Redneck Press: Home of TOUGH

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...

In a small corner of Philadelphia, a funeral director steals a man’s car as payment on a debt… “Where’s my fucking car?” Joey shouted over the phone. “Where’s my fucking money?” Dean shouted back. “You can’t just—” “But I did,” said Dean interrupting him. “I need the money you owe me.” “You don’t understand,” Joey implored. “This ain’t a fucking charity, Joey.” And he hung up. Dean Sassuolo tossed his cellphone onto the stainless-steel table next to him and went back to preparing Mrs. Chalmers for embalming. As he tied the rubber apron around his substantial girth, the phone buzzed angrily on the table, resonating with the steel. Joey again. He could wait. Friendships, good intentions. That’s what fucks you , he thought. Not that Joey was a friend. Not really. His father, Old Joe Tedesco, had been someone Dean looked up to, and for Old Joe’s sake, he had tried to be kindly with Little Joe, had agreed to work with him when he was short on funds for burying his...

That was the history of Marseilles, and always had been. A utopia. The only utopia in the world. A place where anyone, of any color, could get off a boat or a train with his suitcase in his hand and not a cent in his pocket, and melt into the crowd. A city where, as soon as he’d set foot on its soil, this man could say, “This is it. I’m home.” -Jean-Claude Izzo, Total Chaos Crime fiction does setting uniquely well. From Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles to Robert B. Parker’s Boston to Charles Willeford’s Miami, crime novels map out the cities we live in and give us the cities we imagine. How much, for instance, does the popular perception of Los Angeles owe to Chandler’s novels and their numerous adaptions? When I was lucky enough to go to Marseilles a couple years ago, I used Jean-Claude Izzo’s magnificent trilogy of novels set there as a guide. We stayed in Les Goudes, the fishing village at the edge of the city where Izzo’s detective, Fabio Montale, lives. Nestled between the metropo...

Y our eyes don’t leave the stoplight ahead. You’re praying it turns green before I hold out a hand and ask for any change you can spare. You might pity me. Maybe you judge me. What I bet you don’t realize is how thin the line is between you being in my shoes and me being in yours. A cardboard sign exchanged for that seven dollar latte in your cup holder. Dominos fall fast. A solid nine-to-five at the bus factory, to sports gambling with some guys on the assembly line, to you-need-to-call-a-helpline because you’re a goddamn gambling addict. A two year bleed-out in my case. Debts fermenting into desperation. Stealing a pocketful of cash from a locker at work. Hawking my nephew’s Playstation to cover what I owed some seedy fuckers who dealt in baseball bats and needle nose pliers. I shut doors in my life. Some forever. So maybe you can understand why I wake every day feeling the acid burn of guilt in my gut for the people I hurt. Maybe that guilt is why I’m doing wha...

  Nicholas Freeman, county sheriff: The incident began during the opening hour of Elderwood’s 3 rd Annual Juneteenth Festival when 25-year-old Chance Gondry of Elderwood chained himself to the statue of Ambrose Collingwood on the courthouse square. He had gotten a bullhorn from somewhere, and he started shouting about “principles” and “Galveston” and “the real Juneteenth” and about how people would tear down that statue over his dead body, which didn’t make any sense because nobody had said anything about tearing down the statue. Everybody was just trying to enjoy the festival, and Chance was definitely making that hard to do. Will Prescott, the accused: Chance Gondry was an asshole, and he was being too loud. I just wanted to shut him up, and next thing I knew he was dead. Thank god I had a lawyer who knows all about science. Ephraim Foster, mayor: It was a terrible, terrible tragedy, really, really terrible. He was such a fine young man, and in the prime of his life, too. Th...