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Swamp Sister
The swamp had no name and no just cypress, Spanish moss, and alligators -- and a wrecked plane with eighty thousand dollars inside it. The man who found the Money Plane could have any woman he wanted -- even the deliriously carnal Dorry Mears -- as long as he kept the source of his fortune a secret. But in the swamp no secret was ever safe. And neither was anyone who had Dorry for a mistress. An inspired hybrid of crime fiction and Southern gothic, Swamp Sister is Tobacco Road written in acid and hellfire, populated by the most outrageously venal and benighted characters ever to crawl out of the collective unconscious.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
7 people are currently reading
152 people want to read
About the author
Robert Edmond Alter
42 books9 followersRobert Edmond Alter is remembered chiefly for two novels, paperback originals from the 1960s: "Swamp Sister" (1961) and "Carny Kill" (1966). He also wrote children's novels and sold stories to some of the top magazines of his day, including the "Saturday Evening Post" and "Argosy". Alter died suddenly at the age of 40 (some sources state it was Cancer). Some of his later works were published for the first time many years after his death. He was survived by his wife, Maxine and his daughter Sand.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 28, 2025
Swamp Pulp!
Alter penned two pulp classics, Swamp Sister and Carny Kill, both featuring titles telling the reader quite a bit about the setting. Swamp Sister joined a growing chorus of swamp pulp paperbacks in the mid Sixties taking place in the endless primeval swamps and bayous of the South. Typically, these takes feature some conman or innocent dupe on the run from the sheriff, from an all points bulletin, or mobsters. Often, the protagonist thinks he can find safety and romance with a tantalizing siren of the swamp.
Alter’s foray into the mud and muck is more of country pulp, featuring for his readers a whole town of barely educated backwoods swamp folk who turn on each other in their desperate search for a lost treasure - a Money plane that crashed in the endless swamp filled with briefcases of cold hard cash that could take a local out of the backwoods and set him or her up for life, that is, if he didn’t have to share it. This is like a search for the elusive Maltese Falcon stripped to its bare essence, but filled with colorful gator-wrestling characters, paperback writers, and desperate lustful Swamp girls.
The plot may not be unique, but Alter really does a great job of drawing the reader in and keeping the reader interested as well as wary of ever venturing into that morass of a wilderness crawling with gators and snakes and panthers.
Alter penned two pulp classics, Swamp Sister and Carny Kill, both featuring titles telling the reader quite a bit about the setting. Swamp Sister joined a growing chorus of swamp pulp paperbacks in the mid Sixties taking place in the endless primeval swamps and bayous of the South. Typically, these takes feature some conman or innocent dupe on the run from the sheriff, from an all points bulletin, or mobsters. Often, the protagonist thinks he can find safety and romance with a tantalizing siren of the swamp.
Alter’s foray into the mud and muck is more of country pulp, featuring for his readers a whole town of barely educated backwoods swamp folk who turn on each other in their desperate search for a lost treasure - a Money plane that crashed in the endless swamp filled with briefcases of cold hard cash that could take a local out of the backwoods and set him or her up for life, that is, if he didn’t have to share it. This is like a search for the elusive Maltese Falcon stripped to its bare essence, but filled with colorful gator-wrestling characters, paperback writers, and desperate lustful Swamp girls.
The plot may not be unique, but Alter really does a great job of drawing the reader in and keeping the reader interested as well as wary of ever venturing into that morass of a wilderness crawling with gators and snakes and panthers.
April 26, 2016
In a place where ten dollars make a man rich, eighty thousand can make him dead.
The locals have long been searching for the mysterious Money Plane, lost somewhere in the swamp, for it is rumored to be the home of a briefcase containing eighty grand.
So far, all who have gone looking have never been seen again: eaten by gators, bitten by snakes, or just stumbling around lost until claimed by madness or death.
