The subtitle of Slackville Road is "Lazy Dudes, a Dummy, and an Armored Car." That should tell you most of what you need to know about the tone.

It's my first novel, written in 2004 in Bellingham, Washington, about two friends who rob an armored car for reasons that make perfect sense from the inside and look insane from the outside. The protagonist, Jack, is a small-time thief who steals for the thrill. His friend Ricky is a Louisiana runaway who became a beach-fire philosopher and weed dealer and, eventually, the brains behind a very bad plan.

There's a woman named Karen who complicates everything, as women named Karen often do.

What I love about this book, revisiting it now: the people in it are not stupid. They're not tragic victims. They're people who looked at the deal being offered and decided it wasn't worth taking — and who eventually made a different kind of deal that turned out to have higher costs than advertised.

If you like crime fiction with actual philosophical weight, or just a good story about friendship and bad decisions in a rainy Pacific Northwest city, this one's worth your time.