Richard Laymon Same Vein

RATING:

Publisher: No Exit Press

Review Source:

ROBBERS by Christopher Cook

Eddie didn't mean to shoot the 7Eleven clerk in the head, but the pack of Camel straights he was trying to buy cost $4.01, and he was a penny short. Then Ray Bob went back to get some Marlboros and cleaned out the till: "You can't rob a dead man."

Eddie and Ray Bob are runnin' buddies, and in this high-octane first novel, they keep runnin' all the way across Texas. Eddie starts shooting first, but it's really sociopath Ray Bob we have to worry about: he calls Eddie's 7-Eleven clerk and raises him a cop and a few more clerks.

You get the idea...

Then there's Della, a hairdresser who left a body of her own in a Holiday Inn outside Houston; she hitches a ride in the runnin' buddies' ragtop caddy, and, naturally, three's a crowd.

Ray Bob, you see, has some unresolved issues about sexual orientation, and he just doesn't hit it off with Della, especially since she's getting along so well with Eddie.

Cook takes the noir chase novel (there's a persistent Texas Ranger on the boys' trail) on some remarkable detours. Yes, we feel the pathos of white-trash lives gone wrong, but soon enough, we've forgotten the big picture; we're runnin', too - tasting the dirt of the backroads and rooting for Eddie and Della, murderers each, to escape both Ray Bob and the law and to make it into the middle-class of their naive dreams.

Shocking, brutal and funny. A terrific read!

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Published by No Exit Press
Distributed by Capricorn Link (Aust)
Available through good bookstores.

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