A Single Shot

When Moon holds his little boy seemingly for the first time after he has broken into Moira’s apartment, he discovers he is less capable of comforting the child than the babysitter who has made a wreck of the place and invited a man over as Moon’s child sleeps in the next room. Do you think this is evidence enough to show whether Moon would have made a good father to his son? Do you think Moon, like his father before him, would have been viewed as a disappointment to the generation he raises?

Daggard Pitt, Moon’s lawyer, appears at first to be on Moon’s side. Later, Moon finds out he has been representing the interests of the thieves who have come after Moon at the same time. Do you find this to be moral behavior? How much does Pitt’s job as defender of the accused affect how you view the nature of his decisions?

What do you make of the many hallucinations Moon experiences of the woman he has killed? Particularly, do you find the sexual nature of many of them to be expected? What reason, subconsciously or consciously, do you think Moon has for giving the dead girl a personality and thoughts of her own, despite having never met the girl before her death?

To what extent is Moon’s assertion that the “bad thing” he refers to in his letters “was nobody’s fault” accurate? Is Moon culpable? Who in the novel is most culpable? Who is least culpable?

A Single Shot has something in common with the plot of a Greek tragedy. Do you consider Moon to have a tragic flaw? If so, what is it?

Contents

FRONT COVER IMAGE

WELCOME

DEDICATION

READING GROUP GUIDE

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

SIX ANGLES OF WRATH

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY MATTHEW F. JONES

SPECTACULAR PRAISE FOR MATTHEW F. JONES’S A SINGLE SHOT

THE BAYOU TRILOGY

A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF

FUN AND GAMES

COPYRIGHT

About the Author

Matthew F. Jones’s 1999 novel Deepwater was adapted for a 2006 film of the same title. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

ALSO BY MATTHEW F. JONES

The Cooter Farm

The Elements of Hitting

Blind Pursuit

Deepwater

Boot Tracks

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The Bayou Trilogy

Under the Bright Lights • Muscle for the Wing • The Ones You Do

By Daniel Woodrell

Collected for the first time in a single volume—three early works of crime fiction by a major American novelist.

“A backcountry Shakespeare…. The inhabitants of Daniel Woodrell’s fiction often have a streak that’s not just mean but savage; yet physical violence does not dominate his books. What does dominate is a seasoned fatalism…. Woodrell has tapped into a novelist’s honesty, and lucky for us, he’s remorseless that way.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Daniel Woodrell writes with an insistent rhythm and an evocative and poetic regional flavor.”

—The New Yorker

“Woodrell writes books so good they make me clench my fists in jealousy and wonder.”

—Esquire

“What people say about Cormac McCarthy goes double for Daniel Woodrell. Possibly more.”

—New York

Mulholland Books • Available wherever books are sold

Also available from Mulholland Books

A Drop of the Hard Stuff

A novel

By Lawrence Block

“Good to the last drop… a Great American Crime Novel…. The perfect introduction to Scudder’s shadow-strewn world and the pleasures of Block’s crisp yet brooding prose…. A Drop of the Hard Stuff reads like it’s been jolted by factory-fresh defibrillator pads, as Scudder recalls his first, nerve-rattling year of sobriety. Block makes the hard work of sobriety totally gripping…. A bracing distillation of Block’s powers.”

—Ed Park, Time

“Moving… Elegiac… Satisfying…. Right up there with Mr. Block’s best.”

—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal

“Block is a mesmerizing raconteur…. [The book is] a lament for all the old familiar things that are now almost lost, almost forgotten.”

—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

Mulholland Books • Available wherever books are sold

Also available from Mulholland Books

Fun and Games

A novel

By Duane Swierczynski

“Insanely entertaining.”

—Josh Bazell, author of the New York Times bestseller Beat the Reaper

“More exciting than whatever you are reading right now.”

—Ed Brubaker, author of Criminal and Incognito

“Cool, suspenseful, tragic, and funny as hell, Fun and Games is Duane Swierczynski’s best yet. I haven’t had this much fun reading in a long time.”

—Sara Gran, author of Dope and Come Closer

“A white-hot nuclear explosion.”

—Joe R. Lansdale, author of The Bottoms

Mulholland Books • Available wherever books are sold

Spectacular Praise for Matthew F. Jones’s

A SINGLE SHOT