Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2023
336 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
Friday Night Lights gone dark with Southern Gothic; Eli Cranor delivers a powerful noir that will appeal to fans of Wiley Cash and Megan Abbott.
In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother's abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy's bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy's abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs.
Edgar Awards, 2023
Winner of Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Nominated for the Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel
Finalist for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel
Finalist for the 2022 Dashiell Hammett Award
A New York Times Book Review Best Crime Novel of 2022
A USA Today Best Book of 2022
A CrimeReads Best Crime Novel of 2022
CrimeReads The Best Noir Fiction of 2022
An Amazon Editors' Pick
CrimeReads Most Anticipated Books of 2022
New York Post Top Reads for the Week
CrimeReads Best New Crime Fiction of March
An Arkansas Center for the Book "Arkansas Gems" Selection
"The comparison to Friday Night Lights will jump out at readers of this hard-as-nails debut thriller, but, in fact, beyond the thematic link to high-school football, the two stories live in very different worlds. In the celebrated TV show, there is a sense of possibility; in Cranor's novel, as in the best genuine noirs, there is only inevitability."
—Booklist (starred review)
"A first novel bristling with dangerous energy ... Friday Night Darks."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Don't Know Tough explores the nexus of class, race, language, and poverty in pushing ordinary teens to brutal acts, and ordinary coaches towards brutal commands. A star player is causing problems for his new coach, who's got one last chance to make it back into his coaching star father-in-law's good graces. The coach thinks he's mentoring the kid. What he's actually doing is far darker."
—CrimeReads
"A searing exploration of the toxic heart of Southern high school football culture, including the human price of winning at all costs; think Friday Night Lights with extra darkness. Readers of Daniel Woodrell and Allen Eskens will appreciate the visceral detail in this Ozarks noir."
—Library Journal
"Eli Cranor's top-shelf debut, Don't Know Tough, is Southern noir at its finest, a cauldron of terrible choices and even more terrible outcomes ... There is a raw ferocity to Cranor's prose, perfectly in keeping with the novel's examination of curdling masculinity."
—Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review
"Readers may think they know what happened, but Cranor has some twists in store—in a plot that calls to mind Megan Abbott's depictions of claustrophobic competitive cultures. A former quarterback who coached for five years at an Arkansas high school, Cranor brings an insider's understanding of the game, the region and human nature."
—Paula Woods, Los Angeles Times
"[A] brilliant debut ... which is less Friday Night Lights and more a Daniel Woodrell Ozark gothic noir ... Don't Know Tough takes the adage of 'Faith, Family, and Football' and reveals it to be a vicious canard, or at least a decent cover for the common failings of god and men, the violence on the field an acceptable proxy for the violence that exists behind closed doors. A major work from a bright, young talent."
—USA Today, 4 out of 4-stars
This information about Don't Know Tough 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.
Eli Cranor played quarterback at every level: peewee to professional, and then coached high school football for five years. These days, he's traded in the pigskin for a laptop, writing from Arkansas where he lives with his wife and kids. His work has won The Greensboro Review's Robert Watson Literary Prize and been featured in Missouri Review, Oxford American, Ellery Queen, The Strand and others. Eli also pens a weekly column, "Where I'm Writing From" for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and his craft column, "Shop Talk," appears monthly at CrimeReads. He is the author of Don't Know Tough, which won the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest, and Ozark Dogs. For more information visit elicranor.com.
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