They All Fall the Same

A marijuana kingpin seeks vengeance against a narcotics dealer in attorney Browne’s gritty debut. Burl Spoon has run a large cannabis farming operation in Jackson County, Ky., with the tacit cooperation of local law enforcement for decades. Burl’s legal contacts have also enabled him to keep his adult daughter, DeeDee, out of trouble, but he’s powerless against her opiate addiction. The family’s fragile status quo gets disrupted when DeeDee is found near death after overdosing on fentanyl. Burl suspects that Clovis Begley, a dealer “responsible for countless lost lives and souls in [Burl’s] mountains,” supplied her with the drugs. When an employee of Burl’s is killed, evidence again points to Begley, setting Burl on a violent path toward revenge. Browne draws on his experience with the Appalachian criminal justice system to infuse the narrative with striking and authentic details, including Burl’s installation of black lights in the bathrooms of gas stations he owns “so users couldn’t find their veins to shoot up.” Exciting action and a strong emotional pull grounded in Burl’s complicated love for DeeDee bolster the proceedings. Fans of Eli Cranor will devour this. Agent: Alice Speilburg, Speilburg Literary. (Jan.)