#26: Five for Them, One for Me, with Wes Browne

Wes's latest, THEY ALL FALL THE SAME, is out January 7, 2025.

The joke between Wes Browne and I was, he’d written a book about a drug dealer but didn’t know he’d written a crime novel. That’s what he said when we were talking a few years back, not long after I’d read his Kentucky-set debut, HILLBILLY HUSTLE. I told him that not only had he written a crime novel, he’d written a damn fine one.

See, I’m a sucker for crime novels set in my home state, and besides the TV show JUSTIFIED (based on a character created by Elmore Leonard), the novels of Chris Offutt, and the work of Louisville partner-in-crime Rob Smith, the Commonwealth seemed to be relegated to true-crime and the occasional cozy.

Wes is helping change that. His latest novel, THEY ALL FALL THE SAME, is a rural thriller soaked in blood and bourbon that sits comfortably alongside S.A. Cosby, David Joy, and Donald Ray Pollock—who have all also praised the book—while also acting as an incisive character study of its protagonist, pot dealer Burl Spoon. It’s full of audacious choices and characters pushed to the edge. Wes crafts this story with a knowing cultural eye and gallows humor that makes THEY ALL FALL THE SAME more than just another southern-fried noir.

Wes is also the latest Five for Them, One for Me.

Let’s go.

FIVE FOR THEM

1. Your new book is THEY ALL FALL THE SAME. Tell us about the origin point for the story.

Burl Spoon is a backwoods kingpin in Kentucky at the height of his powers. The backbone of his empire is an illegal cannabis operation, but he has diversified into countless other businesses—some legal, and some more gray in color. His guiding principle can best be summed up as “Do what you have to do,” and there are very few restraints on his behavior because he sits at the top of his local food chain. Law enforcement and the legal system are in his pocket, and the people around him mostly give him what he wants or stay out of his way. The glaring exception is his family. He has tried to run his family like he does everything else, but the problem with that is, they don’t bend to his will. In fact, the only one who still sees him in the light he likes to see himself is his granddaughter, who he dotes on endlessly. He’s never been terribly loyal to his wife, so she responds in kind. His daughter is ungovernable. His son came out, and they no longer speak. It is this fraying of family ties that makes him vulnerable. Those vulnerabilities catch up to him all at once.

2. THEY ALL FALL THE SAME finds the return of Burl Spoon, the antagonist of your first novel, HILLBILLY HUSTLE. Here, he’s the protagonist, though he’s definitely not a “hero.” Talk a little about shifting a character from one role to another.

The story I told in HILLBILLY HUSTLE was over. Even so, the one character that stayed with me was Burl Spoon. I thought about writing a character similar to him, but that didn’t really make any sense. I already had his rhythms so down. So I started from scratch with a new story about him. At the beginning, he’s pretty much the same as he was in Hustle. Riding high, seemingly invulnerable and untouchable, but that’s never true of anyone. When someone like that comes down, it’s violent and fast. I got captivated with how Burl would handle that.

Writing someone who is fundamentally not a good person, and doing it in a way that readers still pull for them, kind of epitomizes what I like to do as a writer. There’s humanity and potential for redemption in just about everyone. So you have to find subtle ways to get that across without losing the character’s essential nature. If I think about it, that’s what I’ve done as a criminal defense attorney my entire adult life. Try to convince people that someone who’s done something bad has potential for good in them. Burl Spoon is just another client, I guess. More interesting though.

3. A thing I loved about THEY ALL FALL THE SAME is how very Kentucky it feels. It’s a novel so specifically of a place, and you nail the particular rhythms of the region and its role on the characters in such a way that this book couldn’t have been set anywhere else. What role did region play as you wrote the book?

For me to write this book, Kentucky was the only option. I’ve spent the past twenty-five years practicing law here in dozens of communities. I know people who get into the kind of trouble I write about, who have the types of relationships I write about, and who see the world in the way my characters see the world.

When you’re an attorney, you get insight into the deepest darkest recesses of people’s lives because they tell you all about it. A lot of times they lie to you, so you develop a really good bullshit detector. I just don’t think there’s any way to get a better education in human nature—good and bad—and a place, than that.

Most of the locations I write about, I’ve gone to for work, or I have friends there, or both. I like to hang around, eat in local restaurants, go to convenience stores and junk stores, and talk to people. Then there’s the courthouses. I’ve spent hours on end in back rooms at courthouses, killing time with other attorneys, courthouse staff, police officers, defendants, judges, just shooting the breeze. Add to that what I’ve seen and heard in jails. I also work in other businesses, so there are whole other worlds of people I deal with on a daily basis. I could write about somewhere else, and I do, but right now, Kentucky and Kentucky characters come the most naturally.

