"Eventually I became who I am, a somewhat educated hillbilly who keeps his diction stunted down out of crippling allegiances to his roots."

Doyle Redmond, failed teacher and no Stephen King, is going back "someplace that didn't have any bench warrants out on me" - the red, rocky Ozark soil his card-carrying White Trash kin have tended and feuded over for generations. In the rear of a Volvo 'borrowed' from his estranged wife is a pistol in a pillowcase.

At home are granddaddy Panda - "if (his) face was carved on the prow of a seagoing vessel, it'd be a vessel that didn't get fucked with much" - and older brother Smoke - "who after he'd opened a bottle of whisky would throw the cap away". Smoke lives with Big Annie, and Big Annie's 17-year-old "hillbillyette beauty" Nigara Mattux, who fixes on the love of a good man like the ponytailed Doyle.

The 35-year-old "baby bro" is groping for a reason, a hook to escape; Smoke has him securing the "money garden" of Afghan Razorback Red he's about readying to harvest. Run-ins with the "butthole cousin" law and other interested local in-breds keep his life sparking.

Daniel Woodrell's written good books before - Under The Bright Lights, Muscle for The Wing - but this self-styled "Country Noir" is the best. Doyle's been away long enough, learned enough, to have perspective, but not enough to slight blood kin when the bullets start flying. Where drink and sex are concerned, he's to this manor born.

Woodrell keeps his ladystinger prose afloat by not writing down to our expectations: "Cupid was a silent partner in this criminal conspiracy, or maybe it was that gnat-ball destiny"; "Her champagne blond hair seemed like a lightbulb in the moonlight". The Redmonds might be trash but they ain't dumb. Big rivals the Dollys, now they're pig-dumb. It's their job.

As a consequence Woodrell actually makes us care for Doyle and Smoke and Big Annie and especially Nigara, whose cut-offs might vanish up the crack of her ass, but who harbours dreams of Hollywood and The Method and already has her first screenplay. Even her dog, with Macbethian weight, is called Damned Spot.

Give Us A Kiss is the modern crime novel as a sharp, funky, funny hillbilly hay-ride. Woodrell is a man in love with Willeford, Chandler, Cain and, obviously, Raymond Carver, and his novel puts a lie to that the over-used aphorism that a book with a Roddy Doyle strap-line sucks: "Woodrell is a marvellous writer". He's not wrong.