Cry Father

Whitmer (Pike) continues his gritty and gruesome streak with a second novel full of drugs, gratuitous violence, and down-and-out characters searching for fulfillment that never comes. Patterson Wells, who works as a tree trimmer in disaster zones, is left a shell of a man after his son, misdiagnosed by a careless doctor, dies from an unknown disease. When Patterson returns to his desolate life on the Colorado mesa, his marriage now over, he befriends Junior, a drug runner and cokehead prone to bouts of extreme aggression. Among the pair’s many brutal adventures, including (too) many blood-soaked ballroom brawls and a lethal dust-up with a crazed meth addict, the most dire is their involvement with a Mexican drug cartel. Meanwhile, in sporadic chapters, Patterson writes letters to his dead son that seem more like tools for Whitmer to fill in the disconnected holes in Patterson’s dismal background (his work in post-Katrina New Orleans, his father’s suicide, his ex-wife’s brief affair that resulted in a pregnancy) than anything else. With an explosive finale that delivers more of the same, this bloodbath isn’t for the faint of heart or stomach. More people are dead, but Patterson’s back to square one. Agent: Gary Heidt, Signature Literary Agency. (Sept.)