4. Part of THEY ALL FALL THE SAME takes place during the COVID pandemic, and there are several plot points related to things such as masking. Some writers have stated they’re not sure if they’ll ever be able to write about the pandemic; what made you decide to not just explore it, but incorporate it into the story?

I wrote the first half of THEY ALL FALL THE SAME in 2019 before my first book came out, and the second half in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. I was kind of depressed about writing, because HILLBILLY HUSTLE had momentum, but it came out literally right as the pandemic started in 2020. It was awful timing, honestly, but so much worse happened to people that I couldn’t be whiny about it. I was pretty depressed though, so I went back to writing the new book as a way to soothe myself, and by the end of 2020, the first draft was done.

The timing of the various parts of the book correspond with when I was writing them, and that’s how I landed on writing the pandemic. I had more than one beta reader suggest it was risky, and I questioned it myself, but then I thought if other writers were avoiding it, maybe it would help the book stand out. So I leaned into it, but not too hard. It’s there, and it has a big effect on the story, but I tried to make sure it wasn’t overbearing. This is not a book about the pandemic. It is a book with the pandemic as a backdrop that hopefully adds to the drama and texture.

5. While it’s a great crime novel, THEY ALL FALL THE SAME is also a social novel. Besides the COVID pandemic, you discuss opioid addiction, poverty, homophobia, and civil unrest. Discuss how you balance those themes while still delivering on the genre expectations of readers.

First and foremost, I was trying to write a compelling and exciting story that read like real life. Those issues are facts of life, and in some cases particularly prominent facts of life in Kentucky. I’m not someone who writes books about social issues, and I’m not someone who gets didactic, or moralistic. I’m not the right person to do that. I don’t profess to be flawless myself. Some of my own flaws are the reasons I’ve had to confront and come to better understand some of those issues and what underpins them. I’m sure that informs how I write about them.

I try to present those themes in realistic ways that add to the depth of the story in a way that isn’t too heavy-handed, and then have my characters react. My characters may discuss those issues, but I try to never tell readers what they should think. If people see something from an angle they didn’t before, great. But readers have to come conclusions on their own.

ONE FOR ME

In addition to being a writer and a practicing attorney, you also own and operate a chain of pizza shops. What’s your favorite style of pizza, and what’s your go-to pizza order?

I moved to Kentucky in 1996 to attend law school, but I was born and raised 30 minutes outside of Detroit, so I came up on Detroit-style pizza. That’s still my number one. My favorite place was Shield’s Pizza in Southfield near my grandma’s house, not far from the corner of Nine Mile and Telegraph.

It’s hard to name just one, but my go-to pizza order since I was a kid is ham, pepperoni, and mushroom. I leave off the pepperoni more often now to be a little healthier and because my wife prefers it without.

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SHAMELESS SHILLING

I’ve been a fan of Colin Conway’s 509 anthologies since the first one, EVICTION OF HOPE, back in 2021. Each one’s been stacked with talent, and recognized with award nominations and inclusions in the annual Best American Mystery and Suspense collections. The themes allow for a variety of styles and voices, but each one guarantees that, as a reader, you were going to have a good time.

So when I saw Colin at Left Coast Crime in Seattle earlier this year, I thought I’d toss my hat in the ring for a future volume. However, Colin swore he wasn’t doing anymore; they were a lot of work, he said, and he’s always juggling a variety of projects. To be fair, I couldn’t blame him.

Seems a few other writers also told Colin he should do another anthology—at least, it’s what he says in his introduction to LOST & LOADED, A GUN’S TALE, his latest 509 Crime Anthology. (Maybe the pressure got to him.) Whatever the reason, when he pitched me the premise for LOST & LOADED—follow the same revolver as it winds up in the hands of numerous wrong people—I was in.

LOST & LOADED is out today. My story “Do You See the Light?” follows the gun alongside a record store clerk and a down-on-his-luck party clown with the plan to steal a classic blues album. As you'd expect, shit goes awry. It’s a story that was inspired by a scene in THE BLUES BROTHERS—yes, that scene—before veering completely off the rails by the end. Colin let me embrace a generous amount of weirdness here, and I hope y’all enjoy it.

I’ll also say I’ve read the other stories in the collection, and I think it’s the strongest one yet. Here’s hoping Colin keeps ‘em coming.

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That’s all we’ve got for now. Thanks for coming. See you next time, and hey, let’s be careful out there.