After his first two novels garnered awards nominations, Oklahoma author Lou Berney elbowed his way to the frontlines of crime and thriller writing with his 2015 novel The Long and Faraway Gone, which won Edgar, Anthony, and Barry Awards among a fistful of honours. Berney’s next novel doubled down. November Road, set tangentially against the JFK assassination, scooped a few of the same prizes while adding the likes of the prestigious CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Hammett Prize.
And then … a five year wait for readers. Good things come to those who wait, my Mum used to tell me, but in this case that’s not quite true. Dark Ride isn’t good, it’s great. Berney hits us with another sublime stand-alone thriller full of heartache and humanity.
Hardy ‘Hardly’ Reed spends his evenings as a zombie-battling sheriff at the local amusement park. A college dropout, he strolls through a care-free life in a herbal haze. He’s hardly who you’d turn to in a crisis. But when Hardly spies cigarette burns on two young kids at the local municipal building, something stirs. After notifying an overwhelmed CPS, Hardly can’t let it go, so he begins investigating the family and the kids’ father, a tax lawyer in a strip mall who keeps very dangerous company.
Berney cajoles us with the nuances of Hardly and a fascinating, rag-tag cast, and takes us on a thrilling and emotional ride. Superb; a best of the year contender.
Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORLou Berney is the author of the novels Dark Ride (Sept. 19, 2023), November Road, The Long and Faraway Gone, Whiplash River, and Gutshot Straight.
His books have won the Edgar, Hammett, Steel Dagger, Barry, Macavity, Lefty, and Anthony awards, and he has been a finalist twice for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches in the MFA program at Oklahoma City University.
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