For some time now, I have been quite fond of the genre often identified as “Southern Lit,” “Grit Lit,” “Country Noir,” or “Rural Noir.” In reading these novels, I have noticed there are several common aspects often contained in such writing.

These aspects include wonderfully descriptive narratives of the environmental surroundings, which includes everything from localized flora and fauna to that of roadways and homesteads. Further aspects include food and eateries and of course, detailed descriptions of citizens, both in current and historical ways.

One last aspect is how Southern writers are so adept at stringing their words together in such a careful and artisan way that makes the writing seem so complete and instinctive. Words are not used in excess, with the chosen ones often reductionist in nature, but at the same time, so descriptive of environment, people, time, and place. Surely, these writers would disagree words come so easily, but that is what makes the writing of the great ones so enjoyable – the words come together in such a natural melding and seamless way that the interlocking of words appear so naturally formed and as if by magic.

Chris Offutt’s The Killing Hills, except for the food part, certainly meets all of these aspects and more. His writing gently places the reader into the presence of the lands and people he describes. While reading his novel, one can easily hear the crackling of gravel roads beneath vehicle tires or the slapping of tree branches and weeds against the exterior body as these same vehicles travel over narrow dirt roads and through hollow paths. It is even easy for the mind’s eye to imagine seeing the broken shadows of leaves cast upon the windshields of moving vehicles while being driven beneath the canopy of tree-lined roads.

The Killing Hills opens with the discovery of a woman’s corpse by an elderly, retired school janitor searching for ginseng in the hills of Kentucky. Sheriff Linda Hardin is tasked with investigating the murder of Nonnie Johnson and how her body came to be in the Kentucky woods. Quickly on, it is made clear to her powerful figures in the county feel she is not up to the task to complete this investigation. Because these same people appear to have other unstated ulterior motives, she enlists the help of her brother Mick Hardin. Not long before the murder, Mick Hardin, an army criminal investigator based in Germany, had abruptly returned to his hometown for personal reasons. He at first reluctantly agrees to help his sister but is soon drawn completely into the investigation.

As Mick Hardin burrows deeper into the murder investigation, he finds not only must he deal with others that may not want the murder correctly solved, but is also reminded of the importance of the mores and traditions of rural folks. This includes how history and past offenses linger for generations and should never be forgotten and how those with long memories can be both helpful and dangerous.

With The Killing Hills, Chris Offutt has spun a tale with lush writing, complete character development, and no need to suspend belief in order to enjoy the story, plots, and writing.

Readers who enjoy the current crop of Southern writers are encouraged to add Chris Offutt to that list and should also read his other writings, especially his previous novel, Country Dark.

NetGalley provided a copy of this novel for the promise of a fair review.

This review was originally published at MysteryandSuspense.com

Killing Hills, the latest fictional gift from the talented Chris Offutt is a dark & very compelling whodunit located in the Kentucky backwoods.
The main protagonist Mick Hardin, a war veteran from the endless Middle Eastern conflicts, currently working as a US Army criminal investigator based in Germany, has come home on leave to be by his pregnant wife. Unfortunately for Mick, his marital situation is running amok and very soon he will have to help his sister Linda, the town sheriff to solve the murder of a local woman and hunt down her killer.
Set in the clannish environment of rural Kentucky, this novel is redolent from the start with the scents of violence, of human backwardness, of poverty & loneliness, a world where grudges are left simmering on the back burner but never forgotten. A sad devastating picture of some remote and forgotten corners of rural America where the opioids are still wrecking lives & livelihoods without mercy and where hopelessness reigns supreme.

Finally, this novel is also an ode to the natural wonders & beauties of Offutt's beloved state. As far as I'm concerned he is one of best Kentuckian wordsmiths at work today and his latest literary creation is a wonderful read, tensly & wittily written, despite its sadness & dark undercurrents. Hopefully it will be translated & published overhere in Europe very soon.

Many thanks to Netgalley & Grove Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful novel prior to its release dat

Yassss! Loved this grit lit mystery so hard. Chris Offutt absolutely nails the people of Appalachia (yup, I’m born and raised) and presents his characters with empathy. The plot was engaging and well-paced.

Synopsis:

This novel tells the story of Mick Hardin, a combat veteran who is now working as an army CID Agent. He’s home on leave, but is due to go back to work very soon. His wife is due to give birth very soon, and they aren’t getting along. His sister has just become the sheriff in his town, only to become embroiled in a murder case. Town politicians are trying to take charge of the murder case, so she calls on Mick to assist, while staying on the down low.

My Review:

I really enjoyed this story. It was a fast-paced mystery, yet the writing was such that it was easy to follow. One thing I find with some mysteries is that they get bogged down with details and that can sometimes make the story very confusing. That was not the case for this novel. One particular element I enjoyed was the descriptions of Kentucky/the Appalachians. I’ve never been to that area myself, but the descriptions were so well written that it feels like I travelled there myself. I highly recommend The Killing Hills.

