BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE is a gritty, murder-mystery thriller set in the backwoods of West Virginia.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT? A young pharmacist takes a job in a small rural town and is quickly introduced to a world of drugs, sex, guns, and deceit. Unexpectedly, he falls in love with the local ‘good-time girl’ and finds himself trying to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of the pharmacist he was hired to replace.
In another lifetime many years ago, I was a young pharmacist in a rural West Virginia town. I watched the destruction and depravity of prescription drug abuse and addiction. I saw some crazy stuff. This book attempts to capture the recklessness of the world I witnessed.
BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE was a finalist for the Appodlachia 2020 Best Appalachian Book of the Year.
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID:
“…a dark, twisty thriller…fast-paced, hardboiled, and edgy, where lies, corruption and horrific crimes lurk around every corner…an engrossing, gritty tale that ventures into the illicit underbelly of a tiny rural town with plenty of secrets to hide…” – BookTrib – 05/05/2021
“…a mystery that chills, titillates, and above all entertains…the scenes roll out smoothly, and itis easy to imagine this story as film noir…This novel has a Hitchcockian flavor…” – Independent
Book Review – 07/28/2020
“…a great ride… a suspenseful story with lots of nods to the gritty but endearing underbelly or rural West Virginia’s “holler’s and backwoods towns…” – Amazon review – 07/07/2020
“…the characters were real… like I knew them personally… the prose itself was the real prize- gritty and sympathetic, with a Bukowski-from- Appalachia feel… READ THIS BOOK!” – Amazon review – 07/07/2020
“Song references create a soundtrack with a sonic juxtaposition of Husker Du meets Americana meets the Rolling Stones… Here’s to Caldwell, WV! Here’s to the jukebox at Frank’s
Supper Club!” – Google review – 07/08/2020
“…the absolute jam. Strap in. It’s enticing, and pretty freaking horny.” – Instagram review – 09/10/2020
BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE was included on this list of stellar books by the fabulous S. James McLaughlin.
Have you ever wondered where the title BULLETS FOR SILVEWARE came from?
That is definitely the question I get asked the most about the book.
My brother Chris did a painting many years ago (see above) that depicted three young fellows passed-out on a couch in an apartment on the Monongahela River in Morgantown, WV after a two-day binge of different intoxicants.
Chris was with my other brother Jeff, and they snapped a Polaroid photo of their three drunken and slumbering friends.
Before the guys passed out, food was ordered from a local Chinese restaurant for delivery. After the food arrived, my two brothers went into the kitchen of the strange apartment in search of forks and spoons so they could eat.
They opened the silverware drawer. It was filled with nothing but bullets of many different sizes. They searched through all the drawers in the kitchen. They all were filled with bullets. There wasn’t a single fork or spoon in the entire apartment.
Chris was enrolled in art school at West Virginia University at the time and did the painting of the photograph and named it “BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE”.
As a young pharmacist in rural West Virginia, I witnessed and experienced some wild and hard-to-believe events, some very similar to the scene depicted in the painting by my brother.
I saw how prescription drug abuse could tear a small community apart where opportunities for legitimate employment and to improve one’s life were few.
Sometime around 2012, I began putting those experiences onto paper in the form of a fictious novel and completed it a few years later. I named the book “BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE”. When the book was finally published in May 2020 by PUMP FAKE PRESS, the painting was to be used for the cover. Because of size limitations, only one of the three passed out young men made the cut for the final cover of the book (see below).
BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE is available for purchase at http://www.jimantonini.com
Along with Jim’s other books- Wild Bill Rides Again, Like Falling from an Airplane, and The Hot Dog Diaries
EXCERPTS FROM BULLETS FOR SILVERWARE:
…We gazed into the dark October night. The sky was clear and smeared with stars. It was a new moon, and without the accompanying moonlight, the stars were especially bright and more plentiful than I’ve ever seen them before. We leaned back onto the blanket, resting our heads on the windshield, and stared above. The stars glittered and shimmered, almost as if alive and breathing. I pinched myself and was again convinced this was heaven. Neither of us said word for a few moments. I couldn’t help but wonder what Crystal was thinking. Still a mystery, she was as curious to me as all the secrets hidden among the stars over us.
“This is a beautiful place,” I said, breaking the silence and still staring at the sky. “And, it’s the first time I’ve noticed the stars here. After growing up in the noise and chaos of the big city, I’ve never seen or appreciated anything like it- this simple beauty.”
“Sadly, this area, and even us, have become scarred with warts and bruises,” she said, referring to washed out logging roads, the hollowed out and topped off hillsides from decades of coal mining, and the drug issues. “You just have to find the time and look up every now and then.”
I could tell she was a little cold, so I pulled her closer to me and wrapped the edge of the blanket around her.
“But you could live anywhere,” I said. “Why do you stay here?”
“Where would I go?”
“There’s a great big world out there. You’d be a star.”
“A star? Of what?”
“Anything you wanted.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You seem like a girl who gets what she wants.” “Maybe I like it here.”
xxx
…“We can stay here, at least until spring. There’s plenty of food and wood for the fireplace. And the Chicken Man will be open if we get bored.”
She glanced back to me.
“This feels like home.”
“What happens after spring?” I asked.
“Does it matter if we have each other?”
She turned and faced me. I edged my body closer. Her teary eyes sparkled in the dancing orange glow of the burning fire.
“I won’t leave Caldwell without you,” she said, reaching out her hand.
“I’d follow you to hell at this point,” I said, taking her hand in mine.
“You already have.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but I wouldn’t let her.
“I won’t let go this time.”
And I didn’t. I held her hand through the night and into the next morning as she fell asleep in my arms under a blanket on the floor. We kept the fire burning for days, not leaving the house. I tried not to think about what would happen next. Spring was out of sight and far away. As I pulled her body closer to mine, my future was more uncertain than ever- my life temporarily placed on hold. But I didn’t care. Never had I been so free. And we both were finally home…
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