A fantastic tale of identity, crime, and the long tail of violence
Your ancestors breathe through you. Sometimes, they call for vengeance.
Babs Dionne, proud Franco-American, doting grandmother, and vicious crime matriarch, rules her small town of Waterville, Maine, with an iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her loyal lieutenants, girlfriends since they were teenagers, and her eldest daughter, Lori, a Marine vet struggling with addiction.
When a drug kingpin discovers that his numbers are down in the upper northeast, he sends a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate. At the same time, Babs’s youngest daughter, Sis, has gone missing, which doesn’t seem at all like a coincidence. In twenty-four hours, Sis will be found dead, and the whole town will seek shelter from Babs’s wrath.
This is the first novel by Ron Currie that I’ve read. It is at once the story of the Dionne family, and simultaneously an examination of the long tail of violence that can change individuals and communities. Currie’s prose quickly hooked me, and the story kept me reading well into the night. This is a really, really good novel.
At the heart of the novel are two women, both of whom find themselves at the centre of what could well be the savage, violent end to their way of life: Babs and Lori Dionne. The majority of the novel is told from their perspective, with a handful of others thrown in to add depth, and also to provide additional perspectives on the protagonists.
Babs is the matriarch of the Dionne family, who has effectively ruled Waterville with an iron fist for a few decades. Unlike some king-/queenpins, though, that iron fist is encased in a velvet glove. She is fiercely protective of the community, her heritage, and her extended family. Under her leadership, much of the city has been corrupted, but in that almost-altruistic way that keeps the more violent crime, and dangerous drugs to a minimum. Nobody wants to cross Babs Dionne. Nobody in Waterville, that is… Because Babs’s business has caught the attention of a powerful criminal up north, who has decided that he has the right to take Waterville for his own.
Lori Dionne, Babs’s eldest daughter, is barely keeping it together. Haunted by what she experienced in the army in Afghanistan, she has fallen into addiction — a hole that swallows up so many suffering from PTSD in under-served neighbourhoods and regions. She works for her mother (as do many of the other women in the community), and at the start of the novel we meet her… well, a little worse for wear. Babs tasks Lori with finding the youngest Dionne daughter, Sis, who has gone missing.
The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is an excellent examination of heritage, identity, family, and the different types of violence that can upend people’s lives. It’s viscerally told, in tight prose. Every word is well chosen, and the story never flagged. The characters are always compelling, and sometimes sympathetic. The two primary protagonists are especially strong characters, with Lori a real stand-out.
I have a feeling this might appeal to any fans of crime (family) sagas. I was reminded of Don Winslow’s latest trilogy, in some ways, despite them being quite different in details — …Babs Dionne is also, in my humble opinion, a much stronger book. This is a great cross-over novel, I think, which should appeal equally to crime fans and contemporary/literary fiction fans.
As I said at the top, this was the first of Currie’s novels that I’ve read. It will certainly not be the last. (His others all sound quite different in tone, but I nevertheless am really looking forward to reading them all.)
Very highly recommended. I think a lot of people are going to dig this.
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Ron Currie’s The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is due to be published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in North America (March 25th, 2025) and Atlantic Books in the UK (April 3rd).
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Review copy received from publisher