Tomato Red

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Winner of the PEN West Award for the Novel

 

“Woodrell’s storytelling is as melodic, jangly, and energetic as a good banjo riff . . . If one is tempted to hear the echoes of William Faulkner, or Erskine Caldwell . . . no matter. Mr. Woodrell isn’t imitating any of them. He’s only drawing from the same well they did, but with a different take, a different voice, a sharper sense of irony.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

 

“Beyond the savory hill-tones, the bite, the warmth, the cadences that link the Appalachian tongue to an older English treasure, Woodrell is also writing pastoral, an invocation of green hills, red dirt, and sagging wooden structures in the hollows.”

—
Los Angeles Times Book Review

 

“Woodrell’s down-home version of Chandleresque prose lends a near-Biblical dignity to the criminal doings.”

—
The New Yorker

 

“Wild and poignant . . . smart and melancholy . . . Plot is secondary to character in Woodrell’s luminous books, and it’s part of the writer’s gift that his people, born losers all, are steeped in credible dignity.”

—
San Jose Mercury News

 

“Erskine Caldwell with a double shot of irony . . . [Woodrell] writes some of the funniest, most lyrical, most marvelously double-edged prose being written by anyone on any side of town, in any genre, high or low. Take Elmore Leonard’s grit, Barry Gifford’s wild heart, James Crumley’s mean streak, and a wisp of Truman Capote’s lyricism, and you’re ready to visit the Ozarks, Woodrell-style.”

—
Booklist
(starred review)

 

“[Woodrell’s] writing sure goes down smooth and easy.”

—Carl Hiassen,
The Washington Post

 

“Woodrell has the gift . . . An exhilarating writer.”

—
Philadelphia Daily News

 

“A rollicking and buoyant book.”

—
The Village Voice

 

“Woodrell has tapped into a novelist’s honesty, and lucky for us, he’s remorseless that way.”

—
Los Angeles Times

 

“One fine, startling, disturbing novel . . . Mr. Woodrell’s prose is crisp and clean.”

—
Austin Chronicle

 

“Woodrell’s novels veer, sometimes brilliantly, between burlesquing the genres they ostensibly inhabit and investing them with an exceptional authenticity . . . Extraordinarily readable . . .
Tomato Red
both showcases and consolidates Woodrell’s casual mastery of his idioms.”

—
The London Review of Books

 

“
Tomato Red
made me laugh, made me shake my head in amazement, but most of all it made me bloody envious. Modern crime fiction is thick with storytellers, but Daniel Woodrell is that rare beast: a
writer
.”

—Roger Smith, author of
Mixed Blood
and
Wake Up Dead

 

“Three pages into
Tomato Red
I got that inexplicable head rush that comes from wondering how I’d never heard of the book or of Daniel Woodrell, and regretting the years I was ignorant of both. Woodrell writes with a poetic, lyrical, breezy style that reminds me of authentic country artists like George Jones or Hank Williams but he somehow does it on the page. He packs an entire world into a short book and leaves you yearning for more. Thank you, Busted Flush Press, for introducing me to Woodrell. Now others won’t make the mistake I made.”

—C. J. Box, Edgar-winning author of
Nowhere to Run

 

“
Tomato Red
is something remarkable and extraordinary . . . a fiery book . . . Woodrell’s fiction is first-rate; he writes tough and true, without apology or regret.”

—
The Oxford
(Mississippi)
Eagle

 

“Woodrell’s people live out there in that world of rare fiction that is realer than real.”

—Robert Campbell

 

“Funny, poignant, deeply affecting, untamed, and wild, wild, wild.”

—
The Detroit Metro Times

 

“Lyrical . . . a perfect slice of country noir . . . Daniel Woodrell is one of the major discoveries of the last decade.”

—
Time Out London

 

“Woodrell’s South, like his prose, is complex and ironic; it is as beautiful and full of love as it is violent and self-destructive.”

—
The Bloomsbury Review

 

“Before you begin Daniel Woodrell’s sizzling
Tomato Red
, strap yourself into your chair. The story starts with a firing-off-the-line, hell-bent-for-leather sentence that leaves readers breathless, laughing, and begging for more speed . . . Noir master Raymond Chandler once said that ‘good prose should be lean, racy, and vivid.’ Like all of Woodrell’s fiction,
Tomato Red
has these in spades.”

—
BookPage

 

“In his latest, Woodrell does to common Ozark English what barbecue masters do to a tough cut of meat. He smokes it with a combination of raw and rich words, tenderizes it, spices it up until it’s mouthwatering.”

