The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie Jr. [Book Review]

A doting grandmother runs the drug trade in a small Maine town, and when her daughter turns up dead, she doesn’t grieve quietly.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

Babs Dionne is a grandmother, a proud Franco-American, and the woman running the drug trade in Waterville, Maine.

So, yes, she contains multitudes.

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie Jr. is a violent, funny, deeply messy crime novel about inherited trauma and what happens when love starts looking a lot like control. I admired quite a bit about it. I also kept wishing it would stop hurting people for five minutes so everyone, including me, could regroup.

Meet Babs Dionne

Babs rules Waterville, and especially its Franco-American neighborhood, Little Canada. She controls the drugs coming into the area with help from her friends and her oldest daughter, Lori, and she’s also a devoted grandmother at the center of a family held together by love and fear in equal parts.

Then a drug kingpin notices his numbers are down in the Northeast and sends a sinister figure known only as The Man to find out why. At the same time, Babs’s youngest daughter, Sis, goes missing. Within twenty-four hours, Sis is dead, and Babs is furious.

This is not a woman who grieves quietly.

Babs Is a Lot

Babs is the reason this book works. A doting grandmother who runs a criminal operation is a good hook, but Currie gives her enough personality and emotional complexity that she never feels like a gimmick.

I didn’t need to approve of her decisions to appreciate her as a character. The contradiction never goes away, and the book doesn’t try to tidy it up.

It’s also at its best when it looks at how people are shaped by the damage that came before them. Babs wants to protect her family, and she also helped build the world that puts them in danger. That’s painful, and it gives the novel some of its strongest emotional weight.

Little Canada Matters

One of my favorite things about the book is how specific the setting feels. Little Canada isn’t just a backdrop. The Franco-American history and language give the novel a real sense of identity, and you understand what these characters are trying to preserve.

You may have questions about the preservation strategy. Quite a few, actually.

But there is something moving about people fighting to hold onto a community when the outside world has spent generations encouraging them to become something else.

It Gets Very Dark, But Somehow, It’s Also Funny

Look, I’m not asking for sunshine and roses, but there were stretches where the misery just wouldn’t let up. The family dynamics kept me invested, but I needed more room to breathe before the next terrible thing happened.

And there is always another terrible thing.

But I will say, this book is much funnier than its body count suggests. The jokes never pretend the violence is harmless. They come from personality, family dynamics, and the fact that these people commit even when everything is going horribly wrong.

And these people are very good at making terrible decisions with total confidence.

Netflix and The Duffer Brothers

Babs is also headed to the screen. Netflix is developing a series based on the novel with Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of Stranger Things, through their company Upside Down Pictures. Ron Currie Jr. is writing it with his longtime screenwriting partner, Joshua Mohr, and they’ll executive produce. No release date or casting has been announced, so for now I’m free to cast Babs in my head.

Final Thoughts

Babs is a very memorable character, and the setting gives the story real texture. Plus, it has more emotional and cultural depth than the crime-family setup suggests. And yes, I struggled with how relentless the darkness got, but I would still recommend it. Especially if you like crime novels about complicated women, messy family loyalty, and characters who can love someone deeply while also making their life a living hell.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for an advanced reader’s copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.