NEIGHBORHOOD OF DEAD ENDS by STANTON MCCAFFERY + THE DIRTY SOUTH by DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

 

BY TIM P. WALKER

Stanton McCaffery’s Neighborhood of Dead Ends (Rock and Hard Place Press, 2021) is a coal-black slice of crime fiction about my two favorite subjects—planning and zoning.

 

Okay, it’s actually a story about a young single mother named Sophia. Barely scraping by on convenience store clerk wages, she finds herself staring down the wrecking ball when her neighborhood is targeted for condemnation to make way for an upscale development. In a last ditch effort to save her home, she’s goaded by a local attorney/activist into running for an open seat on the Town Council. Out to thwart her efforts is the world’s worst mayor/father/crook Sal Millitello.

 

An ambitious man with his own designs on a higher office, Sal, dissatisfied with the speed of the government that he governs, moves to expedite his eminent domain-based redevelopment scheme by hiring a pair of thugs to beat up a couple of paramedics in Sophia’s neighborhood, which results in the death of one medic, a man who just so happens to also be dating Sophia. And how sloppy of a crook is this Sal Millitello anyway? It’s one thing to keep employing the thugs after they show their aptitude for botching things royally; it’s another to exchange multiple exhibits worth of text messages with his brother-in-law/co-conspirator detailing the crimes they’ve committed and the ones they’re conspiring to commit. You would think that such a corrupt pol like Sal Millitello would be too stupid to exist, but then again, a quick peek at Twitter or CSPAN these days would prove you oh so wrong. Did I mention this guy is also a raging alcoholic and a violently abusive father? Yes, he checks a lot of villain boxes.

 

As a novel, Neighborhood of Dead Ends checks a lot of classic noir boxes as well. Dingy bars? Check. Asshole bosses? Check. Opportunities for easy money? Check. Characters with complicated, mysterious pasts? Characters who when presented with options always seem to pick the wrong one? Check and check. All credit to McCaffery for skillfully piling it on without convoluting the story.

 

Oh, and one more box to check—it takes place in the type of fictional working class town that seems to exist exclusively for the purpose of being picked clean by crooked pols. The town’s called Rinecliff Park, and it’s located somewhere adjacent to the swamps of the northern part of New Jersey. That’s why this book pairs perfectly with…

 

Okay, maybe not this one. I mean, c’mon, does everything in Jersey have to involve the Boss? 

 

Oh no, no, no, no, no! Fuck no! Not this one either. I don’t even know how or why…

 

Ah, there we go! Because when I think of the seedier elements along the northeastern I-95 corridor, I think of The Dirty South by Drive-By Truckers (New West, 2004).

 

Recorded by their most vaunted line-up—Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, Brad Morgan, Shonna Tucker, and Jason Isbell—The Dirty South might not be their best album (that would be—fight me—Brighter Than Creation’s Dark), but with its fourteen tracks of flinty rockers and reverb-heavy dirges spread over a leisurely seventy minutes, it’s easily the record that exemplifies the essence of Drive-By Truckers the most. Opening with a song called “Where the Devil Don’t Stay” and closing with “Goddamn Lonely Love,” it could also embody the dead ends of Rinecliff Park that close in around Sophia and the ones closest to her. Plus, this album’s loaded with its own set of noirish characters, much like the ones found in Neighborhood of Dead Ends—some nursing their own grievances, some drowning in their own terrible decisions, and a handful who are the type of belligerent idiots that you’d swear couldn’t possibly exist in real life. Their cursed realities are summed up thusly: “Never Gonna Change.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3icBcr1_Tw

 

Neighborhood of Dead Ends is available here: https://www.rockandahardplacemag.com/neighborhood-of-dead-ends.