Overview
Ray Puzo, the 34-year-old hero of this gonzo noir from Woods (Kiss the Devil Good Night), has been a professional killer for 17 years, most recently as a Special Forces sniper ‘hunting ragheads on the Afghan high desert’. He takes a job in the Texas hill country at the Cross Bar Ranch exterminating feral pigs that have been spoiling the ranch’s grazing land. Radiation from atom bomb tests together with other factors have made the hogs so intelligent they can speak English, stand on two legs, wield a knife, and fire automatic weapons. A large cast of zany characters live at the ranch, including Ray’s boss, the sexy Mrs. Amanda Cross, and her beautiful ‘nympho daughter’, Loretta. When not killing hogs, Ray spends his time having sex with Loretta and recovering from having sex with Loretta. A massive battle ensues after the hogs declare all-out war. Amid all the sex and violence, there are many excellent book and movie recommendations. Readers willing to loosen their inhibitions and jettison their good taste will get a lot of laughs out of this one.”
— Publishers Weekly
Ray Puzo, ex-Special Forces sniper, is hired to rid the vast Cross Bar cattle ranch in South Texas of its feral hog problem. Due to radiation and other pollution the hogs have become super-brainy. Faced with extinction, the hogs organize and fight back. Humans and hogs face off in an epic battle between good and evil—but who is good and who is evil is an open question.
Besides leading the charge against the hog uprising, Ray must navigate the Byzantine politics of the ranch’s eccentric aristocracy, including:
- Mrs. Amanda Cross, reptilian ranch matriarch;
- Ned Cross, her queer son;
- Loretta Cross, her crackpot nympho daughter;
- Old man Cross, paralyzed by a bullet through his spine;
And a supporting cast of cowpokes, vaqueros, schemers and ne’er-do-wells.
Part pulp noir. Part dystopian Gothic western. Part satiric magic realism antiwar sex farce, Hog Wild is the illegitimate offspring of a ménage à trois between and among Orwell’s Animal Farm, George Miller’s The Road Warrior and Verna Bloom of Animal House and High Plains Drifter fame.
HOG WILD is
ANIMAL FARM meets
ANIMAL HOUSE
“Somewhere on the spectrum between Chaucer and Mickey Spillane, Jonathan Woods’ Hog Wild is a deliciously bawdy frolic, drunk on its own exuberant language, and fearless to tread anywhere and everywhere.”
— Madison Smartt Bell, a National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and author of All Souls’ Rising, Straight Cut and Doctor Sleep
“Jihadist feral pigs, a nymphomaniac ranch heiress and an ex-military sniper converge on a South Texas cattle ranch. What could possibly go wrong?… Hog Wild is a surreal, Tarantino-esque feast of sex, violence and rock & roll.”
— Eric Freeze, author of Dominant Traits, Invisible Men and French Dive
“Hog Wild is a wild glorious ride and a fantastic feast of storytelling…Mixing the Gothic with the surreal, the western with pulp, it all comes together to make a wondrous read. Imagine William Golding through Orwell filtered by Elmore Leonard, you’d have this terrific book.”
— Ken Bruen, award winning author of London Boulevard, Blitz and the Jack Taylor crime novels, including most recently A Belfast Epiphany
“Men are pigs and pigs are men in Jonathan Woods’ rambunctiously clever romp of a novel, Hog Wild. Set on a vast cattle ranch in the badlands of South Texas, this is dystopian pulp-noir to smack your lips over.”
— Vicki Hendricks, Edgar-nominated author of Cruel Poetry, Miami Purity & Iguana Love
About the Author
Hi, I’m Jonathan Woods. I divide my time between Key West, FL and Dallas, TX. Whenever I have a little spare cash, I travel the world looking for story ideas. My stories involve sex, violence and craziness – stuff you read about every day in the metro section of your local newspaper or hear about on the late night TV news.
I hold degrees from McGill University, New England School of Law and New York University School of Law and for many years practiced law for a multi-national high-tech company. My first stories appeared in Dogmatika, 3:AM Magazine, Plots with Guns, Thuglit, Pulp Pusher, the noir issue of Blackheart Magazine and in the recent anthologies Speedloader, Crime Factory: The First Shift, Noir @ the Bar Vol. 1 and Murder in Key West
I am the author of the collection of noir crime stories Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem which won a 2011 Spinetingler Award for Best Crime Short Story Collection and was a featured book at the 2010 Texas Book Festival. Except for Maracaibo, I have been to every location where the nineteen stories in Bad Juju are set.
My crime novel A Death in Mexico was named one of the five top debut crime novels of 2012 by the indie BookPeople Bookstore in Austin, Texas. My website is: http://www.southernnoir.com/
My new collection of crime stories, coming from New Pulp Press in March 2014, is called Phone Call from Hell & Other Tales of the Damned. If you got a phone call from Charles Manson, what would you do?
My newest story “Swingers Anonymous” will appear in the anthology Dallas Noir forthcoming from Akashic Books in November 2013. Dallas Noir is part of Akashic’s renown “cities noir” series of anthologies which now numbers more than 50 volumes. What an honor it is to be a part of this history making literary event!
Purchase Here
reecaspieces 