Forthcoming from Chris Offutt: Country Dark

ThisApril 2018 book by Chris Offutt seems to neatly cross two of my prime obsessions, crime fiction and Appalachia. Be sure to pick it up. It's a guaranteed good read.

His first work of fiction in nearly two decades, (Country Dark is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970.

Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don’t have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods Kentucky world of shine-runners and laborers whose social codes are every bit as nuanced as the British aristocracy, (Country Dark is a novel that blends the best of Larry Brown and James M. Cain, with a noose tightening evermore around a man who just wants to protect those he loves.

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