This debut novel from Scott Blackburn is a powerful blend of grit and heart, with an unforgettable cast of quirky, flawed characters. Hudson's narration brings the town’s hidden truths to life, and Blackburn’s writing paints a vivid, rustic southern setting. The plot is fast-paced and full of twists, keeping you guessing until the end. The dialogue is smooth and natural, with Charlie providing plenty of humor amid the tension. Lucy’s presence added a youthful dynamic, though I would have preferred a bit more focus on the adult thriller elements.

Overall, it’s a searing, gut-punch of a novel with a perfect balance of suspense and emotional depth. Scott Blackburn has created a winner, and I can’t wait to see what he does next!

I really liked this southern mystery and its cast of characters. The plot was clever and kept me interested.
Many thanks to Crooked Lane Books and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

It Dies With You is the debut novel by Scott Blackburn. Set in a small, rural southern town, the book shows the danger of secrets in these closely knit communities.

Hudson Miller is having a rough time. Sanctioned by the boxing authority for a after-ring issue, he is couch-surfing, trying to keep his bills paid by bartending and acting as a bouncer in a run-down local bar. One morning, after an issue at the bar, his phone rings and it is the police - informing them that his estranged father has been murdered. He needs to come right away to his dad's place so they can update him and his stepmom.

After the funeral, Hudson finds out that his father left him something in the will - strange - because they were estranged and had been since his father left his mother while Hudson was a teen. Hudson inherits 3 rental properties and his father's pride and joy - Miller's Pull-A-Part - a salvage yard. The place where his dad had been murdered.

As Hudson moves back to this town, and decides to make a go of the salvage yard - again - he needs money - more secrets start spilling out. More mysteries come to light that need to be solved. However, if Hudson solves them, will he still be alive to see it through to the end?

I had trouble putting this book down. The pace did not leave much dead space to put it down and walk away. I needed to know what the next piece of the puzzle was and who-dun-it. I also did not figure out who the "bad guy" was until towards the end - thank you! It really kept me guessing. I look forward to this author's next book.

North Carolina author Scott Blackburn pulls rather a nifty feint with his gritty, character-centric rural noir tale IT DIES WITH YOU: although his bio says he’s a first-time novelist, if you didn’t know that you’d swear by the quality and little joys of this tale and you were in the hands of someone with plenty of books under their belt.

Hudson Miller is a boxer who can’t box, relegated to bouncing at a dive bar thanks to a post-fight brawl that threatens his living. The punches keep coming when Hudson learns his estranged father Leland has been shot in the back of the head at his scrapyard. The cops think it’s a robbery gone wrong. Having been arrested at his father’s wedding, Hudson is surprised to find he’s inherited some rental trailer homes and the scrapyard. Returning to his Bible-belt hometown of Flint Creek, he’s unprepared for all he’ll uncover. Was his father part of an illegal gun-running ring? Then, a grisly discovery in one of the mashed-up cars on the yard.

Hudson forms an unlikely investigative trio with his father’s crotchety former employee, Charlie, who’s closer to 80 than 60, and sparkplug teenager Lucy Reyes who’s seeking justice for a killing in her own family, Together, they peel the skin back from what’s really been going on in Flint Creek. How rotten is the core of the town?

Put simply, this is marvellous storytelling with terrific characters and a really strong voice. It begins as a bit of a slow-burn, but is well worth the ride. Settle in and enjoy the characters, sense of place, and storyline.

If you’re a reader who enjoys the ‘grit lit’ of authors like Wiley Cash, David Joy, Michael Farris Smith or Brian Panowich, then IT DIES WITH YOU is a must-have for your shelves. Hopefully we'll see plenty more from Scott Blackburn, who's quite a talent.

[This is an expanded version of a review for Good Reading magazine in Australia]

"I wasn’t glad he was gone. I just wished he’d been somebody different when he was alive."

Hudson Miller is 29 years old, has unsuccessfully tried to make it as a boxer, and is now working as a bouncer. When his estranged father is murdered, Hudson finds out he has inherited his Dad's salvage yard in his hometown in North Carolina and a ton of illegal problems to go with it.

I loved this book. Dark and gritty with great characters, it more than held my interest all the way through.

I received this advanced reading copy from Crooked Lane Books through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

Author Scott Blackburn says inspiration for It Dies With You came in the form of a statement from one o his friends: "It dies with him." They were discussing family legacies, and an idea took hold of him about the tale of a young man who is estranged from his father, but inherits his salvage yard. He says the characters and story began to keep him up at night, and his gut told him he had "a story that needs to be told."

