Killing Game

by Charlie Huston

The first stand-alone thriller by critically acclaimed author Charlie Huston, The Shotgun Rule is a raw tale of four teenage friends who go looking for a little trouble -- and find it.Blood spilled on the asphalt of this town long years gone has left a stain, and it's spreading.Not that a thing like that matters to teenagers like George, Hector, Paul, and Andy. It's summer 1983 in a northern California suburb, and these working-class kids have been killing time the usual ducking their parents, tinkering with their bikes, and racing around town getting high and boosting their neighbors' meds. Just another typical summer break in the burbs. Till Andy's bike is stolen by the town's legendary petty hoods, the Arroyo brothers. When the boys break into the Arroyos' place in search of the bike, they stumble across the brothers' private a crank lab. Being the kind of kids who rarely know better, they do what comes they take a stash of crank to sell for quick cash. But doing so they unleash hidden rivalries and crimes, and the dark and secret past of their town and their families.The spreading stain is drawing local drug lords, crooked cops, hard-riding bikers, and the brutal history of the boys' fathers in its wake.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Noir, Ebooks

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Charlie Huston is an American novelist, screenwriter, and comic book writer known for his genre-blending storytelling and character-driven narratives. His twelve novels span crime, horror, and science fiction, and have been published by Ballantine, Del Rey, Mulholland, and Orion, with translations in nine languages. He is the creator of the Henry Thompson trilogy, beginning with Caught Stealing, which was announced in 2024 as a forthcoming film adaptation directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Austin Butler. Huston’s stand-alone novels include The Shotgun Rule, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, Sleepless, and Skinner. He also authored the vampire noir series Joe Pitt Casebooks while living in Manhattan and later California. Huston has written pilots for FX, FOX, Sony, and Tomorrow Studios, served as a writer and producer on FOX’s Gotham, and developed original projects such as Arcadia. In comics, he rebooted Moon Knight for Marvel, contributed to Ultimates Annual, and penned the Wolverine: The Best There Is series.

Reviews

[Francesc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una lectura muy amena.
Es una novela coral ya que todos los personajes son importantes en la historia. Los protagonistas son 4 adolescentes (George, Héctor, Paul y Andy) que, sin querer, se meten en un lío de drogas.
Este lío se convierte, poco a poco, en una excusa para desarrollar la historia personal de cada uno de los chicos y de sus respectivas familias. Por encima de todas las historias, sobresale la de los hermanos George y Andy y el pasado de su padre, Bob.
Todos los personajes acaban conectados de alguna manera.
Esperaba bastante menos de esta novela y me ha sorprendido gratamente.
Los personajes están muy bien descritos, la trama está bien desarrollada y los diálogos son muy veraces. Además, el lenguaje usado concuerda perfectamente.
Buena novela.
Charlie Huston no llega a las cotas de James Crumley, John Hart o Donald Ray Pollock, pero se le acerca.

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A very enjoyable read.
It is a choral novel as all the characters are important in the story. The main characters are 4 teenagers (George, Hector, Paul and Andy) who unwittingly get into a drug mess.
This mess becomes, little by little, an excuse to develop the personal story of each of the boys and their respective families. Above all the stories, the one of brothers George and Andy and the past of their father, Bob, stands out.
All the characters end up connected in some way.
I expected much less from this novel and was pleasantly surprised.
The characters are very well described, the plot is well developed and the dialogue is very truthful. In addition, the language used matches perfectly.
A good novel.
Charlie Huston does not reach the heights of James Crumley, John Hart or Donald Ray Pollock, but he comes close.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Posted at Shelf Inflicted

Four suburban teenagers manage to find big trouble when they come across a meth lab while trying to retrieve Andy’s stolen bike. I’ve wanted to read Charlie Huston for a while and thought this stand-alone thriller would be a good place to start. I wasn’t disappointed. This was a brutal, dark and compelling slice of suburban life. The characters were very well-developed, the dialogue sharp, and the pace relentless. The story was raw, painful and a believable portrayal of troubled youths, dysfunctional families, and drug use. This was a story about kids who made mistakes and had bad things happen to them; it was about parents who wanted to make a better life and found they couldn’t escape their past. Intense, disturbing, and not for everyone.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't usually read the endorsement quotes from famous writers that appear on books, but this one caught my eye. It was a blurb from Stephen King about how "unputdownable" this book was. And, I was looking for something in the thriller genre, not necessarily scary, but fast-paced and a little mindless, so I thought this might work. The Shotgun Rule is about four high school friends who pass their days riding their bikes around town, getting high, and figuring out not-so-legal ways to make a few extra dollars. When they break into the house of a rival gang, they stumble upon a meth lab, and steal a bag of crystal meth, hoping to find a way to sell it off. The boys, as you might expect, get more than they bargained for, and suddenly find themselves in a little over their heads. In addition to the drug deal plot, a couple of the kids have mini-sub-plots about their relationships with their parents that I found much more interesting than the main story. I'm not sure if I agree with King that this book was unputdownable, but I did read it in one long session on the elliptical machine. It made the time pass more quickly than it otherwise would have, but I don't think this one would have been worth spending pure reading time on.

