Hogdoggin'

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From Publishers WeeklyThe squeamish will want to avoid this violence-laden sequel to Smith's Yellow Medicine (2008), in which terrorists framed Billy Lafitte, a former Minnesota deputy, for some gruesome murders. Now in South Dakota, Lafitte is serving as sergeant at arms for Steel God, the ruler of a biker gang whose control over his clan is coming under challenge as his health declines. After Lafitte gets an emergency message to return home, he crosses paths with the FBI agent he once assaulted, Franklin Rome, who's plotting revenge against him. Most of the action concerns the efforts of Rome, aided by his assistant, Joshua McKeown, to catch up with Lafitte, who accumulates additional enemies along the way. The book's brutality is exemplified by the blood sport that provides the title, which matches vicious dogs like rottweilers against helpless pigs. Fans of darkest noir will be most satisfied. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistDodging federal arrest warrants and his old nemesis (special FBI agent Franklin Rome), ex–rogue cop Billy Lafitte—introduced in Smith’s Yellow Medicine (2008)—abandons his job as enforcer for a motorcycle gang and rumbles back to Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota. Rome is squeezing Lafitte’s suicidal wife to lure him home, planning his own unauthorized revenge play. Lafitte thinks he’s riding his turquoise-blue chopper to the rescue, but violence and destruction follow in his wake. Smith’s version of Minnesota is no Lake Wobegon; the inhabitants are refreshingly made up entirely of the deranged, the damaged, and the doomed. If you can picture the intellectual and physical mayhem that might have resulted from a Jim Thompson and Harry Crews collaboration, you’d be on the right track. But Anthony Neil Smith is his own writer—and a very fine one, indeed. --Elliott Swanson