Country Noir: The Devil’s Country by Harry Hunsicker

The Devil’s Country is a popcorn book.  Enjoyable and easy to consume.  But not meaty or complex.  And not entirely satisfying.

Arlo Baines isn’t looking for trouble.  He is just looking for escape from the circumstances that led to the murder of his family.  But he isn’t exactly in the mood to run from trouble.  So, when the ex-Texas Ranger steps in between a woman on the run from a cult with her two small children and two gun thugs, he doesn’t step back.  It isn’t hard to go “tumbling down into the black canyon at the center of [Arlo’s] being.”

Fiction: Last Girl Gone by J.G. Hetherton

Is the evil done to us irreparable?  Are we doomed to pay it forward?

Last Girl Gone is an assured debut, as much a thriller as a mystery (certainly effective as the former).  Young girls are starting to go missing in the small town of Hillsborough, North Carolina—just like they did decades before—and disgraced journalist Laura Chambers sees her way back out of her hometown.

Historic Occoneechee Speedway – not my pic