Tom Franklin

Mississippi Noir is the latest collection of dark crime stories in the long running series of similar titles from Akashic Books, and it's another good one. The first hint of what to expect from the book's sixteen stories comes in the blunt opening paragraph of Tom Franklin's two-page introduction:

"Welcome to Mississippi, where a recent poll shows we have the most corrupt government in the United States. Where we are first in infant mortality, childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, teenage show more pregnancy, adult obesity, adult diabetes. We also have the highest poverty rate in the country.

And, curiously, the highest concentration of kick-ass writers in the country, too,"

And judging strictly from the number of writers who make their homes in Oxford, the claim about "kick-ass writers" might very well be true. (But sadly, so are the other ones.) This Mississippi-based story collection features the work of a few familiar names, such as Ace Atkins, writers newly come to the genre, and even a couple of writers being published for the first time. As is always the case with the Akashic books in the series, the sixteen stories are divided into four thematic sections with tiles that give a clue to the type of story housed there: "Conquest & Revenge," "Wayward Youth"," Bloodlines," and "Skipping Town."

As it turns out, my three favorite stories come from three different sections of the book: "Lord of Madison County," by the first-time-published Jimmy Cajoleas, "Oxford Girl" by the already well-known Megan Abbott, and "Pit Stop", by veteran writer John M. Floyd.

"Lord of Madison County" tells of a seasoned teenaged drug dealer who has stumbled upon the best way imaginable to hide the truth about himself - he pretends to be a Jesus freak interested only in spreading the word of God among his peers. When, predictably, the young man learns that, not only is he nearly as smart as he thinks he is, but that bigger, badder criminals are all around him, things do not go particularly well for him and his preacher's-daughter girlfriend.

"Oxford Girl" takes the rather unusual approach of adopting its plot from an English ballad dating back to the 1820s. The old ballad tells the story of a young woman who is brutally murdered by the man she believes she is going to marry. The short story cleverly cites verses from one version of the old song as the story about two University of Mississippi students unfolds along eerily similar lines. There is one key difference, however, that makes the story especially effective - unlike the song, which is narrated by the killer, the story's narrator is the murdered girl.

And then there's "Pit Stop," a story that likely would have warmed the heart of Alfred Hitchcock. In this one, a young woman is telling her little girl a story from her past, the one in which she encountered the infamous "Night Stalker" who killed several women along Mississippi's Highway 25. An abundance of false leads and misdirection - along with plenty of clues that point to the Stalker's true identity - make this one a fun and satisfying read.

Bottom Line: Mississippi Noir meets the high standard set by it predecessors in this Akashic Books series.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher) show less

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Book Description: It's 1911 and the secluded southwestern Alabama town of Old Texas has been besieged by a scabrous and malevolent character called E. O. Smonk. Syphilitic, consumptive, gouty and goitered, Smonk is also an expert with explosives and knives. He abhors horses, goats and the Irish. Every Saturday night for a year he's been riding his mule into Old Texas, destroying property, killing livestock, seducing women, cheating and beating men all from behind the show more twin barrels of his Winchester 45-70 caliber over and under rifle. At last the desperate citizens of the town, themselves harboring a terrible secret, put Smonk on trial, with disastrous and shocking results. Thus begins the highly anticipated new novel from Tom Franklin, acclaimed author of Hell at the Breech and Poachers.

Smonk is also the story of Evavangeline, a fifteen-year-old prostitute quick to pull a trigger or cork. A case of mistaken identity plunges her into the wild sugarcane country between the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, land suffering from the worst drought in a hundred years and plagued by rabies. Pursued by a posse of unlikely vigilantes, Evavangeline boats upriver and then wends through the dust and ruined crops, forced along the way to confront her own clouded past. She eventually stumbles upon Old Texas, where she is fated to E. O. Smonk and the townspeople in a way she could never imagine.

In turns hilarious, violent, bawdy and terrifying, Smonk creates its own category: It's a southern, not a western, peopled with corrupt judges and assassins, a cuckolded blacksmith, Christian deputies, widows, War veterans, whores, witches, madmen and zombies. By the time the smoke has cleared, the mystery of Smonk will be revealed, the survivors changed forever.

My Review: Oh! Oh, I see...THIS is what y'all were on about when y'all were carryin' on over Franklin's writing. It surely to hell couldn't've been that crooked mess. That was painful.

Eugene Oregon Smonk is as horrible a character as Ignatius Reilly. He's as gross, as grotesque, as cruel, and as massively hilariously vile. Smonk suffers from gout, so he's already ten yards ahead of everybody else in the book in my good graces. He's got terminal consumption, too. (I don't have that.) He's bowlegged, he hates horses, he detests people. He's murdered and raped and generally been as much like Attila as a modern man can be.

