“Witty, Nuanced, and Overall Entertaining”: A Conversation with Wes Browne https://ift.tt/T13gDqc
If you wanna take a hell-ride into central Kentucky, read Wes Browne’s newest novel, They All Fall the Same. The book comes on the heels of his excellent Hillbilly Hustle, a fantastic read in itself. But the more recent novel exhibits the full horizon of Browne’s literary abilities. Propulsive plotting is only part of the draw. Browne is a master of dialogue and character, and unlike so many mystery novels, the book possesses true depth. To wit, it explores the intersecting themes of family, loyalty, love, and the awful power of place. Of course, maybe the most compelling aspect of the novel is Browne’s terrifying main character, Burl Spoon, the head of a criminal outfit at odds with another local crew. From the outset, Burl is bent on revenge, a path he follows for better or ill. Root for him, or root against him. Either way, you’ll have to follow along. Ain’t no two ways about it, this book is a page-turner.
Wes Browne lives within the Kentucky River Basin in Madison County, Kentucky. He has practiced law as a criminal defense attorney, prosecutor, and public defender in Appalachia for over 24 years. He also helps run his family’s pizza shops. His novel They All Fall the Same was named one of The Best Books of 2025 (So Far) by Book Riot, and one of 2025’s Biggest Mysteries and Thrillers by Goodreads. His 2020 debut Hillbilly Hustle was named one of Merriam-Webster’s Best Lockdown Reads.
Great to talk to you again, my friend and fellow Kentuckian. To start, I’d like to ask you about the ideas of loyalty and family in They All Fall the Same. The book revolves around a revenge plot involving two feuding criminal outfits, “clans,” if you will. Family ties figure crucially, as well as allegiances forged over time and around certain places. What does this say about the people and mindset of central Kentucky? Are the criminal outfits an extension of (less criminal?) cultural formations?
If you spend any time in Kentucky at all, you’ll hear a lot about the close bonds of family, especially in rural areas. What that means is incredibly varied and oftentimes imperfect.
Burl Spoon is really more of an eastern Kentucky guy, but he comes from a fractured family where his mother wasn’t able to raise him and his father abused him. After he rises to power and has a family of his own, he believes himself to be an ideal patriarch, but that’s a role that was never modeled for him in his own life.
What he views as idyllic relationships with both his children become strained as soon as they pass out of early adolescence and his influence over them wanes. That’s why he’s shifted his attention to his granddaughter, who’s too young to register his many flaws. He’s most interested in the admiration and adoration phase. That tracks with his role as a crime boss, where the people he pays seldom question him.
His wife has tolerated his infidelity for years but when she finally strays, that’s unacceptable to him. What he sees as being a strong figure in his family in actuality is his feeling of entitlement to do as he pleases while others bend to his will. As the book makes clear, that is a weakness, not a strength.
Both Burl and his nemesis, Clovis Begley, are far more effective at forming tight-knit units around their criminal enterprises. In Clovis’s case, his family is also his organization in a way Burl’s isn’t. That cohesion is at times to Clovis’s advantage, but it also makes him vulnerable. Any time he puts a subordinate at risk, he’s put family at risk. Burl’s men are employees, none of whom would even be helping him if it weren’t for money, and while he cares about them to a point, he’s far more cavalier about risking their lives. In some ways, that’s tactically helpful.
Burl Spoon is a conniving, unethical, and thoroughly vicious character. He’s also loving and devoted to many in his circle. Indeed, much of the strength of the novel revolves around this simultaneously likable and loathsome character. He’s a big part of what keeps us so interested as readers. Can you say something about why you chose to make Burl the heavy in this book and tell us how you went about creating him, about shaping him to fit a narrative in which so many people are at odds with him?
The initial concept for the book was to follow the downfall of a seemingly untouchable kingpin, and to show how when something like that happens, it tends to be quick and violent. I had written Burl as a side character in my debut novel, Hillbilly Hustle, and he turned out to be a fan favorite because he’s witty, nuanced, and overall entertaining. When I started They All Fall the Same, it didn’t make sense to write another character like Burl when I knew the character so well and readers were so drawn to him.
Both books are standalones but They All Fall the Same has reached a much larger audience. We’re finding that people who love it then go read Hillbilly Hustle as a sort of origin story and really enjoy it. I’ve started recommending reading them in that order.
Kentucky mystery writer Chris Offutt, who says wonderful things about your book, notes that dialogue isn’t meant to represent how people actually speak to one another. And yet, the dialogue in both of your novels comes off as genuine. Specifically, we know as readers that we’re in the world of rural Kentucky. This can be a tricky thing. How do you manage dialogue in a novel like this, with rural speakers who could devolve into caricatures without proper care?