He worked the skiff up an inlet, heading for Breakneck, poling quietly with a touch of caution, like a cross-eyed man trying to find his way in a delicate house of mirrors, uneasy about disturbing the sleeping giant. But it wasn't really sleeping. It was more, he decided, like a mute monster gaping at him, absently wondering why he was foolish enough to deliberately enter its trap.
Shad has found the plane, and the money. Now comes the hard part - getting out of the swamp alive.
Evil he'd heard the swamp called by those who'd been in it and those who had not, and they were right. But it had always struck him as a purely beautiful form of evil.
This is a delicious, steamy ride. Good luck putting the book down once you hit Part Two. After all, in the swamp, there are just SO MANY ways to DIE!
The locals have long been searching for the mysterious Money Plane, lost somewhere in the swamp, for it is rumored to be the home of a briefcase containing eighty grand.
So far, all who have gone looking have never been seen again: eaten by gators, bitten by snakes, or just stumbling around lost until claimed by madness or death.
He worked the skiff up an inlet, heading for Breakneck, poling quietly with a touch of caution, like a cross-eyed man trying to find his way in a delicate house of mirrors, uneasy about disturbing the sleeping giant. But it wasn't really sleeping. It was more, he decided, like a mute monster gaping at him, absently wondering why he was foolish enough to deliberately enter its trap.
Shad has found the plane, and the money. Now comes the hard part - getting out of the swamp alive.
Evil he'd heard the swamp called by those who'd been in it and those who had not, and they were right. But it had always struck him as a purely beautiful form of evil.
This is a delicious, steamy ride. Good luck putting the book down once you hit Part Two. After all, in the swamp, there are just SO MANY ways to DIE!
December 8, 2021
This novel is as sordid as it gets. Don't believe me? Sample this:
It was damp hot in the little room where Dorry and her sister Margy shared a bed. And because they were girls, and because this was their room, and because of the summer-thick night there was a heady female odour. But the not too subtle emanation that compounded the room’s atmosphere was merely a nuisance to the sisters. Their warm, supple bodies, naked and only sheet-covered, stuck wherever they touched and formed glowing bubbles of perspiration. When they sighed with exasperation and pulled apart, the sweat-beads would plop and run down their smooth thighs and hip
A plane carrying $80,000 crashes into a swamp. The backwoods swampy folk tangle with each other to discover the plane (swamp folk call it the Money Plane) in the dense labyrinthine swamp and retrieve the money. Shad, a poor young white man finally discovers the plane after many folk tried and never came back, including Shad's brother. Shad comes back to his village with a few tens, deciding that he will get a bigger boat to carry the large sack of cash. But little does Shad know that the suave Conrad reading banker Mr.Ferris has left a few burglar alarms of sorts in the backwoods - serial numbers of the lost tens and Shad's elderly lover Iris Culver, who is close to Mr.Ferris. Then there are the Dorry sisters whom every man in the village covets. Jort Camp, the local heavy/gator hunter is also searching for the money plane.
Robert Edmond Alter has created a whole new world with lingo that I have never heard before to make it all authentic. I have read one book about swamps written by a feminist professor so I am easy to fool.
Here are a few words that I found interesting:
Tailormade: think they are handrolled cigarettes.
Shebang: A bare hut of some sort which Shad discovers deep in the swamp.
corn-of-the-hifis - corn liquor.
The descriptions of the swamp are reminiscent of HP Lovecraft. The swamp with its bull and grandpa gators, cottonmouths and shore-prowling pumas is the main villain in the book. Filled with catacomby gator caves, populated by giant cypress trunks and lingering aura of ancient Indian mounds, the swamp is like the devils own lair where a man would have to face up to who he really is. It has a strange allure which keeps men trying to enter and conquer it but they are consumed by it. Shad, the main character learns a few lessons from it.
