Branches [Hardcover]

A smalltown West Texas sheriff is the antihero of Cullin's quietly chilling short novel in verse. Pacing the desolate, burnt-out ruins of his boyhood home 22 miles from town, Sheriff Branches (a minor character in Cullin's previous novel, Whompyjawed), catalogues his misdeeds and probes his conscience. On the surface, he is a solid family man, devoted to his wife, Mary, and looking forward to a cozy evening at home eating beef burritos and watching America's Funniest Home Videos. But as Cullin reveals almost immediately, Branches has killed his stepson, Danny, pushing the teenager down a well on the deserted property and emptying his Colt Trooper MK III after him. At the bottom of the well, the decaying corpses of two Mexicans already bear witness to Branches's homicidal instincts. Danny, a budding neo-Nazi, may have committed a crime of sorts. But Branches's other victims--and their numbers multiply--are guilty of little more than crossing the sheriff's path. Nevertheless, Branches remains a remarkably sympathetic character, the balladlike strains of his narration counteracting the grisliness of his actions. Cullin is adept at blending the affable and the sinister, and while this hybrid effort is just a simple song in a minor key, as such it succeeds admirably. Film rights to William Finnegan. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The novel-in-verse boomlet continues with this short-lined monologue that is rather a hybrid of Stephen King and Jim Thompson. Cullin's Sheriff Branches resembles King's Delores Claiborne in that, like her, he tells his own story, and he has shoved a family member, ornery teenaged stepson Danny, into a deep, abandoned well (a fate Danny doesn't deserve). Branches also recalls Thompson's Sheriff Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me (1952), for under the cover of his badge, he has committed a few more indelicacies--murders and rapes, that would be--that he imparts to us in the course of his spiel. Verse rather than prose seems an ideal solution to the belief-suspension problem inherent in the book's confessional mode, especially since Cullin is a less sensational writer than King or Thompson, capable of making his creepy protagonist resemble a Browning monologist--that is, if Browning would ever have chosen to limn the psychology of a King-Thompson lowlife. Eerie, smeary photos by Ryuzo Kikushima illustrate appropriately. Ray Olson

Cullin returns (Whompyjawed, 1999) to gritty west Texas where lawmen, like Sheriff Branches, can be mean as hungry rattlersand, to judge by this case, almost as complex. Branches tells his story in short, uneven lines of print centered on the page, leaving wide-open spaces spreading off to either side. This, one would conclude, is poetry, though in Cullins hands its wildly uneven indeed, swinging from tin-eared ludicrous (Havent had a bit to munch / since lunch, / and even then / it wasnt much) to character-abandoning profound (My conclusion: / Man is made / of infinite arrogances, / a multitude of stupidities). As the reader first meets him, Sheriff Branches is sitting with his back against the well of an old homestead (twenty-two miles / into the heart of isolation) that, it turns out, is where his own mean-fathered childhood was spent, the place since burned to the ground (by the vengeful Branches himself). Whats happening just now, however, is that somebody is down in the well, splashing around / like a minnow and screaming for help as Branches sits there thinking things over. Whos in there? Well, its Branches stepson Danny. Howd he get there? Well, Branches heaved him into join the two decomposing Mexicans whom he did the same with some time before. And why did he drop Dannyor the others, for that matterin? And whatll he do next? These, undoubtedly, are questions best for readers themselves to find the answers to, and in their quest theyll also find out what Branches talks about when he talks to his gun (Gun, / I hope youll forgive / what Ive done), what he did to a gay man, to a lady traveler, and how much he loves being home / all cozy and relaxed after a sad days work. Still, says Branches, sometimes / its all so meaningless / I cant stop my brain / from flooding out my ears. Yes, something like that. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A chillingly effective novel-in-verse.... Branches' name is only one ironic touch in this tour of a twisted mind. -- Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

A quietly chilling short novel in verse.... Cullin is adept at blending the affable and the sinister.... (Branches) succeeds admirably. -- Publishers Weekly

Branches is a strange and magnificent book.... Cullin’s tale is straight darkness.... it will make your bones cold. -- The Santa Fe Reporter

Hypnotic, gothic.... (Branches) stark allure is an indication that the author knows what he’s doing. -- The Austin Chronicle

Mitch Cullin is to be congratulated for this hybrid achievement. -- The Houston Chronicle