Robbers

Timing is everything. For Christopher Cook's manuscript of his first novel "Robbers," everything couldn't have been worse.The day the book was sent out for bids from publishers was the day, two years ago April 20, of the Columbine school massacre.Nobody, that day, was looking for a modern Western shoot-'em-up. Not one publisher made a bid."Robbers" eventually found its place between hard covers (Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., New York) and is on its way to finding widespread readership, chalking up excellent reviews, including The New York Times.Here's my personal endorsement: I read it three times in the past month and have recommended it to most everybody I think would enjoy it.That's not necessarily everybody."Robbers" puts you on the road with a couple of Texas psycho, good- ol'- boy bad guys on a murder spree of convenience store clerks, beginning with a fellow who was a penny foolish.When one of the pair, Eddie, comes up one cent short for a pack of cigarettes at an Austin 7-Eleven, the clerk --"a plump young man with burnished bronze skin and a black mustache, either Indian or Pakistani" -- refuses to cut the price even a penny."'What kind of !#$% country you come from?'" Eddie says, flipping the top of his Zippo open and shut in one hand."'Very fine country,'" the clerk says. "'Where we pay for what we get.'""'Listen to me. This is America. Gimmee them cigarettes.'""Only the guy didn't budge. Not one word, just standing there like a chocolate Deputy Doright. A corner of his mouth lifting slightly, either a smirk or twitch."That's when Eddie "hoisted a leg and reached into his boot. Pulled a .22 revolver, an old Colt Police Positive with a four-inch barrel, looked like a toy. Pointed it at the guy. Arm straight out, finger on the trigger. Saying, 'Gimmee them !#$% cigarettes.'""'Robbery,' the man squawked. He stared at the gun, dark eyes blinking, teethed his upper lip, jaw thrust forward. 'I call the police. Get your license plate.'"So Eddie pulled the trigger. A sharp crack, the barrel kicking up. The bullet caught the clerk square in the forehead. His head snapped back, a small black hole in the bronze curvature. He stood there with his hands on the counter a moment, eyes crossed, then slid down onto the floor out of sight."Too real for you? Then don't read "Robbers." It is real Texas -- really violent, really sexy and really religious.If the mix of religion with sex and violence seems out of place, then you don't know the place Texas is, especially the rural regions.The author, Christopher Cook, 48, knows it well. He grew up in what's called the Golden Triangle of Southeast Texas, where the petrochemical industry pulls country boys up by their roots from the Pineywoods and into the refineries along the Gulf Coast.That's where the killers wind up, with a Texas Ranger closing in on them. One makes it all the way to his home county of Jasper, where the dragging death of a black man is a fresh memory.I'll tell you this much about the c

I am not a practiced book reviewer, just a avid reader. It has been a long time since I have read a "new" story. I was about to take a pickup load of books, with the bookmark about halfway to the middle, to the dumster. It seems that the big name writers have quit writing and started just typeing. Mr. Cook managed to keep me awake nearly all night with his new book. I hope it catches on. Its time we had a good storyteller to make a breakthru to the best seller list. This is the guy.

(The following review by Reed Holland appears in the December issue of Texas Co-op Power magazine) --- Robbers falls within the genre of darkly comic, smart-talk thrillers of Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy and James Lee Burke. Cook, whose novel will soon be published in England, France and Japan, writes with evangelical rhythms and a sheer joy for words that can make his prose read like Faulkner¹s or Cormac McCarthy's: "Vast stretches of land to a horizon unbroken save for lonely trailer homes perched queerly in the stepped green-brown expanse, as if dropped from the sky as an alien afterthought." Cook, who lives in Austin, aspires to the literary noire. He finds it in wasteland along the Houston Ship Channel that once was a leper colony, a highway on the Bolivar Peninsula broken away by the Gulf of Mexico, and a hardwood overstory so thick in Jasper County that a deluge of rain roars on the canopy, slowly dripping through, as the action takes a hair-raising turn. Make what you will of Cook's antiheroes, violence and frank carnality, but here's a Texas writer whose eye is keen, and whose voice is sure and strong.

(The following pre-release review was published in the fiction section of PUBLISHERS WEEKLY on October 9, 2000) --- The harsh, foreboding essence of rural Texas dominates Cook's bloody, bittersweet debut novel, charting the adventures of two criminal drifters and their pursuer ... The boys' aimless adventure eventually includes Della, a woman who patterns her life on women's magazines and desperately aspires to middle-class respectability ... as crafty Texas Ranger, Rule Hooks, picks up their scent. Hooks, a tracker by training and instinct, relies on modern police methods as well as his gut instincts to sniff out his prey. Cook's plot tumbles from scene to scene with jarring brilliance, the pathos of his characters lending his otherwise brutal world a certain beauty. His imagery is striking, almost lyrical ... This gritty crime drama is not for the faint of heart, but Cook¹s prose sets it a notch above many like novels. The publisher compares the book to the work of James Lee Burke; if booksellers push this comparison, or if they aim the title at a hip, youthful readership, it could make out like a bandit.