The Shotgun Rule

by: Charlie Huston

Published by: Ballantine Books

Reviewed by Diane Snyder

In the summer of 1983 in northern California, four friends who want to be bad, cool and tough, cruise around their neighborhood on bikes. Their language is rude, crude and unattractive. They tease, yell and sling insults at each other. As you begin to read you don’t think you are going to like these boys. They do drugs and drink. They are thieves. They steal from the elderly in their own neighborhood. But as their personalities emerge, you do like them. You may even become sympathetic towards them as some of their family issues are revealed or implied.

Paul, Hector, George and Andy will be seniors in high school in the fall. Andy is the genius who is two years younger and George’s kid brother. He takes the most teasing and harbors the most violence. George and Andy have an Aunt Amy who is one of the neighborhood drug suppliers, but there are other drug dealers in the neighborhood–the Arroyo brothers. When Timo, the youngest Arroyo brother steals Andy’s bike, violence is triggered that quickly escalates, disrupts families and the past confronts the present. The young friends, although smart and quick, are pitted against the older, deadlier and more dangerous Arroyos whose survivor skills are very basic: kill and maim.

To retrieve the bike, the boys must break into the Arroyos’ house. They discover that the Arroyos not only deal in drugs, they manufacture meth. This information is dangerous enough but Paul steals some of the drugs without the others knowing. When Paul tries to sell the drugs to a neighborhood person of questionable employment, he puts his life as well as the others in imminent danger. Even though no one comes out of this untouched, unlikely heroes from the past emerge and their futures are changed forever.

It’s a raw and gritty story and Huston does not waste words–but you get the essence of the characters and of the place they live–and you will get caught up in this fast-paced plot.

Author’s Web site is as gritty and uncensored as his writing—so this web site is not for children: http://www.PulpNoir.com