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Charlie Huston's first standalone novel after his Joe Pitt and Hank Thompson series. While it is just as visceral and violent as his other novels, it is also quite different. For The author has moved his action to the suburban setting of Northern California and focuses his attention on four teenagers growing up with many of the temptations our society gives them. This suburban setting may feel uncomfortable even to the most ardent Crime Noir fan for this is violence set on children even if those children see themselves as adults. The Shotgun Rule reminds me a bit of Dennis LeHane's Mystic River in the idea that the sins of the fathers catches up to their children. But Huston approaches it with his own unique fast-paced action and dialogue. With this novel and his other standalone, The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death, the author is showing he is not happy with being a superior pulp writer. He has a interest in our relationships, especially in families, and how they haunt us. Huston continue to pull away from other Crime Noir writers and makes a impressive stand.

[Ian Mathers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe it's because this one stars deliquent teenagers instead of a burned out ex-baseball player or, you know, a fucking vampire detective, but the violence in The Shotgun Rule seemed even more brutal than normal for Huston. There was one particular bit with a hacksaw that actually made me take a five second break to compose myself.

But the reason I dove right back in wasn't because Huston does literary violence well, although he does; it's because as always his characterization and dialogue and plotting are top-notch. Again possibly because of our protagonists we have Huston's happiest ending (at least to date, Mystic Arts... arguably eclipsing this one in that respect) and it feels a lot more earned than most authors could manage. This guy just writes fantastic, gripping, funny, moving books.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a fourth of the way through, I just about put this down, and took a break from it. I was getting little tired and fed up with these teenage friends that all they did was, smoke, drink and the ever present f-bombs. What the hell were their parents doing, to keep them from crusing around the neighborhood on their bikes? Then ya find out about their parents, past and present issues.....and welcome to 'burbs of northern CA, in the early 80's. After what these kids got themselves into, it is, a no holds barred, drugs and gangs tale. And with a very intense, unforgetable ending....that I didn't see coming the way it ended. This quick read ended up as a pleasant surprise.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Shotgun Rule" was the last of Charlie Huston's novels that I had yet to read (other than "A Dangerous Man," which, based on my feelings about "Six Bad Things," I may just skip), and I was a bit nervous about it, since it's about a bunch of teenaged boys, and I wasn't sure I could handle reading about kids suffering the sorts of atrocities that he regularly puts his adult protagonists through. In the end, though, I couldn't resist, and I'm glad I couldn't, as this book is another home run in the spirit of "Caught Stealing," "Already Dead," and "The Mystic Arts Of Erasing All Signs Of Death." When Huston gets rolling, he does not fuck around, and the violence was just as present and just as brutal in this book as it has been in the other books of his that I've read. However, in the end, I enjoyed the story too much to let it stop me from reading it. I could relate to all of the main characters--Paul, the perpetually angry one; Hector, the Mexican punk rocker; George, the easygoing one; and Andy, George's precocious little brother--in different ways, and it did suck to see all of them endure their own share of ultraviolence. What made it so interesting was learning to understand what was behind their surface-level personalities, what characteristics and experiences led them to be the way they were now. All of the protagonists find a hidden core of strength to see them through the bad situations they find themselves in, and so does George and Andy's father, now an upstanding citizen who turns out to have had a juvenile-delinquent past similar to the present his teenage sons are now living through. I'm going to be very vague where the plot is concerned. The whole thing gets going because a local bully, who lives with his outlaw older brothers, steals Andy's bike, and from there, I really shouldn't tell you anything else, because so many changes happen so quickly, and I wouldn't want to spoil them for you. Suffice to say that fighting between teenagers is just the tip of the iceberg. You owe it to yourself to learn the rest of the story. Read this book.