Thanks to NetGalley, Grove Press, and Chris Offutt for the opportunity to review this ARC. This review and all opinions are my own.

I was excited to read this book because I love "small town" type thriller/ mystery reads. The Killing Hills is set in the Appalachian mountains and I was excited to see the way the author described the community and the troubles faced by the people that live there.

We follow Mick, who is on leave from the Army to see his pregnant wife, and who ends up helping his sister (the Sheriff) after a body is found in the area.

The story was good and I found this book fairly easy to follow. However, I have given 3 stars because sometimes the plot felt a little bit too unrealistic, and I felt that the characters lacked some depth. It would have been nice to get to know more about Mick's marriage and his time in the army, and his sisters background too. That being said, it is a fairly short book, good for a quick mystery read and I would be interested to read more by the author.

I really enjoyed this book! It was a straightforward mystery, but not as thrillery as I would have liked. I felt like I traveled to Kentucky to solve this murder

The Killing Hills
Book Review | 📚📚📚 3/5
Chris Offutt | Grove Press

Why I was interested in this book:
Living in rural Kentucky for over a decade, my love for grit lit is endless. I had previously read and reviewed Chris Offutt’s novel, Country Dark and really enjoyed it. Who doesn’t love a compelling murder mystery set in the Appalachia country!

My assessment:
While I really enjoyed Country Dark, this book had a decent story, but fell flat. The characters seemed one-dimensional and not people I felt empathy for. Many of the descriptions and story lines seemed so matter of fact. Told sleuth-like, gum shoe. Choppy. I could almost hear Humphrey Bogart’s voice in the main character. It felt like descriptions were often told and not shown. It all just felt cold, soulless. It was interesting to note that many of the descriptions were reference points, but didn’t seem to fit into the story, itself. We got to read about Kentucky history, Moreland local references, and lots of animal references. But they seemed to be dropped in and not adding to the actual story. In Offutt’s Country Dark novel, there were also animal references, but they really seemed to connect to the characters and situations.

Stories of the human condition:
I mean, it’s a story set in troubled Appalachia, featuring troubled Appalachians, and there was a compelling murder mystery, but the characters really lacked any connection to the readers. I felt no empathy for anyone. Again, it just felt soulless.

Full disclosure:
I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley(dot)com in exchange for an honest review. Based on my past reading of works by the author, I was very interested in reading this book.

Read more of my reviews at https://tugglegrassblues.wordpress.com/.

TAGS:
#TheKillingHills #The Killing Hills #review-book #book review #Grove Press #Chris Offutt #ChrisOffutt #TuggleGrassBlues #Tuggle Grass Reviews #TuggleGrassReviews #NetGalley

This is a fast paced mystery novel about Mick, who in on leave from Afghanistan to see his wife, and Mike’s sister Linda, the county sheriff. It starts with a body being found in the woods and continues with Mick’s quest to find out who the murdered woman is and why she was killed. Linda is also involved in the mystery, but doesn’t have the time for some of the Mick’s old-timey ways of talking and getting information.

I loved the setting of this book, and the characters were so well developed. At the beginning of each chapter there was alway a mention of local birds, trees, and flowers. It was just a sentence or two, but it gave such a great feeling of place.

Killing Hills, the latest fictional gift from the talented Chris Offutt is a dark & very compelling whodunit located in the Kentucky backwoods.
The main protagonist Mick Hardin, a war veteran from the endless Middle Eastern conflicts, currently working as a US Army criminal investigator based in Germany, has come home on leave to be by his pregnant wife. Unfortunately for Mick, his marital situation is running amok and very soon he will have to help his sister Linda, the town sheriff to solve the murder of a local woman and hunt down her killer.
Set in the clannish environment of rural Kentucky, this novel is redolent from the start with the scents of violence, of human backwardness, of poverty & loneliness, a world where grudges are left simmering on the back burner but never forgotten. A sad devastating picture of some remote and forgotten corners of rural America where the opioids are still wrecking lives & livelihoods without mercy and where hopelessness reigns supreme.

Finally, this novel is also an ode to the natural wonders & beauties of Offutt's beloved state. As far as I'm concerned he is one of best Kentuckian wordsmiths at work today and his latest literary creation is a wonderful read, tensly & wittily written, despite its sadness & dark undercurrents. Hopefully it will be translated & published overhere in Europe very soon.

Many thanks to Netgalley & Grove Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful novel prior to its release date

The Killing Hills by. Bros Offutt
Rating: Starred review

Summary: A active duty CID officer is called home to help his Sheriff sister with a local murder. While home helping he must also decide how to deal with his wife pregnant and ready to give birth to a child that might not be his. As he navigates the deep hollers of northern Kentucky he looks for a killer of a women and deals with deep family roots.

