Ebook Overview: ‘Nothing However the Bones’ is a compelling noir novel at a breakneck tempo

 Ebook Overview: ‘Nothing However the Bones’ is a compelling noir novel at a breakneck tempo


Nelson “Nails” McKenna isn’t very vibrant, stumbles over his phrases and sometimes says what he’s considering with out realizing it.

We first meet him as a boy studying a superhero comedian on the banks of a river in his backcountry hometown within the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia. There, a bully picks on him after which does the identical to a fairly lady Nails secretly fancies. Enraged, Nails, blind to his personal power, offers the bully a deadly beating.

Nails’ pal Clayton Burroughs, who watches it occur, doesn’t name the police. As a substitute, he calls his brutal father, Gareth, who runs the rackets on Bull Mountain, to cowl it up.

So begins “Nothing However the Bones,” a prequel to the primary three Southern noir novels in Brian Panowich’s critically acclaimed Bull Mountain sequence.

After the killing, the story skips ahead 9 years and finds historical past repeating itself. Nails, now working as an enforcer for Gareth, is ingesting apple juice in a seedy bar when he sees a punk mistreating a younger girl. Moments later, the punk lies lifeless on the barroom flooring.

There are too many witnesses for Gareth to sort things this time. As a substitute, he palms Nails a bag of money, orders him to go south, and offers him a telephone quantity to name when he will get to Jacksonville, Florida. As Nails speeds away, he discovers the younger girl, a fellow outcast who calls herself Dallas, hiding within the backseat. She persuades a reluctant Nails to take her with him, and as they drive on, an unlikely love story emerges. As readers be taught Dallas’s backstory, it turns into clear that they want one another.

When Clayton hears what’s occurred, he’s is aware of that his father, who avoids authorized entanglements in any respect prices, hasn’t despatched Nails away for a brand new begin. Nails is driving to his demise. So, in defiance of his father, Clayton heads for Jacksonville to save lots of his pal. Their friendship might remind readers of George Milton and Lennie Small in John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella, “Of Mice and Males” — though Nails isn’t as restricted as Lennie.

The compelling story, its tone alternately brutal and tender, unfolds at a breakneck tempo. The character growth is excellent, the settings are vivid, and the prose is as tight as a noose. The plot is stuffed with twists. Amongst them is a startling revelation about Dallas’s identification, introducing a delicate topic that Panowich handles with understanding and charm.

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Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Thriller Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the writer of the Mulligan crime novels together with “The Dread Line.”

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AP e book opinions: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews



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