It took me a while to get through MEAN BUSINESS ON NORTH GANSON STREET. Don’t misunderstand: it wasn’t due to the quality of the book. S. Craig Zahler, who has made a name for himself writing westerns and screenplays for chilling movies that are scream starters and conversation stoppers, has topped himself with his latest effort, a seemingly impossible accomplishment. The book is brutal, crude and violent, shot through with grim humor and characters who can only be classified as bad or really bad, in situations that make nightmarish works like Apocalypse Now seem like the product of a sheltered, orderly mind. My pauses were occasioned by the subject matter, which is best handled in small doses. Naturally, I loved every word of it.

"The book is brutal, crude and violent, shot through with grim humor and characters who can only be classified as bad or really bad, in situations that make nightmarish works like Apocalypse Now seem like the product of a sheltered, orderly mind."

The focal point of the novel is a law enforcement officer named Jules Bettinger, who, as the story begins, is ensconced in a police department in western Arizona, where the sun is bright and the air is warm. He is rough around the edges...actually, that’s not quite right. Bettinger is rough, through and through, from one edge to the other. His initial downfall comes when he gives some excellent though hard-edged advice to a crime victim, with disastrous results. He finds that his job is gone before the smoke even clears. His supervisor throws him a leaking kisby ring in the form of a detective position with an outmanned, outgunned police department in Victory, Missouri. Victory --- cold, wet and dirty --- is not Arizona. Rather, it has followed the same urban devolution as Detroit. The police in Victory can only keep a semblance of order by being even dirtier than the criminals who own the streets.

Bettinger moves himself and his family to the nearest decent town to Victory and commutes back and forth, attempting some semblance of crime fighting while trying not to lose his soul. It’s a dark battle, especially when Bettinger finds that there is an ongoing war between the police and what passes for Victory’s crimelord. When that war escalates dramatically and violently on a dark, frigid night, Bettinger finds himself caught directly in hostile crosshairs. While Bettinger is as hard-boiled as they come, he possesses a rough moral code and a sense of justice that regrettably is of no use to him in a town like Victory. If he is to survive the living nightmare in which he finds himself, he will have to strip the thin veneer of civilized behavior that he retains and engage in the same ruthless, homicidal tactics that are being utilized against him. But will even that be enough for him to prevail? It’s a tough question that is ultimately answered in the conclusion to this grim, brilliantly imagined work.

Is MEAN BUSINESS ON NORTH GANSON STREET perfect? No. At times, it seems more like a series of loosely connected vignettes than a novel. Zahler occasionally uses several words where one would do, and sometimes gives the impression that he is in love with his own voice. If you had an imagination like Zahler’s, though, you would be too. And what an imagination that is. It is said that if you can think of something, it’s already happened. I hope that’s not true in Zahler’s case, but it probably is. Strongly recommended, but only if you loved Hostel (I and II), and your idea of a fun date is playing urban broom polo at 3am on a street where the buses don’t run.