Occupational Hazards
By Jonathan Segura
Simon & Schuster, 256 pages, $14

The 11-page first chapter of Occupational Hazards, a wildly foul-mouthed, mostly derivative, modestly suspenseful and ultimately likable debut novel by Jonathan Segura (an editor at Publishers Weekly), includes the words "fuck," "fucking," "fuckers," "fucked," "goddamned," "hell," "shit," "suck," "fart," "pisser," "prick," "blowjob," "jerk off" and "sumbitch."

But coarsest of all is our pill-addled, flake-shouldered, chain-smoking, un-smiling boozehound hero and narrator, whose name happens to be Cockburn, though that’s not pronounced like it looks.

Cockburn speaks in icy little sentences. He writes half-heartedly—no, eighth-heartedly—for the Omaha Weekly News-Telegraph, headquartered in a yellowing basement. The sign on the office door is written in marker.  read more »