5/20/2023 0 Comments Tom franklin books in order![]() ![]() Franklin announces the arrival of the avenger with a sentence no more complete than ""A match striking,"" and yet this is enough for a good scare. The other stories in the book, however, only provide a tantalizing buildup to the chilling title story, in which a legendary and demonic game warden in a small Alabama town stealthily and privately punishes three youths who have murdered his predecessor. In ""The Ballad of Duane Juarez,"" a man commits small crimes without guilt because he has given himself a fake name, and thereby a fake identity. Fantasy has its place, too, as in ""Alaska,"" in which a rambling male voice describes an imagined trip to the Northwest that never gets farther than the shores of a pond in some unspecified Southern location although little happens, the story's dreamy meandering is seductive. ![]() The protagonist of ""Triathlon,"" a man trapped in a decaying marriage, remembers fishing for sharks on the night before his wedding. In ""Grit,"" a devious laborer at a minerals processing plant trades positions with his supervisor through blackmail involving gambling debts, only to see the scam backfire. In ""Dinosaurs,"" a waste inspector takes a huge stuffed rhinoceros as a reward for not closing down a gas station with several hazardous leaky pumps. The collection's power arises from Franklin's reluctance to analyze its (often bloody) events. These 10 honestly crafted and carefully executed tales of cottonmouths and skulking outlaws in the South unflinchingly explore the pitfalls and dangers involved in making one's place in the world. ![]()
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