Rats Alley

While it's less nihilistic and sharp than Irsfeld's Little Kingdoms, Rats Alley offers more than enough in truly sympathetic characters and heart-tearing scenes. The portayal of death to a young man and its after effects on those left behind is carefully played out, and hardly a point of view is left out of the progressing story. Serious reading for those interested in such.

In Rats Alley, John Irsfeld creates understanding and even compassion and sympathy for a wide variety of the most ordinary human beings. His characters are the nameless police officers and high school kids and housewives that most people would never notice and soon forget. Yet, in this story, these individuals stay with you long after you have finished the book.Set in Houston and a small Texas town, the story explores right and the wrong and the string of consequences that spring from seemingly incidental actions. Above all else, however, Irsfeld is a great story-teller, in the tradition of Faulkner, Twain and other great Southern writers.J. David Green