Burn What Will Burn by C.B. McKenzie

Published by Minotaur Books on June 21, 2016

Burn What Will Burn is the kind of crime novel I admire. The prose is vivid but the story is compact. The plot unfolds without a wasted word. The story is intricate without becoming labored or farfetched.

Far off the path of Arkansas Scenic Highway 7, Bob Reynolds finds a dead body in a muddy creek where he goes to fish. Maybe the dead man slipped and drowned but in the absence of a wallet or car, that seems unlikely. Also tourists don’t fish where there are insects and alligators.

Reynolds is a financially independent poet with a tragic history who chooses to live like he’s dirt poor, even though he has shrewdly invested his inheritance (dead father) and insurance payout (dead wife). What Reynolds wants, money can’t buy, so he doesn’t bother to spend any.

An unfriendly Sheriff seems unsurprised when there’s no body where Reynolds last saw it. Even if the Sheriff doesn’t want to solve the crime, Reynolds is convinced that self-preservation requires him to pursue it. After all, Reynolds might be blamed for the murder, or maybe for more than one. The reader eventually learns why Reynolds holds that belief.

In addition to the Sheriff, several interesting characters surround Reynolds, including a special needs child named Malcolm, Malcolm’s no-good father and judgmental grandfather, a cellmate who is the walking definition of trailer trash, an auto mechanic named Tammy Fay who is the object of his (and most everyone’s) lust, a collection of bar hounds (both educated and not), and the town doctor. Reynolds is the outsider, having not grown up in the town.

Nearly everyone in the town is corrupt, if not murderous. Characters are motivated by realistic obsessions that add to their credibility. Reynolds is no paragon of virtue, but his enigmatic nature and concealed past force the reader to make guesses about just how bad he might be. Compared to the rest of the town, any evil tendencies he might have certainly don’t stand out.

All of the characters are sketched convincingly. We learn just enough to understand them, but the story doesn’t bog down with needless background. Authentic dialog contributes dark humor to the story. I had never heard of C.B. McKenzie before reading this novel, so I didn't know what to expect from him. I was more than pleasantly surprised.

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