The Shotgun Rule: A Novel
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Product Description
Blood spilled on the asphalt of this town long years gone has left a stain, and it’s spreading. Not that a thing like that matters to teenagers like George, Hector, Paul, and Andy. It’s summer 1983 in a northern California suburb, and these working-class kids have been killing time the usual ways: ducking their parents, tinkering with their bikes, and racing around town getting high and boosting their neighbors’ meds. Just another typical summer break in the burbs. Till Andy’s bike is stolen by the town’s legendary petty hoods, the Arroyo brothers. When the boys break into the Arroyos’ place in search of the bike, they stumble across the brothers’ private industry: a crank lab. Being the kind of kids who rarely know better, they do what comes naturally: they take a stash of crank to sell for quick cash. But doing so they unleash hidden rivalries and crimes, and the dark and secret past of their town and their families.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a good book but it's not Huston's best. The story revolves around a gang of teens who, looking for thrills, like a little burglary, theft and weed alongside their comic books, music and BMX's. one fine summer all goes hideously wrong when a childish confrontation over a stolen bike escalates into GBH and stealing a huge amount of crank from the unfriendly neighbourhood drug runner.
What the boys don't know though is that the criminals they are trying to stay one step ahead of are nowhere near the top of the criminal food chain- and something much bigger and nastier is soon breathing down their necks.
The trademark idiosyncratic punctuation, crackling dialogue and casually described incredible violence we have come to expect from Huston are all here. Where this novel is different to Huston's others is it has multiple protagonists and in my opinion this makes it lose a small amount of focus and momentum. From anyone else this would be a problem but Huston is good enough that it will only make a few of his contemporaries shed a tear that they aren't this good, rather than throw themselves in the abyss; a sure-fire occurance if the read any of the Hank Thompson or Joe Pitt novels that show Huston cartwheeling where lesser writers walk.
What the boys don't know though is that the criminals they are trying to stay one step ahead of are nowhere near the top of the criminal food chain- and something much bigger and nastier is soon breathing down their necks.
The trademark idiosyncratic punctuation, crackling dialogue and casually described incredible violence we have come to expect from Huston are all here. Where this novel is different to Huston's others is it has multiple protagonists and in my opinion this makes it lose a small amount of focus and momentum. From anyone else this would be a problem but Huston is good enough that it will only make a few of his contemporaries shed a tear that they aren't this good, rather than throw themselves in the abyss; a sure-fire occurance if the read any of the Hank Thompson or Joe Pitt novels that show Huston cartwheeling where lesser writers walk.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you read nothing else this year, then you must read The Shotgun Rule. Huston captures the essence of a gang of boys and how quickly they fall deeper and deeper into trouble where violence spirals out of control.
The quality of Huston's writing is unsurpassed in recent years. He must surely become a huge star as he cannot be touched by the vast majority of contemporary writers. Beware...start to read his work and every other writer will fade into insignificance!
The quality of Huston's writing is unsurpassed in recent years. He must surely become a huge star as he cannot be touched by the vast majority of contemporary writers. Beware...start to read his work and every other writer will fade into insignificance!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
37 reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
One of the summer's most impressive books
28 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover
One of the strongest crime writers to emerge in recent years, Charlie Huston changes pace with this pitch-perfect story of four teenage boys and how they spent their summer vacation. They entertain themselves by smoking and swearing and dreaming about sex, but when they break into the house of the town's biggest meth cookers, their adventure turns into a nightmare. Huston has the characters down pat in "The Shotgun Rule," capturing their attitudes, ideas and speech like few writers could. Most thrillers aim to entertain by being larger-than-life. "The Shotgun Rule," however, is an intimate, realistic and contained story, and one of the summer's most impressive.
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Coming of Age in Hell
31 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Forget the clichés and superlatives: Charlie Huston is simply the single young writer today with the chops to pick up the slack after the iconoclastic Cormac McCarthy moves on. No rules, no convention, no following the pack with Huston. No political correctness between his pages. But if you haven't experienced the versatility of Huston yet through the Hank Thompson trilogy or the bizarre Joe Pitt duo of "vampyre" novels, you're missing a whole new definition of pop noir, fiction as cynical and insightful as it is bloody and brutal, prose that Huston sears on the page with blow torch intensity.
