Rating: 
Summary: AH...THE GENTEEL SOUTH...
Review: ...you won't be finding THAT here - what you WILL find, however, are some incredibly well-written short stories that are filled with characters that make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up and say `howdy'. I was directed to this author after writing a review for Marlin Barton's (even better) collection THE DRY WELL - I like Barton's style better, but Franklin is a craftsman as well.The notes on the dust cover state that `The world of POACHERS is dark, brutal, without redemption, a place most of us have never seen.' Thank God for that - and what a blessing it is to be able to experience that world in such living, breathing detail. Tom Franklin grew up in south Alabama - he knows his subjects well. His introduction to this volume, entitled `hunting years', is a moving and revealing as any of the stories collected here. In it, he speaks of the rites of passage through which he traveled, of his deep desire to please his father, to be viewed favorably `as a man' in his eyes - he writes the intro from the perspective of a trip back to his old stomping grounds, with a nostalgia that is poignant and heartfelt, without stepping off the shelf into the maudlin. It's a thoughtfully written and valuable beginning for the reader about to take the journey through the book. There are mean people here. The lead-off story, `Grit', presents a `collection man' for a loanshark/bookie, a fellow aptly named Snakebite who, it is rumored, once cut off a debtor's toes with a pair of wirecutters. I think you can get the picture - these are not the type of people that most of us hang out with, but they're out there in the world and they're real. Franklin's prose - and his ability to create such a palpable sense of time and place and mood - bring them vividly to life. It says a lot for his writing talents that I can't remember reading a novel or a group of stories populated by such despicable personages and enjoying it as much as I did this one. The title novella, the last piece in the collection, is one of the most singularly frightening pieces of writing I've come across in some time. Three brothers - lifelong poachers who keep to themselves, nervously tolerated by those who live around them - are pursued by a rabid veteran game warden, a man about whom many stories have been told over the years. It's said that he was a poacher himself when he was a young man, and that he turned to law enforcement, from breaking the law, because he found it to be a greater challenge. The damp, dark, kudzu-encased woodland in which this novella takes place is something I've never experienced - but it was right there around me as I read this chilling tale. This is not a collection for the squeamish - but, contrary to another reviewer's opinion, I think it's too easy to write it off as a book of stories `about stupid people'. There's a lot more going on here than that statement would indicate - and I'm glad it was recommended to me.
Rating: 
Summary: Southern noir at its best
Review: A collection of stories, all of which have a heart of darkness. We're talking plot, suspense, character - and alligators. Not for the faint of heart. Nothing charming or frothy here; just riveting tales of violence, drunkenness, death, craziness, and obsession. Superb - only don't read it right before falling asleep.
Rating:
Summary: SWEET HOMER ALABAMA
Review: A nice debut by yet another blue collar southern bard. It reminds one of Harry Crews or Larry Brown. God help me for saying this, but Franklin portrays a kind of pastoral weirdness and brutality with an unflinching eye. At some point, readers are going to have to ask how much unflinching they can take. Some of the early stories in the book are not as realized as they might be, but the payoff is the tour de force that is the title story at the end. "Poachers" is a memorable little novella that will leave readers looking forward to Franklin's novel.
Rating:
Summary: haunting, livid prose
Review: Franklin has written a very impressive collection of short stories here, which I thought culminated in the excellent novella Poachers that gives the volume its name. He explores the backwoods of Alabama with a native's knowledge of the hunters and fishermen who live in the state's rural areas, and at the same time he possesses considerable skill in storytelling. I've never visited the area he writes so convincingly about, but those who live there seem to indicate he nailed the characters dead on. The story "Poachers" involves a group of three amoral and uncontrollable brothers who wreak havoc in Alabama until a mysterious, legendary and mostly unseen game warden is dispatched to start picking them off. The suspense is tremendous as the hunters become the hunted in a cool, calculated, unhurried style. The story reminded me a little of the eerie movie Southern Comfort, where a bunch of National Guardsmen where systematically hunted down and killed in a rural Louisiana swamp by unseen Cajuns. Other stories in this volume, while not as powerful as the title piece, were uniformly above average and sometimes very good. Frankin is always entertaining, and seems always to know what he is writing about. The author has been critized here at Amazon by one or two reviewers for inconsistent plot development, but I thought the plot of "Poachers" was as fully developed as that of most full length novels, and some of the shorter stories were meant to be experimental and a little abrupt. Short stories are seldom wrapped in conventional packages. Overall, I give the volume 4 stars, maybe 4 1/2 if you concentrate mostly on the title novella, and I enthusiastically look forward to reading Franklin's debut novel.
