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Outlaw Custom — Henry Joseph
After a violent encounter with the Feds, retired ‘herb' smugglers Bobby Joe (of Choctaw descent), Dev (possessing preternatural strength), and Jack Lee, move up to a mountain estate in Visconde de Mauá in Brazil. They each have women in their lives: Bobby Joe has a young son with an old love from the States, Dev has settled with a Brazilian lady, and Jack is in a celibate marriage with an old love who allows him space to pursue his spiritual practice. On the surface, all seems well, but forces are building from two different directions that could combine into a deadly pincer movement.
João Silva, an old Brazilian friend from their days at the University of Georgia, visits with news of the systematic murdering of street children all over Brazil. João He tells them he is going to try to stop it, and speaks of another old friend who oversees a ‘herb' plantation in Bahia. He breaks out samples and speaks of the millions of dollars he will need to defend the street children. Bobby Joe rolls a fat joint and then stuns his friends with an announcement. He proposes they come out of retirement to smuggle one last load to help João's cause.
This sets in train a series of events with mortal consequences. A load is successfully smuggled into the United States, and João is given the money. However, enemies emerge and they find common interest with the extra-legal U.S. agents who are in pursuit of the trio. A combined force launches a raid on the estate, but it has nothing to do with warrants, or arrests. Jack Lee is not present when it occurs at dawn one day, but hears the helicopters and afterwards discovers all of his friends and loved ones shot dead, except for Bobby Joe's son. He goes on the hunt and ultimately finds and kills the one who led the raid, and in the process uncovers secrets that leave him reeling. After securing Bobby Joe's son into the custody of João's lifetime love, he takes passage on a tramp freighter bound for India. Once again he is alone, bereft, and with blood on his hands, with the ringing words of his guru in his ears, spoken some twenty years before and now seemingly bitterly prophetic and utterly accurate.
The Author: Henry Joseph wrote six picaresque novels (pi.ca.resque -- adj: relating to the adventures of rogues) between 1992 and 1999. The first, Bloodwork: The New Rugged Cross, was published in hard cover in the U.S.A. and was broadly acclaimed by critics and fellow writers alike.
“. . . the most powerful first novel I've read in years. It's wonderful,” said James Crumley, author of The Mexican Tree Duck and Border Snakes, to whom Henry has been favorably compared.
“. . . sheer storytelling brio,” declared Frank Wilson in The New York Times Book Review. “… riveting …compelling… foreshadows a long, successful career,” said Bruce Southworth in The Drood Review of Mystery.
In France, Cedric Fabre, in L'Humanite said of Dinosaur Heaven, the second book in the series, “startling and magnificent, beyond jubilation: we enter a part of ourselves we were unaware of: Joseph is a terrific smuggler of tears.”
Yet, through the weirdness of modern publishing, Bloodwork was the only book of Henry Joseph's to be published in English. His next five novels were all published (like the first) in France, with excellent critical review, but not in English. This strange aberration is now to be corrected, with publication by Astor + Blue Editions of all of the Dinosaur Heaven Quintet series in English.
In 2001, Henry Joseph decided to retire from worldly affairs, including writing, focusing instead on a spiritual life of yoga and Buddhism. But now, at least, his acid, moving, and witty storytelling can be enjoyed more widely than before. They are true page turners " a world of outlaws, by which is meant anyone who toys with the idea that they are an outlaw. There may not be as many around as there should be, but maybe reading Henry's novels will change all that . . .
João Silva, an old Brazilian friend from their days at the University of Georgia, visits with news of the systematic murdering of street children all over Brazil. João He tells them he is going to try to stop it, and speaks of another old friend who oversees a ‘herb' plantation in Bahia. He breaks out samples and speaks of the millions of dollars he will need to defend the street children. Bobby Joe rolls a fat joint and then stuns his friends with an announcement. He proposes they come out of retirement to smuggle one last load to help João's cause.
This sets in train a series of events with mortal consequences. A load is successfully smuggled into the United States, and João is given the money. However, enemies emerge and they find common interest with the extra-legal U.S. agents who are in pursuit of the trio. A combined force launches a raid on the estate, but it has nothing to do with warrants, or arrests. Jack Lee is not present when it occurs at dawn one day, but hears the helicopters and afterwards discovers all of his friends and loved ones shot dead, except for Bobby Joe's son. He goes on the hunt and ultimately finds and kills the one who led the raid, and in the process uncovers secrets that leave him reeling. After securing Bobby Joe's son into the custody of João's lifetime love, he takes passage on a tramp freighter bound for India. Once again he is alone, bereft, and with blood on his hands, with the ringing words of his guru in his ears, spoken some twenty years before and now seemingly bitterly prophetic and utterly accurate.
The Author: Henry Joseph wrote six picaresque novels (pi.ca.resque -- adj: relating to the adventures of rogues) between 1992 and 1999. The first, Bloodwork: The New Rugged Cross, was published in hard cover in the U.S.A. and was broadly acclaimed by critics and fellow writers alike.
“. . . the most powerful first novel I've read in years. It's wonderful,” said James Crumley, author of The Mexican Tree Duck and Border Snakes, to whom Henry has been favorably compared.
“. . . sheer storytelling brio,” declared Frank Wilson in The New York Times Book Review. “… riveting …compelling… foreshadows a long, successful career,” said Bruce Southworth in The Drood Review of Mystery.
In France, Cedric Fabre, in L'Humanite said of Dinosaur Heaven, the second book in the series, “startling and magnificent, beyond jubilation: we enter a part of ourselves we were unaware of: Joseph is a terrific smuggler of tears.”
Yet, through the weirdness of modern publishing, Bloodwork was the only book of Henry Joseph's to be published in English. His next five novels were all published (like the first) in France, with excellent critical review, but not in English. This strange aberration is now to be corrected, with publication by Astor + Blue Editions of all of the Dinosaur Heaven Quintet series in English.
In 2001, Henry Joseph decided to retire from worldly affairs, including writing, focusing instead on a spiritual life of yoga and Buddhism. But now, at least, his acid, moving, and witty storytelling can be enjoyed more widely than before. They are true page turners " a world of outlaws, by which is meant anyone who toys with the idea that they are an outlaw. There may not be as many around as there should be, but maybe reading Henry's novels will change all that . . .
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