"The Shotgun Rule" is the story of four teenaged stoners in the parched suburbs of Oakland's eastern hills. George Whelan and his genius younger brother Andy, Hector, the blond-mohawked Mexican, and hair trigger-tempered Paul drink, steal, and dope their way through the summer of '83. Compared to these kids, Bevis and Butthead are Eagle Scouts. But the summer goes from ordinary mayhem to a Charles Manson-class nightmare when Andy's bike is stolen by the local Hispanic thug Arroyo brothers, leading to the discovery of a crack lab and a quick education in the Oakland drug hierarchy, complete with retribution out of their tender aged class.
A word of caution: this can be pretty tough reading. Huston is not one to mince words, nor graphic butchery, and never shies away from tearing down polite social convention. None of the characters are particularly likable, yet they are rendered with an unvarnished but credible fatalism on par with the venerable McCarthy. But this is by no means the equivalent of a Sam Peckinpah film gore fest in print, as the cagey Huston spins some clever twists and unlikely heroes in building from a quirky and sometimes nonlinear story line to a truly memorable climax. Like the ruthless "American History X", "Shotgun" rips a slice of culture from America's bowels, and finishes with a blaze that almost shows a wit of social redeeming value.
In a way, Huston's first five novels were just practice for "The Shotgun Rule", a tour de force of American life that will make you uncomfortable, yet still is mordantly irresistible. This is required reading - but don't pick it up unless you have several free hours ahead of you.
"The Shotgun Rule" is the story of four teenaged stoners in the parched suburbs of Oakland's eastern hills. George Whelan and his genius younger brother Andy, Hector, the blond-mohawked Mexican, and hair trigger-tempered Paul drink, steal, and dope their way through the summer of '83. Compared to these kids, Bevis and Butthead are Eagle Scouts. But the summer goes from ordinary mayhem to a Charles Manson-class nightmare when Andy's bike is stolen by the local Hispanic thug Arroyo brothers, leading to the discovery of a crack lab and a quick education in the Oakland drug hierarchy, complete with retribution out of their tender aged class.
A word of caution: this can be pretty tough reading. Huston is not one to mince words, nor graphic butchery, and never shies away from tearing down polite social convention. None of the characters are particularly likable, yet they are rendered with an unvarnished but credible fatalism on par with the venerable McCarthy. But this is by no means the equivalent of a Sam Peckinpah film gore fest in print, as the cagey Huston spins some clever twists and unlikely heroes in building from a quirky and sometimes nonlinear story line to a truly memorable climax. Like the ruthless "American History X", "Shotgun" rips a slice of culture from America's bowels, and finishes with a blaze that almost shows a wit of social redeeming value.
In a way, Huston's first five novels were just practice for "The Shotgun Rule", a tour de force of American life that will make you uncomfortable, yet still is mordantly irresistible. This is required reading - but don't pick it up unless you have several free hours ahead of you.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
A Wild Read, A Wild Ride, circa 1983....
28 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover
Though the four unlikely boy-heroes of Huston's THE SHOTGUN RULE are into plenty of nasty stuff--drugs, thievery, language that would make a sailor blush, and duplicity of all kinds--it's hard not to like them. They are, after all, boys who love their parents, feel a desperate need to protect their bicycles and siblings alike, worry about their futures and sport an enviable, Hardy Boys-like bravery. But if the personalities of the boys are classic (and, really, boys will be boys), the crime and violence in THE SHOTGUN RULE are fiercely contemporary: meth labs, high-stakes street gangs, and moral dilemmas children should never have to face. Huston makes crime personal--even a neighborhood issue--and reveals how susceptible we all are to temptation, and how thin our veneers of respectability really are. A stunning accomplishment and a wild read that ends with a surprising note of hope for which the reader will be truly grateful!
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