[William Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Want to know what it's like growing up lower-middle class, get into fights with the neighborhood kids, screw around with all of your outsider friends and talk about nothing but drugs and music and not think about the future for one single second? Read this and find out. I could not believe how close this book came on every level to a very dark period in my own high-school experience, not only the insight and feelings of the teens, but literally, the violence, the drugs, the seedy adults and dealers and thieves and scumbags. It was like reading Jim Thompson- brutal. It was like reading Stand by Me- close to home.

I'll have to admit, when he isn't writing some trndy garbage about private investigating vampires, he really knows what he's doing. This is damn near the same book I was trying to write in my early twenties, and he did it better, more honestly, and more brutally than me.

Congratulations, Charlie Huston, this book is gold.

[Lisa Kühntopp · Rating 5 out of 5]

super geschrieben..so spannend, dass man es gar nicht mehr aus der Hand legen kann

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy does Charlie Huston do the build up of dread well. Grabbed this book at a used book store on my way to vaca, doing the, sticking with an author you know rule, and it did not disappoint.

We've got fucked up kids getting in over their head and boy do they ever. They are boys who are a little lost because of various family circumstances, even if they have no right to be cause the parents care. They get high, they boost shit, they want to be tougher than they really are. Than things turn for real tough and turn bad and the next thing you know life changes are happening. The kind of things that you are like, if you were older you'd know better than to do this shit. The sense of dread is meticulously being built from the very beginning. By the end I was having to look away as things were moving so fast and so apparently out of their young hands that I couldn't bear to watch it unfold before my very eyes.

[Charlie George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as consistently bracing and blistering as I was hoping for, but still very hard-edged and good. The story lurches suddenly when some mildly hooligan kids being delinquent are mixed up in major-league criminal villainy. The best part is the realism--of characters, dialogue, setting, and behavior alike. It takes a long time to set up that level of believability, so of course it can't be action-packed.

Never been a better book to play 'guess who all is gonna die'. I'm usually bad at this game, and this was no exception. I was even worse at playing 'guess who's gonna come alive and pwn this shit'. This isn't necessarily because it is unpredictable, but more likely because I suck at prediction.

Very enjoyable, exciting reading, even if nothing profound happens. I'll be seeking out more of Mr. Huston.

[Larry H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charlie Huston is a great writer. He's written two different series before this book and I'd recommend both--one is about a guy caught in the wrong situation who kills to get out of it, and the other is about a vampire struggling to make it in the vampire-ridden world of NYC. That being said, this stand-alone book was terrific. Four kids break into the neighborhood thugs' house to steal back one of their bikes and find stuff they shouldn't. What happens from that point on may be a little predictable at times, but ultimately is terrifically suspenseful and so well-written. This is more than a story about boys being boys and getting into trouble; it's a story about the bonds of friendship and family, and how secrets always have a way of being discovered. I think this could be a great movie!

[Alberto Valverde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novela entretenida sin más. Siquiera es original, cuatro jóvenes marginales, dedicados a fumar porros y beber, se introducen en la casa de la familia mas chunga(palabra que aparece por doquier en el libro) de la ciudad (rozando el surrealismo como consiguen entrar) para recuperar la bici de uno de ellos, y se llevan un kilo de cristal (metanfetamina). A partir de intentar colocar lo robado, la situación conduce a un final (que vas prediciendo sin lugar al equivoco según avanzas en la lectura) en que pasado y presente se unen sin sorpresa alguna. Repleta de violencia gratuita, no es recomendable para los mas bibliófilos, puesto que la narración es de lo mas chabacana y coloquial, nada literaria, no solo en el apartado de los diálogos (que seria lógico dado los personajes), sino que engloba también el apartado del narrador (dejando un resultado bastante pobre en ese aspecto, la verdad)

[Georgie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book! Imagine a mix of Stranger Things (kids on bikes), Stand By Me (four boys getting up to no good) and then throw in a whole lot of profanity and graphic violence and drugs and you have this book. I normally dislike excessive swearing/violence in books, because I think a lot of authors just throw that stuff in for shock value. In The Shotgun Rule every swear word, every bit of violence is pitch perfect, true to the characters and the plot. And then there are these moments of tenderness and humour and closeness between characters that just shine through and take your breath away as much as the violent, dark, awful stuff does.
This was one of those rare books where I felt I was right there with the main characters (the four boys) and they became utterly real to me.
Not for the faint-hearted or the easily offended!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charlie Huston writes everyday chaos likes it's happening right in front of him and he's reporting what he's seeing. Authentic dialog, humor, complex characters are all part of his slim, violent volumes. With The Shotgun Rule he doesn't disappoint. Four teenage boys teetering between delinquency and a life of hard crime bite off more than they can chew when they discover a meth lab run by three Hispanic brothers who have accepted their roles on the hard side. When the boys steal a bag of the meth, they set off a series of events that rekindle feelings buried decades ago and change their lives forever.

