Smonk
Tom Franklin
Morrow, Aug 2006, $23.95
ISBN 006084681X

E.O. Smonk, the one-eyed dwarf has terrorized Old Texas, Alabama for years, but justice has come to town 1911 so Eugene Oregon Smonk stands trial for murder and rape. However, Smonk's drinking associates refuse to allow the irascible one to stand trial regardless of the law. They kill every male in town as they free Smonk. A former Smonk "ward" now a lawman Will McKissick chases after the escaped dwarf.

As Smonk flees Old Texas, the Christian posse pursues dangerous if you fail to pay emaciated teenage prostitute Evavangeline for the murders of her Johns. They track her from the male corpses she leaves behind along the Alabama Gulf Coast, but though she can barely survive the daily chores of life, the posse seems one step behind her skinny butt.

McKissick follows Smonk back to Old Texas where Evavangeline followed by posse member Phial Walton has also arrived at a time the town female survivors lay out their dead men and children. May the best man (or woman) be left standing.

Obviously not aimed at the cozy crowd, this is an insane fast-paced historical crime thriller. Fans who enjoy gore will appreciate the trails of corpses that appear everywhere in this gruesome well written storyline. The cast is top rate from the crazy title character; the bewildered teen hooker; guilt-laden McKissick (once saved by Smonk from the deadly local orphanage); the eerie widows placing their dead on dining tables as if serving a gourmet meal; the mad preacher hosting dead children as if they attend services; the obsessed Christian "deputy" seeking to send the sinner to hell; and finally the aptly named rabid dog Lazarus the Redeemer. Tom Franklin's candid but violent send off of western thrillers makes Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch look like schoolchildren at play.

Harriet Klausner