Fika With Vicky - Author Brad Smith - Crime Fiction Copperhead Road & The Goliath Run

This week I’m welcoming Author Brad Smith to Fika with Vicky. We’ll be looking into two of his crime fiction novels Copperhead Road and The Goliath Run. Copperhead Road was a Dashiell Hammett Prize Finalist. 

Fast paced and gritty, these are two very different works. And yet, there’s something that binds them together. Please join us as we explore that connection and more. 

About Copperhead Road: 

Summer 1936, Wilkes County, North Carolina during the great depression. The Flagg family resides in the middle of the Appalachia – one of the hardest hit areas in the country. As the depression drags on the Flag family watch their molasses business decimated. Jedediah, the family patriarch and his sons Morgan andEzra struggle to produce a few meager gallons a week. That is until their sister Ava arrives home and takes control of the family business and starts running moonshine. Ava bails out ex-con Bobby Barlow and tells him he is working for the Flagg family now. With threats mounting from rival clans and the local cops breathing down Bobby's neck, he and Ava devise a plan to play them all, one against the other. They don't necessarily do it by legal means but that doesn't bother them. To live outside the law, you must be honest.

About The Goliath Run:

When a deranged loner kills twenty-six people in a Pennsylvania schoolyard, the country is stunned and devastated. Among those catatonic with grief is Jo Matheson, an organic farmer who has lost her goddaughter in the shooting.

Sam Jackson, an egotistical right-wing TV talking head, has sliding ratings and faces imminent cancellation. He arrives in Pennsylvania and during a rant, he blames the parents of the dead children. He intends the tirade to be his last salvo but, incredibly, his ratings climb, while Jo watches from her farmhouse in upstate New York, incensed.

Sam rides the wave, shouting that it’s time to take the country back from the left-wing weaklings who don’t have the courage to protect their children. When he is asked to run for Congress, he accepts and amplifies his message. Watching these developments in horror, Jo finally decides that there actually is something she can do.

She kidnaps Sam’s ten-year-old daughter.

About Brad: 

Internationally acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Brad Smith is the authorof 14 novels to date, including THE RETURN OF KID COOPER, winner of the 2019SPUR AWARD from the Western Writers of America, ONE-EYED JACKS andCOPPERHEAD ROAD, both short-listed for the Dashiell Hammett Award, and ALLHAT, adapted to a feature film which premiered at the Toronto International FilmFestival, starring Luke Kirby, Rachael Leigh Cooke and Keith Carradine. Smith alsowrote and directed the Bravo short, FADING FAST.

Smith’s writing draws on his wellspring of experiences working across Canada,the U.S. and Africa, at a variety of jobs, including railway signalman, truck driver,bartender, ditch digger, school teacher, farmer, maintenance electrician androofer. He restores vintage cars and currently owns a 1968 Mustang and a 1937Ford coupe. He is a baseball fanatic and plays golf regularly with varying degreesof success. He lives in a 90-year-old farmhouse in southern Ontario.

NOVELS

RISES A MORAL MAN – 1990 – Penumbra Press

ONE-EYED JACKS – 2000 – Doubleday Canada

ALL HAT – 2003 – Penguin Canada

BUSTED FLUSH – 2005 – Penguin Canada

BIG MAN COMING DOWN THE ROAD – 2007 – Penguin Canada

RED MEANS RUN – 2012 – Simon & Schuster Canada

CROW’S LANDING – 2013 – Simon & Schuster Canada

SHOOT THE DOG – 2014 – Simon & Schuster Canada

ROUGH JUSTICE – 2016 – Severn House

HEARTS OF STONE – 2017 – Severn House

THE RETURN OF KID COOPER – 2018 – Skyhorse

THE GOLIATH RUN – 2020 – At Bay Press

CACTUS JACK – 2020 – Skyhorse

COPPERHEAD ROAD – 2022 – At Bay Press

SCREENPLAYS

ALL HAT – Premiere Toronto International Film Festival 2007

FADING FAST – Bravo TV

More about Brad here:Author website: https://www.bradsmithbooks.com/