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A review by jdintr
Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich
4.0
In the first few chapters Bull Mountain feels like it will be another redneck opera: moonshine, small-town sherrifs, guns, even a little meth. But Brian Panowich doesn't have dueling banjos in mind here. Instead, he wants to cram a family epic into a crime thriller.
To do this, he uses multiple points of view to layer the story and bring it vividly to life. Clayton Burroughs would seem to be the central character, but he is balancing remorse over abandoning the family crime syndicate for a job as a county sheriff with an appealing offer from ATF agent, Simon Holly, to bring the whole enterprise to a peaceful end.
About halfway through this thriller, we meet Angel, a down-on-her-luck whore who in one terrible, violent morning is disfigured and impregnated by Clayton's father, Gareth. It's a crucial moment in the book, when the Bull Mountain syndicate goes from pot smuggling to big-time weapons running and methamphetamine production. Angel also becomes the book's moral center: a living link between the Burroughs clan of 1973 and the events that play out 42 years later.
I couldn't put this book down, couldn't give up rooting for both Clayton and Simon for much of it. The dialogue is red hot. The cast is well drawn, even minor characters spring to life on the pages. The challenge of creating such vivid characters, though, is how hard it is to give them up. To me, the book went on too long, wrapping up each character to the Nth degree and providing a surprise in the last three pages that--while welcome--wasn't necessary.
To do this, he uses multiple points of view to layer the story and bring it vividly to life. Clayton Burroughs would seem to be the central character, but he is balancing remorse over abandoning the family crime syndicate for a job as a county sheriff with an appealing offer from ATF agent, Simon Holly, to bring the whole enterprise to a peaceful end.
About halfway through this thriller, we meet Angel, a down-on-her-luck whore who in one terrible, violent morning is disfigured and impregnated by Clayton's father, Gareth. It's a crucial moment in the book, when the Bull Mountain syndicate goes from pot smuggling to big-time weapons running and methamphetamine production. Angel also becomes the book's moral center: a living link between the Burroughs clan of 1973 and the events that play out 42 years later.
I couldn't put this book down, couldn't give up rooting for both Clayton and Simon for much of it. The dialogue is red hot. The cast is well drawn, even minor characters spring to life on the pages. The challenge of creating such vivid characters, though, is how hard it is to give them up. To me, the book went on too long, wrapping up each character to the Nth degree and providing a surprise in the last three pages that--while welcome--wasn't necessary.