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The Mick Hardin Novels #3
by Chris Offutt
In this blistering return to Chris Offutt's acclaimed crime series, Mick Hardin is tested like never before as familial allegiances and old wounds collide, threatening to destroy everything he loves
Master storyteller and award-winning author Chris Offutt's latest book, Code of the Hills, is a dark, witty, and propulsive thriller of murder and secrets in a town where little is as it seems.
Mick Hardin is back in the hills of Kentucky. He'd planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end to his twenty-year Army career. In Rocksalt, his sister Linda the sheriff is investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. After another body is found, Linda and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver wonder if the two murders are related. Linda steps into harm's way just as a third body turns up and Mick ends up being deputized again, uncovering evidence of illegal cockfighting, and trying to connect all the crimes.
An explosive return to the mayhem of the Kentucky hills, Code of the Hills is a harrowing novel of family—of what we're willing to do to protect and avenge the ones we love.
"Excellent Kentucky noir―Offutt's third Mick Hardin novel is the best yet ... Offutt once again beautifully captures both the roughness and the generosity of the inhabitants of Rocksalt, both the menace and the beauty of the eastern Kentucky landscape. The dialogue is a highlight, consistently sharp, quick, and funny; in that, Offutt is rapidly becoming a rural-noir rival to greats like Elmore Leonard ... Another love letter to Appalachia with a high body count. Another bloody delight." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The writing in the follow-up to Shifty's Boysis as beautifully descriptive of the scenes in Detroit as in the Kentucky hills. Offutt's Mick Hardin novels are powerful books that feature characters with questionable ethics." ―Library Journal (starred review)
This information about Code of the Hills was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Chris Offutt is the author of the novels Code of the Hills, Shifty's Boys, The Killing Hills, Country Dark, and The Good Brother; the short-story collections Kentucky Straight and Out of the Woods, and three memoirs: The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and My Father, the Pornographer. He has written screenplays for Weeds, True Blood, and Treme, and has received fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations. He lives near Oxford, Mississippi.
If you liked Code of the Hills, try these:
by Chris Offutt
Published 2022
A literary master across genres, award-winning author Chris Offutt's latest novel, The Killing Hills, is a compelling, propulsive thriller in which a suspicious death exposes the loyalties and rivalries of a deep-rooted and fiercely private community in the Kentucky backwoods.
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Published 2017
A gripping - and gritty - literary mystery that shines a light on rural poverty.
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Winner of the 2015 BookBrowse Debut Author Award
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