[Garrett Leun · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Stand By Me meets Deliverance.

Charlie Huston was a knockout punch from the moment I first read him. He breaks some serious dialogue rules in the best way - it's real, it's fast, and it's off the cuff. His characters are thick and tangible in an I-almost-know-that-guy kind of way. This was the first standalone novel of his that I read (having raced through the Joe Pitt series and Caught Stealing trilogy) and he laid as much asphalt on the road in this one book as he did in maybe all those books combined. So many unbelievable moments and characters and twisted backstories, The Shotgun Rule is a tense, violent and unforgiving book from one of the very best.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems like Charlie Huston isn't writing crime novels anymore, so I've been saving this, the only one of his crime novels I haven't read. This one features not only the violence, tough talk, and plans going horribly wrong that you'd expect, but also a more authentic depiction of the friendships of teenage boys than I've seen in most YA.

Having said that, I didn't love it as much as I did Huston's other crime novels, but I can't put my finger on why. Maybe because there's something about kids in serious danger that freaks me out a little too much. Still, if you've liked Huston's other crime novels, you'll like this one too.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

It started with a stolen hand-me-down bike and ended in scars, crippling, and death. ‘The Shotgun Rule’ is about four teenage boys pitted against small time drug dealers with big time hard-on’s for violence and a warped sense of retribution. Very well written and highly atmospheric, ‘The Shotgun Rule’ is the complete package. I liked how each of the four main characters were given equal page time and a unique background. The showdown at the end will forever haunt me – probably the best scene I’ve ever read. 5 stars all the way.

[Tomasz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a leaner, meaner, faster, stronger and better "Stranger Things" - the '80s revisited without pandering to nostalgia (too much), without having to recourse to Demogorgons and Soviet underground bases to get creepy as all get out. This is Huston on top form, and this is a book it took me years to get through, because I'm a father, too, and it hits me in all the feels, all at once. Time for a Charlie H. reread binge? Quite probably, yes.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great, not terrible. This really could have used more character development. Reading teenagers call each other the f-word repeatedly gets kind of stale after a while. This had a lot of potential and I feel like it just kind of meanders. It’s very vague in what could have been more interesting parts. Pretty forgettable overall and not something I’d recommend.

[Iowa City Public Library]

This is a mean, nasty book about four bad kids, who, in the course of recovering a stolen bike, steal a pound of meth, getting in over their heads with some even worse people. That gang, the Arroyo brothers, is run by an even worse guy, Geezer, who (despite his comic affliction–what’s the word? Aphids? Asia? Aphasia!!) is one of the scariest characters in recent memory. There’s someone even Geezer is afraid of tho, and that’s the father of a couple of the bad kids.

The level of violence here justifies the cover blurb by Stephen King. The dialog is spot on, profane, nasty. The characters work, even if we only side with some of them coz they’re just kids The story’s escalating badness builds momentum, as it explores the past. I couldn’t put it down, but I wanted to shower when I finished.

Nasty. --John

From ICPL Staff Picks Blog

[Estibaliz · Rating 5 out of 5]

No sé si dejarlo en el 4 1/2 o ir directamente a por el cinco, que merecido lo tiene; porque cuando no eres fanática del género y aún así una novela consigue que digas '¡Qué buena!' cuando llegas al punto final, ya está todo dicho.

Y no es poco mérito el poder exclamar, por fin... ¡Aleluya! Porque una historia cumple todo lo que promete su contraportada:

"Con personajes memorables, diálogos chispeantes y una mezcla de humor negro y violencia marca de la casa, Charlie Huston firma un mordaz retrato sobre el mal que está al acecho en cualquier esquina y una historia frenética con un final memorable".

Pues eso: brutal y divertida, esta suerte de 'Goonies' delincuentes, encarnados por un "genio", un latino punk, un chico cool y un impredecible y ultraviolento chaval don migrañas

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Euj9f...

