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Darren, Texas Ranger

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

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Black writers, like all black people, are not defined solely by being oppressed. The majority of black fiction writers will write about how they deal with racism because it is an every day reality in their lives but it is not the only reality. Attica Locke’s fiction exemplifies this. Darren Mathews, the star of what appears to be the first in a series from Locke, is a complicated man. You empathize for him to a degree because of what he has to endure as a […]

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale

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I hate the term “politically correct.” Let’s just get that out of the way. I think the idea of respecting people’s humanity as they want it to be respected is important. When the vast majority of a marginalized group say they don’t want to be addressed with a certain word or in a certain way, making the decision to listen to them is now the downfall of western civilization. Those of us who don’t share a racial, gender, body- or gender-oriented experience as someone else […]

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale

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Read as part of CBR11 bingo: First in the Hap and Leonard series. Joe R. Lansdale is one of those writers I’ve always been meaning to get to but never had the time for. His bibliography, while prolific, is not as readily available at the used bookstores I enjoy perusing, nor are many of them at my local library (I had to buy this copy from The Mysterious Bookshop). And when I did try one of his popular ones, The Bottoms, I found it to be […]

An Homage to an Homage to Twin Peaks?

The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh

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I added The Blinds to my Goodreads list a couple years ago when writer Adam Sternbergh gave an intriguing interview to Texas Monthly magazine. It was all about his travel through Texas to research what West Texas was really like so he could nail it in the book. Since The Blinds was recently a Kindle deal, I nabbed it and gave it a go. At times, the writing is fantastic – fatalistically and pithily humorous. Kind of like a mix of Raymond Chandler and Catch-22. Unfortunately, the back […]

Cowboys Like Us…

The Final Country by James Crumley

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This book inspired the title for the seventh episode of this season’s True Detective. When I finally finished Dave Halberstam’s wonderful-but-exhausting The Best and the Brightest, I decided to pick it up since it was the latest Crumley in my stack. And it might be my favorite. I’ve always liked the Milo books more than the Sughrue ones. There’s really no difference between the two characters; they’re both old, gruff alky war vets who function as ancillaries for the author. But for whatever reason, the three Milo books […]



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