The word "prequel" was apparently coined by Anthony Boucher in the 1950s, but I first heard it twenty years later when someone had the unfortunate idea of making a movie about Butch and Sundance before things started to get messy for them.
Prequels are one of those ideas that tend to sound better than they turn out. (Cough, cough, Star Wars) But as always the proof is in the pudding.
This story is a prequel to "Wood Smoke Boys," which made a lot of best-of lists last year, including mine. "Boys" is about Dylan LaCrosse, a cop in the north territory of Michigan. In the present story we learn about the circumstances that caused him to leave the Detroit Police Department and retreat back to his home turf in the north.
And the circumstances involve taking a bullet in the head in the middle of the kind of hellish cop's nightmare in which there can be no good action to take. LaCrosse survives the injury and is booted out of the force. Now to survive he has to deal with crooked cops and missing money.
A very satisfactory prequel. Maybe George Lucas should have hired Doug Allyn.
