The Last of the Smoking Bartenders
*Starred Review* Tom is determined to prevent terrorists from blowing up Hoover Dam, but he faces many obstacles. He’s hitchhiking to the iconic dam across the vast, sun-struck American Southwest, and he’s gone so far off the grid—to keep the Network from tracking and killing him—that he eschews paper money. On his odyssey, Tom finds allies, a meth-loving former river raft guide named Lorne and a group of meth-dealing Navajos. His pursuers include a crossbow-wielding psychopath and a beautiful, troubled FBI agent with an artificial hip. Contemporary western crime aficionados will find echoes of Willy Vlautin (The Motel Life, 2007) and James Crumley amid the madness, meth, and sudden violence. Howell’s tale is character driven and features a Crumleyesque road trip through dying tank towns in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. Tom proves to be a delusional homeless man who experiences occasional moments of clarity, but Howell imbues him with a strange and engaging nobility. His portrait of small, failing towns with six-lane-wide main streets, a tractor-supply store, and a few mobile homes baking under a nuclear sun will stay with readers for a long time, as will his damaged protagonists and vivid secondary characters, including the tweakers with “glassy eyes and shiny cheeks.” --Thomas Gaughan