ONCE OR TWICE A DECADE, an unknown short-story writer blazes onto the literary literary scene with work that is thrilling and new. Scott Wolven is such a talent, and his raw, blistering tales of hard-bitten convicts, and men running from the law make for “the most exciting, authen-tic collection of short stories I have read in years, “ says George Pelecanos.

Brooding, edgy, and sometimes violent, Con-trolled Burn's loosely linked stories are each in some way a distillation of hard time-spent either in prison, the backwoods of Vermont, or the bad-lands of American West. Peopled by boxers, drunks, truck drivers, murderers, bounty hunters, drifters traveling under assumed names, and men whose luck ran out a thousand miles ago, sto-ries feel hard-won from life, and if they are moody and stark, so too are stark, so too are they filled with human longing.

Controlled Burn is divided into two sections: “The Northeast Kingdom ” and “The Fugitive West.” In each, Scott Wolven reveals a broken world where there is no bottom left to hit. In the haunting “Out-side Work Detail.” Convicts stoically dig graves for their fellow prisoners yet reserve their deepest grief for the senseless death of a deer. “Crank” intro-duces Red Green, a maniacally brilliant addict who brews his own crystal meth in a backwoods lad, and whose high-energy antics inspire both cautious admiration and mortal fear in his busi-ness associates. In “Ball Lightning Reported,” Red Green's ultimate is revealed. In “Atomic Supernova,” a revenge-obsessed sheriff deputizes a known cop-killer to help him hunt down a coun-terfeiter and drug lord. The unexpectedly tender and heartbreaking “ The Copper Kings” concerns a father facing the dark truth behind his son's dis-appearance. And in “Vigilance,” a hunted man struggles to escape his past, always yearning for an honorable yet perhaps unreachable future.

Powered by a spare, ruminative prose style that recalls the best of Denis Johnson and Thom Jones, Controlled Burn is an unforgettable debut.

SCOTT WOLVEN lives in upstate New York . His work has been selected three years in a row for The Best American Mystery Stories (2002,2003, and 2004.)