Just finished my first Larry Brown book - Father And Son. A work of art. A vivid and riveting story of gritty, rough and violent life in rural Mississippi.

"The truth of the matter is that Brown is one of the best writers we have, able in a sentence or or two to cut to the heart of things."
- The Washington Post

From Lisa Guidarini's blog: Bluestalking-
"Father and Son positively seethes with anger, with a particular brand of vengeful anger laced with blind ignorance that's so sinister and frightening to watch. At the start of the book Glen Davis has been released from prison after serving three years for killing a child he'd hit with his car while under the influence of alcohol. Returning home to the small Mississippi town he grew up in he's bent on vengeance against those he sees as having wronged him. As the book progresses he goes on a murderous rampage, seeking his own justice. The prose is brilliant and masterful, creating suspense in a sparing way:

"He cocked the hammer now and swung the barrel up to this father's head and held the black and yawning muzzle of it an inch away. He tightened his fingers on the checkered pistol grip. The old man slept on, father and son. Some sense of foreboding told him to pull back and undo all of this before it was done. Yet he put his finger on the trigger, just touched it. He already knew what it would look like. Virgil moved in his sleep, made a small sound almost like a cough. The puppy whined outside. The house was quiet but for that. He raised the barrel and caught the hammer with this thumb and eased back on the trigger, letting it down. He went out the door, lighting a cigarette, hurrying."

Here's a bit from Wiki on Brown:
Larry Brown (July 9, 1951–November 24, 2004) was an American writer who was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Brown wrote fiction and nonfiction. He graduated from high school in Oxford but did not go to college. Many years later, he took a creative writing class from the Mississippi novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 to 1972. On his return to Oxford, he worked at a small stove company before joining the city fire department.

An avid reader, Brown began writing in his spare time while he worked as a firefighter (at City Station No.1 on North Lamar Blvd.) in Oxford in 1980. The nonfiction book On Fire describes how Brown, having trouble with sleeping at the fire station, would stay up to read and write while the other firefighters slept. His duties as a firefighter included answering fire alarms at Rowan Oak--the home of William Faulkner, now a museum--and the University of Mississippi campus. By his own account, Brown wrote five unpublished novels, including one that he always used as an example to younger writers about a man-eating bear loose in Yellowstone Park, and hundreds of short stories before he began to publish. His first published work was a short story that appeared in the June 1982 issue of biker magazine Easyriders. His first books were two collections of short stories: Facing the Music (1988) and Big Bad Love (1990). After 1990, Brown turned to writing full time and increasingly turned to the novel as his primary form. Brown's novels include Dirty Work (1989), Father and Son (1996), Joe (1991), Fay (2000), and The Rabbit Factory (2003).

In March 2007, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill published Brown's unfinished novel A Miracle of Catfish. Although Brown died before finishing the book, the final page of the published version includes his notes about how he wanted the novel to end. The novel also includes a lengthy introduction by Brown's editor, Shannon Ravenel, discussing her work on the project and her work with Brown over the years. Except for the novel The Rabbit Factory, all of Brown's books were published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing. The paperback editions of Brown's early works were published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, although other paperback houses picked up his later works.

Brown was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction. Brown was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won in 1992 for his novel, Joe and again in 1997 for his novel Father and Son. In 1998, he received a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 per year for three years to write. In 2000, the State of Mississippi granted him a Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts. Read More.

Already started my second - Joe - and it's proving to be just as riveting.
Thanks for turnin' us on to Larry Brown, Luther!