Boot Tracks

Better than any piece of crime fiction I've ever read this novel works on two levels - as an edge of your seat crime thriller (on that level alone it is awesome and well worth reading) and in-depth look into the mis-wired mind of a damaged criminal on the other. It takes an amazing writer to be able to make readers care about a guy like Charlie Rankin and Jones does it. We don't just follow Charlie through his dizzying four day journey - we're in his head every step of the way, experiencing the world as he does. It's unsettling, thrilling, horrifying, mind-boggling and yet by the end of the novel I was rooting for Charlie to somehow make it against all the odds stacked against him and despite the truly horrible things I'd seen him do. Part of the magic is in the artistry of the writing - there's not a wasted word in the book. Reading each sentence is like tasting a finely prepared delicacy. And the way these characters talk - it's some of the best dialogue I've ever read. Years ago I read Jones's novel 'A Single Shot' and thought it was incredible. This one's just as good.

In his novel Boot Tracks, Matthew F. Jones offers the reader a compelling look into the mind of a killer: Charles Rankin is fresh out of prison and on a lethal errand for the Budda, his jailhouse benefactor and protector who plays no direct role in the plot yet still wields considerable influence over Rankin's psyche. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the protagonist's traumatic background has left him with split personality disorder, and has difficulty determining what he did and what his alter-ego, Little Charlie, did. The plot contains the traditional devices, conflict (Rankin has been hired as an assassin), crisis (his own ineptitude and personality stand in his way), resolution (he must determine if he and his alter ego actually murdered their mark), but each is tied so closely to Rankin's flawed personality that it is character that drives the novel forward. Rankin's thoughts best illustrate the true nature of his character. As he moves in on his intended murder victim, his thoughts become increasingly delusional, mixing current circumstances with the childhood trauma of being abused by his mother and her various boyfriends. "Imagining whichever son of a bitch and her being unable to see him, staring right through him even while looking point-blank at him, angrily searching for him in the very places in the room he, Poof Man, was watching them from; keeping himself awake until he was certain they were asleep with visions of them tumbling about, lost, blind, petrified, in the same darkness his X-ray vision permitted him to easily move through." There have been warnings, but the reader here sees that Rankin is a deeply disturbed man--out to kill not for the money he has already been paid, but out of a misguided and exploited loyalty to his prison benefactor who has preyed upon his vulnerability to make him into a killer. He is a complicated character that Jones has crafted by adroitly using the most effective elements of characterization and makes this already compelling novel unforgettable.

Boot Tracks by Matthew F. Jones is the riveting story of Charlie Rankin, a recent prison release, and of his debt to "The Buddha" who got him a job on the outside, killing a man he's never met. Carrying readers through Rankin' s skillfully crafted, articulate and original novel that reveals the psychopathology underlying a criminal life, Boot Tracks follows Rankin through his meeting of Florence and their rapid attraction to one another. A true "page turner" of a read, Boot Tracks is especially recommended as a original thriller and clearly documents Matthew F. Jones as an author to look forward to! Readers new to Matthew Jones will want to seek out his early novels: A Single Shot, Deepwater, and Blind Pursuit.