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Tim Willocks, British writer, psychiatrist training, began his literary career by working in the dark novel, dirty and murky, before taking the tangent of the historical novel in the most epic pretensions (recently: the triptych dedicated to the character Mattias whose Tanhauser he signed the first two volumes: Religion / The twelve children of Paris).
Bad City Blues is his first novel.

Louisiana. Nowadays. Callilou said Callie Carter is a former cocaine addict and prostitute, married to Cleveland Carter, reverend of the local parish and vice president of the Mercantile Trust Bank. With the support of Luther Grimes, a former Vietnam veteran and large ugly, she commits the case of the century by steering the bank from her husband. Total: one million dollars to share. But the beautiful has other projects in mind ... To double his accomplice, she seduces her brother, Eugene Cicero Grimes, idealistic and crazy psychiatrist. The brothers have not seen for ages and nourish one another visceral hatred. When Clarence Seymour Jefferson, corrupt cop to the core, gets wind of the affair, he decided to go after them. Suffice to say that its goal is nothing altruistic and delivering justice is the least of his worries: he has too get in on the bonanza.

With this first novel, Tim Willocks signs a harsh thriller, incisive and hysterical. He cuts his prose vitriolic characters full of testosterone, the dominant males, real hard leather lined pathological bastards who come under almost mythological stature. Luther Grimes is one. Former Vietnam veteran, he served in the 101st Airborne. Back from the war, he got a place in drug trafficking. In the middle, is nicknamed, "Dum-Dum", referring to the high penetration effect bullets that are wreaking havoc in the ranks Vietcong. Aquiline profile. Eagle nose. Long ponytail. There is ground to handle weapons: killing is his job. He talks to Callie his accomplice a sulphurous connection, and nourishes hopes to rank at the end of their case. His brother, Eugene, is a psychiatrist who supports patients handpicked: cocaine, heroin, misfits of all kinds ... the dregs of society. He could make a fortune in his profession but preferred to opt for a tidy lifestyle, preferring solitude and discretion. It is an old fire station in skid row. A man with gray eyes, with nerves of steel, muscular body by practicing karate. When Callie comes knocking at his door at the end of the robbery, she plunged into cocaine. It supports it, and, without doubt for a second that she is an accomplice of a robbery committed by his own brother, succumbed to its charm. The character of Jefferson, rotten, sadistic cop, also belongs to the register of mythical characters: a real bull with his body over a hundred and twenty kilos subjected to daily fitness training. Undaunted, physical resistance to any event, coldly calculating, with an intelligence above the average, it passed expert in psychological torture, that he will not fail to wear during his escapade. ..

Willocks talent in this first novel, is to dig deep psyche of his characters. His psychiatrist liabilities are obviously not for nothing ... We feel, causing the thickness of the protagonists, injected a healthy dose of experience in romantic fiction. There is neither nice nor nasty in Bad City Blues. Manichaeism is not appropriate. Evil is everywhere, it infects all the characters. The two brothers, sworn enemies, have a heavy burden to their credit, and undoubtedly accounts to settle. If Luther is a killer devoid of scruple, Eugene also has its dark side. Jefferson, the corrupt cop, is not free either. A past determines his conduct and explicit its violence, suppressed rage, his perversity. The talented Willocks is to discover little by little, at the discretion of the plot, the root causes, buried trauma that marked these characters and their legitimate today dementia. A still latent insanity, the player rubs with a dangerous attendance, like a tightrope walker balanced on its edge. Bad City Blues is obviously violent. Violent because he cheerfully plunges into the darkness of the human soul and bathes it with ever unhealthy enjoyment. Willocks dissects the behavior of his characters with the precision of an entomologist. And what he shows us is not especially encouraging. Violent, Bad City Blues is also in its action scenes and explicit sex, sent to the peepers drive with an almost cinematic firepower. It défouraille, that torture and fuck it. It's full of sweat, blood and debauchery. It sticks to the fingers because it's tacky. And it will certainly not leave you indifferent.

If Bad City Blues was to be a gesture, it would be a punch. For a first novel, Tim Willocks the strikes us severely. It shows a certain talent to camp major characters of XXL, the thugs, sadists neurotics who are not without their attendant wrestle demons. From beginning to end, the entire novel macerated in bad luck of a climate of physical tension, sexual and psychological giving it an aura poisonous fundamentally unhealthy, deliciously claustrophobic. Bad City Blues or the crucible of evil: this is what makes its charm.