As It Dies with You opens, Hudson Miller is nearing this thirtieth birthday and down on his luck. His boxing license has been suspended following an after-match brawl that he did not instigate, but in which he participated. It was caught on video, went viral on YouTube, and also cost him the prize money from that match, as well as his position coaching kids at a local rec center. Although he has boxed professionally for a few years, Blackburn describes Hudson as "an everyday man" whose potential for success in the ring was always limited. For Hudson, having to "hand over my coaching whistle" hurt the most, he explains in the first-person narrative through which Blackburn tells his story. "He doesn't have much footing in the world," according to Blackburn, and the one thing that meant a great deal to him has been taken from him. Now he's working as a bouncer at the Red Door Taproom and sleeping on his friend's couch as tries to figure out how to get his license reinstated.

Hudson gets a telephone call from his father, from whom he is largely estranged. He opts not to answer the first time or when his father calls back. And his father does not leave a message. The next morning, Hudson receives another call from the police in his hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina, informing him that his father, Leland, was fatally shot at his salvage yard, Miller’s Pull-a-Part. Hudson wonders what it was his father wanted to say to him, and whether answering his call might have made a difference. Before he can return to Flint Creek for the funeral, Leland's employee, Charlie, discovers the carpet pulled away from the floor in the salvage yard's storage room, revealing a metal door. Below it are eight guns with the serial numbers ground off. More damning is the fact that each gun is tagged in his father's handwriting. The police believe there were more guns stored there before the murder, and his father was involved in an illegal gun-running operation.

His father's killing and the mystery surrounding it force Hudson to confront his memories of the man. He is stunned by the prospect that Leland was running a criminal enterprise, although he does remember him stuffing rolls of money into coffee tins and liquor bottles that he hid in and around the family home. He also stockpiled batteries, flashlights, and nonperishables, and had an "everybody-is-out-to-get-us attitude." It also conjures up memories of the days before his parents divorced and the twenty years since his father "dismantled our family." Hudson finds it hard to grieve a man who virtually abandoned him. "I wasn't glad he was gone. I just wished he'd been somebody different when he was alive." He also has to deal with his chain-smoking stepmother, Tammy. Hudson calls Tammy "as helpless a person as I'd ever met. . . . Her idea of a job, for years, was sitting her ass in the living room, smoking and drinking Diet Mountain Dew while she stuffed envelopes full of entry forms to every sweepstakes, prize drawing, and contest imaginable." Hudson describes Leland and Tammy as "perfect for each other in the worst ways possible. Cancerously codependent."

Part of Hudson's resentment of his father stems from watching his mother struggle to raise him after his parents' split. So he is curious to learn the value of his father's estate, and astonished to learn that Leland left him not only Miller's Pull-a-Part, but also three rental properties. Hudson has no idea how to run a salvage yard or be a landlord, but he is determined to learn. Charlie Shoaf is a seventy-one-year-old Vietnam veteran who worked under the table for Leland, and is willing to stay on and help Hudson. He lays out his terms: he has to be paid weekly in cash, left alone to do his job without being hounded by a boss, and allowed to drink beer on Saturdays. Keystone beer, to be exact. Charlie is sly, savvy, and knows that Hudson will not be able to run the salvage yard without him. Since one of the rental properties is vacant, Hudson has a place to live while he figures out if he can keep the salvage yard operating or should sell it, and the investigation into his father's death proceeds.

The story is set in fictional Flint Creek, North Carolina, based on small, mid-North Carolina towns in the area where Blackburn grew up and still resides. He says he wanted to write "something that was relatable to my own experience so that it would come off the pages as real." It does. Flint Creek is a prominent, omnipresent character in the book and Blackburn transports readers there. Hudson, Charlie, and the rest of his eclectic cast of characters are thoroughly credible, in part, because of Blackburn's keen talent for crafting believable and, at times, humorous dialogue. He credits his ability to make his characters come to life convincingly with the fact that he incorporated words and phrases from real conversations.

Hudson has just begun to settle back into Flint Creek when the investigation into his father's murder takes more mysterious and deadly turns, and brings teenaged Lucy Reyes into his life. She is feisty, whip-smart, and on a mission to get justice for her family. She has been using social media to enlist help from the community. Through her Instagram account, she shines a light on what she and her family believe is callous indifference on the part of the Flint Creek police department -- the same department that isn't making much progress on discovering who killed Leland, or the motivation for that crime and the incidents that have occurred since his death. Hudson assures a cynical Lucy that he wants the same thing she does -- the truth and for justice to be served. "Justice," she responds. "A poor Mexican family getting justice in this town? That's a good one."