Alter does make a dig at writers of crime thrillers and the hard boiled genre through the character of Iris Culver whose husband is a writer of tough novels. Here is a drunk Iris having a go at her husband:
“Do you know what your work reminds me of? It’s like the trash those hack writers used to pot-boil for the pulp adventure magazines back in the ‘20s and ‘30s. They always called their dashing Nordic heroes names like McCoy or McKay or McCloud or Quincannon -- names which automatically had a connotation suggestive of rough, manly derring-do. Invariably they had sandy thatches of hair, frequently red, and always a scattering of freckles on the backs of their tanned square wrists. But best of all was the manner in which these literary giants would introduce those
girlkilling, booze-drinking, saloon-brawling, quick-shooting, Scotch-Irish supermen. They would write, ‘No plaster saint -- comma -- McKay.’
“A man that writes that sort of pap isn’t really a man. Isn’t really anything. And that’s what I’ve been living with for eight years. A nothing man. That type of lame-brain should be put away in a glass cage and sheltered and protected and never be shown a newspaper. They shouldn’t let you into bedrooms. It upsets your sensibilities, unhinges your nervous system.”"
HAHAHAHAHAH! It made me wonder how much of the novel is actually a dig at readers like me.
Swamp Sister is not perfect. At times, the writing seemed a bit too ornate, the descriptions of nature slightly flowery, the social commentary a bit simplistic and cliched and some of the plot points repetitive. But it was entertaining for the most part. Probably one of the best swamp noir novels ever written.
Anyway, I wish Rob Zombie or someone would make a movie based on this book. It does have an interesting cast of characters. The visual possibilities of the movie are tremendous and should get any directors dick hard. Maybe the guy who made Snakes on a Plane?
It was damp hot in the little room where Dorry and her sister Margy shared a bed. And because they were girls, and because this was their room, and because of the summer-thick night there was a heady female odour. But the not too subtle emanation that compounded the room’s atmosphere was merely a nuisance to the sisters. Their warm, supple bodies, naked and only sheet-covered, stuck wherever they touched and formed glowing bubbles of perspiration. When they sighed with exasperation and pulled apart, the sweat-beads would plop and run down their smooth thighs and hip
A plane carrying $80,000 crashes into a swamp. The backwoods swampy folk tangle with each other to discover the plane (swamp folk call it the Money Plane) in the dense labyrinthine swamp and retrieve the money. Shad, a poor young white man finally discovers the plane after many folk tried and never came back, including Shad's brother. Shad comes back to his village with a few tens, deciding that he will get a bigger boat to carry the large sack of cash. But little does Shad know that the suave Conrad reading banker Mr.Ferris has left a few burglar alarms of sorts in the backwoods - serial numbers of the lost tens and Shad's elderly lover Iris Culver, who is close to Mr.Ferris. Then there are the Dorry sisters whom every man in the village covets. Jort Camp, the local heavy/gator hunter is also searching for the money plane.
Robert Edmond Alter has created a whole new world with lingo that I have never heard before to make it all authentic. I have read one book about swamps written by a feminist professor so I am easy to fool.
Here are a few words that I found interesting:
Tailormade: think they are handrolled cigarettes.
Shebang: A bare hut of some sort which Shad discovers deep in the swamp.
corn-of-the-hifis - corn liquor.
The descriptions of the swamp are reminiscent of HP Lovecraft. The swamp with its bull and grandpa gators, cottonmouths and shore-prowling pumas is the main villain in the book. Filled with catacomby gator caves, populated by giant cypress trunks and lingering aura of ancient Indian mounds, the swamp is like the devils own lair where a man would have to face up to who he really is. It has a strange allure which keeps men trying to enter and conquer it but they are consumed by it. Shad, the main character learns a few lessons from it.
Alter does make a dig at writers of crime thrillers and the hard boiled genre through the character of Iris Culver whose husband is a writer of tough novels. Here is a drunk Iris having a go at her husband:
“Do you know what your work reminds me of? It’s like the trash those hack writers used to pot-boil for the pulp adventure magazines back in the ‘20s and ‘30s. They always called their dashing Nordic heroes names like McCoy or McKay or McCloud or Quincannon -- names which automatically had a connotation suggestive of rough, manly derring-do. Invariably they had sandy thatches of hair, frequently red, and always a scattering of freckles on the backs of their tanned square wrists. But best of all was the manner in which these literary giants would introduce those
girlkilling, booze-drinking, saloon-brawling, quick-shooting, Scotch-Irish supermen. They would write, ‘No plaster saint -- comma -- McKay.’
