A highly riveting, frightening read. The people in this book are so real and multilayered that I had the glancing-over-my-shoulder feeling reading about them that I had, without being aware of it, often crossed paths with them in many corners of America. The emotions and tensions within each of them is palpable. And the story's plot evolves so subtle(ly), and so within the context of the underlying story, that it's final mind-bending conclusion is both impossible to foresee and, in retrospect, clear as a bell. And what a rich, fertile, complex world somewhere (or maybe anywhere is the point) in rural mid-America this all happens in. What a skillful piece of work. I agree with the earlier reviewer who said that Jones is a one of a kind (it's hard to know who to compare him to completely uncompromising writer whose work has to now mysteriously remained beneath the commercial radar. This is the third of his novels I have read. Though each one is much different from the others, they all left me with the same from the gut, powerful and lasting impression. I strongly recommend this book and this writer to anyone who likes both a great story and great writing.

I was never quite comfortable while reading this book, which is part of what made it such a powerful read. The apparent straightforward style of the writing belies the complexity of the characters and of the story unfolding around them at the Deepwater Motel and helps to create an eerie and increasingly dark sense of anticipation. The book draws you further and further into the world it creates in the way of a current slowly drawing a swimmer into a whirlpool. With stunning descriptiveness and powerful imagery Jones creates a deceptively beautiful world and characters all too real to feel comfortable around. A dizzying and in the end very frightening story. And tremendously well written.

A phsycologist friend of mine passed this book on to me, hyping it as one of the most intriguing character studies he'd ever come across. I couldn't agree more, though the book is also a first class, and very edgy mystery. Nat Banyon, the book's drifter protagonist is a character who is immediately likable and remains that way even after all we learn about him. Jones's mastery (think of being in Jim Thompson's world as seen by someone with the literary gifts of Cormac McCarthy)is in slowly revealing more and more of this outwardly simple man's tormented inner life, a life that he himself is only remotely (and sometimes not at all) in touch with. The seething emotions inside of the man, and the root of those emotions, are so accurately and eerily drawn I found myself feeling as if I were actually inside of Banyon's head and wanting on one hand to escape from it, while on the other feeling irresistably drawn to getting to the very core of what makes him the personality he is. A very disorienting feeling indeed. And the real beauty of the book is that it can on one level be read as a straight noir mystery, as it is easy to read and has a very compelling plot in the real world, outside of Banyon's head. But each sentence in the book is so compact and artfully drawn as to portray much more than what is actually happening on the page. Even when this guy seems only to be driving a car, hitting a punching bag, painting the side of building, making love to his boss's wife, you can feel, through Jones's simple but compact sentences, the anger, fear, paranoia seething just under his surface. What this book isn't, thank God, is a by the numbers, formulaic mystery. What it is a frightenigly accurate, downright scary portrayal of a walking time bomb, who doesn't even know his fuse is lit. Great work.

The Cooters of upper New York are a family on the verge of falling apart. Hooter Cooter, the patriarch of the bunch, rules the family with cruelty and ruthlessness, ridiculing and attacking those who don't fall in line.
While this novel has been compared with To Kill a Mockingbird,I didn't find it all that compelling and there were parts that I found hard to get through (especially the detailed scenes of incest). This one also has all the earmarks of a book written by a newer writer, with sections alternating between sentimentality and dark humor....not always in the smoothest manner. The author shows promise but this one isn't going to have a permanent place on my bookshelf.

This is the kind of book that with a better writer may have had a chance. Instead, it's just another poorly executed story by a writer without a lot of talent. The story of the loser son, his fighting and uneducated parents and the tenuous baseball connection around which its story is hatched rings hollow and is perhaps only sightly more compelling reading than the minutes from a local school board meeting. None of the characters are well developed, the story is tired, the stakes are low. I struggled to finish this book and probably only did so because every now and then Jones would break from his formulaic characterizations and predictable plot for a quick flourish of imagination and inspiration. The Elements of Hitting is sad as a story and as a book. It takes a depressing story, which in better hands should have been interesting, and leaves it stranded at first base while the writer strikes out without so much as taking a good swing. And that's sad.

THE ELEMENTS OF HITTING is a hard hitting character study of a son and father, both having failed in their roles in some way. Don't be fooled by the cover. This is not the traditional "baseball book."

Here, baseball is simply another place on the stage, a venue for participation, a venue where great tragedy and joy both occur. The novel is well-paced and anchored by memorable characters, not your ordinary "buddy" characters, however. The reader may have difficulty finding something to like about the hapless Walter Innis. But as his history is revealed, layer by layer, his honesty and complete lack of pretention should garner a measure of sympathy. It is gratifying to see such a gifted writer use the undying baseball metaphor.

