Review: "Dust Devils" by James Reasoner

 

Dust Devils
by James Reasoner
The Book Place, 2011

 

James Reasoner’s marvelous crime thriller, Dust Devils—published by Point Blank Press in 2007—received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and the writer and critic, Ed Gorman, wrote: “Dust Devils is an exemplary modern hardboiled novel with all the merits of the post-Tarantino era but none of the flaws.” Not only does Dust Devils live up to the accolades it received upon its original publication, but it reads as well today, some sixteen years later, as it must have then.
     Toby McCoy is a young drifter looking for work in the dusty, windblown Texas panhandle. On a chance, Toby knocks on the door of a lonesome farmhouse. A woman nearly twice his age, Grace Halligan, opens the door with some suspicion, but agrees to give Toby a job. No more than two weeks later, Grace and Toby, driven by mutual loneliness, make their relationship more personal and physical. But when a pair of gunmen arrive at the farm, Grace and Toby’s secrets are dragged out from the shadows.
     Dust Devils is close to a perfect hardboiled thriller with twist after surprising twist built into the plot. And each twist hits the reader harder than the last until that final, shocking hammer blow. The characters—particularly Grace and Toby—are developed with a realistic flair. Both are likable and curiously mysterious at once. The Texas landscape is painted with a realist’s brush and it is obvious Reasoner not only knows the country where the book takes place, but loves it, too. While Dust Devils isn’t exactly noir, there is an appealing melancholy to the narrative that is as much about the sunbaked landscape as it is about the story.
     Dust Devils needs only a larger readership to claim its deserved place as a genuine hardboiled classic.

Go here for the Kindle version and here for the paperback edition at Amazon.