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Desolation Run Paperback – 10 October 2013
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70-something Oreny "Big" Johnson has a problem. Actually, he has two. Or maybe three. The first is that he'll be dead from cancer, less than a year, which doesn't particularly concern him: "Things I've been through, dying is just one more page in a long bad book." But spending his last living days, taking his last living breath, behind steel bars does.
That's the second problem: Inmate #78903 in the notorious level-four Washington State prison known as Horseneck Bay. Then there's the money. Two million dollars of stolen military payroll, supposedly buried in some remote and mysterious south-Texas mountain range called Los Despoblados, or The Uninhabited, which sounds to Oreny like one of those places his Mama Maybell always told him to avoid. But he'll worry about that later. He has to get there first. Problem number three.
That's when he brings those two smoldering dynamite sticks he's attached himself to--his Luke-boy and Jaime--on board to help his tired old body break out of Horseneck and go dig up that money and then hightail it across the border into Mexico. And when they do break out, and Luke decides to bring his girlfriend Lauren along, and her enraged ex comes after them, and then the manhunt starts multiplying faster around them than those cancer cells inside him, Oreny still thinks he can control them. The problems, that is. At least, until Cade arrives.
Cade, the prison investigator Oreny knows is dangerous and unpredictable as a six-foot-two wolverine on eight gallons of adrenalin gone bad. And who won't stop until he catches them and does to them what Cade does best. Cade, Oreny knows better than anything else, is their biggest problem of all...
"Simultaneously brutal, bloody and beatific, this is crime fiction done right. A relentlessly paced, unpredictable page-turner powered by well-developed characters." Kirkus Reviews
- Print length335 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication date10 October 2013
- Dimensions13.97 x 2.13 x 21.59 cm
- ISBN-100991527011
- ISBN-13978-0991527014
Product details
- Publisher : Bandera Publishing
- Publication date : 10 October 2013
- Language : English
- Print length : 335 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0991527011
- ISBN-13 : 978-0991527014
- Item weight : 426 g
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 2.13 x 21.59 cm
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

James Snyder was born in Memphis, Tennessee and lived in many parts of the United States before settling with his family in Napa Valley. Among a variety of careers and occupations, he was a soldier with a tactical mobile operations unit in Germany, as well as an executive for a Fortune 500 company.
Among others, he has published short stories in the Houghton Mifflin Black Mask anthologies, the Ginosko Literary Journal, and was a finalist in the New Letters’ Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction. His literary works include the novels AMERICAN WARRIOR, DESOLATION RUN, THE BEAUTIFUL-UGLY, FRENCH QUARTERS, SOLDIER IN GERMANY, and the short story collection TALES OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
His author’s website and contact are at jamessnyder.net. He currently lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from Australia
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- Reviewed in Australia on 8 January 2017Format: KindleVerified Purchasethis is a great book. good writing, interesting characters. enjoyed the road trip thru western and southern usa. ending maybe a little too dramatic.
- Reviewed in Australia on 5 February 2016Format: KindleVerified PurchaseGood read, but not a happy ending I'm afraid. Story held me all the way through, characters well developed, well written.
Top reviews from other countries
- MordecaiReviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 November 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars The Coen brothers ought to make a film of this...
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseThis is a hard-as-nails, yet on occasion lyrically well-written, tense modern thriller. The general atmosphere reminded me very much of Cormac McCarthy’s/The Coen Brothers’ ‘No Country For Old Men’. There’s a lot of bleakness, well-described scenery, good characterisation, convincing dialogue and a twisting plot. There’s even a touch of mysticism, too. Beware (as some reviewers have mentioned), there’s lots of bad language, sex, and graphic violence. But to me, none of these things seems out of place with the author’s great writing style and plotting. Highly recommended – a real page-turner (or button-clicker, in Kindle world!)
- RiderReviewed in the United States on 29 October 2014
5.0 out of 5 stars My Highest Praise for your literary accomplishment, Mr. Snyder, and I am eager to read MORE!
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseI don't review most of the books I read by relatively new, or "up and coming" authors, because they often fall somewhere near the middle of the bell curve for various reasons. If I find one either especially bad, I try to warn other readers, since almost everyone "publishing" these days seems to have a stable of loyal friends and family willing to pad even the most agregious blater with positive "reviews". Conversely, when, in my opinion, I do find a new author who seems to really stand head and shoulders above the pack relative to talent, originality, and virtuosity, It only seems fair to give their work a nod of praise and recognition. James Snyder's Desolation Run shows the kind of writing prowess, intelligent observation and expression, and uninhibited confidence found more typically in a well established author with legions of fans. This novel satsfied me in ways few have of late. I need characters I can believe, want to spend time with, and are complex, flawed, vulnerable and noble. I want my villains to be just as real and tortured as my heroes, and I don't want anything spoon fed to me. However the authentic character development forms but the foundation for the authors pehaps most gratifying gift to the reader; that being his ability to engross you immediately in an adventure so unpredictable, both breathlessly beautiful and horrifying, that though you want to at least briefly step away from the expereince unfolding before you, yet can't bear turning off the light for the night.
- Cozmickid80Reviewed in the United States on 17 May 2025
4.0 out of 5 stars What a fabulous story
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseTitled like it is, I wasn't expecting a Disney story, but I was still surprised by the gritty, desperate, and often brutal way this story unfolded. I felt moments of sparse, fragile hope that seemed pointless, as well as moments of surprise that things had somehow worked out.
Always, there was the knowledge of ambient dread; of the growing feeling of disaster building momentum towards some awful conclusion, but I couldn't turn away.
And I couldn't turn away because the characters were so skillfully written that, even the ones I didn't like I believed and needed to see through to the end.
And what an end!
I highly recommend this book.