Rattlesnake Rodeo

by Nick Kolakowski
Series: A Boise Longpig Hunting Club Noir, #2

eARC, 162 pg.
Down & Out Books, 2020

Read: September 8, 2020

In 2018, I read my first book by Nick Kolokowski, Boise Longpig Hunting Club, which is pretty much everything you think it is from the title. In the two years and change since then, I’ve read five other books by Kolokowski—well, six now. That alone should be an indication of what I think about his stuff.

What’s Rattlesnake Rodeo About?

This is the sequel to Boise Longpig Hunting Club, taking up minutes after it. Spoilerly talk about BLHC—bounty hunter, Jake; his sister, Frankie (a gun smuggler); and ex-wife/fiancé, Janine (who has nothing to do with criminals); are kidnapped by a group of super-wealthy people, and set loose in an Idaho forest while they’re being hunted. Jake and Frankie are a lot more resourceful than anyone expected—and Janine has depth that no one expected—and they end up killing all the hunters.

We rejoin them in this book headed back to Boise. They have a number of emotions and thoughts running through their minds at this time—as they should—the most prominent of them is: how are we going to get away with this? There’s no way that they didn’t leave all sorts of DNA, fingerprints and other sorts of evidence behind that’ll make forensic techs happy. And there will be scores of techs, investigators, agents and what have you at the crime scene—very rich, very important people died up there and someone is going to have to pay for that. Oh, and Frankie wants fries. You work up an appetite fighting for your life.

Karen

They quickly learn about one person who not only has links to the Longpig Hunters, evidence about Jake and Frankie’s involvement, and a reputation to make people quake in their boots. Like Prince, Madonna, or Hawk (to bring it back to crime fiction), she’s known by one name: Karen.

Quick aside: I wonder if in early drafts, she was called something like Margo or Helen, but given, well, all of 2020, Kolakowski decided to go back and change it. Or did he have enough foresight months ago to go with that?

Back to the book: Karen offers them a deal, they do one incredibly horrible task for her, or she ruins the lives and reputations of Jake, Frankie, and Janine. They have no choice…they have to find an Option C.

Gunfights, treachery, and (obviously) rattlesnakes ensue.

Frankie and Her Troops

In almost every novel I’d normally read, Frankie and her employees would be the targets of the protagonist, not their ally. But I’ve gotta say, for a bunch of gun-running criminals, benefiting from the miseries of others (and being a means to innocents being killed at the hands of their customers), they’re a lot of fun. There’s a fun sense of camaraderie and some good banter among them. They’re a pretty effective squad, too. Kolakowski could write a pretty entertaining series featuring these guys. And not just because they’re led by a man who always wears a rubber gorilla mask.

Which is fitting, considering how cool their boss is. Spenser has Hawk, Kenzie and Gennaro have Bubba, Elvis Cole has Joe Pike, Walt Longmire has Henry Standing Bear, Joe Pickett has Nate Romanowski, Sunny Randall has Spike, and Jake has Frankie. The “not-bound by the same laws and ethics that the series protagonist is” so that the protagonist can keep his/her nose clean and still get the job done. They’ll cut the corners, they’ll take and make the shots that no one else will, they’ll be the ones to use lethal force when their friend just can’t bring themselves to do it—and they won’t feel guilt (at least not enough to interfere with their ability to get things done).

Frankie is, as far as I know, the only female lethal sidekick, in crime fiction. Through grit, determination, skill, and panache—Frankie is what ultimately keeps her brother and sister-in-law breathing. It’s just fun to see a female in this role, particularly one that fits. I could never see Sunny Randall go toe-to-toe with some of the dudes she needs to without Spike (or Jesse, or Richie, or Richie’s family)—but I can see Frankie (like Lori Anderson or Charlie Fox) do it without blinking.

The Setting

I’ve talked a little about this in the other book, but it’s fun for me to see the region I’ve lived my whole life in depicted so well in these pages. I enjoy anyone finding a way to bring a crime novel to life outside of Boston, NYC, New Jersey, Chicago, Miami or LA—Elmore Leonard, Jason Miller, Craig Johnson, C. J. Box, Darynda Jones, and G. M. Ford have/continue to do a good job of that, but there needs to be more*. Kolakowski brings my corner of the world into that fold (Jayne Faith did it in Urban Fantasy, and Wesley Chu set a Tao book near where the climax of this novel took place). It’s nice not having to use my imagination much when picturing a scene, at the same time—if I’d never been anywhere near this place, Kolakowski depicts it well enough that someone from Michigan, Mississippi, or New Mexico would have no problem seeing what he’s going for.

* I don’t pretend that’s an exhaustive list, still feel free to add others I should get to know.

So, what did I think about Rattlesnake Rodeo?

You could feel the dread coming off of Jake and Frankie as they thought about the police and (probably) feds coming for them after surviving the last novel, you could feel their hatred (for Karen) and revulsion for their task for her, and you could sense the chaos, smell the smoke, and taste the air from the big scenes at the end of the novel. There are significant portions of this novel you experience as much as you read. You’ve gotta love that.

There was one death that totally caught me unprepared and left me stunned. The violence felt a little more grounded than the genre demands, but Kolakowski knows when to loosen the reins and let things go a little over the top. Which is just fun.

At the same time, there’s a great sense of enjoyment to this novel—to the characters, what they do, and how they go about it. It’s the kind of action novel that gets your fists pumping as much as anything else.

Just the fact that the novel starts with the trio worried about all the evidence they left behind made this a winner—how many characters in novels worry about that sort of thing? Add in the characters—from the oddity of Monkey Man, to the implausibly competent Frankie, to the quiet strength of Janine, to the terror that is Karen—and the great balance of tones, and you’ll see why Kolakowski is my favorite US indie Crime Novelist.