Rating:
Summary: A book about loss, tragic loneliness, & snakebit lives
Review: Friends. That's what I call my literary companions, my favorite books, the books that take me on a new and different journey every time I read them. Tom Franklin's Poachers is a friend of mine. It's a book for the journey. An author, in my judgment, has nothing more to give than words for the public good, and Franklin delivers this with a bare-knuckle punch. Whether or not a writer has done his moral duty is proven in the reading of his work: I've read Franklin's book straight through three or four times over the past several years. About Christmas 1999 I happened upon a copy of Poachers, a few months after it was published. I was, at the time, working at the state college in my hometown, moonlighting while I tried to learn how to write stories. I immediately perceived in Franklin's craft something to attain, a level of mastery needed if I was to tell stories about backwoods, rural, and New South industrialized blue-collar men and women. For several years, I had been groping earnestly for better stories. I was not a fast learner. But I had faith that if I kept writing, I would eventually publish fiction. Part of the reason I took the job at the college was to study creative writing under Tim Gautreaux. With his instruction during an academic year, and literary models such as Poachers, I improved as a writer. I learned how to poach off another writer, and I had read Franklin more than any other author during the period. I would read individual stories and search for tips: How to handle scene, dialogue, point of view, and narrative techniques. After the apprenticeship with Gautreaux was finished, I started sending out my stories for the first time. I sent one piece to a literary review acknowledged in Franklin's book, a place where he'd been published. To my delight, the San Francisco-based journal Fourteen Hills published one of my first stories. Nine story publications have occurred in succession starting back in the fall of 2001 by magazines. Franklin's stories are set three hours east of where I'm from, but I suppose his folks are much the same as mine, related by their sense of loss, their tragic loneliness, their snakebit lives. He knows my people, I know his. Just thinking about Poachers sitting on my shelf makes me want to take it down, and go straight through it a fifth time, to see if I can poach yet another story. -------------------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman
Rating:
Summary: A book about loss, tragic loneliness, & snakebit lives
Review: Friends. That's what I call my literary companions, my favorite books, the books that take me on a new and different journey every time I read them. Tom Franklin's Poachers is a friend of mine. It's a book for the journey. An author, in my judgment, has nothing more to give than words for the public good, and Franklin delivers this with a bare-knuckle punch. Whether or not a writer has done his moral duty is proven in the reading of his work: I've read Franklin's book straight through three or four times over the past several years. About Christmas 1999 I happened upon a copy of Poachers, a few months after it was published. I was, at the time, working at the state college in my hometown, moonlighting while I tried to learn how to write stories. I immediately perceived in Franklin's craft something to attain, a level of mastery needed if I was to tell stories about backwoods, rural, and New South industrialized blue-collar men and women. For several years, I had been groping earnestly for better stories. I was not a fast learner. But I had faith that if I kept writing, I would eventually publish fiction. Part of the reason I took the job at the college was to study creative writing under Tim Gautreaux. With his instruction during an academic year, and literary models such as Poachers, I improved as a writer. I learned how to poach off another writer, and I had read Franklin more than any other author during the period. I would read individual stories and search for tips: How to handle scene, dialogue, point of view, and narrative techniques. After the apprenticeship with Gautreaux was finished, I started sending out my stories for the first time. I sent one piece to a literary review acknowledged in Franklin's book, a place where he'd been published. To my delight, the San Francisco-based journal Fourteen Hills published one of my first stories. Nine story publications have occurred in succession starting back in the fall of 2001 by magazines. Franklin's stories are set three hours east of where I'm from, but I suppose his folks are much the same as mine, related by their sense of loss, their tragic loneliness, their snakebit lives. He knows my people, I know his. Just thinking about Poachers sitting on my shelf makes me want to take it down, and go straight through it a fifth time, to see if I can poach yet another story. -------------------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman
Rating:
Summary: Tom Franklin is Tremendously Talented
Review: I don't normally read crime stories. I am not often stimulated by the use of language in mysteries and crime novels. James Lee Burke is a major turn-off for me. However, Franklin's jarring stories are written so skillfully that I am reminded of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," the only other crime story I've truly enjoyed. Franklin is wordsmith of the highest caliber. Moreover, there is a dark humor in his stories that reminds me of Flannery O'Connor, my favorite author. I am really hoping Tom Franklin will be able to deliver a novel that is as enjoyable as the dark and treachorous stories found in "Poachers." My favorite story is the first in this collection, entitled "Grit." I recommend it will all my heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Do you like trailers?