If you’ve ever smoked a pork butt and pulled it, you know that good pulled pork is what you have left after you strip out and throw away a lot of excess that nobody would want to eat. That same thing applies to dialogue. I’ve made my living as an attorney for many years, and I can tell you, if you’ve ever read transcript testimony, it’s awful. There’s too much there that detracts from the exchanges. Good written dialogue leaves a lot out.
I’ve listened obsessively to the way people in Kentucky speak, especially in rural areas. It’s glorious. There’s a music to it. I get in my car and carry on conversations with myself from the mouths of people I’ve heard speak just as a means of entertainment. I take that same energy to the page. I suspect every good writer of dialogue reads it back aloud. If it doesn’t flow, if it’s not easy and natural to say, I rewrite it until it is. I find no need to write in dialect or alter the spelling or words unless there is some very compelling reason — there aren’t many. If I’m doing the job, readers will intuit the way characters sound.
Your work employs violence in places, especially in They All Fall the Same. Characters can be with us one moment and gone the next. This involves some serious consideration. How do you manage violence on the scale that you do? That is to say, do you worry about alienating readers, about where to draw a line so that your narrative remains “dangerous,” but not gratuitous?
Violence will repel certain readers the same way cursing does. I can’t worry about that. Not if I want to be authentic and honest. As an attorney, I’ve had to reckon with the real consequences of violence, so I write about it plainly and sparely to make the action clear, but I don’t luxuriate in it. When I feel like a writer is reveling in gory details, or straining to make the violence as horrifying as possible, that repels even me.
I look at every good character I write as equity built. When one of them dies, that’s equity spent to move the reader. To evoke an emotional response. If you spare every loved character and kill all the despicable ones, the emotions become very muted and the story is flat. You have to make the reader feel some lows in order for them to experience higher highs.
I’ve heard you say that your editor, Sara J. Henry, was crucial to the development of this book. How was the book written and then edited? Can you discuss your working relationship with your editor, in other words?
My road to publishing my first novel in 2020 was over twenty years in the making and involved a number of finished but abandoned books. I got nervous that after Hillbilly Hustle came out I would get blocked, so I wrote half of They All Fall the Same in the leadup to my debut’s release. I wrote the second half after, which was during the pandemic. Then I rewrote it several times following rounds of beta reads.
My agent, Alice Speilburg, had me rewrite the first chapter, and I did, and we decided we both liked the original version better and reverted. Then it went out. Sara acquired it and was the perfect editor for the book. She has told me it was possibly the lightest edit she has ever had to do because it was fairly well-honed after all my previous rewrites, but she persuaded me to make several critical and significant changes. We were really on a good common wavelength and it shows. Sara was able to make the finished book so much better because of that connection.
Women occupy an interesting place in the world of The All Fall the Same. The book’s criminal organizations are heavily male-centric. And yet, Burl’s wife, his daughter, his granddaughter, his mistress, and other female characters figure importantly in the evocation of themes and in the evolution of plot. They are strong characters who make courageous choices in places. You could have written a male-centered novel, a book about feuding crime organizations, but you didn’t. How do the female characters figure into your broader themes?
Burl is essentially a disaster. Even when successful, his better instincts are overshadowed by his flaws. That’s what leads to his downfall. The women in his life are who keep him from spiraling out entirely. He doesn’t know that at the beginning of the book, but by the end, he does. I think that’s pretty much in keeping with real life. Men with power bore ahead and throw things into ruin, and it’s so often women who have to bear the consequences and try to course correct. I try to write genuinely, and I can’t think of anything more genuine than that.
You’ve done a good deal of work in writing workshops, both as a participant and as a mentor/instructor. How have your work developed as a result of formal workshops and writing programs?
I can thank the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop for getting me off the ground. I went five times as a student and was recently honored to go back and teach. That was my first real writing community and I met so many of my friends and writing confidants there. It’s where I found teachers who led me forward and peers whose writing styles align with mine. Leaning on them for feedback is what elevated my work. I’ve gone to other workshops like Tin House and the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival, and those pushed me along even farther. I’ve also made some great friends in the crime writing community, and we all help each other. If you find your people, you will find your voice.
What’s on the horizon for you? Do you have plans for a new novel?
I just finished a rewrite on my new one which is currently titled Twentynine Palms Highway. It’s crime fiction but it’s a departure for me in terms of setting. Think HBO’s Barry meets Baby Driver meets the nineties movie True Romance all set in the Nevada and California desert.
Thanks so much for talking with me again, Wes. Always a pleasure. Congratulations on the wildly successful They All Fall the Same.
Thanks, man!
FICTION They All Fall the Same
By Wes Browne
Crooked Lane Books
Published January 7, 2025
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