Crime roundup, part 2: "Arkansas" by John Brandon

Fits on the bookshelf between Mike Boyle and Richard Brautigan.

McSweeney's, you treat me so bad, but I still want to give you a good morning HJ when I wake up with you on my mind.

The main idea of this book is that if you're young and you can think quick, you can make decent money running drugs for shady people. It's way easier than being in college or working a real job. When convenient, your conscience will desert you, but at the right moments, it will grow.

Most of the McSweeney's crowd will relate to Kyle and Swin, the twenty-something drug couriers, because they're young and confused and likeable. But to me, the real choice meat of the narrative revolves around Ranger Bright, who runs one arm of the smuggling ring out of an Arkansas state park, and Frog, the secretive mastermind of the whole smuggling operation. These two guys have isolated themselves through their careers, but they each have urges to act as surrogate fathers: Bright brings in Kyle and Swin and aims to teach them the ways of the world as he sees it (which includes lots of whiskey and sloppy cooking), and Frog brings in two boys of his own, with the idea of having them inherit his operation when the time is right.

"Arkansas" is fun, but not. It's very funny, but the more you laugh at the characters, the more you like them, and the problem is that most of them end up dead.

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