I backed up the small town criminal losers in Arkansas with Anthony Neil Smith’s Yellow Medicine - a novel that treads similar territory. Yellow Medicine is a much bleaker read though. The book’s cover accurately sends the message that within the cover desolation, loneliness, and despair will reign. Think maybe Fargo without Frances McDormand.
Billy Lafitte is a cop exiled from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi to the tundra of rural Minnesota for a second (and last) chance. Lafitte was asked to leave the Gulfport PD for making up his own brand of justice following Katrina.
I messed with the wrong people…In the wake of the storm surge, plenty of officers were glad to rat me out…I was strung up as an example of the “good” police filtering their own ranks to protect and serve…A scapegoat, a whipping boy, a martyr.
The Great White North leaves little to occupy a wayward cop, other than heavy drinking, bouts of depression, the occasional shakedown of small-time hoods, and, of course, psychobilly music. Like the novel Arkansas, boredom, lack of opportunity, and desperation lead to low-level crime for some. The driving force of Yellow Medicine though is the havoc visited upon the bucolic Yellow Medicine County by outside forces. In this case, a foreign crime syndicate with an eye towards terrorism comes to town. Things get ugly fast.
Yellow Medicine is a good read for those that like their cops hard-boiled, their action bloody, their environments grim and unforgiving, and their justice merciless, if ambiguous. Or something like that. If this describes you, leave me a note in the comments, and I’ll send you a promo copy of the book. First come, first served.