Redneck Press: Home of TOUGH

  Detective Novel by Craig Rodgers, 100 pages Death of Print Books, $15.00 by Hugh Blanton R eaders of Craig Rodgers have come to expect having more questions than answers at the end of his books, and Detective Novel (Death of Print Books, 2025) is no exception. Rodgers's prose is sometimes compared to Cormac McCarthy or Don DeLillo, and while his style is indeed very similar to both, he writes without the peacocky vocabulary. He opens Detective Novel with a man on a rickety, aged bridge over a river removing his shoes and watch. He ensures there's no witnesses around and jumps (he didn't see the vagrant camped in the brush of the riverbank). The vagrant climbs up to the bridge, puts on his new shoes and watch, and returns to his camp. No body is discovered, the vagrant says nothing, and Calvin Lond is reported missing. Detective Novel takes place in Oriel, a fictional town that has appeared in previous Rodgers books. A man sitting on a cot inside the building of the l...

Murderapolis Anthony Neil Smith Urban Pigs Press 12.99 O n January 9, 1925 the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder ran a story under this headline: "Minneapolis Faces Rising Homicide Rates Amid National Decline." In 2024 the US homicide rate had fallen approximately 16%, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels. However, in Minneapolis there were 76 homicides in 2024, up from 72 in 2023, making its homicide rate more than triple the national level. Among Minneapolis homicides for which the age of the offender was known, about 10% were committed by children under the ago of 18 and about 40% by those under 24. The age group of the killers isn't too much of a surprise—it's not like geriatrics would be out running around committing murders, right? However, a Brookings Institution report in December of 2024 found that the homicide increases that had been recorded in 2020 were "directly connected to local unemployment and school closures in low-income areas." Also, more t...

  by Sheldon Lee Compton 193 pages Cowboy Jamboree Press 2/25 $15.99 Opioid Oblivion by Hugh Blanton W hen the Sackler family and their drug company Purdue Pharma found themselves on the receiving end of numerous lawsuits during the height of the opioid epidemic, they were called to Congress to testify. In 2020 the Committee on Oversight and Reform of the US House of Representatives put David Sackler on the hot seat for hours of testimony. Afterward, representative James Comer of Kentucky said there were partisan divisions in reaction to Sackler's deposition, but they were united in at least one aspect: "I think our opinion of Purdue Pharma and the actions of your family...are sickening." The Sacklers offered up a huge settlement of $6 billion, but with a proviso that immunized them from future lawsuits. In June 2024 the US Supreme Court told them to shove their offer up their asses. *** Sheldon Lee Compton's latest novel Oblivion Angels is a f...