Skin River

With an eye for gritty detail and a predilection for metaphor, Sidor paints a morbid picture of deviance and death in the small Wisconsin town of Gunnar in his fast-paced crime debut. Since removing himself from the armed robbery business a year and a half earlier, 52-year-old Buddy Bayes has been attempting to straighten out his life. He keeps busy by running his own tavern and eyeing Margot, the homely young mother living upstairs. But just as things are beginning to look up, he stumbles across the severed hand of a missing girl in a nearby river. Soon he's back in the sheriff's radar and is forced to hide his past and protect his loved ones as carnage ensues. That's not easy to do when a former partner in crime wants him dead, one of his friends might be the sadistic murderer, and he has an uncanny knack for finding bodies. The pace accelerates as the killer, devilishly named Goatskinner, acts out his tortured fantasies, getting closer to Buddy with every slice of his knife. Sidor doesn't stray far from formula, but Buddy's futile attempts to repair his life give the story extra depth, and the salty prose (""She has an ugly smile, he thinks, like an open cut"") and clever narration will keep readers hooked.