This is as fine of a novel with a baseball theme I've ever had the pleasure of reading. One, though, need only be a fan of great storytelling, characters, and writing to enjoy it immensely, as the baseball is clearly secondary to the story of Walter Innis, a man approaching forty, recently abandoned by his wife, reunited for the first time in twenty-five years with his dying and formerly abusive father,and suddenly without a job beyond that of the unpaid coach of his new girlfriend's son's baseball team. More than anything Walter's story is evidence of the fact that none of us, no matter how hard we try, can make it through life without confronting our pasts. When Walter finally confronts his the results are intermittently - and at times all at once - hilarious, gut-wrenching, shocking, sad, maddening, and, ultimately, uplifting. A great story filled with tremendous characters with all of the flaws and idionsyncracies that make them as believable as everyone you know. If only every novel with a sports theme, or every novel period, were written this well.

Matthew F. Jones has written a tight thriller, A Single Shot, that takes the reader deeper and deeper down a dark tunnel of despair and violence. It begins with a single shot that reverberates in one man's life until the final few pages. There is no let up from the protaganist's despair and it makes for an exciting and somewhat depressing read. The author writes well and uses the space of this short novel effectively and chillingly as he shows how a single moment can destroy the destiny of men forever. It has the feel of the world of film noir mixed with the literary imagingings of mystery novel.

I can't believe I hadn't heard of this author before a friend convinced me to read A SINGLE SHOT. The book is a masterpiece, one of those rare novels that stays in your head weeks after you've finished it. I put it down while reading it only to occasionally remind myself that what was happening in it wasn't happening in fact or to marvel at Jones's incredible ability to create taut scenes and real characters. I actually read the book twice and liked it even more the second time. This book, and author, I predict, will be read for years to come. Mr. Jones, more please!

I still haven't got John Moon or his unraveling out of my head. SHOT is taut and edgy with real characters you can care about. The L.A. Times Book Review was right on - the finest portrait of guilt since CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. The best novel I've come across in a long while.

A very tense, extremely well written mystery. Since we know from near to the start who the kidnapper of Jennifer Follet likely is, much of the story's tension comes in wondering if the police will manage to put together enough evidence against him to obtain the warrant necessary to search for Jennifer before it is too late. Meanwhile we find out more and more horrifying facts about the actual identity of her apparent abductor and become just as frustrated as the investigating officers,two of the most interesting cops I've come across in modern crime fiction,in their race with the clock. Jones's writing style reveals much more than it says; he simply won't let you stop reading. After finishing this book my main question was why it received as little attention as it apparently did (I came across it only by chance). Jones uses nature as well as anyone I've read to create moods and enhance the action portions of a story and the words spoken by his characters, all of whom - even the most minor ones - are wonderful, rivals that of Elmore Leonard's. Jones's work though is more chilling than Leonard's. I read when they came out a few years ago both 'Church of Dead Girls' by Stephen Dobyns and 'Girls', by Frederic Busch, two other well-received books involving missing girls in upstate New York and in truth found 'Blind Pursuit' to be superior to either of them.

I absolutely loved everything about this book, from the storyline to the characters. I agree wholeheartedly with the reader from Miami - those who had trouble with the prose no doubt are used to reading formulaic fiction, which, thankfully, this is a far cry above. Not only is it much better written than the normal thriller fare, it is far more thrilling. A truly scary story, the more so for it's realistic feel! As an aside, I think it would make a great movie.

Matthew F. Jones, in BLIND PURSUIT, has created a masterpiece for our times. The characters in this book, from the distraught, quilt ridden parents of the kidnapped Jennifer Follett to the two detectives trying to find her to the suspects in her disappearance to Jennifer's schizophrenic Nanny, are so believable, yet distinctive, with their flaws, contradictions, and unpredicatabilities, I swore I knew them and in some cases, wished I didn't. Unlike genre writers and most writers period, Jones's characters reveal their motives and inner selves through, rather than just flat words on a page, their patterns of speech, their gestures, their mannerisms, in the very ways they dress and eat. As a mother of a small child this book terrified me, yet I couldn't stop reading it. And mixed in with the horror is beauty(the passages between the Follets are wrenching and those in the woods at once frightening and magical), a parent's love, even humor. Jones's almost obsessive attention to voice and detail creates more than a story, it creates a world that is all the more terrifying for its knowability. If Jones's unique, powerful style of writing takes a little getting used to it is only a matter of pages before you find you are hooked by it and in the thrall of a master, one of a kind storyteller whose every sentence says more than an average writer does in two pages. If you like thrillers that are a lot more than run of the mill you won't be able to put this one down. A great read.