Evavangeline is fifteen, a whore, and mean as a butt-fucked polecat. She doesn't know what “thank you” means, she's got no idea what impulse control is, and she expresses her displeasure with johns who don't pay up (I refuse to reach for the cheap joke inherent in “stiff her”) in most-often fatal ways.

And these, laddies and gentlewomen, are our heroes.

Yeup. This book, it's as much fun to read as a William S. Burroughs novel edited by Roger Corman. It's got energy. It's got no time for sacred, for nice, for sweet. It's got no place for normal, for kindly, for restrained. (Unless you mean “tied up for sex.”) It is, in short, a book for the boisterous and the bawdy, not the timorous and the tidy.

I totally get the Franklin thing now. That crookedy crapola? That's nothing much, it's no doubt what happened when some longfaced Puritan somewhere started biting Franklin behind the ear after this book came out. He should slap her into next Sunday and go back to Smonking. This genre-busting carnival of louche and salacious and violent living is far far far more interesting and better written. show less

This delicious novel is penned by a novelist and poet, who co-wrote the entire thing, creating an atmospheric, emotional, and vivid story of love, place, betrayal, and violence. I apologize now if my review doesn't convey my deep like and enthusiasm for this novel -- writing reviews recently has been hard! (Pregnancy brain! and all that, right??)

Set in 1927 in a fictional town on the Mississippi, the story is split between Dixie Clay, a bootlegger who lost her son two years ago; and Ted show more Ingersoll, a IRS agent searching for two murdered revenue agents with his partner Ham Johnson. But the plot isn't precisely a cat-and-mouse tale, nor a will-they-or-won't-they love story, as the threat of the Mississippi flooding over its levees colors everything and everyone.

Ingersoll, a jazz-loving orphan who fought in Europe during World War I, stumbles upon an infant when he and his partner investigate the scene of a shootout. Loathe to leave the child at an orphanage, on the recommendation of a shop keeper he gives the baby to a young housewife, pretty Dixie Clay.

Dixie, still heartbroken over the death of her infant, clings to the new child, disbelieving -- and unwilling to give him up even when her good-for-nothing husband threatens her. While Ingersoll and his partner masquerade as engineers arrived to help fortify the levees against the swelling Mississippi, they quickly learn that Dixie Clay's swank and swaggering husband is an ambitious criminal, and Ingersoll has to reconcile his interest in Dixie with his desire to do his job well.

There's a love story in this novel that is predictable, but I didn't mind, as I just adored both Dixie and Ingersoll. The flood of 1927 was totally new to me, despite being considered by some to be the worst natural disaster to ever occur in our country, and the events and impact of the flood were fascinating and disturbing and made for a fantastic backdrop to this story.

I'll admit I was curious how coherent the story would feel with two authors. My apprehension was that the two viewpoints would be split between the authors -- Ingersoll penned by Franklin and Dixie by Fennelly -- and according to the Reader's Guide included with the novel, this was the original plan. In the end, however, both authors worked on both characters and sections, and the resulting prose is just gorgeous -- lyrical, poetic, rich, and action-filled.

As one who is going to give birth in a few months, I enjoyed Dixie's ruminations on motherhood and parenting -- I haven't been drawn to fiction around those themes for some reason, but welcomed them here. (Fennelly wrote Great With Child, a volume of letters she sent to a pregnant friend -- "These are letters I would have welcomed when I was pregnant," she said -- and if they're half as tender and thoughtful as her writing here, I'm going to love them.)

For those who enjoy Jazz Era-novels but want something different, consider this one -- I haven't stumbled over many novels that feature jazz fans and flappers that aren't set in a large urban center. Fans of fiction set in the South absolutely will want this book -- place is a very rich character here! Thoughtful and action-filled, this is a wonderfully escapist novel with two very appealing characters and an absorbing story. show less

A rare collection of consistently brilliant writing. The stories are set in rural southern Alabama--to me a foreign and exotic place--with such absorbing detail that I felt like swatting mosquitoes off the back of my neck as I read.

The prose hooks from the first word and propels the reader, bumping and scratching through dirt roads and swamps, to each story's poignant conclusion, while even minor characters burst into life with the intensity of a match igniting.

My favorites were the majestic show more foreword, the opening story, "Grit", and the title story, "Poachers". But I nevertheless enjoyed every story in this book, which is better than I can say for most short story collections. show less