News!

Midnight Emissions to be published in Otto Penzler’s anthology The Best American Mystery Stories

“Million Dollar Baby: Stories From the Corner”, a review by David Marshall

“Stopping Blood: Boxing and Noir”, article by Barry Graham that discusses Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner

Reviews for Pound for Pound

“Pound for Pound is an extraordinary gift to those of us who sensed that the wonderful stories in F.X. Toole’s Million Dollar Baby only scratched the surface of the author’s unique talent. That this posthumous novel is the last such gift we’ll receive from a great writer makes it even more special.” 

Richard Russo

“Pound for Pound is a fully realized work, with a grace note of loss and elegy. It’s musical that way. It’s unaccountably soft.”  

James Ellroy, from the forward to Pound for Pound

“Toole writes beautifully, accurately and with enormous generosity . . . an homage to the resiliency and strength of the human spirit.”  

Edgardo Vega Yunque

“The characters are irresistible, and their gritty, savage, strangely noble world is vividly evoked.” 

Kirkus Review

“Powerful and very readable . . . Toole’s deep love of boxing’s rituals, traditions, and code of honor shines through.” 

Library Journal

Reviews for rope burns

 

“ROPE BURNS is the best boxing fiction since Leonard Gardner’s FAT CITY.  It’s the best boxing short fiction ever written.  F.X. Toole is the brilliant love child of Sonny Liston and a rabid pit bull.  ROPE BURNS is a hymn to ferocious longing and loss.” 

James ellroy

 

“F.X. Toole is a writer to break the heart.  ROPE BURNS is utterly fascinating . . . These stories are funny, disturbing, unpredictable and suspenseful, but most of all they are achingly real.” 

Joyce carol oates

 

“In this remarkable collection . . . the spirit of Hemingway lives on.”  

Pete Hamill, Wall Street Journal

 

“The stories are written sparely and derive much of their power from their authenticity.”  

Los Angeles Times Book Review

 

“Toole’s prose is sharp and jablike, and at its best comes at you with the rhythm of a good gym fighter working on the speed bag.” 

New York Times

 

“To get right to it, this book is a miracle; it’s as close as I can remember being to a literary masterpiece without holding something that had already been so declared.” 

Gene Collier, Post-Gazette