Lucy's reaction is one of the ways Blackburn demonstrates that Hudson, Charlie, and Lucy are all, in their own ways, "outsiders" in Flint Creek. To the entrenched residents of the little town, they are "others." Hudson grew up there, but has been away for eleven years and only returned because of his father's death. Charlie is not from Flint Creek. Lucy's family is actually from Texas, a fact she has had to explain "a thousand times before" to townspeople. None of the three "line up with the power center of the town," and they all feel unwelcome due to the prejudices and ignorance of those who do. Blackburn's story is an indictment of small town small-mindedness, as well as unharnessed power and corruption, illustrated through characters including Frank Coble, the police chief, and the Boars Club, of which his father, along with "some of the most upstanding men in town," was a long-time member. The clubhouse is where deals are brokered, decisions made, and the lives of the citizens who aren't part of the club are impacted.

Lucy, Hudson, and Charlie team up when it becomes clear that the local police are disinclined to put much effort into solving the crimes that have rocked their families. All three are fully formed, deeply sympathetic characters that readers will cheer on as they undertake their own dangerous investigation. Lucy understands the power of social media, and intends to harness it to achieve her goal. She will not be deterred until her family gets vindication. Charlie may be irascible, but his gruff exterior belies his honor and deep loyalty. Hudson needs answers so that he can at last put the past behind him and carve out a future for himself whether it be in Flint Creek or elsewhere. But if he is going to make a home for himself in Flint Creek, it has to be on his terms. And, along with Lucy and Charlie, he is intent on exposing the ugly side of the little town where people who don't look, talk, act, and think the way the majority do, they are treated like "less of a person." He declares to those who have perpetuated the status quo that he wants no part of that mentality. Hence, the book's title: "It dies with you."

An exploration of corrosive power and greed undergirding the workings of a small town, particularly a small Southern town, is hardly unique or innovative. But Blackburn manages to make it fresh, absorbing, and deeply moving because of his command of his subject matter, as well as the characters he brings to life. It Dies with You is a mesmerizing debut -- entertaining, and richly atmospheric, with plenty of surprising plot developments, and a thought-provoking examination of families and their legacies relayed through Hudson's experiences and emotional journey. Blackburn also explores whether second chances can work out, and if it is possible to start again in the place where your life began. Will Hudson ever learn why his father was calling him? Or will he have to accept that his father took the purpose of the calls with him to his grave? By the book's satisfying conclusion, readers will be clamoring for more from the very talented Blackburn who, happily, reports that his second novel is in the works.

"When it came to stuff outside of guns and cars and his membership dues to the Boars Club, he was tighter than two coats of paint."

I love crime novels, especially the classics, and this line from Scott Blackburn's debut, It Dies With You, felt like it was lifted from an old Jim Thompson or Mickey Spillane pulp. This is not a twisty thriller like so many of today's books. it's a character-driven crime story about a boxer in turmoil who inherits his murdered father's salvage business and rental properties in his North Carolina hometown. Along the way he finds himself uncovering clues and relying on an unlikely pair of allies with their own agendas to help him get to the truth.

Highly recommended if you enjoy a goods southern mystery/crime novel.

Hudson’s relationship with his father has been strained for years, so he’s surprised when he inherits a salvage yard after his dad is murdered. During the murder investigation, the police find a cache of guns hidden at the salvage yard. Is this the reason Hudson’s dad was killed? Hudson decides to run the salvage yard with the help Charlie, the cranky old man who worked for his dad. They soon discover a body inside a crushed car buried on the salvage yard lot. Hudson and Charlie team up with Lucy, a social-media savvy teen who’s looking for justice for her own family tragedy. As the unlikely trio look for answers, their own lives are put in jeopardy.

This is a promising debut from author Scott Blackburn. He does a great job setting the scene in a small, rural southern town. I really liked the relationship between Hudson, Charlie, and Lucy as the three take on their own investigation. Fans of southern noir should make sure this on is on your TBR.

Perfect for fans of Southern noir. Hudson didn't expect his father to be murder, that he would inherit the scrap yard, that he would inherit Charlie, or that he would inherit the body of Lucy's brother, who is found in the trunk of a car there but he has. Hudson isn't really welcome in Flint Creek, nor is he especially welcomed by the cantankerous Charlie or the police who don't seem interested in looking further into the murders. Lucy, however, is one determined teen and she ultimately convinces Hudson and Charlie to help her find the truth. There are some classic things here (small town corruption, secrets and lies) but Blackburn has created memorable characters. This might seem to move a little slowly in spots but wait for it..Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. No spoilers from me for this very good read.

