Lawrence Block: Not Comin' Home to You (USA 2016)

From the Publisher:
"Jimmie John Hall wasn't anything until he was a killer, and Betty Dienhardt wasn't anything until she met Jimmie John Hall. When they get together, sparks fly and bullets follow. The first to go are Betty's parents, but Betty isn't bothered. She only wants to be with her man - the first person to ever make her feel special.

"They set off on a cross-country spree, killing for gas money and food, killing to swap their car for one the police aren't looking for. As the dragnet draws tighter, they only grow closer, riding a road that leads to death because death has surrounded them all the time."

That's the copy on Dreamscape Audio's excellent audiobook, expertly narrated by Alan Sklar, and I'd be hard put to improve on it. It's worth noting, though, that the novel derives from and was inspired by the real-life (and real death) rampage of Charles Starkweather and Caryl Fugate in 1950s Nebraska; the novel itself is set fifteen years later, and does not attempt a literal reconstruction of the original case.

It's a powerful work of fiction, a penetrating look at two disturbed and disturbing individuals, and a breakneck tear across the American Midwest. Like Such Men Are Dangerous and The Triumph of Evil, it was originally published under LB's Paul Kavanagh pen name, but as soon as he could he resides all three books under his own name, and is pleased to make them available now in the Classic Crime Library.

THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art.

Lawrence Block: Not Comin' Home to You. LB Productions (Classic Crime Library), ISBN: 9781523937318 (February, 2016), 250 p., $10.99.