THE DEEPENING SHADE
An alcoholic cop, a Jesus freak, a pregnant homeless teenager, a stripper, a cop in debt to a gangster, and the manager of a fast food joint who is in the wrong place at the wrong time are all part of the rich and varied cast of characters in The Deepening Shade, Jake Hinkson’s superlative short story collection.
The writing is vivid, lyric and brutal. The stories are powerful and involving. The characters are human, all too human.
Every story in this collection is a gem but standouts for me were Makers And Coke, Night Terrors, The Serpent Box and Our Violence.
HELL ON CHURCH STREET
Paul is a troublemaker. A rough and ready kind of guy, he loses his job in a Mississippi plastics factory after getting into a fight with the Foreman.
So, he hits the road and ends up in Texaco. Running low on cash, he decides to rob a fat man and steal his car. But things don’t go to plan.
The fat man introduces himself as Geoffrey Webb and he tells the harrowing story of his time as a youth minister at a small Baptist church in Arkansas and his seemingly inevitable descent into something painfully close to a literal hell as his life spirals out of control and ever downward.
An incredibly dark but richly hued blend of Jim Thompson‘s brand of noir and Camus’ The Fall, Hell On Church Street is both gripping and chilling. Beautifully written, perfectly paced and full of harsh insights into the innate duplicity (and self-duplicity) of human beings. Absolutely brilliant.
Hell On Church Street is currently out of print in English but hopefully this will be rectified soon. However, it is, along with more of
Jake Hinkson‘s books, available in
Italian and
French
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