The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne: “One of the best crime novels of 2025”

‘A tour de force’
Guardian

‘A bloody yet surprisingly warm-hearted spin on The Godfather. Great stuff’
The Times, Best Thrillers of 2025

Babs Dionne, doting grandmother and vicious crime matriarch, rules her small town with an iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into its borders with the help of her loyal lieutenants, girlfriends since they were teenagers, and her eldest daughter, Lori, a former soldier struggling with addiction.

When a drug cartel discovers that its numbers are down in the area, they send a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate. At the same time, Babs’s youngest daughter, Sis, has gone missing, which doesn’t seem at all like a coincidence. In twenty-four hours, Sis will be found dead, and the whole town will seek shelter from Babs’s wrath…