“A man that writes that sort of pap isn’t really a man. Isn’t really anything. And that’s what I’ve been living with for eight years. A nothing man. That type of lame-brain should be put away in a glass cage and sheltered and protected and never be shown a newspaper. They shouldn’t let you into bedrooms. It upsets your sensibilities, unhinges your nervous system.”"
HAHAHAHAHAH! It made me wonder how much of the novel is actually a dig at readers like me.
Swamp Sister is not perfect. At times, the writing seemed a bit too ornate, the descriptions of nature slightly flowery, the social commentary a bit simplistic and cliched and some of the plot points repetitive. But it was entertaining for the most part. Probably one of the best swamp noir novels ever written.
Anyway, I wish Rob Zombie or someone would make a movie based on this book. It does have an interesting cast of characters. The visual possibilities of the movie are tremendous and should get any directors dick hard. Maybe the guy who made Snakes on a Plane?
April 24, 2024
Highest Possible Rating.
Tense, suspenseful adventure-thriller with a superbly realized lead character in Shadrach Hark, the swamp-billy who prowls the dangerous marshlands in search of the corpse of his brother, lost forever in the depths of the 'gator infested swamps while pursuing the legendary "Money Plane".
This novel starts off like a bullet fired from a gun.
The reader is riding with a piper cub pilot and a payroll agent clutching a brief case full of money. Eighty thousand dollars in various denominations. Mostly tens. The plane's engine shuts down mid-flight. The pilot looks out the window and sees nothing but an endless vista of a vast, rugged swamp:
And fade to black as the small plane crashes through scrawny pines fighting their way to sunlight from the bogs below, through vines and crawlers thick as a man's leg, coming to rest suddenly, lodged into an enormous cypress, hurling the two men in the tiny plane forward into the cabin, smashing their bodies together. Forever.
Over the years the swamp folk who live around Sutt's Landing, those who half-way make their living fishing the many lakes and ponds surrounding the swamp, occasionally head out in groups of three or four in skiffs in search of the fabled "Money Plane". Most come back; several don't including Shad Hark's older brother Holly.
So Shad sets out by himself a few times each month to try and retrieve his brother's body. He dodges bull gators, nests of water moccasins and the ever present quicksand. One day he looks up from the dense vegetation, a shallow creek bed in the middle of an alligator infested island and spies it up in a wall of streamers and crawlers surrounding an old cypress, nose down, tail and rudder up - the Money Plane.
He climbs up the tree using the vines and creepers to aid him in his efforts. When he finally is able to see into the plane, he discovers two rotted skeletal remains. One of the skeletons is clutching a briefcase. Shad pulls on the bag eventually having to break the finger bones off the briefcase handle in order to get to the money inside. He takes out a hundred dollars in ten dollar bills and decides the safest place to store the money is back inside the briefcase and inside the plane until he can come back for it later with more supplies and a rifle and enough ammo to protect himself from the swarming alligators.
Shad’s no sooner back at Sutt's Landing than the ten ten-dollar bills start burning a hole in his pocket. He breaks a ten on some corn liquor, a little more on supplies and... people start wondering how Shad came by such money.
The novel is populated with assorted backwoods dim-wits, the half-good, the wicked, and the doomed. Seems like everyone finds out about Shad's good fortune and they want their share of it, too.
Tense, suspenseful adventure-thriller with a superbly realized lead character in Shadrach Hark, the swamp-billy who prowls the dangerous marshlands in search of the corpse of his brother, lost forever in the depths of the 'gator infested swamps while pursuing the legendary "Money Plane".
