Dear
Reader,
If you’re new to the whole Smith vibe, welcome to the cult! If you’ve read my trash before, it’s time for the blood sacrifice.
Kidding, kidding.
I hope you like The Butcher’s Prayer, which is a “homecoming” of sorts for me. I’ve been writing about my adopted home of Minnesota and the surrounding area for a long time now, but this time I’m back on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where I was born and raised. I moved “up north” way back in 2003, and have been here ever since.
So why now? Why this story? What was calling me back to the bayous?
There’s this true story, see, about a butcher who chopped up a guy and tried to get rid of the pieces in the bayou behind his house. He might have gotten away with it if the dead man’s girlfriend hadn’t escaped the box he and his accomplice locked her in. And it also happens that for several years before the murder, the butcher and I attended the same Pentecostal church. I knew him well enough – not really close, not really a stranger. But this story has haunted me for years. What does it take to fillet another person like a fish? Or treat a man’s body the same as you would a side of beef?
But I couldn’t figure out how to write about it. I was inspired by it, sure, but it took another twenty-two years to find my way in – it was the detective, Hosea Elgin, a fallen preacher turned cop. As soon as I saw him in his fancy suit left over from his preaching days, stepping carefully around the body to avoid getting blood on his loafers, that was what I needed.
As usual, for me it’s about the characters more than anything else. Why do we do the awful things we do to each other? In my story, there are two killers on the run, both in very different mental states as the cops close in on them. And since the butcher is Hosea’s brother-in-law, that means his whole family gets involved with the case – his depressed pastor father, arrogant older brother, and most affected, his sister Rachel, the butcher’s wife, and their two children. When faced with a choice, will it be faith or justice deciding it for the family?
There you have it. I took a seed from a gruesome true crime and found a way to tell a story about faith – holding onto it and losing it – and family – sometimes hurting those we love the most. Maybe I needed to write about the South again, too, since I realize I’m never moving back there again. I haven’t visited my hometown since my grandmother died in 2011. Yes, I’ve been back to the Coast, mainly around New Orleans where my parents now live, but not back “home” because it doesn’t feel like home anymore. The Coast I write about in Butcher’s is pre-Katrina, pre-internet, pre-9/11, pre-Covid, and pre-George Floyd. I’m sure it’s changed a lot more than I can even imagine. But 1996 will always be 1996, every last sordid detail of it.
Love,
Neil
Anthony Neil Smith is an English professor and crime novelist, born and raised in Mississippi, now teaching at Southwest Minnesota State University. The Butcher’s Prayer is his fifteenth novel. He loves cheap red wine and Mexican food.
You can visit his website at http://www.anthonyneilsmith.com or connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Title: THE BUTCHER’S PRAYER
Rodney Goodfellow watches his friend kill a man, and then volunteers the unthinkable – to carve up the body with his butcher’s knives in order to get rid of the evidence. But the victim’s girlfriend escapes halfway through the butchering, sending Rodney and the triggerman, Charles, on the run.
Charles is unhinged, flying high on meth. When it’s clear that escape isn’t a realistic possibility, he chooses chaos. He goes back looking for a little revenge, with Rodney and the girlfriend first on his list.
Hosea Elgin is a fallen preacher turned police detective…and Rodney’s brother-in-law. When he realizes Rodney is involved, he’s sickened, but he’s got to keep searching for his fugitives. He weighs loyalty to his job against loyalty to his family.
Rachel Goodfellow is Rodney’s wife and Hosea’s younger sister. She worries that Rodney might come looking for her in his time of need. He’s the father of her two children. Could they ever be a family again? Will her love for him overcome her revulsion, or will she be the one to turn him in?
And what about Hosea’s father, a Pentecostal pastor, and older brother, the pastor’s right hand man? Would they choose family over justice and give Rodney refuge in spite of Hosea?
Hosea and his partner are on the prowl, trying to find Rodney and Charles before they can kill again, but he never expects his own family to stand in his way. Ties are strained, faith is tested, and there has to be a breaking point.
PRAISE
“The Butcher’s Prayer is wine-dark noir, with a hammering and bloody heart. This is Smith at his bleak and soulful best.” — Laura Benedict, Edgar-nominated author of The Stranger Inside
“Anthony Neil Smith is a massive talent. One of the very best crime writers I’ve ever read.” — Allan Guthrie, author of Kiss Her Goodbye and Hard Man.
“Visceral, propulsive writing that cuts like a razor. Think Elmore Leonard with an injection of Southern Gothic. Heady stuff.” — Dan Fesperman, author of Safe Houses.
“Crime-fiction veteran Anthony Neil Smith wields a smooth yet serrated style that’s carved him two decades worth of fierce material, now being re-discovered by a younger upstart audience of modern noir enthusiasts. He possesses such an acute, vivid feel of time and place in his subjects, his stories immediately burrow into my memory and remain long, withstanding the static storms of our contemporary attention-deficits. It’s challenging stuff, yet wholly accessible; with spiking dark humor that confirms sure you still have a pulse.” — Gabriel Hart, author of Fallout From Our Asphalt Hell
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