The Blood in Guthrie

1934 Guthrie, Louisiana: population 577...make that 571. Severed heads, caked in blood, are piling up in the sweltering Louisiana sun with no trace of the bodies they were once attached to. The town is run by dimwitted Sheriff Elmer Avant. His new deputy, a Cincinnati transplant with a dark past, Jack McMann, is trying to ward off his demons by hunting down the killer and saving the people of Guthrie. Unfortunately, the folks in Guthrie don't take kindly to outsiders, and Jack can't seem to drag the truth out of anyone no matter how hard he tries. With a killer roaming around, pecking folks off with no rhyme or reason, it seems everyone in town is averting their eyes to anything that might be considered suspicious. Nothing makes sense in the small town filled with dirty blood and dark secrets, but Jack will have to figure out the brutal be-headings and strange clues before Guthrie is left with a population of zero. The Blood in Guthrie is Kira McKinney's first novel. It is heavily rooted in early Blues music and can be likened to a cross between Jim Thompson's "Killer Inside Me," Sweeney Todd, and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."