ABOUT THE BOOK

Jewel Cobb had come to St Bruno to climb on the fabled big city gravy train. As he tucked his .32 Beretta into the waistband of his trousers, he sensed he was about to turn his midnight fantasies into rich reality. Cousin Duncan had set little Jewel up to do the killing. The boy was hillbilly raw but country tough...and too dumb to get in Duncan's way after the victim was dead.

It seemed simple enough..a burglar caught in the act..bullets fired in panic..too bad the dead man was a prominent black councilman with big political ambitions but that's life. Find the burglar and you find the killer...simple as that.

But for detective Rene Shade it seemed a bit too simple..a bit too pat so he takes on City Hall as he follows a twisting trail through the sleazy streets of St Bruno's Cajun quarter, down the back alley balck ghettos into the murky bayous that ring the city. It's a trail that leads to corruption, betrayal and more murder.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

'Woodrell alternates between reaming the language with a dry corncob and practising a particularly skilful kind of literary cabinetwork.' - E Annie Proulx

"...but let's agree on Woodrell as the foremost exponent of the poetry of trailer-park trash. Woodrell does the best 'country noir' prose there is, and if you want to be hip read him now..." - Susie Maguire, Southern Daily Echo

"Woodrell proves once again that he's one of the finest exponents of American noir writing. His seductive and deceptively lazy style lulls the reader into a false sense of security - and then hits him below the belt. In short, he's an original and first-rate story-teller." - Irish News

"Jane Austen saw far less violence in her world, but move her to South Carolina and you'll get some idea of what Daniel Woodrell is up to." - The Spectator

"Terrific." - Literary Review

Daniel Woodrell's The Death of Sweet Mister is nakedly honest, unsettling, pitch perfect, and uniquely American. Put it on the shelf alongside Faulkner, Jim Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy. With this one, Mr. Woodrell has earned himself a piece of immortality.
George P. Pelecanos

"Daniel Woodrell is a storyteller of bristling imagination and muscular prose, who uses the poetically profane language of the trailerpark to wicked effect. " - Bizarre

"At a time when the two dominant strands of male American fiction to emerge in the last couple of decades - contemporary noir and dirty realism - have largely lapsed into self-parody, a writer from the Ozark mountains of Missouri has come along to resuscitate them both." - John Williams, The Independent

every bit as sharp and twisted as the best of Jim Thompson or Charles Williams...what Daniel Woodrell's come back with are some of the finest, toughest books in American fiction today." - John Williams, Time Out