Donnybrook

January 14, 2013
Bill’s debut novel (after his short story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana) trails another ruck of miscreants as they cook, shoot, snort, screw, punch, and head-butt their way across the Ohio River to backwoods gangster Bellmount McGill’s annual donnybrook, a three-day, bare-knuckle free-for-all. Wanting the big-money pot to make a new life for his kids and their Oxy-addicted mother, tavern brawler Jarhead Earl robs a local gun shop for the $1,000 entry fee. Double-crossing tweaker Ned Newton steals his stake from crank cooker Chainsaw Angus. Ned and the dealer’s hateful sister, Liz, haul Angus’s product to the ‘brook, which promises to make them a mint. Left for dead, Angus tears a trail of mayhem in their pursuit, trying to shake Fu Xi, a debt-collecting torture artist, and Ross Whalen, a vengeful deputy sheriff with secrets more vile than the acid burns and chainsaw accidents that flare up along the way. Waiting for them all is Purcell, a prophet of the johnboat who foresees calamity, strives for good, and whose appearance in Jarhead’s life suggests a possible sequel. Fun and fast but with a prose so pulpy it sometimes turns to mush, this book lands its best punches below the belt. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary Agency.

January 1, 2013
This is a novel that guts the underbelly of southern Indiana and leaves the reader with either a rush of adrenaline or a wave of loathing. Jarhead can't find a job to feed his hungry babies, so he robs a gun store for $1,000--not a dollar more or a dollar less. His only skill is bare-knuckle fighting, and he needs the money for the entry fee to the Donnybrook, a tournament where 20 men fight each other in a 30-by-30 enclosure until only one is left standing. Winners advance through several rounds, producing an ultimate winner who takes home a hundred grand in cash. It's the only path Jarhead can see for a better life for his family. Unfortunately, it's a path soaked in blood. Nearly everyone else of importance in this grim tale is a murderer, a meth dealer or user, a whore or an abuser of whores. Chainsaw Angus is Jarhead's biggest obstacle in the Donnybrook, as he has never lost a fight in his life. Chainsaw's sister Liz is a prostitute who puts a bullet in a man's head while they are having sex. Bill portrays depravity and violence as few others can--or perhaps as few others dare to do. The problem is that most of the characters are one-dimensional, irredeemable, sorry wastes of protoplasm. It's hard to imagine so many people showing so little decency in the same story. Yet the plot builds relentlessly to the final round of the Donnybrook and gives the reader unexpected jolts all the way through to an ending that strongly suggests a sequel. Bill is one hell of a storyteller. If he makes his characters a little more complex, he could become one of the best, but this book doesn't quite get him there.

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October 15, 2012

Bill's debut story collection, Crimes in Southern Indiana, raised a collective gasp. So pay attention to this first novel, which portrays a bloody three-day bare-knuckle fight in isolated southern Indiana called the Donnybrook. As bettors clamor, 20 fighters open the fight, but only one is left unbowed.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2013
In the first novel from the author of the short-story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana (2011), characters fight, fornicate, tweak, drink, fight, betray, rob, kill, and fight en route to an annual bare-knuckle brawling tournament in, yes, southern Indiana, where they hope variously to deal meth, take revenge, and win the top prize of $100,000. Crimes had power but lacked finesse; Donnybrook has even more power and even less finesse. The prose is studiously untutored, rife with sentence fragments, unorthodox word use, and overheated metaphors that don't always scan. (Simple restraint would be welcome: must a character raise his hairy appendages ? Can't he just raise his arms?) Even readers who adapt to the voice may be turned off by the uniformly deformed characters: with so many ugly people doing so many ugly things, it's just hard to care what happens to them. And if Bill has empathy for his own creations, he hides it awfully well. Readers who like hard-edged stories of down-and-outers would be better served by Willy Vlautin or Daniel Woodrell.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)