Death Don't Have No Mercy — William Boyle

"William Boyle does for the small damaged towns of New York what Nelson Algren did for Chicago: he makes the streets sing with piss-pot poetry and gut-bucket blues. These are edgy stories about people who would have to pull themselves up to walk the line, people who spend so much time in bars, drunks and bartenders start to look like family. In here, hardship is a given, failure too, but Boyle's beautiful prose infuses his characters with a deep sense of knowledge and dignity and awareness, so hope is always present, no matter how dim the light. In DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY, a shot of whiskey is rocket fuel, and the songs are all sung by dead folks and outlaws. Drunk working men look like dumptrucks, their mouths hanging open for booze. Boyle is a new breed of literary crime writer that knows to be alive is to be a criminal and the art of living is finding the best possible crime. Fans of James Cain and Vicki Hendricks, of Charles Bukowski and Larry Brown, saddle up to the bar and throw down your money for the excellent stories in DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY. I guarantee you will fall in love with the neighborhoods, with the alleys, with the garages and one-bedroom apartments, because around the corner William Boyle is bartending and everything he has to say is the best thing you will read this year. An outstanding collection " -Dave Newman, author of PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ANYONE TONIGHT, RAYMOND CARVER WILL NOT RAISE OUR CHILDREN, THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE POEMS, and TWO SMALL BIRDS