Five Dollar Bounty

The Crimes of Woodson Fulk, Book 1

By: Nicholas S. Casale

Narrated by: Sean Redfield

Railroad worker Woodson Fulk wants nothing more than to keep his head down, do his job, and live out his days in peace. However, when his sister comes to him covered in bruises that her husband gave her, Fulk’s rage drives him to murder the wife-beater.

With his brother-in-law’s blood on his hands, Fulk goes on the run, looking for a place that he can lay low and wait out the law. He soon finds an old shepherd and his grandson who are being harassed by local cattlemen. Fulk offers to scare off the ruffians in exchange for room and board. But he soon discovers that it’s more than just a few foul-tempered men who’ve been raising hell for this poor old shepherd, and in time, Fulk finds himself exactly where he never wanted to be: at odds with the law.

©2021 Nicholas S Casale (P)2022 Nicholas S Casale

A rough beginning for a rough character

This was... really short, and I wouldn't say in a good way, either. I'm not sure what kind of accent the narrator was going for most of the time, and as I'm pretty sure this takes place in Utah, the general southern/lousiana southern, and east coast southern that he slides around just doesn't work a lot of the time. When there are a lot of characters in the scene, I also had a hard time telling people apart.

While I liked this book since I like westerns generally, I felt like there was never any attention paid to scenery at all. Not even a throwaway line about the dusty air, or the mountains and their color, or the smell of the land, no appeal to the other senses most anywhere, unless we're talking about how bad our protagonist, Woodson, smells. A sense of space, a little bit of color here and there, even just a line to ground us would have been nice. I don't need all of the details on a china cup, but just something, please.

Additionally, while there isn't much of it on account of how short the book is, the dialogue suffers from "he said/she said" every time it appears. Perhaps this is something that means more in audio format, but that's not exactly an excuse.

Finally, the last complaint of mine is the pacing. Ten minutes here, next scene, ten minutes there, next scene, ten minutes elsewhere, next scene. It's rapid, consistent, and often makes scenes fall flat when they aren't given any breathing room.

While it's a decent set up to what could be a great redemption arc for a character who's not been dealt a great hand to begin with, it's rough around the edges as it is.