Bad Eye Blues

You can't beat Neal Barrett when it comes to smells. Take your doughnuts and diapers, Doublement gum, carboard coffee and ancient onion rings, wet socks, winos, chicken parts and kiddie farts, diesel and despair. Yep. There ain't no doubt you're smelling the big coast-to-coast . . . that rollling blue box bound for for Big Sky country. Hang on to your ribs, folks. There's funny stuff ahead.If you haven't read Neal Barret Jr. you owe it to yourself. He's not Carl Hiaason . . . he's Hiaason on PCP. By the books. All of them.

No matter what genre(s) he's writing in, it's hard to top Neal Barrett. In my mind, only Joe Lansdale, Andrew Vachss, and Lawrence Block are writing crime/mystery fiction of this caliber. If you like the non-traditional approach, and lean-and-mean prose, check out this Wiley Moss "Blues" series by Neal Barrett. Then, if you can, track down a copy of "The Hereafter Gang", a masterpiece that is sadly out of print. The reading public at large will discover Neal Barrett's awesome body of work someday, and I hope I'm around to see it.