Robbers [Paperback]

Ex-cons Eddie and Ray Bob, "runnin' buddies," stop at a convenience store for cigarettes. Eddie is a penny short of the price, and the stuffy clerk is adamant, and Eddie shoots him. It is hard to tell who is more amazed, Eddie or the victim. Eddie carefully lays down four one dollar bills and goes back to the car whereupon Ray Bob rushes back, cleans out the till (and retrieves Eddie's four dollars) grabs snacks, cartons of cigarettes and sandwiches. When he ambles back to the ragtop Caddie (stolen?), he announces, "You can't steal from a dead man." Their odyssey has begun, a rampage of raiding convenience stores and leaving dead clerks. They are shot with luck, as there never are any witnesses and things go well until they pick up Della, who has had a spot of trouble of her own.

Ray Bob is vicious, highly intelligent psychopath who is jealous of Della coming between him and his runnin' buddy. Eddie, a sweet dim bulb with the soul of an artist, is clearly over his head with the murderous Ray Bob and infatuated with Della. Della, an almost "babe" (her eyes are too close together) is a combination of low down schemer and "what's a nice girl like me doing with thugs like you."

You get to know these three like members of your family (though you wouldn't want to admit you knew them.) There is a Texas Ranger grimly trying to trail him, and victim's husband who is a religious zealot and a gun nut who is following the ranger, but Ray Bob, Eddie and Della are blissfully unaware. Texas wraps around you like a sandy scarf. You think this is going to end up like the gunfight at OK Corral, but Mr. Cook has many surprises in store before you reach that last page. When you close the book, you will think long and hard about justice, in the abstract and in the particular.

"Robbers" is wonderfully written, and I would choose it as my second favorite book of 2003 (after "Life of Pi"). There have been many comparisons made from Faulkner to James Lee Burke, but I'd have to say Mr. Cook has his own unique voice, and a very good one it is.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

The day the book was sent out for bids from publishers was the day, two years ago April 20, of the Columbine school massacre.

Nobody, that day, was looking for a modern Western shoot-'em-up. Not one publisher made a bid.

"Robbers" eventually found its place between hard covers (Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., New York) and is on its way to finding widespread readership, chalking up excellent reviews, including The New York Times.

Here's my personal endorsement: I read it three times in the past month and have recommended it to most everybody I think would enjoy it.

That's not necessarily everybody.

"Robbers" puts you on the road with a couple of Texas psycho, good- ol'- boy bad guys on a murder spree of convenience store clerks, beginning with a fellow who was a penny foolish.

When one of the pair, Eddie, comes up one cent short for a pack of cigarettes at an Austin 7-Eleven, the clerk --"a plump young man with burnished bronze skin and a black mustache, either Indian or Pakistani" -- refuses to cut the price even a penny.

"'What kind of !#$% country you come from?'" Eddie says, flipping the top of his Zippo open and shut in one hand.

"'Very fine country,'" the clerk says. "'Where we pay for what we get.'"

"'Listen to me. This is America. Gimmee them cigarettes.'"

"Only the guy didn't budge. Not one word, just standing there like a chocolate Deputy Doright. A corner of his mouth lifting slightly, either a smirk or twitch."

That's when Eddie "hoisted a leg and reached into his boot. Pulled a .22 revolver, an old Colt Police Positive with a four-inch barrel, looked like a toy. Pointed it at the guy. Arm straight out, finger on the trigger. Saying, 'Gimmee them !#$% cigarettes.'"

"'Robbery,' the man squawked. He stared at the gun, dark eyes blinking, teethed his upper lip, jaw thrust forward. 'I call the police. Get your license plate.'

"So Eddie pulled the trigger. A sharp crack, the barrel kicking up. The bullet caught the clerk square in the forehead. His head snapped back, a small black hole in the bronze curvature. He stood there with his hands on the counter a moment, eyes crossed, then slid down onto the floor out of sight."

Too real for you? Then don't read "Robbers." It is real Texas -- really violent, really sexy and really religious.

If the mix of religion with sex and violence seems out of place, then you don't know the place Texas is, especially the rural regions.

The author, Christopher Cook, 48, knows it well. He grew up in what's called the Golden Triangle of Southeast Texas, where the petrochemical industry pulls country boys up by their roots from the Pineywoods and into the refineries along the Gulf Coast.

That's where the killers wind up, with a Texas Ranger closing in on them. One makes it all the way to his home county of Jasper, where the dragging death of a black man is a fresh memory.

I'll tell you this much about the conclusion of its finely crafted plot: Good guys don't always win, bad guys don't always lose. But don't worry: nothing awful happens to the little puppy.

Cook has the Texas vernacular nailed, which he expertly utilizes in description as well as dialogue, one blending into the other without quote marks to separate the line of thought.

I would have liked the style better with normal punctuation for quotes, which I took liberty in adding to the section excerpted above.

Cook, whom I met in Austin recently, explained that what his characters think and what they say can't be easily distinguished. It's a literary thing. Maybe you understand.

What I know is simply this: "Robbers" is well written, well-plotted and superb in its characterization of a deep dark subculture, deep in the heart of Texas.

P.S. The British edition of "Robbers" was just released; French, German and Japanese editions are coming out later this year. Cook has a short story collection, "Screen Door Jesus & Other Tales," that will be published this fall, and a filmmaker in New York is making a movie based on those stories. In May, Cook moved to Prague where he is working on his next novel.