The world was a mean dog. Turn your back, step out of line, and it bit you good. The world didn't ask for you, didn't want you; and if your folks were stupid or careless enough to bring you into it, the world set out to do its best to get rid of you. If you were tough you might dodge disease, if you were lucky you might escape or live through accidents, but it made you pay for living.
And when you came into the world you had only one privilege and that was the right to howl. And even if you howled too loud or too long someone or something would come along with a big stick and close your mouth. And it was like that even at the end. So you clench your teeth and you do your howling inside where only you can hear it.
This novel starts off like a bullet fired from a gun.
The reader is riding with a piper cub pilot and a payroll agent clutching a brief case full of money. Eighty thousand dollars in various denominations. Mostly tens. The plane's engine shuts down mid-flight. The pilot looks out the window and sees nothing but an endless vista of a vast, rugged swamp:
It was endless, stretched as far as the eye could see. What if they did get down in one piece? How would they get out? Who could find them? But I'll take it! I'll take the goddamn alligators and water moccasins and quicksand...
And fade to black as the small plane crashes through scrawny pines fighting their way to sunlight from the bogs below, through vines and crawlers thick as a man's leg, coming to rest suddenly, lodged into an enormous cypress, hurling the two men in the tiny plane forward into the cabin, smashing their bodies together. Forever.
Over the years the swamp folk who live around Sutt's Landing, those who half-way make their living fishing the many lakes and ponds surrounding the swamp, occasionally head out in groups of three or four in skiffs in search of the fabled "Money Plane". Most come back; several don't including Shad Hark's older brother Holly.
So Shad sets out by himself a few times each month to try and retrieve his brother's body. He dodges bull gators, nests of water moccasins and the ever present quicksand. One day he looks up from the dense vegetation, a shallow creek bed in the middle of an alligator infested island and spies it up in a wall of streamers and crawlers surrounding an old cypress, nose down, tail and rudder up - the Money Plane.
He climbs up the tree using the vines and creepers to aid him in his efforts. When he finally is able to see into the plane, he discovers two rotted skeletal remains. One of the skeletons is clutching a briefcase. Shad pulls on the bag eventually having to break the finger bones off the briefcase handle in order to get to the money inside. He takes out a hundred dollars in ten dollar bills and decides the safest place to store the money is back inside the briefcase and inside the plane until he can come back for it later with more supplies and a rifle and enough ammo to protect himself from the swarming alligators.
Shad’s no sooner back at Sutt's Landing than the ten ten-dollar bills start burning a hole in his pocket. He breaks a ten on some corn liquor, a little more on supplies and... people start wondering how Shad came by such money.
The novel is populated with assorted backwoods dim-wits, the half-good, the wicked, and the doomed. Seems like everyone finds out about Shad's good fortune and they want their share of it, too.
He awakened once in the time of night that is vast, endless, and everything is dead. No man's time. Not belonging to the intricate mechanism of clocks that control worldly minutes. Universe night. Then he remembered the Money Plane...
May 12, 2023
05/2023
I just noticed the wrong book is pictured here. Well, there were many Swamp Females.
02/2019
From 1966.
This was a very good book. I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. I found it at the Goodwill a couple years ago. A paperback reprint from 1986, published by Black Lizard.
The swamp is a very dangerous, hellish place. When a plane with money in it crashes there, only the bravest local men and boys go looking for it. And most of them die. The action really begins when Shad (Shadrack Hark) finds the fabled "money plane." What happens then is something like Swamp Noir. A set of sisters is involved, but this is really Shad's story.
Dense with description and alligators, this is very well written. According to the About the Author on the last page, Robert Edmund Alter died t he year this came out. He was 40.
I just noticed the wrong book is pictured here. Well, there were many Swamp Females.
02/2019
From 1966.
This was a very good book. I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. I found it at the Goodwill a couple years ago. A paperback reprint from 1986, published by Black Lizard.