—
The Kansas City Star

 

“Scathingly funny . . . Sammy’s first-person narration swings to the beat of Southern fable. Woodrell’s language blends the exaggeration of front-porch lie swapping, the visceral lament of the blues, and the apocalyptic, lyrical bent of the King James translation of the Good Book itself. There’s hardly a dull line in the entire enormously entertaining romp.”

—
The Lawrence
(Kansas)
Journal-World

 

“It’s like being behind the wheel of a stolen car on a drunk night-run down the snake-backed highway through the Ozarks from Kansas City to Little Rock . . . This looks like breakout time for Woodrell. Hop on his bandwagon now before it gets too crowded.”

—
Playboy Online

 

“Zooms on the rocket fuel of Woodrell’s explosively original language.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

 

“Genius is a word that gets thrown around a little too much these days, but when it comes to Daniel Woodrell, it’s nearly an understatement.”

—Reed Farrel Coleman, award-winning author of
Innocent Monster

 

“There are writers who break all boundaries and break your heart with the sheer level of their art. Daniel Woodrell is not only the most truly humble writer I’ve encountered but one of the very few I refer to again and again to learn how true poetic writing is achieved. His on-the-surface simple style conceals a master craftsman at work. There is no other writer I know I would love to devote a whole novel to just quoting from his work. There are crime writers . . . literary writers . . . and then . . . Daniel Woodrell. Nobody comes near his amazing genius and I very much doubt anyone ever will.”

—Ken Bruen, award-winning author of
London Boulevard

 

“Reading
Tomato Red
—the first Daniel Woodrell novel I came upon—was a transformative experience. It expanded my sense of the possibilities not only of crime fiction, but of fiction itself—of language, of storytelling. Time and again, his work just dazzles and humbles me. God bless Busted Flush for these glorious reissues. It’s a service to readers everywhere, and a great gift.”

—Megan Abbott, award-winning author
of Bury Me Deep

 

“I can’t remember coming across a more precise evocation of innocence lost since Golding’s
Lord of the Flies
. With
The Death of Sweet Mister
, Daniel Woodrell has written his masterpiece—spare, dark, and incandescently beautiful. It broke my heart.”

—Dennis Lehane, best-selling author of
Mystic River
and
The Given Day

 

“
The Death of Sweet Mister
is a strong contender for my all-time favourite novel, crime or otherwise.”

—Allan Guthrie, Edgar Award-nominated author of
Slammer
and
Killing Mum

 

“Put [
The Death of Sweet Mister
] on the shelf alongside Faulkner, Jim Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy. With this one, Mr. Woodrell has earned himself a piece of immortality.”

—George Pelecanos, best-selling author of
The Way Home
(and writer for HBO’s
The Wire
and
Treme
)

 

“The characters in Daniel Woodrell’s
Tomato Red
speak the poetry of the trailer park in a world where all wisdom is hard-won. Here there are no trust fund babies plagued by ennui. Woodrell’s universe is strictly hard-scrabble, where the only struggle involving identity is the one to keep it concealed. We are better for knowing it.”

—Thomas H. Cook, Edgar Award-winning author of
The Last Talk with Lola Faye

 

“Daniel Woodrell is one of those authors that’s doing something not enough writers do. Write well about rural people, and about people that aren’t all savvy and hundred-dollar bills. He knows how to just tell the story. Reminds me of the storytellers I grew up with. They knew the power of a simple tale well told, and so does Woodrell.”

—Joe R. Lansdale, award-winning author of
Vanilla Ride

 

“Daniel Woodrell’s work transcends genre. Don’t bother calling it ‘crime’ or ‘noir’ or ‘southern gothic.’ Just call it ‘brutally magnificent’ and get your dirty hands on as much of it as you possibly can.”

—Tom Piccirilli, author of
Shadow Season

 

“City slickers like me go on and on about the ‘mean streets,’ but the country noir of Daniel Woodrell can be so rawboned, nasty, and violent, it sends me scurrying back to relative safety and comfort of the closest dark, seedy alley. Grab all of the Woodrell you can find—but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

—Duane Swierczynski, author of
Expiration Date

 

“Daniel Woodrell is consistently referred to as ‘The Greatest Writer You Haven’t Read Yet,’ and as much as I hate that kind of labeling, I can’t argue its veracity. Fact is,
The Death of Sweet Mister
is one of the finest novels, regardless of genre, published in the last fifty years, and
Tomato Red
is snapping at its heels. Nobody else can condense whole lives into less than 200 pages with such emotional truth, and nobody else comes close to the brittle perfection of his prose, stiletto sentences that leave you wondering why Woodrell isn’t held in higher regard. Perhaps it’s just because people haven’t read him. I hope that changes with the new editions, and I envy those coming to him for the first time—they’re about to read real noir, the kind that comes from human beings, not characters.”