Smonk

'Fast-paced and unrelentingly violent . . . readers looking for a strange and savage tale can't go wrong' with this western from an Edgar Award-winning author (Publishers Weekly).From the New York Times-bestselling author of Hell at the Breech and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, a historical thriller in turns hilarious, bawdy and terrifying.It's 1911 and the townsfolk of Old Texas, Alabama, have had enough. Every Saturday night for a year, E. O. Smonk has been destroying property, killing livestock, seducing women, cheating and beating men, all from behind the twin barrels of his Winchester 45-70 caliber over-and-under rifle. Syphilitic, consumptive, gouty, and goitered-an expert with explosives and knives-Smonk hates horses, goats, and the Irish, and it's high time he was stopped. But capturing old Smonk won't be easy-and putting him on trial could have shocking and disastrous consequences, considering the terrible secret the citizens of Old Texas are hiding.Praise for Tom Franklin: 'I'm reminded, by the evocative strength of the prose and the relentlessness of the imagination, of William Faulkner.' -Philip Roth'It's as if the author kidnapped Raymond Carver's characters and set them loose in the Deep South.' -The New York Times Book Review