“This is the ancient myth of Hercules — the plot of all plots — re-engineered into a modern-day wonder. Tinti knows how to cast the old campfire spell. I was so desperate to find out what happened to these characters that I had to keep bargaining with myself to stop from jumping ahead to the end … a master class in literary suspense. Hercules himself might feel daunted by the labor of writing tales for 12 bullets, but Tinti is indefatigable. Each one of these stories drops us into a different setting somewhere in the country, establishes a tense situation in progress and then barrels along until slugs start tearing into flesh. Given the repetition, you would think we would come to anticipate Tinti’s methods and grow weary with these near-escapes, but each one is a heart-in-your-throat revelation, a thrilling mix of blood and love … This would all be empty calories if Tinti weren’t also such a gorgeous writer, if she didn’t have such a profound sense of the complex affections between a man wrecked by sorrow and the daughter he hoped ‘would not end up like him.’”
–Ron Charles, The Washington Post, March 21, 2017
Read more of Ron’s reviews here
Watch: Hannah Tinti discusses the lack of empathy plaguing contemporary culture, and talks about learning how to shoot a gun for The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley—but perhaps more importantly, finding common ground with some of the people one finds themselves spending time with when learning how to shoot a gun.
