A Better KInd of Hate

A Better Kind of Hate is a brutal, uncompromising short story collection steeped in noir violence, moral rot, and vigilante justice. Many of the stories orbit Bishop Rider, a rogue antihero who operates in the margins of a corrupt city, dispensing punishment where the legal system fails-or refuses-to act. Rider's world is one where justice is transactional, mercy is weakness, and survival demands cruelty. Through his voice and those of similarly damaged narrators, the collection explores the thin line between protector and predator, asking whether eradicating monsters inevitably requires becoming one.

Beyond Rider-centric stories, the collection widens its scope to include criminals, victims, and broken men shaped by betrayal, abuse, and obsession. These standalone narratives are raw and psychologically intense, often driven by revenge, sexual violence, and long-simmering trauma. Johnson's characters are rarely sympathetic in a traditional sense, yet their rage and despair are rendered with a confrontational honesty that forces the reader to sit with their ugliness rather than look away.

Unified by themes of hatred as both fuel and poison, A Better Kind of Hate presents a bleak vision of morality in collapse. Justice here is not clean or redemptive-it is messy, personal, and frequently indistinguishable from cruelty. The collection ultimately suggests that in a world stripped of fairness and restraint, hate may be the only force powerful enough to drive action, even as it corrodes everything it touches.