The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne

＂Darkly funny, shocking, and unblinking, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is a tour de force＂--C.J. Box, author of Battle Mountain

＂An explosive thriller that leaps from the blocks and races to the finish...Babs Dionne herself is nothing short of a human keg of dynamite.＂ -Justin Cronin, author of The Ferryman

＂A furious page-turner that kept me up way past my bedtime.＂ -Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook

When crime matriarch Babs Dionne’s youngest daughter is found dead, she will stop at nothing to uncover the truth--or get her revenge.

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.

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is a gripping, propulsive, darkly funny thriller, with a ferocious matriarch at its bruised, beating heart. Award-winning author Ron Currie delivers an unforgettable crime saga about love, duty, and vengeance.

Ron Currie is the award-winning author of five novels. He has won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, the Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into fifteen languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. He lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program.