Woodrell has set most of his eight novels in the Missouri Ozarks, a landscape which he knew from childhood. He has created novels based on crime, a style he termed "country noir", a phrase which has been adopted by commentators on his work. However, William Boyle, an avowed fan and fellow author of literary crime fiction, put Woodrell's work in broader context: "this Woodrell guy’s got double of everything. Language, plot, dialogue, sense of place, energy, tension...He’s interested in the whole of humanity through the lens of his place."