Comments: Offutt is an incredible talent of country noir. Precise fast clipped writing. Offutt wastes no time digging into his plot. Incredible country noir writing. While we miss Woodrell, Offutt fills the holes. Highly recommended.

Chris Offutt loves Kentucky. And memoirs. Seriously, the man has written a conspicuous amount of memoirs for someone who is only 62. I mean, you’d expect that many from maybe a giant tortoise or someone of similar lifespan, but presumably some people are just that introspective and ready to spill it all into the world. Anyway…I actually don’t care for Kentucky at all or memoirs. But Offutt’s Country Dark was pretty excellent and so it made me want to read this book.
Like Country Dark, this is a crime thriller set one again in the backwoods of Kentucky. The local community makes tightly knit seem like fishnets, they hold grudges like guns and family matters above all others…and not in that cousin loving way either, if that’s your idea of Kentucky’s backwoods. It’s just that they protect their own, above both reason and law, and when one of their own is found dead, body discarded in the woods, it sets off a chain of crime and retribution.
But first there’ll be an investigation. Presided over by the local sheriff (uncharacteristically a woman elected as a political statement, but still) and her perfectly timed on leave brother, an Army trained investigator. The latter is our protagonist, Mick, combat toughened and presently whiskey soaked man who came home to sort out his marriage that’s been all but done in by long distance. Of course, he’ll set his personal crap aside to help his sister, we already discussed how important the family is in the community. And of course, it’s everyone’s personal crap that’ll be the driver and the killer behind the plot. Small town, small lives, large arsenals…it’s always going to end the same way.
But here’s the thing that sets this novel and Country Dark before it above the rest of the Southern, country fried, Appalachian sort of fiction. It’s really freaking good and it’s got great characters. Yes, but also it actually has a way of explaining that lifestyle that makes you understand the people living it. Maybe not approve of it, enjoy it or wish to join in, but understand. And that’s a sigh of great literature, to make you understand something that seems incomprehensible, even repulsive, at a glance. And I believe the author accomplishes this by writing smart leading characters.
Permit a comparison to the recently read Desperation Road by Michael Farris Smith, another southern crime drama. Another well written book. And yet the leads in that book were kind of tragic idiots, people who avalanched their lives into a giant mess at times for no reason whatsoever other than just doing dumb things because that’s a de rigueur behavior around there. Wherein here, among these murderous topologies, Mick is genuinely a good smart guy, who understands both his community and the life outside of it, who has a moral compass and knows to adjust it according to his surroundings. Mick’s someone you can really like and engage with, the sort of protagonist you want to lead the story. And the same can be said for his sister. Even possibly to some degree about some of the rest of the cast. There’s an inherent logic here and some of it isn’t especially logical and some of it is driven by the backwardness and backwoodness of it all, but it’s there. Which makes for an infinitely more compelling read…even if it’s about Kentucky.
Plus it’s dynamic, well written and reads very quickly. It ever has an excellent cover. All good things. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

Morehead, KY. East of Lexington on the downhill side of the Appalachian escarpment, still with plenty of backwoods hollers where blood, family, and cousins do their darndest to scratch out a life. Places where an unannounced visitor is likely to be greeted by an armed resident, at least until the proper pleasantries are exchanged. Mick Hardin and his sister Linda are from here.

Marrying a Hardin wouldn’t be anyone’s perception of ‘marrying up’. Mick got married to his high school girlfriend, started out OK, but he soon joined the Army. The initial adventure was fine for them, but Peggy soon wanted home more than living overseas. Mick moved up from infantry to Airborne to the Criminal Investigations Division. And he was pretty good.

Sister Linda got a job working in the sheriff’s office and soon secured the needed training to become a deputy. Some indiscretions by the sheriff resulted in an early termination. The politically correct thing to do was to promote Linda to fill out the term. Turns out, the new responsibilities suited here. Law enforcement must run in the family.

Mick is stationed in Germany. Has been for a while. Peggy contacts him about something personal prompting a short-term leave of absence. Upon arriving, Mick seeks out his sister and she has her first ‘big’ case. Nonnie Johnson has been found dead up in a holler and she could use Mick’s experienced eye.

Peggy’s ‘issue’ is that she is pregnant. Counting backwards, it might be that Mick is the father . . . but maybe not. Her infidelity weighs heavily on Mick.

It is with this backdrop that Chris Offutt takes us into the insular world of rural Kentucky with all the misconnections that are inherent when betrayal, rivalries and loyalties lock horns. A place where retribution mean far more than justice as set down by politicians. The good book says. ‘an eye for an eye’ and words like that are the basis for family honor. Within the hollers and Morehead alleys, murder and reckoning are explored on an almost primal level.

