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Crimes in Southern Indiana
Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories | Frank Bill
11 posts | 7 read | 1 reading | 17 to read
A ferocious debut that puts Frank Bill's southern Indiana on the literary map next to Cormac McCarthy's eastern Tennessee and Daniel Woodrell's Missouri Ozarks Crimes in Southern Indiana is the most blistering, vivid, flat-out fearless debut to plow into American literature in recent years. Frank Bill delivers what is both a wake-up call and a gut punch. Welcome to heartland America circa right about now, when the union jobs and family farms that kept the white on the picket fences have given way to meth labs, backwoods gunrunners, and bare-knuckle brawling. Bill's people are pressed to the brinkand beyond. There is Scoot McCutchen, whose beloved wife falls terminally ill, leaving him with nothing to live forwhich doesn't quite explain why he brutally murders her and her doctor and flees, or why, after years of running, he decides to turn himself in. In the title story, a man who has devolved from breeding hounds for hunting to training them for dog-fighting crosses paths with a Salvadoran gangbanger tasked with taking over the rural drug trade, but who mostly wants to grow old in peace. As Crimes in Sourthern Indiana unfolds, we witness the unspeakable, yet are compelled to find sympathy for the depraved. Bill's southern Indiana is haunted with the deep, authentic sense of place that recalls the best of Southern fiction, but the interconnected stories bristle with the urban energy of a Chuck Palahniuk or a latter-day Nelson Algren and rush with the slam-bang plotting of pulp-noir crime writing la Jim Thompson. Bill's prose is gritty yet literary, shocking, and impossible to put down. A dark evocation of the survivalist spirit of the working class, this is a brilliant debut by an important new voice.
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review
thebookishtype15
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Bailedbailed

Not for me. Its way too gritty and vulgar. These are vignettes all related to complete a story. I liked the idea of it all but not something I can enjoy because I'm cringing most of the time.

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MrsV
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Learning some local “history”! @KellieRusselburg

Redwritinghood As someone who grew up in southern Indiana, I must check this one out! 6y
MrsV If you‘re expecting True Crime (as I was) this isn‘t it. I admit I was a little disappointed to learn these are fiction stories. 6y
34 likes3 stack adds2 comments
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Pete
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Pickpick

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Frank Bill lets us revel in the grit of a hidden, impoverished, and sometimes brutal Midwest back country. Crimes in Southern Indiana is a collection of shorts that often veer into tales of revenge and madness. I was delighted to find that some of Bill's tales interweave. If this book is out of your comfort zone then I HIGHLY recommend you add it to your stack. The prose are beautiful and the stories are nail biting.

26 likes4 stack adds
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Pete
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Resuming this great short story collection by Frank Bill. The first snow of the year calls for cozy days with my wife, cinnamon whiskey, and stories about unspeakable acts of greed and violence perpetrated by man. #happyholidays #grit #noir #short

LeahBergen 😂 Sounds like perfection! 7y
24 likes1 stack add1 comment
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Pete
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Just when I thought that this short story collection was one bloody note, Frank Bill uses that same narrative style to eloquently convey the love a husband has for his wife and the guilt he feels after her loss. #shortstory

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Pete
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Sweet revenge. Speaking of, I think Ouija's about to attack me for feeding him late.

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Pete
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I love when I find out stories in a collection connect but I guess my reading aloud has lulled Ouija to sleep before the good part (Josephine just shot her husband).

BookishMarginalia 😻😻😻 8y
Bookzombie 💕🐱 8y
Zelma 😹😹😹 8y
24 likes3 comments
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Pete
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Ouija is judging me for enjoying this pulp. First story in this collection is awesome and left a gritty taste in my mouth.

Books_Wine_Repeat 😻😻😻 8y
Bookzombie 💕🐱 8y
25 likes2 comments
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Pete
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All of my library holds came in at once, so now I'm balancing two books of short stories, two novels and a nonfiction tome. I'm a slow reader but I promise to read one or two stories from each collection before I bring them back. Anyone have any story suggestions from this one? #booksandbeer

LauraBeth I'm a fellow slow reader 😀 8y
LeahBergen The double beer boots will surely help! 👍🏼 8y
itsbrb .... On the map next to Cormac McCarthy? 🙌🏽 sign me up! 8y
NatalieR If I remember correctly, these stories build on each other. I know I read them in order. 8y
Pete @NatalieR Good to know. I'll have to make this one a priority as a whole collection. 8y
23 likes3 stack adds5 comments
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Deserthorror
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One of America's trifecta of lit grit greats. You can smell the engine oil on the page. And the gun powder burns stain your hands.

5 likes2 stack adds
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Pete
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Has anyone read this yet? Any comments?

Liberty I dig him. 8y
2 likes1 comment