I’ve been around enough authors to realize they don’t necessarily share the personality of their writing. However, the time I’ve spent with Jonathan Woods and reading his work has never made me ponder the gulf between the two more. This nice, erudite, soft spoken, family man taps into another personality when creating short work that has appeared in Plots With Guns, Pulp Pusher, and Thuglit.
When his debut book, Bad Juju, a collection of short stories mainly consisting of hard boiled crime and a few bizarre horror tales, hit the stores last month, practically every crime writer I know went out to buy it. The likes of of Megan Abbott, Ken Bruen, and Scott Phillips have praised it. That’s some dark company.
If this were the late eighties or early nineties, Woods would probably be writing for Black Lizard Press, founded by writer-publisher Barry Gifford, who’s stories were the basis for the David Lynch film Wild At Heart. Gifford and the cohorts he published seemed to be influenced by the more marginal paperback crime authors like Peter Rabe and Charles Willeford as well as the beats, mixing high brow style with low brow punch. Woods takes that mix and throws in a twist of Texas tall tale that would make Joe R Lansdale double take.
He brings out the sheer joy that only a short story can deliver with boldness and what-the-hell-let’s-try-this glee. Whether they be femme fatales, hard luck criminals, or guys in the wrong place and time with the wrong girl, happenstance seems to grab his characters by the throat from out of nowhere and give the them a fast drag down Hell’s highway. He hits hard and swift like a car crash, leaving you dazed. For myself and others, it’ a great feeling.
Jonathan Woods will be in attendance for The Hard Wood Book Club discussion of Bad Juju at Opal Divine’s at 7PM, on April 28th. I make no promises or take responsibility for what a few beers and discussion of his work will bring out of him.
–Scott Montgomery
BookPeople 