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Boot Tracks
Synopsis
Charlie Rankin has recently been released from prison, but prison has not released its grip on him. He owes his life to “The Buddha,” who has given him a job to do on the outside: he must kill a man, a man who has done him no harm, a man he has never met. Along the road to this brutal encounter, Rankin meets Florence, who may be an angel in disguise or simply a lonely ex porn star seeking salvation. Together they careen towards their fate, taking the reader along for the ride.
Praise
“Man did I love this book. And not to get all meta, but it’s hard to write a review of a book you really loved. Superlatives have been sapped of their meaning by overzealous critics, and somehow it sounds fake to say that a book is one of the “best things” you’ve “read all year.” It’s just that, sometimes (as in the case of Matthew F. Jones’s “Boot Tracks“) that happens to be true. I haven’t read something that made me empathize with a bad guy this intensely since I read “In Cold Blood” in high school.”
“More than just a very good crime thriller, this dark but illuminating novel shows us the psychopathology of the criminal mind. Brilliantly chilling in its step-by-step examination of the mechanics of committing a criminal act – the novel’s true terror is an interior one: an extreme close-up vision of the drive toward homicide. A nightmare thriller with the power to haunt.
“Boot Tracks” is a strange but artful novel enlivened by some of the best low-life dialogue this side of Elmore Leonard….and Jones, who has written other well-regarded novels, is a writer worth meeting.”
“Boot Tracks” has the grace of a Japanese Noh poem and the violence of two lives burning out in front of our eyes.”
“The ex-con just out of prison with one last job to do is a familiar noir premise, and Jones does it proud in this powerful tale. The sense of horrible inevitability is almost overpowering here, but Jones has us following Rankin’s Boot Tracks anyway. If only Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le Flambeur) were still alive to make the movie version.”
“For those who like their noir fiction dark, gritty and intense, the stunning crime novel, Boot Tracks by Matthew F. Jones is a gripping page turner. The terse prose of this remarkably visual novel is permeated with sensory immediacy. One can almost smell the stale sweat and the cheap musty perfume rising from the unwashed bodies of the author’s unpleasant, alienated and often-grotesque characters. This is a tight, tense read, and one you won’t soon forget.”
“Jones is a rare stylist – much of his previous work, including the devastating novel A Single Shot, ponders these dark realms of the human condition, and readers looking for an intense, affecting experience shouldn’t miss this one.”
Matthew F. Jones is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels as well as a number of screenplays.  His novels have been widely translated and several times have been named on best novels of the year lists. Three of his novels, A Single Shot, Deepwater and Boot Tracks, have been made into major motion pictures.  He has taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities, including Randolph Macon College, Lynchburg College and the University of Virginia.  He grew up on a horse and dairy farm in rural upstate New York and currently  lives  in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Other Books
A Single Shot
After the loss of his family farm, John Moon is a desperate man. A master hunter, his ability to poach game in-season or out is the only thing that stands between him and the soup kitchen line. Until Moon trespasses on the wrong land, hears a rustle in the brush, and fires a single fateful shot.
The Elements of Hitting
Walter Innis, son of a frustrated and violent fallen baseball star and a tragically unhappy woman driven to infidelity, carries his family’s legacy of torment into his own adult life – with disastrous results. Ultimately, it is as a Little League coach that Walter discovers a route to happiness and hope beyond the reach of the past.