The third of Smith's novels that I've read, and another great read - dark, compelling and emotionally powerful, with a superb antihero at its heart. ( )

Interesting that this author portrays the FBI agent as having his own agenda and looking to support that agenda rather than seeking the truth.

More violent than I like, I prefer escapism. ( )

Billy Lafitte figured out at an early age that the best way to bend the law was to be the law. This book – the first in a trilogy – kicks off like it’s a plain and simple of story of brutally bad backwoods America, where every shed hosts a meth-lab and every corrupt lawman demands his dues.

But then the narrative escalates into something much bigger. There’s a coherent, carefully crafted plot driving the action. There’s more than money motivating the stone-cold killers who’ve rolled into town and are making bloody examples out of the local lowlives.

At the centre of it all is Billy, already a two-time loser. On his last chance with a law enforcement badge. An adrenalin junkie with a penchant for making exactly the wrong call at the vital moment. And an intriguing character; not a cardboard cut-out, not a two-dimensional hillbilly bad-boy, but a convincing person motivated not just by greed and lust (although they sure play a part)

Yellow Medicine brings something of Louisiana’s laid-back lawlessness to the chilly, big-sky snows drifts of Minnesota, and the squeaky-clean college town of Ann Arbor. It’s less gruesomely explicit than some recent ‘country noir’. Although the pace is driven relentlessly by a succession of escalating violent encounters, it has more the feel of a mature thriller than a hack-n-slash horror crossover.

At its core, Yellow Medicine peels apart some of the most important issues in contemporary politics and Billy himself provides a conduit to examine American motives and actions on the worldwide stage of religious conflict. Author Neil Smith flings his net wide, using what a first sight appears to be a ‘simple’ crime novel to say in public some of those troubling thoughts which usually only get discussed in private.

And he tells a ripping yarn, too.
8/10
( )

I'm glad that Anthony Neil Smith is an author, because I wouldn't want him running around loose looking for a profession. (He also teaches creative writing at a university in Minnesota.) This is a fantastic book, in the same vein as Duane Swiercynski but more grounded in reality, and bears a kinship to the more extreme works of Joe Lansdale as well, though Smith makes Lansdale seem tame. If there is a Pulitzer Prize for Noir, I nominate Smith. Or maybe we should just skip straight to the Nobel.

Though this is twice as long as a pulp fiction novel ought to be, it doesn't read like it. There is no padding and I only put the book down to sleep and go to work. It holds up all the way to the end, but don't look for a lot of rays of sunlight--this is a nasty book where lots of gruesome things happen to people, at least a few who don't deserve what they having coming. At the center of it all is Billy Lafitte, a bad cop who left post-Katrina Biloxi before his crimes there caught up with him and is now working for his ex-brother-in-law in Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota, near the Canadian border. To say that Billy makes a lot of bad decisions throughout the course of the novel is a severe understatement. His lack of judgment as he barrels into one dire situation after another based on some sort of twisted personal code is appalling--but he is consistent in how he acts, so the book holds together.

There is more to interest the reader than just watching a train wreck happen, however. Despite all his faults, there are things we can identify with in Billy. While he cares about himself most of all, he does care about other people in his own peculiar way, and it is his commitments to these other people that give the book its depth and impact. As the events in the book spiral out of control, growing from simply trying to help out the meth-dealing boyfriend of the 19-year-old psychobilly rock singer he is (sort of) in love with, to engaging with a cold-blooded bunch of Asian Al-Qaeda wannabes, all the time pursued by a possibly rogue FBI agent, Billy's relationships with Drew (the singer), Paul (his ex-partner), his new boss, and a host of other characters keep us riveted.

At 99 cents for the Kindle, you would be an extremely foolish reader not to grab this one. I’m about to buy the rest of Smith’s works at the same price. The Kindle has truly returned us back to the era of the cheap drugstore paperback. ( )