Dnf ( )

From the nasty people doing nasty things to each other school of crime writing, which sometimes I like but in this case didn't. Indistinguishable characters and a jumpy plot killed it for me, which is a shame as there were some good moments. ( )

Such a sad book, filled with desperate people leading desperate lives. Some of them are just evil, others totally over their heads with no future and an ugly present.

Reading about them is compelling, however, always wondering what other tragedy lies just over the hill.

You won't like any of the characters -- well, perhaps Olen is an exception, -- but you'll feel sorry for some, pity others, and be very glad you play no part in their lives. Most of them I suspect would be waving Confederate flags at a NASCAR race.

I hope McBride writes from imagination and not experience. I fear the latter. His Goodreads' page notes that “These people are the people I know and see every day, and this is the world I know.” ( )

Another winner from McBride. Nonstop violence and depravity from cover-to-cover, but with a depth of (usually disgusting) characterization that sets it apart. The story of cop Dale Banks' involvement with a bunch of meth-heads in a backwoods Missouri County is going to win any awards from that state's Chamber of Commerce, but it will keep you entertained--unless you have a weak stomach--for a few hours. The audio version, read by John McLain, is superbly done. ( )

Welcome to Hardscrabble, USA. This used to be a place where men carved a living out of the land; farmed livestock, raised families, rode steers and stayed honest. Now it’s redneck central, rotten trailers rusting on dusty tracks; crank-addicts toking and buying and selling the product brewed by those feared, weird men who never come down from the mountain. Welcome to the world of A Swollen Red Sun.

A compelling contemporary novel if ever there was one, A Swollen Red Sun treads the same tracks as Cormac McCarthy or ‘Rust and Bone’, but tells its own story and in a particularly gripping way. The story is populated with fully-fledged characters, men with aspirations and ambitions, be they the high school football hero turned rodeo-rider turned Sheriff’s deputy; or the family man with a farmstead as well as his deputy’s badge; or the tweaker-dealer who has dreams of escaping his grimy life and being a good man to his dream girl… if only he knew how.
Author Matthew McBride has taken every traditional character you might expect to find in this kind of situation and hurled them into the mix – even down to an insane preacher who brews meth on the mountain, chains girls in the basement and finds Jesus in his hallucinations.
(There's more details plot and character info over at:
http://murdermayhemandmore.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/a-swollen-red-sun-something-... )

Some of the characters blur a little – I have to admit that a couple of the tweaker thugs were indistinguishable to me – but the writing in this hard-hitting novel propels you along with the inevitable awfulness as things get rapidly out of hand. On crystal meth, violence saturates the atmosphere and threatens to uncoil at any moment, and that’s exactly what McBride captures here.
It’s a shame that the women characters are little more than ciphers: they are the victims or the goodwives, and feel sketchily drawn. This is man’s country and all the major characters are unreconstructed hormonal males, snarling and snapping at each other’s throats. They may long for an honest woman and a clean family, but wouldn’t know how to provide for one save with the barrel of a shotgun.

Vivid, nasty, violent and thought-provoking, A Swollen Red Sun is 21st century rural America at its worst – and modern American thriller writing heading for its best.

8/10
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