基本信息出版社：Ballantine Books
页码：256 页
出版日期：2007年08月
ISBN：0345481356
条形码：9780345481351
装帧：精装
正文语种：英语
外文书名：游戏规则(小说)
内容简介 The first stand-alone thriller by critically acclaimed author Charlie Huston, The Shotgun Rule is a raw tale of four teenage friends who go looking for a little trouble–and find it.
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.
The spreading stain is drawing local drug lords, crooked cops, hard-riding bikers, and the brutal history of the boys’ fathers in its wake.
作者简介 Charlie Huston is the author of the Henry Thompson Trilogy: Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things (an Edgar Award-nominee), and A Dangerous Man, as well as the Joe Pitt novels: Already Dead and No Dominion. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actress Virginia Louise Smith. Visit him at www.pulpnoir.com.
媒体推荐 From Booklist
In his first stand-alone thriller, Huston explores a 1980s suburban California milieu similar to the one that set the stage for his wonderful Hank Thompson trilogy: teenage screwups chasing away the summertime blues by engaging in minor-league mayhem. Here, four white-bread friends who smoke pot and pilfer neighbors' jewelry tangle with a trio of hardcase Hispanic brothers who stash their youngest pal's bike in their crank lab/chop shop. The fast-unfolding plot's tension springs from elements both expected (the fine line between youthful indiscretions and life-ruining mistakes) and surprising (how the kids' actions unearth a long-buried feud involving their parents). Huston demonstrates a great feel for characters on the cusp of maturity—which helps readers connect with their adolescent aches even when they're being a pain. But just when it seems this might be a mislabeled YA yarn, the book delivers a fully realized elder generation as well. Huston also manages to minimize the racially charged aspects of the teen showdown by making one member of the foursome a Latino punk rocker who steals more than his share of scenes. Sennett, Frank
Review
Praise for Charlie Huston
“Huston is one of the most remarkable prose stylists to emerge from the noir tradition in this century, and The Shotgun Rule only confirms his talent, his grasp of dialogue and machine-gun narration . . . and his heart. There’s a lot of blood in this book, and a lot of heart. It’s Stand By Me on dexedrine.”
–Stephen King
“Among the new voices in twenty-first-century crime fiction, Charlie Huston . . . is where it’s at.”
–The Washington Post
“Huston writes dialogue so combustible it could fuel a bus and characters crazy enough to take it on the road.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Caught Stealing
“[A] fantastically hopped-up thriller . . . a wrong-man plot worthy of Hitchcock.”
–Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)
“Anyone not acquainted with Charlie Huston’s blistering, unputdownable novels will want to tie their sneakers nice and tight before starting The Shotgun Rule, or they are apt to be blasted clean out of them.”
–Stephen King
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. One of the crime genre's rising stars, Huston (Six Bad Things) delivers a stunning, darkly comic coming-of-age novel, set in the summer of 1983 in an unnamed Northern California town. Four teenage boys, out of school and experimenting with drugs, booze and sex, find trouble fast when they break into the home of the notorious Arroyo brothers to retrieve a stolen bicycle. In the process, they stumble on the Arroyo family's main operation, a meth lab. In a classic moment of naïve bravado, they steal part of the stash, setting off a downward spiral of events that will reopen the door to the town's dark past, when an earlier generation of criminals, including one of the boy's fathers, controlled the streets. Huston's natural gift for dialogue shines as he recreates the language of teenage males, in all its crude and often hilarious glory. Most importantly, Huston has the courage to both unsettle and entertain the reader, and his story resonates long after its disturbing final scenes. Author tour. (Aug.)
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