[Paul Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve read several books by Hurston. The Hank Thompson trilogy (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, A Dangerous Man) was a really good crime series, and two stand alone novels Sleepless and The Mystic Art of Erasing Death were very good and unique.

This one not so much. Dialogue was odd. Kindof like a play: a lot of third person and short choppy settings. Didn’t flow very well. Disjointed, and the story just wasn’t that good. I like his “regular” crime novels better.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stand By Me meets Boyz in the Hood.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ace! Talk about the consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and of how karma has a way of biting you in the ass at its own sweet time.

[RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN · Rating 5 out of 5]

RICK ““SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “A GRITTY, FULL THROTTLE, RIDE FROM BEGINNING TO END!”
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Hold on tight for a literary ride that starts innocuously enough, with four teenage friends during the tale end of summer vacation in a 1983 working class neighborhood in Northern California. Brothers George and Andy, and best buddies Paul and Hector, while not saints by any stretch of the imagination, are certainly not gang bangers, nor are they on the FBI’s most-wanted list. In fact these high school students don’t even drive cars they ride bicycles. They do spend a good amount of time getting high drinking and smoking weed and dropping pills. The author describes in everyday guttural street language, the constant “busting of chops” interaction that is normal between close boys of their age. An old rivalry with the Arroyo Brothers from their soccer days, leads to younger brother Andy’s bike being stolen, and the stage is set, for all that is to follow in this riveting, starkly violent, and savage, chain of events.

The boys response to the theft of Andy’s bike, is to break into the Arroyo’s house to get his bike back. It should be noted, that one of the Arroyo brothers has already spent hard time in jail, and the other two, have definitely, already passed the entrance requirements! While in the house, which it turns out is a “meth” lab among other things, the boys steal a kilo of “meth”. That one maneuver, tips the first domino, that starts a chain reaction that doesn’t stop until there are deaths, gruesome torture, injuries, and unwittingly, starts a chain of events that literally involves generations of families, that looked like respectable people,and leads all the way to the Hells Angels! You cannot put this book down till you’re finished! The author has depicted this class of people explicitly .

[Collin Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine stand by me meets Don winslows excellent Savages and you get an idea of what this book is.

Hector Paul George and the young Andy are enjoying their summer scoring beer and toking up when Andy, George's brother, has his bike stolen by the Arroyo boys, the neighborhoods resident tough guys with a penchant for violence. When they break in to the house to get the bike back, they find out the brothers are running a crank operation. And they decide they want in.

Essentially a bunch of amoral characters (I will warn anyone wanting to read this to prepare themselves to hear a lot of the homophobic f word and plenty or racial slurs) making very very short sighted decisions and the resulting consequences of said choices. It's an intense, sometimes brutal but fascinating crime story, and ends on a bittersweet note. A must read for any crime or coming of age fan.

[John Grazide · Rating 4 out of 5]

First book of the year! Woot!

Also the first for me by this author, and it was pretty good. A story about a group of four friends who are all in their teens and wanting more out of life. So they get high and steal stuff. When one of the kids bike get's stolen the story starts moving. They get mixed up with the thieves and bad stuff happens. A lot of which they aren't aware of. Along the way a little back story of each of the characters is revealed. Just enough to make it interesting. Being a kid from the same time (early 80's) and maybe messing around the same way, made it a little more enjoyable. One peeve I have with it is the authors non-use of quotation marks. He would just do
-what's going on?
And in the beginning it was hard to keep track of who was talking. If they were.

[Jeff Mauch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gritty story about some somewhat delinquent teenagers involving drugs, violence, and their parents pasts in 80's lower income suburbia. I can relate a lot to parts of this story. I remember a bike being my main mode of transportation and how there's nothing quite like the friendships made with the kids in the neighborhood where you grew up. Granted, this is much more violent and dangerous and I can't say meth was really something I had to contend with in my younger years. I really enjoyed Huston's formatting and writing style, somewhat unconventional when it came to dialog. I'll definitely be looking into his other works.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Charlie Huston and his writing style, so there is a built-in bias for this book.

When a boy's bicycle is stolen, he and his friends set out to get it back. But the bike was taken by three brothers who have a bike chop shop and are also selling and making crack.

When the boys take the bike back, they also take some things from the brothers' house -- including drugs -- and turn the brothers in to the police.

That pits them against the brothers and their bosses in a grim Oakland world made vivid by Huston.

It took me a bit to get into this one, but the last three-quarters of the book sped by.