Backwoods American noir is all the rage right now and Peckerwood is among the best of them. It takes all the usual ingredients – small-town sheriff, probably corrupt; meth-labs and whore-houses run a by local hard man; three-time losers looking for a big score; wayward sons and daughters – and blends them together in a romping plot at a pivotal moment.Along the way, heads get broken big time in a melange of shootin’, shaggin’, jackin’, whorin’, thievin’ and blackmail, but there’s more to this bo...

I don't know what it is about this genre. I'm repulsed by the characters, the subject matter, the lives of these people. They take the gift of life and just wipe their ass with it. But, something about this genre creates wonderful writers who write wonderful books. "Peckerwood" is no different. It has what I call the "Deadwood principle" which I define as taking a group of people who swear every other word and have little to no education and making them insightful and brilliant in a believable m...

Peckerwood. This is chicken fried, hardboiled, hyper-violent, grit-lit at its most entertaining. Sheriff Jimmy Mondale is busy trying to keep the peace while keeping an eye on his business interests. Ex-biker Chowder Thompson is a hard edged business man with a low tolerance for outside influence. Terry Hickerson is a two-bit peckerwood with a tendency for stirring shit up. That's pretty much all the context you need to know for now. Why ruin all of the fun and surprises? Peckerwood's narrative

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The long-awaited first novel by Noir at the Bar dogfather Jedidiah Ayres doesn't disappoint, and not just because it fulfills the promise of another borderline unprintable title. A bit more thoughtful and a bit less savage than his short-story collection A F*ckload of Shorts, and much larger in scope than Fierce B*tches, it still moves quick, or at least starts out already moving (you're tuning in to a show already in progress), but it also doubles back on itself from time to time, stretching ou...

"Everyone was waiting for him to turn up dead, accidentally eviscerated with a can opener or hung by his nuts outside the elementary school."PECKERWOOD is hardboiled crime fiction, rural noir as back-alley-bar balls, and as twisty full-metal gonzo as the plots are, ultimately you don't read them for plot, or even character, you read them for voice. You read them for those shivery little pleasure pellets of prose, like miniature cocaine bombs, that bounce off the walls of your blood vessels with

★★1/2Man, I really wish I liked this more than I did. Jedidiah Ayres was one of my favorite author discoveries of last year. So I was excited to read this one: his debut novel and a release from Broken River Books, probably the coolest publisher out there. But although I didn't have a problem finishing the book, I realized that the reason I kept reading was due to Ayers's stylish prose and his true potential rather than much engagement in the characters or what was happening. It read a bit like

If this is a debut novel, I'm a horse's ass. Ayres takes you into the muck, as Scott Phillips says amongst all the other praise this book has gotten and deserved, and that's just the best part of his success in this lacerating and knowing novel. Suspense is a hard thing to master, and Ayres has the mastery to uh, be mastered. Sheriff Jimmy Mondale is my favorite character, a man who's got ideas about how the world should operate, it's just that he's, well, a touch crooked himself, and once throw...

"Peckerwood" centers on the symbiotic relationship between a redneck crime boss and the local sheriff, and the forces that cause their relationship to implode. One of those forces being Terry Hickerson, peckerwood-extraordinaire of Spruce, Missouri. Terry usually sticks to booze, drugs, women, and theft. But he’s not smart enough to stay within his depth. And a chance encounter with the sheriff’s daughter lands him in the middle of two most powerful and dangerous men in town. From the very first...

Well, I'm seemingly in the minority here with a 3 star rating for Peckerwood. Others have characterized this as American backwoods noir, or just a novel about poor white trash in backwoods Missouri. In any event, I suppose both descriptors have some merit. But, bottom line for me-- it's a fairly entertaining book that failed to leave me wanting another.Jimmy Mondale is sheriff of Spruce, Missouri, a backwoods town ruled by a former bike-gang leader, meth dealing drug lord who also runs a legit (...

Epic, profane, stunning and simply magnificent. Jedidiah Ayres has created a complex and compelling world, peopled with characters I couldn't turn away from. They are despicable, yes, be he pulls off a hat trick comparable to Peckinpah, he makes you care about them. My only complaint is the sleep I lost because I couldn't put it down.

A dirty and violent backwoods noir sprinkled with a nice dose of black humor. I loved every page!

This was so much fun to read. All the multiple subplots start to build momentum throughout, slowly at first, and then link together as the book progresses, like snowballs being rolled down hills from opposite directions, gathering mass and velocity before meeting in the middle for the final collision. 4.5 stars.

Adrenaline fueled red-neck crime thriller. The author has never let me down.An absolute grit lit masterpiece!Highest possible recommendation!

Sheriff Jimmy Mondale and local Crime Boss Chowder Thompson have the town of Spruce tied down between them. Chowder ensures no outside interference from other out of town crime syndicates, while Jimmy enforces the law on anyone in town whom Chowder puts the drop on. The arrangement works fine for both parties and the town as a whole has also benefited from Chowder's financial donations. However, when local small time stick up man Terry Hickerson gets it on with Jimmy's wayward daughter Eileen an...

This was a short, satisfying, complex little crime novel. It shifts perspectives quite often (hawks In Cold Blood sections come to mind) to a slightly-surreal/jarring effect, but nonetheless feels like classic hard-boiled noir. One unforgettable scene includes two disorganized crime yokels trying to frame a disguised televangelist in a redneck gay bar.I hope Jedidiah Ayres keeps publishing crime books in this style; it was quite refreshing compared to other grocery-store crime Gods like Patterso...

Crazy wild. Imagine a raunchy, bloody "Raising Arizona" -- that's how these ribald and very funny misadventures hit me. Yet this story never got cartoonish; all the characters and situations, as horribly wrong as they got, felt real. Ayres also has quite a flair with language too, but in a subtle and unshowy way.

This is a very dark novel with a southern flavor. There are lots of bad words, drugs and sex but do not let that discourage you from reading a good novel. In a fictitious county in Missouri, close to Tennessee and Arkansas border, there is a set of characters involved in a crime conspiracy. The main characters are a corrupt Sheriff, with a promiscuous daughter, a middle age drug dealer, with a violent gay daughter, and a very inept middle aged criminal. Then an Assistant District Attorney become...

Love this book. Read it, now.

I have never read a book with more despicable, unlikeable, degenerate, nasty, white trash. Not a single character had any redeeming qualities, but I instantly fell in love with the book. I couldn't wait to find out what these idiots were going to do next! If you have not read Jed Ayers this is the perfect place to start. His characters are outrageous, yet seem like they could all be very real people. The story was tight, funny, and excellent. Ayers is definitely on my "must buy" list every time