One of the best short story collections I've read in awhile. Hard hitting crime fiction and noir stories with a rural/country or Southern flavor. I was very impressed with how different each of the stories are, usually with an anthology of stories by a single author the content tends to suffer from a certain sameness from one story to the next but that is definitely not the case here. Each story is distinct and different while still being firmly in the realm of crime. Some are humorous, some are sad, some are a little of both. Includes two novella length tales: Townies, which has a touch (just a touch) of Stephen King-like supernatural atmosphere and Blood Holler which is more of a straight noir.

This has been on my TBR pile for so long that I forgot all about it. I'm glad I finally got around to it. This is good stuff! Recommended for anyone who enjoys a dark tale told in "down home" style.

Not my typical read. I enjoyed it very much. I would read more by this author. I would recommend it to others.

I read this book while waiting at the hospital for a friend. I kept getting odd looks for laughing, giggling or gasping as each story drew audible responses from me. I'll definitely look for more books by this author.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This is a collection of noir crime stories with a Southern flair. The stories are well-written, and I liked the flow of both the stories and the dialog. While they are touted as being humorous, I thought they were so fatalistic that I failed to find anything amusing about them, with the exception of The Joe Flacco Defense. That story reminded me of the Roald Dahl story, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” which was made into an Alfred Hitchcock episode.

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It's the first book I read written by Eryk Pruitt and I can state he's a great storyteller.
I loved this stories, each of them was a small gem of humor, psychology and style of writing.
It's one of those books that gives you a lot of pleasure in reading them.
And it's one of those book that makes you think "Now I go and buy the book".
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Polis Books and Netgalley for this ARC

During the holiday season, we all seem to read more about home, especially if you can't get there. Eryk shares these small stories that will immediately bring to mind characters from your own childhood, if you lived in the South. As anyone who knows holidays in the South will know, there is always a chance of darkness and grief- of family secrets unmasking and causing havoc. In light of that theory, thi collection shares that sense of doom and mischief. The 20 stories will make you laugh, shudder and shake your head, all the while saying 'well yeah, that coulda happened in _______". If you love Southern fiction, you'll love this collection!

I don’t know what it is about southern writers, but I admire the way they handle language, the way they unfold the cadence and rhythms of their stories. To counter General Patton’s assertion that the US had never learned defeat, the late historian Shelby Foote remarked that the South was the only part of the country that had experienced a deep psychic humiliation. I would humbly add to his response that southern writers have endeavored since the Civil War to season their works with comedy, dignity, perversity, and majesty. Eryk Pruitt belongs in that tradition, as I see it. Technically, Pruitt was born in Texas, but he resides in South Carolina and I think whatever is in the soil or water there has nourished a gift for a turn of phrase, a compassionate vision of the High and Low around him. Writers strive to acquire Voice, and Mr. Pruitt has an evocative, at times hilarious, and lyrical one.

The people Townies don’t read as caricatures or clichés, or the dialogue as some homespun collection of regional colloquialisms as much as they render believable the experiences of the people you and I might meet on the road. In them you’ll find twisted logic, plans and reversals, and hard decisions and awful outcomes, though I found none of this depressing. The language sings throughout. Pruitt, like Flannery O’Connor, can take something as banal as an argument over overgrown weeds and elevate it into a story riddled with subtext on fear and racism. There is no moralizing. It is what it is. Beneath the beautiful and arresting musicality of Pruitt’s prose, brutal truths about the lives observed are turned over like rocks for readers to judge on their own. And that is an admirable accomplishment for any writer. Objectivity. Readers may point to Cormac McCarthy and Ron Rash as the best there is today out of the South – and rightfully so -- but there’s another set of writers that merits attention. His novels keep getting better, and he’s just proven himself in voice work, in a recent podcast called The Long Dance. Pruitt’s short stories here are on a par with those from Padgett Powell, with the humor found in Percival Everett, and his ability to create a provocative and memorable visual is as good as any you’ll find in Ann Pancake and Jesmyn Ward.