Country Noir: Panther Gap by James McLaughlin

James McLaughlin’s debut novel Bearskin was one of my favorite books from a few years ago, so of course I jumped on his follow-up Panther Gap.

Siblings Bowman and Summer were raised by their father and two uncles on a remote Colorado ranch. They react differently to his radical teachings and the confusions of adolescence. As young adults, they become estranged but are brought back together in their thirties by the prospect of an illegal and potentially dangerous inheritance from their grandfather. They must ultimately reconcile with each other and their past in order to defeat ruthless criminal forces trying to extort the inheritance.

I was initially confused as to just what kind of follow-up Panther Gap is. The copy above doesn’t include an obvious tie to Bearskin, but I had it in my head nonetheless that this was maybe a prequel. I won’t say exactly how, but the short answer is that Panther Gap is a distinct story set somewhat before Bearskin with one small tie to that earlier book. I wonder if McLaughlin has a third novel planned that would bring things together in a manner similar to Cormac McCarthy’s Cities of the Plain.

Panther Gap is split into three narratives. One follows Bowman as he attempts to return to the family ranch and reconnect with his sister. The second follows his sister Summer, who stayed on the ranch after their father’s death, attempting to keep it afloat along with her uncles. The third consists of a series of flashbacks exploring Bowman and Summer’s relationship with each other and with their father.

I found the two (roughly) present day narratives far more compelling than the flashbacks. Flashbacks are tricky to do, being a form of prequel and suffering from the usual drawbacks to telling a story the end of which is already baked in by another story. I appreciated that Bearskin includes just the touch of the supernatural. That touch in Bearskin is open to interpretation but pretty clearly falls on the supernatural side, in my view. McLaughlin does something similar here, with ciguatera poisoning-induced hallucinations by Bowman as the vehicle, but now the more natural interpretation is on the non-supernatural side.

McLaughlin continues to write beautifully and shows great range. His prose is both elegant and clear. He writes taut set pieces and also succeeds at more literary aspects of writing. He can write very grounded and he can get much more abstract (mostly when Bowman is hallucinating). My biggest gripe, though, and the only real gripe other than the flashbacks dragging a bit, is that the whole thing is just a little too outlandish. Not so much as to ruin it for me, but enough to keep the novel from soaring in my estimation and from equaling my pleasure reading Bearskin. (And, let’s be honest, I have a pretty strong bias toward a book set in Appalachia over a book set in the Mountain West.)

4 of 5 Stars.