Country: USA
Genre: Literary/Country Noir
Pages: 272
You know what I really hate? When someone thinks life is awesome, that it's a succession of glorious days where you proudly watch your children grow in a house that's almost paid for, where you mow your lawn on Saturdays and invite your neighbors for a barbecue afterwards. Life is so full of dangerous motherfuckers that want you broken, needy and ultimately dead, so if you're happy and satisfied you might just be living with your eyes closed. Fortunately for me, Frank Bill is a writer that understands this feeling very well. CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA is not only fine crime fiction, but it also feels frighteningly real. Behind the closed doors and in the backwoods where nobody ever goes, Frank Bill goes and he tells powerful stories that people have kept silent for too long. CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA is dark, though and yet it's inhabited with powerful characters who are back against the wall, taking difficult decisions and fighting losing battles.
While it's probably the story that's the less inhabited with Bill's haunting sense of place, I had a weak spot for THE ACCIDENT, where the narrator suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after an horrific elevator accident. Maybe it's that anonymity and that feeling of existential loss that really dug deep. The narrator's pain seems to be benign, almost normal at the beginning, yet the story unfolds and you find out he's just lacking the words to understand and express the depth of his distress. THE PENANCE OF SCOOT MCCUTCHEN also hit like a jackhammer. Scoot was happy, almost criminally so, in the little paradise-like home he created for his wife and himself and yet his happiness will be robbed from him with great injustice. Other favorites of mine have been THESE OLD BONES, COLD HARD LOVE, A COON HUNTER'S NOIR and THE OLD MECHANIC, who transported me into Bill's world from the first sentences.
I do have an issue with this collection though. Sometimes, violence gets so overbearing that it's really obfuscating what Bill does best and it's to expose the horrible dilemmas his characters are in. It's not that the gunplay is bad at all. There is some of the most brutal, yet beautiful gory descriptions I have ever read (especially in his Hill Clan stories), it wouldn't be an issue if Bill would be so good, gripping at creating tortured lives. When the violence level overshadows the character development, it gets a little numbing and you can't wait to get to the next story where characters take the center. But it's very minor though. The stories of CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA goes from good to absolutely amazing. There's no bad or boring story by any standards. They all expose a terrible aspect of midland america, from the backwoods meth dealers to the despair of addicts and their families, you're in for a wild ride.
CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA is a rock solid collection of short story, told in a voice so unique and haunting it's going to stay with you for a long time. Some of those stories, I will never forget and read them over and over until I'm an old man. While Daniel Woodrell exposes the awkward beauty of the broken people of midland America, Frank Bill introduces you to their demons, the ills that have been gradually ravaging the place where he's born. CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA is written with anger, heart and a love for a place where people's dreams have become simple and yet so far away. Frank Bill is a booming new voice and I'll be first in line when his next novel will come out. You would miss on something great if you didn't check out his stories. This guy is going to be big. Hemingway big. The voice of a broken down, disturbed generation.