Fiction writer, screenwriter, and memoirist Chris Offutt (Shifty's Boys; Country Dark) delivers Code of the Hills, the excellent third installment in his Mick Hardin series of crime and punishment set in Kentucky's Appalachian hills. Hardin has returned home to eastern Kentucky for a brief visit after his discharge from the army. A soldier and military criminal investigator for 20 years, he, like many of his comrades, struggles to imagine a future outside the rhythms, rewards, and confines of military life. But with a flight soon to take him for an extended stay in France, these questions are on hold for the time being. Then Hardin's sister, the county sheriff, is shot and badly wounded while investigating the murder of a local mechanic. Hardin, compelled to investigate, uncovers decades-long, interconnected local family feuds and small-time criminals running rackets in the hills and beyond. In the process, he deploys targeted violence, extralegal techniques, and his refined local bravado to uncover truths that challenge conventional definitions of justice.
In this third installment, Offutt once again demonstrates his command of the detective form, delivering well-plotted satisfactions that still spurn cliché. His prose expertly conveys a blend of child-like wonder at the ragged beauties of the Appalachian hills with deep pessimism over humanity's awful capacities. Less about elaborate conspiracies or a fathomless underworld, Code of the Hills puts the naïve intimacies, pathetic pettiness, and moral dilemmas of its subjects under the microscope. The conclusion is quiet but startling, with an emotional weight belying its calm surface. --Walker Minot, writer and editor