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Bad Country

par CB McKenzie

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14718184,570 (3.59)4
"The newest winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize, a debut mystery set in the Southwest starring a former rodeo cowboy turned private investigator, told in a transfixingly original style. Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes. Retired from the rodeo circuit and scraping by on piece-work as a private investigator, Rodeo doesn't have much choice but to say yes when offered an unusual case. An elderly Indian woman has hired him to help discover who murdered her grandson, but she seems strangely uninterested in the results. Her indifference seems heartless, but as Rodeo pursues his case he learns that it's nothing compared to true hatred. And he's about to realize just how far hate can go. CB McKenzie's Bad Country captures the rough-and-tumble corners of the Southwest in accomplished, confident prose, with a hardnosed plot that will keep readers riveted"--… (plus d'informations)
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» Voir aussi les 4 mentions

Affichage de 1-5 de 18 (suivant | tout afficher)
I disliked this book for all the reasons that others who disliked it have detailed. There is a big difference between trying to write like James Lee Burke or Cormac McCarthy, and being those two authors, to name but two.
This book hit all of the requirements to be a critics darling.
1. Author has a gritty blue collar background.
2. Author got an MFA
3. Author is overly descriptive regarding people, places, things that don't require that much detail. ( do I really need to know the name of every concert ticket the deceased has in his room.
4. Use words to demonstrate how vast your vocabulary is thanks to your MFA.
5. Add in one or more foreign languages ( Spanish, American Indian ) for no additional benefit to the reader.
6. Be creative. In this case, don't use quotation marks ever, but still have lots of dialogue exchanges. Oh and don't have chapters.
This book is beyond pretentious to the point of being laughable, the story never goes anywhere the dog is either bionic or the fittest dog on the planet, and the main character is neither interesting nor someone the reader can empathize with.
Overall this book was for me a complete waste of time.
( )
  zmagic69 | Mar 31, 2023 |
I loved the hot gritty setting, in a different part of the southwest for me. The old dog and the past affair with Sirena were used very well. Long live Rodeo and Luis. The ending lost me a bit and the baddie was confusingly complex which isn't necessarily a bad thing. ( )
  Je9 | Aug 10, 2021 |
Great mystery book set in the Southwest. Interesting rough characters throughout. The story moves at a good pace with twists and turns. ( )
  caanderson | Jun 13, 2021 |
"Bad Country" is long, slow, sometimes uncomfortable journey into one man's experience of trying to live his life in the unforgiving terrain of the South West Arizona. The journey is strung across the frame of an investigation of the death of a young boy, shot and left to bleed out under a highway.

The man making the journey and carrying out the investigation is a Native American man, Rodeo Garnet, former rodeo star and now a low key, low rent Private Investigator. Accompanied only by his old dog (whose name we never learn) Rodeo chooses to live a mostly solitary life, based in a run-down house on an abandoned development in a remote location where the desert meets the mountains.

Much of the pleasure of the book comes from the way Rodeo looks at the world with quiet, careful accuracy and reacts to it with a pragmatic calm that remains determined rather than fatalistic or cynical. Mostly, Rodeo sees other people and himself for who they are. He is neither surprised nor disappointed with what he sees, it is what it is, and only some of what he sees requires him to do anything.

As Rodeo slowly and carefully compiles the information he needs to understand what happened to the boy who's death he is investigating, he constantly crosses and recrosses a trail that seems to link together the deaths of a number of Native Americans, one of whom was dumped almost at his door. Rodeo thinks about this and works it through with quiet stoicism.

"Bad Country" looks at Arizona not as an exotic location but as home. It's not a very hospitable home but it's home nonetheless. The plot is set in a stable context of people who have known and each other for so long that they have mostly come to terms with one another. There's no deep existential angst here. No "ain't it awful that my life is so hard". Instead the, main impression I was left with was a very non-Anglo spirit of endurance.

This is CB McKenzie's debut novel and, despite the prizes that it won, I felt that showed through more often than I would have liked. Sometimes the descriptions tried a little too hard. Sometimes the pace was so slow that I was checking for a pulse. Yet mostly, what comes through is a unique voice and a lot of talent.

I listened to the audiobook version and was deeply impressed by the way in which Mark Bramhall's narration enriched the atmosphere of the book, both from the unhurried pace of his delivery and the accuracy of the accents he used. ( )
  MikeFinnFiction | May 16, 2020 |
It was just ok. No real explanation about qualifications main character had to even be a PI and unlikely rambling dialogue with excess explanatory statements included that did not ring true to the way people speak. Of course, I have never visited this part of the country so maybe I just don't know. Also, a very unsatisfactory explanation of the ending and how some characters' fates came to be. It was mildly entertaining but a reminder why I've gotten away from this type mystery novel. ( )
  jldarden | Apr 22, 2020 |
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"The newest winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize, a debut mystery set in the Southwest starring a former rodeo cowboy turned private investigator, told in a transfixingly original style. Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes. Retired from the rodeo circuit and scraping by on piece-work as a private investigator, Rodeo doesn't have much choice but to say yes when offered an unusual case. An elderly Indian woman has hired him to help discover who murdered her grandson, but she seems strangely uninterested in the results. Her indifference seems heartless, but as Rodeo pursues his case he learns that it's nothing compared to true hatred. And he's about to realize just how far hate can go. CB McKenzie's Bad Country captures the rough-and-tumble corners of the Southwest in accomplished, confident prose, with a hardnosed plot that will keep readers riveted"--

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