Nitro Mountain: A Novel
by Lee Clay Johnson
Buy on AmazonSet in a bitterly benighted, mine-polluted corner of Virginia, Nitro Mountain follows a group of people bound together by alcohol, small-time crime, and music. There's Leon, a hapless bass player who can embroil himself in trouble just by getting out of bed in the morning. And his would-be girlfriend, Jennifer, who's living with Arnett, the town's most dangerous thug--and hoping Leon will help poison him. And there's Arnett himself, a psychopath for the ages--albeit so charming and deranged, so strikingly authentic, that he arrests the reader's attention at first sight and holds it fast. His mirror image, a singer-songwriter named Jones, has his own moral issues, though at least he's trying to be a good man.…
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"If you need a blood and whiskey soaked waterslide out of your life for approximately seven hours (or however long it takes you to read 224 pages), this is your book. Lee Clay Johnson tells the tale of Leon, a bass player with a broken arm, who is asked by the woman he loves to murder a dangerous man living on the top of a mountain. Will he do it? Not really the question of this book. Johnson writes like lightning, and this wild, careening ride through mountain roads, dirt-covered couches, cold vans and burning bars jumps perspectives and makes you laugh when you least expect it. If you want to see literary talent applied in refreshingly new ways, come along; there’s blood ahead — and betrayal, exploitation, arson, unthinkable violence and all the other byproducts of people reaching, straining, for a better life."
NPR Books We Love — 2016 · apps.npr.org