James Sutphin, Texas—
“Cook’s Tiger Ridge collection is great entertainment. Reading great short stories like these is how people entertained themselves before numbing our minds with television. Cook’s writing is a great reason to turn off the TeeVee.”
Bill Howe, Leeds, England—
“A Writer At The Peak Of His Powers”
“Three excellent new stories linked loosely by being set in the fictional geographies of Tiger Ridge County and its environs, itself based on the East Texas homeland of the author.
“Ranging across a period of over a century, each of the three stories is distinct and different in tone, but each demonstrates the author’s sharp ear for authentic dialogue, evocative descriptive power and the ability to engage the reader in philosophical and ethical discourse in a way that is subtle, engaging and at the same time, entertaining.
“`The Code’ is as fine a piece of contemporary short fiction as you can find, and, of the collection, probably closest in tone to the author’s gripping, (but so far), only novel, Robbers.
“`Lafayette Dugas, Bayou Desperado’ is a historical fiction of the Old West, full of interesting incidental characters, astute observations on human nature, and southern life in the 19th century, full of narrative layers that mark it out as a splendid, sustained, `writer’s’ piece of writing, so that the reader’s interest doesn’t wane for an instant.
“I enjoyed the interlacing and overlapping narratives of the final story, the `Tiger Ridge Trilogy,’ very much; the weaving of the universal themes of life, death, love, lust, greed, birth, hopes and dreams… into the fabric of mundane and ordinary lives. It is a testament to the author’s skill that each of the three `voices’ of the characters are both distinct and accurately portrayed.
“In general, I love the way the author lets his characters ‘come and go’, and gives us glimpses, but not necessarily their whole story… like real life, people pass us by, and we don’t always get to know what came before or everything that happens next, but this is because the writer treats his readers with respect, and sometimes allows a little ambiguity and space in which to exercise their own imaginations.
Storm – A Novella
Robbers – Special Edition
Cloven Tongues of Fire – A Novella
Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories
The Pickpocket – A Short Story
