If I were pitching this to a movie studio, I'd say something like "Elmore Leonard meets William Faulkner", and that wouldn't be too far off, and should be all you need to know to decide whether to read it.

To me a great part of the pleasure of the book (which is a quick summer read, but by no means insubstantial) was knowing very little about it before I read it, other than it was based on actual events in the Alabama/Mississippi region (coincidentally, during Faulkner's boyhood).

"Hell" has graphic descriptions of violent acts. While this is a plus for me, especially when done to further the plot and strengthen the themes of the book, if you don't like on-screen (or on-page) violence, give this a pass, since such descriptions account for maybe a good quarter of the word count. That puts it just a little behind Iain Banks's "Song of Stone".

I rated this a "7" overall, as I was rather nonplussed that a novel that was so heavy on the effort of character development could still yield such flat and non-developing characters, as engaging as they could be. On the other hand, as a meditation on violence in society, it does very well with an economy of words.

Released to a friend. I think this may actually make the bounce to the person who recommended it to me (without having read it).