Half Crime

PRAISE FOR HALF CRIME

"The characters in this collection have been brought low by circumstances or their own actions, but Rusty Barnes is clear-eyed and compassionate in telling their stories, which can be grisly or heartbreaking or-most often-both at the same time." -Scott Von Doviak, author of Lowdown Road

"A writer of incredible humanity, Rusty Barnes doesn't just know the blood that beats through the heart, he knows how it spills as well. Beautiful, poignant, and muscular, Half Crime is a collection that doesn't look away, and promises something special to both readers who refuse to flinch, and those who feel with everything they have." -Paul J. Garth, author of The Low White Plain

"Tender and tough, these short stories in Half Crime from Rusty Barnes will remind you of the hardscrabble, hard-drinking, and hard-living characters from Andre Dubus; they're desperate but dignified, and they can't do wrong right. With a poet's eye for imagery and a turn of phrase, Rusty Barnes is a writer who deserves more attention and readers. Half Crime is all that." -Gabriel Valjan, Agatha-, Anthony-, and Shamusnominated author of the Shane Cleary Mystery series

"From Chimney Hill Road to Drag Hill, the settings in Rusty Barnes's Half Crime are as alive as the characters, who struggle through their lives among box cutters and knife fights, broken bones and busted dreams. Beautiful and brutal, Half Crime will appeal to fans of Daniel Woodrell and Tim Gautreaux." -Steve Weddle, author of Country Hardball

"In each story of Half Crime, Rusty Barnes creates an entire world like a jewel-small and hard and beautiful. He brings the desperation of his rural characters to life with poetic empathy and simmering violence. Broken by poverty or pain, or just bad luck, they bring the reader with them on unforgiving journeys to find just a nugget of solace or compassion. Barnes is a deft and uncompromising writer who can reveal the beauty in even the most heartbreaking circumstances. -J.M. Taylor, author of Night of the Furies and Dark Heat

Rusty Barnes is author of the story collections Breaking it Down (sunnyoutside, 2007), Mostly Redneck (sunnyoutside, 2011), and Kraj: The Enforcer (Shotgun Honey, 2019), as well as four novels: Reckoning(sunnyoutside, 2014), Ridgerunner (Shotgun Honey, 2017), Knuckledragger (Shotgun Honey, 2017), and The Last Danger (Shotgun Honey, 2018). His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies like Dirty Boulevard: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Lou Reed (Down & Out Books, 2018), Best Small Fictions 2015, Switchblade, Mystery Tribune, Goliad Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Red Rock Review, Porter Gulch Review, and Post Road. His poetry collections include On Broad Sound (Nixes Mates Press, 2016) and Jesus in the Ghost Room (Nixes Mates Press, 2017). He founded and edits Tough, a journal of crime fiction. He grew up in rural northern Appalachia