The Killing Hills

It's rare that I read everything a writer publishes—I tend to sample more widely—but I come back to Offutt every time, because I know I'm in good hands and because I'm compelled to let everyone else know what a thoroughly enjoyable and modestly masterful writer he is. The Killing Hills is advertised as his "first crime novel," but it's of a piece with his previous book, the wonderful Country Dark: a young man comes home from war to Kentucky and puts his skills, and his country know-how, to use in righting wrongs. In this book, it's as if Offutt has written a Lee Child novel, with an almost superhumanly savvy, two-fisted hero, but grounded it in the local details and drama of the Appalachian hollers he knows so well. It's a brisk, refreshing drink, straight from a mountain spring.