Book Review: Mean Business on North Ganson Street by S. Craig Zahler

Mean Business on North Ganson Street by S. Craig Zahler

Hardcover, 293 pages

Published September 30th 2014 by Thomas Dunne Books

This violent Midwestern noir was written by S. Craig Zahler the writer director of cult films Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99. If you have seen those movies you will know that he is a writer known for brutal unflinching stories with great dialogue. Bone Tomahawk is probably his best known work, the horror-western hybrid film stars Kurt Russell and is one part western and one part Hills Have Eyes. This novel has more in common with his most recent release BICB99 starring Vince Vaughan.

Mean Business on North Granson Street is a cop drama and crime noir with a heartland setting of the fictional city of Victory Missouri. The hero of the story is an Arizona detective Jules Bettinger a African American officer who was involved in a incident that cost him his job. He explains the reality of a case to a man caught cheating on his wife and business, faced with the reality he turns around and kills himself. This business man was important enough to force him out of the department. The only department willing to hire him is one in Victory, and you get the idea that no one wants to work or live in this city.

Dead in the middle of winter the kind he has never experienced Bettinger ends up working in a city where the ratio of cops to population is far below average. The city is an out of control ghetto with filled massive crime and apathetic at best police. Bettinger arrives there in the wake of a nationally covered brutality case. His first case the death of a hooker,connected to several murdered women and there is evidence of Necrophila. This dark story line is most to carry most novels but it is just the tip of the iceberg. Bettinger can tell know one wanted to the solve this case before him.

Bettinger hates the city, the job, his wife and children don't seem happy about the move but five years and he will have his pension. As much as he doesn't like the cops in this city, and they don't like him. His new partner doesn't hide his habit of brutality or his racist ideas. The story really kicks into gear when two officers are killed execution style and Bettinger is pulled into the dark history of the department. Is it the work of a serial killer or a conspiracy that is much wider?

MBNGS is no joke, it is a excellent plotted, paced story with characters so sharp they are the source for most of the humor and tension. Some of the strengths include Bettinger's decsion to protect his family he moves them into a city more than an hour's drive away. This creates a tired under slept lead who becomes less reliable as the story reaches the end. The highlight of the book for me was the dialogue, often hilarious versions of standard trope cop talk, one of my favorite scenes was when a perp asked "isn't one of you supposed to be the good cop?" "He got fired in the seventies."

As funny as those moments were the violence is not comic-bookishly over the top like Zahler's films. This book has a brutal twist or two and violence is used to beautiful story-telling effect. I don't know why I was surprised at the level of the darkness that Bettinger was dragged into by the end of this story. The novel works as a crime thriller, but have moments that skirt horror. Less so than Bone Tomahawk but certainly I think fans of his films will not be bummed out to read this one.