A Tree Born Crooked, by Steph Post. Austin, Texas: Pandamoon Publishing. 232 pages. Paper, forthcoming.

It’s time to crack out the Mountain Dew and have ourselves a party, because a new voice in Florida noir is here and, hopefully, she’s here to stay.

A Tree Born Crooked, Steph Post’s debut novel, sets readers deep in the parts of Florida that tourists don’t often see—the parts where alligators are as common as hunting dogs, where you’re just as likely to have a shotgun as you are a blue collar job (if you have a job at all), where the drink of choice has been illegal for decades and the second choice is known as the “Champagne of Beers.”

After receiving a postcard telling him that his father has died, James Hart travels home to Crystal Springs—a desolate town whose only claim to fame was “that Elvis Presley had once…