"BULL MOUNTAIN SERIES"--from author Brian Panowich--darkly compelling, gritty North Georgia Noir, featuring an unforgettable clan of criminal minds and their extended reach of cousins and cohorts (see my review)

Bull Mountain

Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations, the Burroughs clan has made its home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family’s criminal empire, Clayton took the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can. But when a federal agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms shows up at Clayton’s office with a plan to shut down the mountain, his hidden agenda will pit brother against brother, test loyalties, and could lead Clayton down a path to self-destruction.

In a sweeping narrative spanning decades and told from alternating points of view, the novel brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of the mountain and its inhabitants: forbidding, loyal, gritty, and ruthless. A story of family—the lengths men will go to protect it, honor it, or in some cases destroy it—Bull Mountain is an incredibly assured debut that heralds a major new talent in fiction.

MY REVIEW:  An impressive fiction debut from author Brian Panowich, "Bull Mountain" is gritty North Georgia Noir, featuring an unforgettable clan of criminal minds and their extended reach of cousins and cohorts. The Burroughs family has deep roots on Bull Mountain, as deep as the roots of the big, old trees that have stood silent witness as generations have come and gone while the mountain holds it ground. As the story weaves back and forth through time, the Burroughs money-making method of madness morphs from moonshine, to pot, to meth, and their trafficking territory blurs through at least half a dozen state lines. One Burroughs, Clayton, has defied his deviant family lineage and become the sheriff of McFalls County, and the county line encloses Bull Mountain. Federal Agent Simon Holly approaches Clayton with a plan to bring down the family drug empire, run by Clayton's older brother, Hal, as a means to reel in the bigger fish, Hal's criminal connection in Florida. Agent Holly is offering immunity for Hal if he turns informant against the Florida organization, particularly their leader, a man named Wilcombe. The alternative, if Clayton and Hal don't cooperate, is an all-encompassing invasion of Bull Mountain, promising mass destruction and an inevitable loss of life. Clayton knows his brother all too well, but he agrees to speak with Hal and advise him of the offer. The bad blood between the brothers runs far deeper than Clayton's choice of career. It's much more than outlaw versus "the law". Clayton will go up the mountain, but will he make it back down alive? A darkly compelling tale from author Brian Panowich. 

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The Broken King

An eshort story introduces readers to Brian Panowich's brutal, mesmerizing North Georgia landscape, in preparation for Like Lions (4/30/19).

"No king lives forever, and Gareth was getting old."

Enter the world of Brian Panowich, where Gareth Burroughs runs McFalls county, in north Georgia, and all the criminal enterprises therein. Two of his three sons, Halford and Buckley, are aiming to follow in his footsteps. The third, Clayton, has turned his back on the family and become a lawman, a sheriff in town. In Bull Mountain, the brothers' inevitable confrontation will change life in the county forever. In Like Lions, the last man standing, Clayton, must finally reckon with his heritage, and with the expectations of everyone left in his father's and brothers' organization. But before Bull Mountain, before Like Lions, there was "The Broken King," and a final confrontation on a very cold night.


 

Like Lions

A powerful follow up to multiple award-winning debut Bull Mountain.
 
Brian Panowich burst onto the crime fiction scene in 2015, winning awards and accolades from readers and critics alike for his smoldering debut, Bull Mountain. Now with Like Lions, he cements his place as one of the outstanding new voices in crime fiction.

Clayton Burroughs is a small-town Georgia sheriff, a new father, and, improbably, the heir apparent of Bull Mountain’s most notorious criminal family.

As he tries to juggle fatherhood, his job and his recovery from being shot in the confrontation that killed his two criminally-inclined brothers last year, he’s doing all he can just to survive. Yet after years of carefully toeing the line between his life in law enforcement and his family, he finally has to make a choice.

When a rival organization makes a first foray into Burroughs territory, leaving a trail of bodies and a whiff of fear in its wake, Clayton is pulled back into the life he so desperately wants to leave behind. Revenge is a powerful force, and the vacuum left by his brothers’ deaths has left them all vulnerable. With his wife and child in danger, and the way of life in Bull Mountain under siege for everyone, Clayton will need to find a way to bury the bloody legacy of his past once and for all.


 

Hard Cash Valley

Return to McFalls County and Bull Mountain in Hard Cash Valley, where Brian Panowich weaves another masterful tale of Southern Noir.

Dane Kirby is a broken man and no stranger to tragedy. As a life-long resident and ex-arson investigator for McFalls County, Dane has lived his life in one of the most chaotic and crime-ridden regions of the south. When he gets called in to consult on a brutal murder in a Jacksonville, Florida, motel room, he and his FBI counterpart, Special Agent Roselita Velasquez, begin an investigation that leads them back to the criminal circles of his own backyard.

Arnie Blackwell’s murder in Jacksonville is only the beginning – and Dane and Roselita seem to be one step behind. For someone is hacking a bloody trail throughout the Southeast looking for Arnie’s younger brother, a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who possesses an unusual skill with numbers that could make a lot of money and that has already gotten a lot of people killed―and has even more of the deadliest people alive willing to do anything it takes to exploit him.

As Dane joins in the hunt to find the boy, it swiftly becomes a race against the clock that has Dane entangled in a web of secrets involving everyone from the Filipino Mafia to distrusting federal agents to some of hardest southern outlaws he’s ever known. 


Brian Panowich

 

Brian Panowich feels a bit strange writing about himself in the third person but he will do his best. Brian started out as a firefighter that wrote stories and morphed into a writer that fights fire. He has written three novels, a boatload of short stories, and maintains a monthly column called Scattered & Covered for Augusta Magazine. He lives in East Georgia with his wife and four children who are more beautiful and more talented than anyone else's. He also might be biased. 

Brian's first novel, BULL MOUNTAIN, topped the best thriller list on Apple iBooks, placed in the top twenty best books on Amazon, and went on to win the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, as well as the Southern Book Prize for Best Mystery. The book was also nominated for the Barry Award, the Anthony Award, The Georgia Townsend Book Prize, and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. BULL MOUNTAIN was also selected for the coveted BOOKS ALL GEORGIANS SHOULD READ list by the Georgia Center of the Book, and has been the recipient of several foreign press awards. Brian's latest novel, LIKE LIONS, isn't due out until April, but Daniel Woodrell and CJ Box really liked it, so Brian is pretty happy. Oh, and YEAR OF THE ROOSTER will be out next year. (2020)

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