The swamp is a very dangerous, hellish place. When a plane with money in it crashes there, only the bravest local men and boys go looking for it. And most of them die. The action really begins when Shad (Shadrack Hark) finds the fabled "money plane." What happens then is something like Swamp Noir. A set of sisters is involved, but this is really Shad's story.
Dense with description and alligators, this is very well written. According to the About the Author on the last page, Robert Edmund Alter died t he year this came out. He was 40.
June 26, 2018
In the heyday of the classic pulps and noirs, a little sub-genre sprang up: the swamp noir/pulp. These stories mixed the bleak, dark world of the crime story with hillbillies, gators, and dirty, dirty swamps. Call it Dirty Southern Gothic, if you will.
Out of this group of swamp noir stories comes Robert Edmond Alter's Swamp Sister and, let me tell you, if you are a fan of noir crime and pulpy action, this book is fantastic!
I do need to put in a warning, though: this book is a slooooooow burn. It is broken up into two parts, and part 1 is basically just a guy walking around a little swamp town and interacting with a diverse bunch of hillbillies. Stick with it, though, because part 2 will blow your panties off with almost non-stop insanity that will have you wondering how it's going to end all the way to the last page.
Out of this group of swamp noir stories comes Robert Edmond Alter's Swamp Sister and, let me tell you, if you are a fan of noir crime and pulpy action, this book is fantastic!
I do need to put in a warning, though: this book is a slooooooow burn. It is broken up into two parts, and part 1 is basically just a guy walking around a little swamp town and interacting with a diverse bunch of hillbillies. Stick with it, though, because part 2 will blow your panties off with almost non-stop insanity that will have you wondering how it's going to end all the way to the last page.
June 19, 2025
"You either trust a woman completely or not at all.
There can be no half measures between females and
trust."
"Nothing's ever so bad hit cain't git a little bit worser."
"The world didn't ask for you, didn't want you; and if your folks were stupid or careless enough to bring you into it, the world set out to do its best to get rid of you."
-Robert Edmond Alter
There can be no half measures between females and
trust."
"Nothing's ever so bad hit cain't git a little bit worser."
"The world didn't ask for you, didn't want you; and if your folks were stupid or careless enough to bring you into it, the world set out to do its best to get rid of you."
-Robert Edmond Alter
March 11, 2019
A wonderful pulp from 1961.
I have no idea if Alter ever saw a swamp or just looked at the pictures (he has a trout stream in his), but I don't care. I loved his swamp, his swamp people, the Money Plane (payroll not drugs) and the whole shebang. If I cud 'member how many folks got gator et and snake bit I'd tell ya, but I cain't.
I have no idea if Alter ever saw a swamp or just looked at the pictures (he has a trout stream in his), but I don't care. I loved his swamp, his swamp people, the Money Plane (payroll not drugs) and the whole shebang. If I cud 'member how many folks got gator et and snake bit I'd tell ya, but I cain't.
May 29, 2023
Enjoyable swamp noir. Steamy and saucy.
http://goldmedalbookblog.com/2023/05/...
http://goldmedalbookblog.com/2023/05/...
January 16, 2021
I sure did learn a lot about swamp life and the swamp people. Some crazy folks in this book but then money can drive people coo coo. The sometimes overdone southern dialog made the book a bit hard to read.
February 19, 2025
Swamp
Well, that was one hell of an adventure!
This time the blurb is not only stupid, it's BS. And as for the cover, not a single female in this story ever owned a pair of shoes. The gator part is correct, except there should be a few dozen of 'em.
I tell you, from about 70% on -- I don't know what to say, stay out of the swamp or you won't live to regret it!
I run across gators every now and then and from now on I'm gonna take them a LOT more seriously. I been living in a fool's paradise.
And I was planning a python-hunt in June. Me and whose army?
Well, that was one hell of an adventure!
This time the blurb is not only stupid, it's BS. And as for the cover, not a single female in this story ever owned a pair of shoes. The gator part is correct, except there should be a few dozen of 'em.
