Six Bad Things (Hank Thompson Series #2) Book

Damn. This was good. Extreme carnage, great dialogue, along with a number of darkly funny moments. Six Bad Things actually starts out slowly, with Thompson hiding out (see the first book in the series, Caught Stealing) on a beach in Mexico. But don't let that fool you, as you sense approaching danger through Thompson's always wary eyes. Thompson, you see, has left a lot of dead bodies in his wake, and he has a bag full of money that some Russian folks want back. One day someone shows up, with a good memory and a good eye. Things go downhill from there. If you haven't read the first book, it seems like Huston does a good job teasing out parts of the earlier story, while at the same time keeping the current tale moving. It's been a number of years since I read the first book, so my memory of the specifics has faded. It works for me, but I don't know how this entry works as a standalone for the uninitiated. For one thing, Six Bad Things strikes me as darker, more tragic, not so much because of new levels of violence, but because of the hardening of Thompson's character. In the first novel, he was something of a hapless victim, who had a knack for getting lucky when people started dying. The second novel shows Thompson as a man transitioning into a role he never wanted: a truly dangerous man.