Skip to content
Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Weblink
http://www.hachettebookgroup.com …

A SINGLE SHOT

Matthew F. Jones

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.
Following the bloody trail, he comes upon a shocking scene: an illegal, deep woods campground filled with drugs, bundles of cash and the body of a dead young woman, killed by Moon's stray bullet.
Faced with an ultimate dilemma, Moon has to make a choice: does he take the money and ignore his responsibility for the girl's death? Or confess?
But before he has a chance to decide, Moon finds himself on the run, pursued by those who think the money is theirs. Men who don't care about right and wrong and who want only one thing from John Moon: his body, face down in a ditch.

Matthew F. Jones is an American novelist. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in upstate New York, he now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. His 1999 novel Deepwater was adapted for a 2006 film of the same title, starring Lucas Black and Peter Coyote. Jones has written a screenplay adaptation of his 1996 novel A Single Shot, and the film went into production in 2010.
Available products
Book

Published 2011-09-01 by Mulholland Books

Book

Published 2011-09-01 by Mulholland Books

Comments

The finest portrait of guilt since Crime and Punishment. Jones is unpredictable and, therefore, terrifying. His charac- ters are knowable, if changeable and complicated. If you say yes to his use of language (like deciding to read poetry) you will not be able to shake him....The most terrifying thing about this unnervingly vivid novel is the fact that the pro- tagonist is a simple man, a basically good man, the victim of a single moment, a single accident that pulls the switch on his already derailed life....His anguish and confusion are precisely drawn, physically, spiritually, emotionally.

Intense, violent, and graphic, this novel of backwoods may-hem may remind some readers of Deliverance.

Jones owns a fine writer’s eye for the kind of details that matter. . . . It is Jones’s skillful straight-from-the-shoulder depiction of [Moon] and his pinched world that resonates and then compels....The author draws on his disoriented thoughts with dark and excellent detail.

France: Editions Denoel UK: Hodder and Stoughton

A high-voltage thriller...a gritty, claustrophobic blend of Jim Thompson and James Dickey.

Powerful...compelling and readable....A violent study of desperation, owing more to Dostoevsky and Faulkner than any suspense writer, the story unfolds like a graphic, slow- motion nightmare from which the protagonist will never awaken.