Chris Offutt’s “Country Dark” was reviewed very favorably on MRB so I won’t revisit Offutt’s history. Just know that he is an award-winning essayist with novels and collections of short stories in print, most of which were published some time ago. He sort of came out from hiding with Country Dark and thankfully he has stayed active with this elegantly prepared story (can a book about hill people be called ‘elegant’? I think so). Quick read, not just because his writing style is so comfortable, but also because it comes in a bit over 200 pages.

But sorry, you’ll have to wait on this: Publication date: June 15, 2021. Mark your calendar. This guy is an artist with his prose.

Aaaahh, I just admire Chris Offutt's ability to capture a specific place - this guy manages to turn his home state of Kentucky into a main character without glorifying it or reducing it to its stereotypes. This suspense novel might not be as phenomenal as Offutt's masterpiece of social realism, Country Dark, but I was so entertained that I couldn't put it down and read the whole thing in one sitting.

Our protagonist Mick Harding, a war veteran and Army CID agent, is currently AWOL and home in Kentucky where his wife is about to give birth and his sister who has recently risen to sheriff is in trouble. A woman has been pushed to her death, and the sister investigates the murder in which the FBI takes a perplexing interest. But it takes people who know the hills and the families who populate them to find out what happened, to uncover a betrayal and to stop the chain of revenge that has been set in motion. Meanwhile, Mick and his wife are struggling because of another kind of betrayal that threatens to tear them apart...

There are parts of this novel that aren't particularly believable, especially the authority that Mick, a visiting soldier, gains in the investigation. But Offutt knows genre, and he plays with that knowledge: Mick is the Appalachian version of a noir investigator, and as he roams the hollers and questions his suspects, he is just fun to behold in all his hardboiled glory. The dialogue, the scene-setting, the depiction of values and worldviews are rendered in an almost musical way, it sucks the reader right in.

Offutt has all my respect for writing about a region that is so often overlooked or depicted in a stereotypical way. He is an engaging, intelligent author, and I can't wait to read his next effort.

The best fiction is transformative, taking the reader into the hearts and minds of the characters, bringing alive the flora and local color of the setting. Chris Offutt effectively places us in the hardscrabble Appalachian mountains of Kentucky, where opiates are king and the citizenry live lives as black as coffee without cream. His main character, Mick Hardin, is a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent. He’s home on leave but, due to some personal dilemmas, is quickly approaching AWOL status. For one, his wife is pregnant and about to give birth. Unfortunately, their relationship is teetering. Secondly, his sister, the just-appointed sheriff, has landed her first murder case and needs her brother’s assistance. A local politician and the FBI are interfering. And the murderer is bound to be a local, which complicates matters. There are no innocents in this backwoods Kentucky town-and that’s precisely why taking down a local is rife is conflict. This is a short, immersive, gem of a novel.

Although not a very long book, the author does a very good job of describing Kentucky, plants, flowers and trees are described often during the story. The story revolves around Mick Hardin, home on leave from the military to be with his wife who is pregnant, though the child is not his. Mick gets talked into helping his sister, the local Sheriff, solve a murder of a woman who had been found at the bottom of a cliff. The investigation is pretty straight forward, Mick talks to people and through observations of their behavior, makes deductions that lead to clues on who the killer is. Mick is also an expert interrogator and uses his calm manner and voice to extract more from his subjects than others did. The story moves at a good pace, there is some violence though not excessive or graphic. I was a bit surprised on the last person who was killed, very twisted motive. Highly recommended, thank you to Netgally and the publisher for the ARC.

With the Kentucky backwoods as the backdrop for the story, The Killing HIlls takes the reader into a world most have never experienced. Offutt’s descriptions of the Appalachians and the people who inhabit the area were so powerful, I almost felt I was there. It’s a beautiful place, but behind all that beauty is poverty, secrecy, loyalty, kinship, betrayal, and now murder. It includes a fascinating cast of local characters, and the reader is left wondering which of them might be the murderer.

Home on leave to confront his wife, Mick Hardin, Army CID Agent, gets caught up helping his sister, the local sheriff, solve a murder mystery. Can he solve the mystery and fix his own personal problems all before his commanding officer orders him back to duty? The ending was surprising, and I laughed out loud.

I enjoyed this book, and thank the publisher, Grove Press, and Net Galley for the opportunity to read it. I gave it four stars.

This was a great book. Nicely drawn characters and really evocative descriptions of the Appalachian settings. I really feel as if I travelled somewhere after reading this book. Pretty straightforward mystery; not a lot of humor, but also not too hard-edged.

I was surprised by the ending, but that doesn’t say much because I am awful when it comes to figuring out mysteries.

The ending of the novel set up the possibility of the main character’s return, and I will definitely grab the opportunity to revisit these characters if another book is released.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this advanced reading copy.