Fabulous, but not for the faint of heart!

Brutal, violent, intense, funny, and not just a little bit sad. A Mississippi Burning on steroids, only our truth seeker and harbinger of justice on this occasion is our lynching victim's father and he's no angel himself.

Putrid, ugly racism in all its forms and exagerrated here to the nth degree is at the heart of this short, powerful novella. Rausch shows his contempt for this form of discrimination by mocking the unenlightened and visiting on them seven kinds of hell in the form of Coke and his best friend sidekick.

Love, loss, regret, mistakes, small town ugliness, a young couple in love testing the boundaries of what will be allowed to stand, hate, vitriol, a lynching, death, bereavement, police corruption, discrimination, the KKK in action, a deputy's loose wife - the town bike, and lots more besides - in particular Vengeance with a capital V.

Story - tick, characters - tick, setting - tick, pace - tick, outcome - no happy ending, but a justice of sorts - tick, length - tick.

Very, very good. Very, very full on. Very much an in your face read, but not without moments of genuine humour that cracked me up. My kind of book.

I bought a copy of this a year or two ago in paperback, but had the chance to listen to it on Audible. The narration added another layer of enjoyment to what would have been a fantastic outing in any format.

5 from 5

I've enjoyed Andy Rausch's work before - Ridng Shotgun and Other American Cruelties. I look forward to more from him again.

Read - (listened to) February, 2021
Published - 2019
Page count - 99 (3 hrs 17 mins)
Source - Audible review copy from Henry Roi ( a purchased paperback sits on the TBR pile)
Format - Audible

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