20 Great Thrillers, June 2012

Everyone is going crazy for this debut novel about Hobe Hicklin, an ex-convict who decides to double-cross the Ayran Nation in general and his old cellmate in particular by jumping the gun on an upstate Georgia bank robbery. It’s a race to see who gets to him first: his erstwhile co-conspirators or Tommy Lang, the aging and alcoholic but still-principled sheriff who is bound and determined to get him first. I guarantee that there are characters and passages in this prime example of redneck noir that you will remember fifty years from now.