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Skin River [Hardcover]

Steven Sidor (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)


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Book Description

August 12, 2004
Skin River is the story of Buddy Bayes, a man with a shadowy past trying desperately for a second chance at a peaceful life as a tavern owner in small-town Gunnar, Wisconsin. Buddy has traded his connections in the Chicago underworld for the loose friendship of an assortment of locals who frequent his bar. Before long, with the help of a young single mother who works for him as a waitress, Buddy starts to trust that he's lost himself in exactly the kind of new life he'd imagined.

His hopes for a clean start are shattered, however, when he finds the severed hand of a missing college student and falls headlong into a harrowing situation which has Buddy convinced that his past has come back to haunt him. As events unfold, it becomes clear that things aren't what they seem, and jumping to conclusions proves a disastrous mistake as the true nature of Buddy's situation slowly comes into focus. Skin River is a tense, chilling novel that introduces Steven Sidor, a fine crime writer with an exacting touch and a remarkable talent for suspense.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With an eye for gritty detail and a predilection for metaphor, Sidor paints a morbid picture of deviance and death in the small Wisconsin town of Gunnar in his fast-paced crime debut. Since removing himself from the armed robbery business a year and a half earlier, 52-year-old Buddy Bayes has been attempting to straighten out his life. He keeps busy by running his own tavern and eyeing Margot, the homely young mother living upstairs. But just as things are beginning to look up, he stumbles across the severed hand of a missing girl in a nearby river. Soon he’s back in the sheriff’s radar and is forced to hide his past and protect his loved ones as carnage ensues. That’s not easy to do when a former partner in crime wants him dead, one of his friends might be the sadistic murderer, and he has an uncanny knack for finding bodies. The pace accelerates as the killer, devilishly named Goatskinner, acts out his tortured fantasies, getting closer to Buddy with every slice of his knife. Sidor doesn’t stray far from formula, but Buddy’s futile attempts to repair his life give the story extra depth, and the salty prose ("She has an ugly smile, he thinks, like an open cut") and clever narration will keep readers hooked.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

You can't get creepier than this opening scene: a search party combs a section of woods in northern Wisconsin looking for a missing college girl while a serial killer--with the college girl trapped in the back of his truck--sits calmly smoking a joint a mere 10 feet away from the searchers. Sidor's debut novel maintains the tension throughout as the serial killer continues to thwart and taunt investigators. The hero, Buddy Bayes, is a moving target for both the killer and the cops. Bayes runs a tavern in small-town Wisconsin, a kind of hideout from his past. When Bayes finds the hand of the college girl next to the Skin River, he moves from local eccentric to suspect (for the police) and convenient fall guy (for the killer). Sidor sets this classic prey-and-predator story in a North Woods landscape laden with hunting associations. Exquisitely plotted, with a well-realized main character. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st Ed. edition (August 12, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312329490
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312329495
  • Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,200,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Best Thriller Read in Two Years, September 2, 2004
By 
This review is from: Skin River (Hardcover)
Most thrillers disappoint me with their cardboard cutout heroes, whether ex-special forces, brilliant physicists, or cynical, streetwise detectives. But "Skin River" gives us Buddy, a hefty backwoods bar owner and retired criminal, who wants a relationship with his waitress but sees too many complications. A strong plot pushes this refreshingly human protagonist into conflict with both his past as part of the vicious Chicago underworld and a gruesome serial killer. Add dead on dialogue and a gritty realism achieved through concrete details on everything from the real teeth and fake eyes a taxidermist uses to what your wrist feels like after firing a sawed off shotgun, and "Skin River" moves to the top of my list.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Needed more character development., April 10, 2005
This review is from: Skin River (Hardcover)
Maybe I've just hit my limit of the anti-hero, and I freely state that I need to feel an affinity to the characters to really like a book. I know others have really liked this book, but I found myself reading to get to the end, particularly as you know, fairly early on, who is the killer. In fact, I felt more emphasis was spent building his characters than the protagonist. On the plus, it is well written and suspenseful, but I'm going back to books where there are protagonists I like and maybe even have qualities I can admire.
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3.0 out of 5 stars promising debut., October 9, 2009
This review is from: Skin River (Paperback)
This gritty and earthy slice of "country noir" iss et in small town Wisconsin ,where a serial killler is on the loose .The identity of the killer ,known by the name of "Goatskinner" is not long concealed from the reader ; he is the local taxidermist ,"Angus Bodine " a man whose childhood traumas have resulted in his need to kill .He targets a waitress in a small diner ,a woman named Margot .Margot's boss and owner of the diner is Buddy Bayes and he has a thing for her .He is also on the run from the Chicago mob who have a score to settle with him ,and that is not the least of his worries either as the local law ,the barely competent Police Chief is determined to prove Buddy is the killer.When Goatskinner kidnaps Margot Buddy ,aided by his brother ,needs to rescue her from his clutches ,as well as evading the mob enforcers and proving his innocence

The prose is lean ,sparse and economical and the writer does not stint on the violence .His desriptive writing is superb and evokes the brooding bacwoods landscape and bucolic small town background superbly .The only problenm for me was the frequent use of quite lengthy flashbacks which served to vitiate tension and retard narrative drive .

This is promising and a potent slice of Daniel woodrell like "country noir" /A better and stronger grasp on structure would have made it an even better novel but it is still a worthwhile read
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Flashlight beams play in the dark spaces between the trees as the search party fans out. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Black Chimney, Melissa Teagles, Carl Sherry, Deputy Sherry, Sheriff Rafferty, Mary O'Connor, Buddy Bayes, Ketchel Road, Augustus Bodine, Swiss Army, The Indian, Uncle Bill
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