Jake Hinkson's Dry County teases out a lean, tense story of blackmail and other crimes at the intersection of religion and politics in a small Arkansas town. While it boasts twists and a body count, what's most killer in Hinkson's propulsive novel, the crime writer's fourth, is its resonant portraiture of Ozark life in 2016. His sharply drawn locals, all schnooks in over their heads, tell the story through their varied first-person chapters, their voices often scabrous and all increasingly desperate. Above all else those voices are convincing: the repressed rage of a reverend facing the possible exposure of his homosexual dalliance rings as true as the vigorous swearing of Hinkson's assorted ne'er-do-wells--including the college dropout attempting to extort the man of God out of 30 grand and the furious young woman whose sexual history has become local folklore.
Quiet chapters narrated by the reverend's suspicious, long-suffering wife unfold as marvels of fleet yet potent characterization. In tender scenes, Hinkson reveals his people's hurts before showing how they, in turn, pass that hurt on to others. At the same time, some of Dry County's most memorable moments pulse with a vicious rural swagger, as the youthful hellraisers lay out just how these lives that weren't going much of anyplace inevitably fumbled into crime. Hinkson's storytelling blends the richness of literary fiction with the breathless surge of the crime thriller. The novel's first murder is just as wrenching as the scene where the reverend's family puzzles over whether, as evangelicals, they can justify a vote for Trump. --Alan Scherstuhl, freelance writer and editor