THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
December 24, 2000

By MARILYN STASIO

Bad boys like Ray Bob and Eddie need no introduction; they just are what they are, ”outsiders from the rural frontier . . . young and unemployed and broke, trawling boredom after a late greasy lunch.”

Christopher Cook puts the match to these combustible ”running buddies” in ROBBERS (Carroll & Graf, $24.95), a debut novel with classic noir bones, when he sets them down in Austin, Tex., in a stolen Eldorado and points them to the highway. Eddie, the stupid one, comes up a penny short for a pack of smokes, so he shoots the clerk at the 7-Eleven, giving Ray Bob, the crazy one, the excuse for a crime spree.

Jumping lanes to elude a mean Texas Ranger on their trail, the outlaws shoot, rape and rob their way to Galveston and would still be tearing up the blacktop if Eddie hadn’t fallen for a Houston hairdresser with higher aspirations. This is familiar plot territory, but Cook covers it with fearless originality, in a lyric voice that sings itself raw.

THE BOOK REPORT / (bookreport.com)
November 1, 2000

ROBBERS
Christopher Cook
Carroll & Graf
Suspense
ISBN: 0786707763

There has been a lot of hype about ROBBERS and, more specifically, about Christopher Cook, about how he writes like Elmore Leonard or James Lee Burke. Now, how is this guy, with his first published book, going to live up to that? Well… I doubt it was easy, but Cook does it. And let’s toss in some Larry Brown influence and, yeah, maybe even some Cormac MacCarthy chops as well. Yes, yes, Christopher Cook is that good.

I had my doubts for a minute or two; make that one doubt, on the first page, but that was quickly blown away. I never put this book down once after I opened it, except to underline passages and even to write a few of them down. James Crumley, no slouch himself, offers a blurb on the back of ROBBERS that Cook writes like an angel. Just so. But he’s like an angel who was cast down into hell to bear witness to what is going on to those above.

If you’ve done any long distance traveling by automobile you’ve seen Ray Bob and Eddie from ROBBERS. You might have seen them at a roadside rest stop or gas station, or walking into a package liquor store in Kentucky. They’re the guys with the long sleeve shirts that almost but not quite cover the jailhouse tattoos. They’re either on the pay phone and not talking or taking a long time to decide on what six-pack to buy. You automatically avoid eye contact with them and try to keep at least a few aisles, or urinals, between them and you. You don’t know why, but you do it. And then you try to get the hell back on the road, not running, not hurrying, but not dawdling either. Ray Bob and Eddie are the stars of ROBBERS. They are on the run, though they’re taking their time about it. They are totally unpredictable; all that one can say for sure is that whatever they do, it won’t be anything good.

Things begin to change a bit when Ray Bob and Eddie pick up a hitchhiker named Della, a beautician who is on the run herself and who will find the ride to be the best and worst thing that ever happened to her. At the same time, the trio is being pursued by Rule Hooks, a Texas Ranger—yes, there are still Texas Rangers—who seeks them by scent and sight and sound and instinct across the length and breadth of Texas. Matters become more complicated when Eddie begins to fall for Della and decides to clean himself up for her. Ray Bob has other ideas, however; he saw Eddie first, and he’s not about to give up his running buddy without a fight. Or worse.

ROBBERS is a compelling, thrilling tale with characters that are as true to hardscrabble life as a trip down the back roads of America, the roads that the freeways have bypassed and the people have been left behind. And it is that locale, specifically the locale of Texas, that Cook, in a novel loaded with the magic of words, works his greatest spell of all. For his description of east Texas—the Texas not conjured by the name, the rural backwoods that adjoin Louisiana—is as compelling as anything you’ve read. I found it hard to resist jumping into my automobile and making the 18 hour drive there, simply to experience the geography with which Cook provides the backdrop and setting for the tale. And the impulse is still with me as I sit here writing.

(Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub)

BOOKLIST
December 2008

By Bill Ott, Editor & Publisher

“Robbers remains one of my favorite first novels of the last decade. More, please, sir.”

BOOKLIST – Starred Review
October 15, 2000

By Bill Ott, Editor & Publisher

Eddie and Ray Bob are runnin’ buddies, and they run for all they’re worth, through Texas and Louisiana, in this high-octane first novel. Eddie starts shooting first, but it’s really sociopath Ray Bob we have to worry about… Then there’s Della, a hairdresser who hitches a ride in the runnin’ buddies’ ragtop caddy, and naturally, three’s a crowd…

This may sound like a cross between Natural Born Killers and Will and Grace, but, in fact, it’s something very different. Cook takes the noir chase novel (there’s a persistent Texas Ranger on the boys’ trail) on some remarkable detours. Yes, we feel the pathos of white-trash lives gone wrong, but soon enough, we’ve forgotten the big picture; we’re runnin’, too.

KIRKUS REVIEWS
November 15, 2000

First-timer Cook, a former journalist and human-rights activist, serves up “running buddies” Ray Bob and Eddie, who follow up their prison stint with a killing spree motivated by a need for cold beer, pocket money and an amorality so deep it must have been implanted prenatally. Their demonic swathe through most of Texas leads them to Della.

Meantime, Texas Ranger Rule Hooks and his tracking dog Lucky are closing in, as is another old-time lawman, out to avenge a relative who became one of the buddies’ victims.

Della, whose mentors are drawn from soap operas and the sleazier talk-show hosts, is appallingly funny, while Ray Bob’s behavior makes a powerful case for capital punishment without trial.