The Fighter

‘Exceptional’ — Crime Review on The Fighter

A crooked nose. Scar slices across his forehead. Jack Boucher, he whispered and he shook his head. You ain’t nothing but a broken down dirty dog.

Le Boucher, he said to himself in the rearview mirror. The butcher.

Jack Boucher, a washed-up bare-knuckle fighter, is battling against decades of drug and alcohol abuse when he returns home to find his world in ruins.

Set against the desolate backdrop of the Mississippi Delta, the foster mother who saved Jack as a child now rests in a hospice.

Her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack is now owned by banks and strangers.

And Jack’s own mind is failing. Concussion after concussion has forced him to carry around a notebook of names warning him who can be trusted and who should be considered a foe.

In a single twisted night, after losing the money that would have cleared his debt with the queen of Delta vice, Jack’s life is quickly derailed.

Forced into the fighting pit one last time, “Jack the Jaw” faces his biggest challenge yet as he must once again fight for his life and everything that was taken from him.

A brilliant, gripping novel of endurance and redemption, The Fighter is set to be a major film in 2023 titled Rumble in the Dark starring actors Bella Thorne and Aaron Eckhart.

• Film tie-in edition to celebrate the release of Rumble Through the Dark (aka The Fighter), starring Aaron Eckhart & Bella Thorne, which is set for release by Universal International in spring 2023
• Two of Smith’s other novels have also been optioned for film, with Smith acting as screenwriter; Desperation Road, starring Mel Gibson and Garrett Hedlund, is currently in production, while Blackwood is in pre-production
• In this brilliant novel set against the dark and desolate backdrop of the Mississippi Delta, Jack Boucher, a washed-up bare-knuckle fighter, battles against decades of booze and drug abuse as he returns home to try and save all he has lost
• Perfect for readers of Southern Gothic noir and crime thrillers. Smith’s writing has been compared to Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx
• Smith’s novel Blackwood was selected as a Times Book of the Year. Nick garnered blanket coverage acros the national press, including reviews in the Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Mail, Mail on Sunday,Scotsman, Herald & Irish Times. His latest novel, Salvage This World, will be published in May 2023
• Smith has been longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and awarded the Mississippi Author Award for Fiction, Transatlantic Review Award, and Brick Streets Press Story Award