Arkansas by John Brandon (2008)

The Coen Brothers have made a nice career out of crafting stories about guys who are not nearly as smart as they think they are. Whose plans are not nearly as airtight as they need should be. Folks who don’t have nearly the power they think they do. John Brandon uses the same outline in his debut novel Arkansas and it works quite well. Brandon’s tight story also reminds one of the whole Southern Gothic thing (Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy) and the fine crime novel style of Elmore Leonard. He also manages to throw in a few experimental flourishes that don’t seem to bog the narrative down but rather elucidate it.

Here we have Swin and Kyle, two men who back into jobs in the drug trade in the rural South. Their improbable rise to the lower echelons of narcotics distribution finds them working for a fake Ranger in a State Park in the land of Razorback football and shady trailer parks. They drive for a man named Bright who in turn gets packages from a mysterious woman named “Her.” The ultimate power in the network is held by another foolhardy type who goes by the name Frog. We learn of Frog’s rise to the top of his game (which really isn’t all that far up, to tell the truth) in some interstitial chapters written in second person.

Brandon makes all of these characters seem real and you find yourself rooting for Swin and Kyle even though you get the feeling from pretty early on that their story will not end nicely. Then the bodies start piling up and what little center there is obviously cannot hold. The sympathy is ratcheted up when Swin gets his girlfriend pregnant and the three try to make a semblance of a normal life. Swin is drawn as an intelligent (but not too smart) family man if a bit self-centered. He fears that the sisters he left in Kentucky will miss him so much that they will become strippers for lack of a decent male role model. The truth is they are doing just fine without Swin. Kyle is the real criminal of the two. He doesn’t pretend to be smart but he thinks he knows how to live outside the law. The two bring out the best and the worst in the each other. But mostly the worst.

With a debut as strong as this, I expect great things from John Brandon. I highly recommend Arkansas. Read it now so you can impress your friends when the Coen Brothers version wins Best Picture.

Arkansas is published by McSweeney’s Books and can be bought here.