Donnybrook
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- £8.99
-
- £8.99
Publisher Description
__________________________
Twenty fighters. One wire-fence ring. One man left standing.
The Donnybrook is a three-day bare-knuckle tournament held on a thousand-acre plot out in the sticks of southern Indiana. Twenty fighters unleash hell until only one man is left standing while a rowdy festival of onlookers – drunk and high on whatever’s on offer – bet on the outcome.
Jarhead is a desperate man who’d do just about anything to feed his children. He’s also the toughest fighter in southeastern Kentucky, and he’s convinced that his ticket to a better life is one last fight with a cash prize so big it’ll solve all his problems. Meanwhile, there’s Chainsaw Angus – an undefeated master fighter who isn’t too keen on getting his face punched anymore, so he and his sister, Liz, have started cooking meth. And they get in deep. So deep that Liz wants it all for herself, and she might just be ready to kill her brother for it.
As we travel through the backwoods on the way to the Donnybrook, we meet a cast of nasty, ruined characters driven to all sorts of evil, all in the name of getting their fix – drugs, violence, sex, money, honour. Donnybrook is exactly the fearless, explosive, amphetamine-fuelled journey you’d expect from Frank Bill’s first novel . . . and then some.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bill's debut novel (after his short story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana) trails another ruck of miscreants as they cook, shoot, snort, screw, punch, and head-butt their way across the Ohio River to backwoods gangster Bellmount McGill's annual donnybrook, a three-day, bare-knuckle free-for-all. Wanting the big-money pot to make a new life for his kids and their Oxy-addicted mother, tavern brawler Jarhead Earl robs a local gun shop for the $1,000 entry fee. Double-crossing tweaker Ned Newton steals his stake from crank cooker Chainsaw Angus. Ned and the dealer's hateful sister, Liz, haul Angus's product to the brook, which promises to make them a mint. Left for dead, Angus tears a trail of mayhem in their pursuit, trying to shake Fu Xi, a debt-collecting torture artist, and Ross Whalen, a vengeful deputy sheriff with secrets more vile than the acid burns and chainsaw accidents that flare up along the way. Waiting for them all is Purcell, a prophet of the johnboat who foresees calamity, strives for good, and whose appearance in Jarhead's life suggests a possible sequel. Fun and fast but with a prose so pulpy it sometimes turns to mush, this book lands its best punches below the belt.