I strongly recommend Rattlesnake Rodeo, whether or not you read BLHC first, it’s a fun ride.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from the author in exchange for this post and my honest opinion, I appreciate the opportunity.

4 Stars

Even More Quick Questions With…Nick Kolakowski

By HCNewton

On October 6, 2020

In A Few Quick Questions With..., Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Nick Kolakowski

Wow, Nick Kolakowski is back for a fourth go ’round with my questions. I’m a major fan, and really enjoy these. I hope you do, too. Be sure to check out my take on his upcoming novel, Rattlesnake Rodeo earlier today.

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How has 2020 treated Nick Kolakowski the writer—have you been able to work? Are you finding writing time vanishing into doom-scrolling or binging something? Is there a pandemic novel in your near future?

When New York City went into lockdown, I threw myself into writing and editing. It became my coping mechanism, to such a degree that I had to step away a bit a few months later. First I poured my energy into “Lockdown,” a charity anthology of horror and crime stories that I co-edited for Polis Books; proceeds went to support BINC, which is helping booksellers through this weird time. With that completed, I finished work on “Absolute Unit,” a horror novella coming out next year from Crystal Lake Publishing; I’d started writing it last year, well before the pandemic, but it has some uncomfortable echoes with what’s happening now—mass infection is a big theme. By that point, I was pretty fritzed out, so I started trying to balance out the schedule; less writing, more actually getting outside.

How was it coming back from the dystopian-SF/Crime of Maxine Unleashes Doomsday to something very contemporary, very non-SF?

It felt good! With contemporary crime fiction, you don’t have quite the same pressure of world-building as you do with sci-fi and dystopian fiction. That being said, I did struggle with the plot of “Rattlesnake” a bit—for the longest time, I had the first two-thirds written, but couldn’t figure out a way to end it that really came together.

As much as I enjoy Frankie, Jake, and Janine—the character that keeps hanging out in the back of my mind is The Monkey Man. (Shockingly, a criminal always wearing a rubber gorilla mask is memorable!) Where did he come from? Too much time spent listening to The Traveling Wilburys? I’d imagine there’d be a big temptation to go wild with the character, but you kept him fairly low-key and reserved over these two books. How’d you resist?

The Wilburys were the inspiration for the name. And there was a lot of temptation to unleash him in a particularly messy/funny/creative way. What held me back was, of all things, Hannibal Lecter.

Specifically, when I was writing “Rattlesnake,” I was also watching both Hannibal Lector movies, and what I noticed was that Hannibal was a more effective character the less he was shown doing. He’s an incredibly powerful character in “Silence of the Lambs,” but aside from talking, he doesn’t do terribly much beyond his brief escape at the end; his power comes from his reputation. In the sequel, by contrast, he’s doing lots of things, and that drains the mystique from the character; he becomes something of a hammy joke. So that curbed my impulses to do something grand with Monkey Man.

Sometimes I think I resisted that impulse a little too much, though. Someone who dresses like that is no doubt capable of some freaky shit.

Jake’s wife, Janine, is never the focus of these books, but I think she has the most interesting arc over the course of these two novels. Somehow, she and Jake have managed for years to keep her pretty isolated from his world. But in the few days these two books cover, all that’s gone away, and she reacts better than Jake (and probably Janine herself) expects. Why tell that story in the midst of all the action and chaos? Was there a version where she gets overwhelmed by everything and can’t adapt to the circumstances?

Nope! In so many thrillers, there’s this cliché of a civilian character (whether the wife, daughter, husband, etc.) who falls apart completely under stress, and I wanted to steer away from that as hard as I could. Janine’s ability to deal with the situation, I felt, also gave some additional nuance to Jake and Frankie—they’re so tough that they can’t grasp that someone like Janine, who doesn’t have any criminal or combat experience, might be totally adaptable to a hard situation; it’s a huge blind spot that reveals something about their egos.

It’s one thing for authors to make specific geographic references in New York City—most non-New Yorkers have enough of a grasp of that area to mostly understand them. To a lesser extent that’s true of LA, Chicago, Boston, etc. But in Rattlesnake Rodeo, you throw around references to the Boise-area like a native, 97% of which are going to mean nothing to anyone not from around here. Is there a risk in that? Yeah, it’s a very authentic feel, but does the authenticity outweigh the potential alienation of someone from another part of the country/world? Or in the age of a search engine, does that not matter?

I’m not sure there’s a risk in it. This summer, I read S.A. Cosby’s “Blacktop Wasteland” and David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s “Winter Counts,” both excellent thrillers/mysteries that take place in areas not well-trod by most crime fiction (rural Virginia and a Native American reservation, respectively). Both of those books have tons of esoteric detail about those locations, and it adds a lot of nice texture to the narrative. I look at “Rattlesnake” (and “Boise Longpig Hunting Club”) the same way—a substantial portion of the audience is never going to go to Nyssa or any of those towns along the Snake River; they’re never going to swing by Fanci Freez, which has some of the nation’s finest milkshakes; but hopefully all the detail gives them a sense of place.

As usual, I’ve got to ask, what’s coming down the pike? Are you far enough into your next book to talk about it?

“Absolute Unit,” a horror novella told from the perspective of a sentient parasite living inside the body of a corrupt health inspector, is the next one (mid-2021)! Then after that, there’s another novella, “Payback is Forever,” that should come out from Shotgun Honey in late 2021. The latter is my attempt at a classic Chandler-style thriller, although there’s a contemporary twist to it that the audience will hopefully never see coming.

Thanks for your time—and thanks for another great ride with Jake and Frankie!