I tell you, from about 70% on -- I don't know what to say, stay out of the swamp or you won't live to regret it!
I run across gators every now and then and from now on I'm gonna take them a LOT more seriously. I been living in a fool's paradise.
And I was planning a python-hunt in June. Me and whose army?
September 14, 2024
This was some hardboiled swamp noir! I've long been intrigued by this book, mainly because of its evocative cover art by Mitchell Hooks. The blurb is a red herring, but thankfully that didn't sell me on it. Just the promise of a swamp...and there's plenty of swamp in this book.
A little plane goes down over Floridian swamplands, carrying a briefcase of $80,000. After the locals learn about it, some folks die trying to find it, while the others let it just become a legend. Searching for his lost brother, Shad Hark comes across the plane, and the $10 bills he starts flashing around town gets everyone in a tizzy. Half the town wants a piece of the money, the other half wants to take it all from Shad. Back and forth into the swamp they chase, fighting gators and each other.
Alter really works hard to make the swamp a real place. He references the flora and fauna to build the world, not to mention the heat, the mud, the darkness of the water, the bogs, the bugs, the sounds. Even his metaphors and smiles were in reference to the swamp. That swamp was alive and as much of a character as the bumpkins chasing after that money.
And they are bumpkins. Alter writes the dialogue in their accent—"Whyn't you leave your skiff here, Shad? We kin all fit snug-like in mine."—which normally would bother me, but for some reason it just flowed with the swamp as I read it. Not every character is a swamp-billy—there's the insurance man from the big city trying to get the money back to its rightful owners, the wife from the north who drinks too many martinis, and the author with a resume remarkably like the author's. (That part was charmingly meta.) Alter wraps the plot around all these folks and doesn't hesitate to add a few surprises and shocks.
I was really impressed. I thought this would be trash, given the pedigree of "swamp pulp", but I just could not get enough of Alter's writing. I can't think of the last time a book had me awake, reading until 2 a.m.
A little plane goes down over Floridian swamplands, carrying a briefcase of $80,000. After the locals learn about it, some folks die trying to find it, while the others let it just become a legend. Searching for his lost brother, Shad Hark comes across the plane, and the $10 bills he starts flashing around town gets everyone in a tizzy. Half the town wants a piece of the money, the other half wants to take it all from Shad. Back and forth into the swamp they chase, fighting gators and each other.
Alter really works hard to make the swamp a real place. He references the flora and fauna to build the world, not to mention the heat, the mud, the darkness of the water, the bogs, the bugs, the sounds. Even his metaphors and smiles were in reference to the swamp. That swamp was alive and as much of a character as the bumpkins chasing after that money.
And they are bumpkins. Alter writes the dialogue in their accent—"Whyn't you leave your skiff here, Shad? We kin all fit snug-like in mine."—which normally would bother me, but for some reason it just flowed with the swamp as I read it. Not every character is a swamp-billy—there's the insurance man from the big city trying to get the money back to its rightful owners, the wife from the north who drinks too many martinis, and the author with a resume remarkably like the author's. (That part was charmingly meta.) Alter wraps the plot around all these folks and doesn't hesitate to add a few surprises and shocks.
I was really impressed. I thought this would be trash, given the pedigree of "swamp pulp", but I just could not get enough of Alter's writing. I can't think of the last time a book had me awake, reading until 2 a.m.
April 23, 2022
Not everyone is going to like this book but I loved it! Florida swamp people doing bad deeds to each other. The action in this book kept me on the edge of my seat and any true Floridian should read it!
Want to read
December 8, 200712/08/07 rec via bookmooch
January 12, 2008
great fun chasing money in the Swamp
February 27, 2008
fun book that has noir and carnival mixed into a great tale of greed and weirdness.
August 17, 2009
Plot, character, and interstitial tissue.
Read
April 11, 2017I wrote a review but I might be saving it for something.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews