Smack beneath the buckle of Bible-Belt Missouri, the town of Arbor is populated by folk ‘God has done for, and done up good’. Alma DeGreer Dunahew, the maid, recounts to her grandson past events that still afflict the town, centering on the unsolved 1929 dance hall explosion that blew 42 souls sky high. The disaster ‘spared no class or faith, cut into every neighbourhood and congregation, spread sadness with an indifferent aim’. Twenty-eight unidentified victims, including Alma’s sister Ruby – the town good-time girl and secret squeeze of Alma’s blue-blood boss – are buried in a mass grave topped by an angel statue that has latterly started to dance.

As bleak as it sounds, Woodrell’s ‘crime noir’ is a joy to read simply for the beauty of his sentences and his deft characterisation, particularly in the vignettes detailing the lost lives of the dead and the drink-, love- and lust-afflicted folk of the Ozarks.

Set on the same plateau as Woodrell’s most renowned book, Winter’s Bone (try the DVD and CD too, if you like your tales of hillbilly meth and family ties told with a killer folk soundtrack), it’s not quite Southern Gothic but might as well be. The language is as lyrical as it is brutal, like a novella-length King James Version in Midwestern twang, and is peppered with such gleeful alliteration that I get the feeling Woodrell had fun writing it.

If you like where the pared-back writing of Ron Rash and Cormac McCarthy have taken William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, but could do with a little more brocade, The Maid’s Version is one for you.

Jason Cotter is a freelance reviewer.