redeeming qualities, except he's darned hard to kill. You won't like him, but you'll be afraid of him. He has oodles of sex amidst the sea of drinking and bloody violence, so be forewarned- these ain't no gentle crime tales.
He's a bouncer at a rough club that's always got some mayhem happening, as well as being a part-time legbreaker and worse. He employs his guns frequently in the course of his adventures, and his fists even more. He manages to keep getting away, despite losing pieces of himself in the scrapes he gets into.
There's always a tough woman to patch him up and heal him, and even to back him up with a gun when the odds are against him. Would you call that lucky? He's lucky and tough enough to survive in a vicious world.
So if you like stories that punch you hard and leave a mark, check this out.

[Lisa Lieberman · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started this book, I was finding it funny in a black-humorish way, but now that I've finished it, I've decided it's one of the saddest books I've ever read. Kraj is wounded, morally, in such a deep and enduring way that I see no way out of the pattern he's established. Very bleak story but it feels true.

If I hadn't run into Rusty a couple of months ago and renewed a friendship (begun virtually, in the largely defunct writer's community, Zoetrope, some twenty years ago) and seen what a sweet person he is, I'd have imagined him as mean and angry, given the fictional world he inhabits. Me, I need some grace to carry on, in these times especially.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed these crime stories about the Croatian enforcer with a sense of humor. Gritty but somehow charming as well.

[Rob Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are interconnected stories of a Croatian war refugee Kraj and his climb up the criminal ladder in Elmira, NY. He starts off fighting in a church basement for money. Next up is low-level errand boy work for Tricky Ricky, a local kingpin. Kraj uses his wit and considerable size later as a successful debt collector aka leg-breaker. I really enjoyed Kraj and his resourcefulness in these tight punchy tales. I hope this was as much fun to write as it was to read.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark and gritty

Some great stories by Rusty Barnes. Kraj is a great charcter. Gritty, dark, pulpy, and mean. This is my kind of crime fiction.