Review: I have a problems when it comes to books. Movies, too. I don't like stories about stupid people. Stupid people with no redeeming qualities. I don't know why, maybe it's because one encounters so many stupid people during the course of the day that I don't want to spend my spare time reading about them, too. Well, this book is full of them. Wall to wall stupid, trailer trash people. In the book's foreward, the author tells us about how much he loved growing up in the South and then proceeds to give the reader a seriously unflattering, stereotypical picture of it. It may be accurate but I don't want to read about it.
Usually if I don't like a book I just give it a low rating and I'm done. This book, though, had such good reviews that I felt I needed to warn others of a like mind off. I got part way into the third story before I just had to quit. Then I remembered people said that the last story, "Poachers", was the best so I gave that one last try. It's a cut above the rest because (surprise!) some of its characters aren't stupid (the clever game warden). Even that story, though, peters out at the end. Sigh.<BR...
Rating:
Summary: A true look at Southern Life
Review: I met Mr. Franklin when he gave a reading at Arkansas Tech University, and I can say without a doubt that these stories portray life in the South as it truly is. The stories have a dark quality and a sense of hopelessness that anyone who lives here can feel if they really try. I applaud Mr. Franklin for his work and look forward to reading more of it.
Rating:
Summary: Tom Franklin is Tremendously Talented
Review: This is an excellent collection of short stories, along with the novella that gives the book its title. Franklin's stories are set in Alabama and share some traits with other stories set in the south. There is a directness to Franklin's writing that stems all the way back to Faulkner. The writing has traces of Breece D'J Pancake, but with more energy. There are reminders of the stories of Pinckney Benedict as well. There are some common symbols amongst their writings as well as the general tones. The characters in Franklin's stories have hard lives that they live hard. There is seemingly no redemptive quality to their lives and the characters realize it. They don't try to set up their afterlife; as a sign in the title story says "Jesus is not coming." They drink non-stop; they contemplate and often have sex in adulterous relationships; they steal, and they don't think twice about any of it. The stories do have a slightly uneven quality to them. Some are Year End Best of quality while others seem like second or third drafts, not completed versions. Standouts include "Grit," where a foreman at a grit manufacturer gets himself in deep to a loan shark and has to run an unethical business to keep his body whole, and "Dinosaur," a story that includes a rhinoceros, an old folks home and a rural gas station nearly ready to go out of business. The book ends with the title spawning novella that was a multi-award winning story. It won an Edgar award for best mystery short story but it is more of a moody, Hitchcockian tale. The drama and suspense build through the story as three amoral young brothers are slowly stalked and picked off, one by one, by an ex-poaching game warden. As a whole the collection has enough standout material, especially the longer efforts to make you long for Franklin to move on to the novel format. The only way I'd ever want to visit this Alabama is in the future writings of Tom Franklin. 3.5 stars.
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