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Plots With Guns
Book by Smith, Anthony Neil
326 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2005
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About the author
Anthony Neil Smith
63 books190 followersI write crime novels. PSYCHOSOMATIC, THE DRUMMER, plus the Billy Lafitte series--YELLOW MEDICINE, HOGDOGGIN', THE BADDEST ASS, and HOLY DEATH--and the Mustafa & Adem series--ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS and ONCE A WARRIOR, in addition to WORM, CHOKE ON YOUR LIES, and the SLOW BEAR trilogy.
I'm an English Professor at Southwest Minnesota State University, and editor of the online lit mag Revolution John.
I'm an English Professor at Southwest Minnesota State University, and editor of the online lit mag Revolution John.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 17, 2017
The main question with any anthology concerns the consistency of the quality of the inclusions. Does the book start well and then fade? Is the early going a grim slog, but do things pick up later? Or, as is the rarest case, is every single story in the collection good? "Plots with Guns" comes incredibly close to being that rarest of all collections, a book in which there is not a single clunker, head-scratcher, letdown, or misstep.
The now-unfortunately defunct publication set out with the deceptively simple masthead of looking for...you guessed it...short stories whose plots dealt with guns. That PwG was looking for a balance between the pulp and the literary is maybe where their guidelines got a bit more complicated, but thankfully they culled a good number of stories written by men and women who proved up to the challenge.
Most of the stories deal with well-worn genre tropes, but from a new angle or in an original voice, reworking the grist of "bitter detective" or "cheating lovers plot to kill clueless husband" into something new. There were at least ten bona fide classics in this collection. Considering there were roughly 25 stories, this would be the baseball equivalent of an approximate .400 average, the score of someone bound for the Hall-of-Fame. It's hard to single out just one story for praise, so let's try three:
Kent Anderson's provocatively-titled "Elvis Hitler" is a dark tour-de-force about a Portland P.D. cop who has a weird and perilous interaction with a Nazi skinhead weight-lifter, responding to a domestic violence call by the Nazi's girlfriend. Like most great writers, Anderson has unfortunately not written much, but the level of quality control and authority he wields when writing about street life and cop psychology is a wonder to behold.
Scott Phillips's "Crow Killer" is a nutty and absurd change of pace that comes at just the right time in the collection. It deals with a group of poachers taking potshots at birds, who accidentally hit a bald eagle; hilarity and Grand Guignol-level gore ensue.
"Brian's Story" by Jim Nisbet is probably the longest in the collection (aside from maybe the one in which Michael Connelly puts his Bosch character through his paces), and it's also the best. It deals with a conversation at a gas pump in the Deep South, in which the details of a drug deal gone bad and a life misled really takes off and transcends any label you want to peg it with, from noir to literature. It's a mini-masterpiece, and further confirmation for me after reading his book "Dark Companion" that the guy is a master craftsman who seems to be either maligned or ignored in comparison to the names that usually come up when people ask who's the best in the field.
Recommended.
The now-unfortunately defunct publication set out with the deceptively simple masthead of looking for...you guessed it...short stories whose plots dealt with guns. That PwG was looking for a balance between the pulp and the literary is maybe where their guidelines got a bit more complicated, but thankfully they culled a good number of stories written by men and women who proved up to the challenge.
Most of the stories deal with well-worn genre tropes, but from a new angle or in an original voice, reworking the grist of "bitter detective" or "cheating lovers plot to kill clueless husband" into something new. There were at least ten bona fide classics in this collection. Considering there were roughly 25 stories, this would be the baseball equivalent of an approximate .400 average, the score of someone bound for the Hall-of-Fame. It's hard to single out just one story for praise, so let's try three:
Kent Anderson's provocatively-titled "Elvis Hitler" is a dark tour-de-force about a Portland P.D. cop who has a weird and perilous interaction with a Nazi skinhead weight-lifter, responding to a domestic violence call by the Nazi's girlfriend. Like most great writers, Anderson has unfortunately not written much, but the level of quality control and authority he wields when writing about street life and cop psychology is a wonder to behold.
Scott Phillips's "Crow Killer" is a nutty and absurd change of pace that comes at just the right time in the collection. It deals with a group of poachers taking potshots at birds, who accidentally hit a bald eagle; hilarity and Grand Guignol-level gore ensue.
"Brian's Story" by Jim Nisbet is probably the longest in the collection (aside from maybe the one in which Michael Connelly puts his Bosch character through his paces), and it's also the best. It deals with a conversation at a gas pump in the Deep South, in which the details of a drug deal gone bad and a life misled really takes off and transcends any label you want to peg it with, from noir to literature. It's a mini-masterpiece, and further confirmation for me after reading his book "Dark Companion" that the guy is a master craftsman who seems to be either maligned or ignored in comparison to the names that usually come up when people ask who's the best in the field.
Recommended.
June 7, 2021
Very gritty noir compilation - one very short story in particular was very reminiscent of The Lottery in it's very impactful and concise storytelling.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews