Contemporary Fiction Book Reviews

Brothers in Arms by Jack O’Riley follows a group of friends who spend a lot of time drinking (and drinking and drinking) who takes their antics too far and end up violently beating up a husband and wife with a pious vanity plate. The victims of the crime are then pegged as snobs as the small band of misfits then become a major phenomenon in the Twin Cities, and the city is plunged into a debate about the nature of crime and punishment.

There’s a distinct Raymond Carver feeling to O’Riley’s narrative, especially in the lack of quotes for dialog […]

Dumped years ago by his college sweetheart Lila, and slightly lazy in his job going nowhere as a local hotel waiter in the same town he grew up in, Jason Chapman embarks on a quest chasing The One That Got Away when Lila sends him a wedding invite.

With no “plus one” to take along, he must spring into action with only his parents and slightly raucous and laddish best mates to assist him into firstly finding a date for the looming wedding so he doesn’t look desperate in order to impress and woo Lila out of her intended marital […]

This second volume in the Hyde’s Corner Trilogy chronicles the continuing tribulations of Selmer Burks, sheriff of Sundowner County, Oklahoma. Before I go any further, let me warn you: This is a sequel, not just the second in a series. If you have not read the first Hyde’s Corner book, No Man’s Land: The Beginning, this one will be confusing, especially at first. It takes up the story at the cliffhanger ending of No Man’s Land and goes on from there with very little explanation about what happened in the first book. On the other hand, the story here […]