Set in a rural Southern town, It Dies With You by Scott Blackburn is his literary debut. Working in a bar as his boxing licence is suspended, Hudson Miller inherits a salvage yard from his estranged father. Returning to his home town of Flint Creek, North Carolina, he discovers his father’s business also included an illegal gun-running ring. Then a dead body turns up and the hunt is on for the killer. With only his elderly employee and a young Latino teenager to rely on, things escalate as the three investigate, given the Sherriff’s seeming indifference. With its wonderful characters, moody atmosphere and action and twists aplenty, makes for a four star read rating. With thanks to Crooked Lane Books and the author, for an uncorrected advanced reader copy for review purposes. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given.

Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this book for an honest review.

A slow burn thriller that I really enjoyed. A down and out boxer with a broken family moves back to his home town and sets about righting wrongs. Great read!

I received this from Netgalley.com.

"Hudson Miller's estranged father, Leland, has been murdered in what appears to be a robbery-gone-bad at his salvage yard, Miller’s Pull-a-Part."

A good read with an interesting plot and plenty of action and likable characters.

3.75☆

Debut novel and I can see that this author will do great things. This was a little slow and a bit of a dark/noir (not my favorite) but the story was compelling.

Hudson is a banned professional boxer turned bartender who receives a surprise inheritance from his estranged father after he is murdered. Which isn't necessarily a good thing. First of all he has to move back to the rural small town he had managed to escape and figure out how to run his father's salvage yard. Charlie, his father's only employee, sticks around for which I am glad. He by far was my favorite character. Got to love crotchety old men with no filter. And then enter sassy teenage Lucy who is looking for her brother's murderer. Together these three manage to kick over more than one hornet's nest.

I will be keeping an eye out for what Blackburn does next. I want to thank NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me an advance copy of It Dies with You in exchange for my honest review.

Really enjoyed this debut from Scott Blackburn. A slow burn mystery with all my favorite elements: small town, fractured family dynamics, and well developed lead characters. A great read for fans of southern crime fiction.

For a debut novel, this was a good book, but not exactly one I'd highly recommend. The story was not going at a very fast pace, and I never really felt any connection with any of the characters. I'm sure other people would love it more than I did.

Hudson Miller, recently demoted boxer, now bouncer and bartender to make ends meet, receives a call that his dad has been killed. Hud was not particular close to his dad, and is a bit surprised to find out that he now owns 3 rental units and a scrap yard.
His dad’s killing is not the only things that shakes things up. Together with his dad’s old employee Charlie and a teenage girl named Lucy, he sets out to expose the truth. There is so much more I could say, but that would give away the story.
Great book, I really enjoyed how these unlikely characters end up working together. Definitely an addition for your “to be read” pile.
Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for an advanced copy in exchange for my opinion

It Dies With You is a story of frail family relations where a son tries his best to do right by what was left to him by his estranged father. In doing so, he finds an unexpected ally, Charlie, who remains by his side even under the most excruciating circumstances. It has a well-put-together plot, with a lot of twists and turns that culminate in appointing the culprit (also unexpected!). The story grips the reader's attention from the beginning and you just have to keep on reading to learn what happens next! Great entertainment!

I’ve got a thing for southern mysteries, especially those that are southern noir. This debut isn’t as dark as some, but it’s got a nice gritty feel to it.
Hudson Miller is dealing with a one year boxing suspension when his father is murdered, an apparent robbery gone wrong. They were never close, so he’s shocked to learn his dad has left him his salvage yard. But things keep going wrong as first guns and then a gruesome discovery are found on site.
Blackburn has created some great characters. Not just Hudson, but also Charlie and Lucy. And he definitely has the ability to put you right in the scene.
This isn’t fast paced, in fact, at times it almost seems to mosey. But it kept me drawn in and curious. I admit to figuring out who was behind the murder but not all the twists leading up to it.
I will definitely read whatever Blackburn serves up next. My thanks to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books.

Hudson Miller is a down-and-out boxer who is takes a job as a bouncer at a local, townie bar when he finds out his estranged father as been murdered. Very little is left to Hudson, except is father’s rentals and a salvage yard. With not much money left in his account, Hudson takes over the business up in Flint Creek, Michigan, but everything at the salvage yard isn't what it seems. Hudson teams up with a few others to make an unlikely trio to investigate what happened.

Scott Blackburn delivers a powerful debut thriller with It Dies With You. In this raw and gritty southern noir, Blackburn weaves together intriguing characters and elegant writing that hits you like a punch. Blackburn should be an author that everyone picks up this summer. So far, this is my summer pick that any crime fiction fan will love.

Wonderful debut novel for new author. Characters are well formed and strong. I am from NC and loved finding familiar places in the story. The mystery kept me turning the pages, and the story reminded me we can become whoever we want to be - we do not have to be products of where we come from.