In his novel Boot Tracks, Matthew F. Jones offers the reader a compelling look into the mind of a killer: Charles Rankin is fresh out of prison and on a lethal errand for the Budda, his jailhouse benefactor and protector who plays no direct role in the plot yet still wields considerable influence over Rankin's psyche. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the protagonist's traumatic background has left him with split personality disorder, and has difficulty determining what he did and what his alter-ego, Little Charlie, did. The plot contains the traditional devices, conflict (Rankin has been hired as an assassin), crisis (his own ineptitude and personality stand in his way), resolution (he must determine if he and his alter ego actually murdered their mark), but each is tied so closely to Rankin's flawed personality that it is character that drives the novel forward.
Rankin's thoughts best illustrate the true nature of his character. As he moves in on his intended murder victim, his thoughts become increasingly delusional, mixing current circumstances with the childhood trauma of being abused by his mother and her various boyfriends. "Imagining whichever son of a bitch and her being unable to see him, staring right through him even while looking point-blank at him, angrily searching for him in the very places in the room he, Poof Man, was watching them from; keeping himself awake until he was certain they were asleep with visions of them tumbling about, lost, blind, petrified, in the same darkness his X-ray vision permitted him to easily move through." There have been warnings, but the reader here sees that Rankin is a deeply disturbed man--out to kill not for the money he has already been paid, but out of a misguided and exploited loyalty to his prison benefactor who has preyed upon his vulnerability to make him into a killer. He is a complicated character that Jones has crafted by adroitly using the most effective elements of characterization and makes this already compelling novel unforgettable.
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