One of the first books I reviewed in 2015 was the last Hawkeye collection L.A. Woman so it’s nice symmetry that Rio Bravo is the one I’m closing out tOne of the first books I reviewed in 2015 was the last Hawkeye collection L.A. Woman so it’s nice symmetry that Rio Bravo is the one I’m closing out the year with.
It’s also bittersweet that this marks the end of Fraction and Aja's time on the title which will be remembered as one of the best runs of a mainstream superhero comic book. There’s already been plenty written and said in praise of what they did here, and I’ve gushed about it in my other reviews, too. So I’m not going to rehash all of that other than to say that they wrap this up as strongly as they started it. I particularly liked the inspired issue which used the idea of Clint falling asleep while watching a Christmas special with his neighbor’s kids to come up with a cartoonish but effective way of exploring the inferiority complex that he has as a non-super powered Avenger as well as the stubborn streak that results from it.
There’s one thing that knocks this down from 5 to 4 stars for me. The last two trades have been a mix of issues that focused on Kate Bishop on her own in the last one, and Clint is the main part in this one. That makes sense thematically as a collection, but it does make some of the story seem a little disjointed and confusing, especially since there’s a lot of skipping around in time of the narrative anyhow. I wish I’d read them in order as released rather than in the trade paperbacks because I suspect that the story would have flowed better.
It’s still a great ending to one of the best runs we’re likely to see on a mainstream title. If I ever meet Fraction, I’d just like to say, “Thanks, bro.”...more
Since this is the third Star Wars comic collection I’ve reviewed this month you might be wondering why I’ve been binge reading these. Most of you probSince this is the third Star Wars comic collection I’ve reviewed this month you might be wondering why I’ve been binge reading these. Most of you probably missed this because there was hardly any marketing done for it, but there was a little indy movie called The Force Awakens that got made by some tiny studio. I think it’s only playing at art house theaters, but I managed to catch a showing. It got me craving more stories about the Star Wars universe and for some reason Marvel released a new line of comics so that was fortunate timing.
I think maybe Marvel has some kind of association with the same fly-by-night studio that made the movie? Anyhow, that’s why I’ve been reading all these. And if you get a chance to catch the movie I highly recommend it, but you better hurry because I hear it’s tanking at the box office and probably won’t be in theaters long.*
What we’ve got here is Princess Leia going on her own solo adventure shortly after the events of A New Hope, but before the events of the main Star Wars comic. Leia is reeling a bit because her old home planet of Alderaan got blown to smithereens by the Empire, and it was kinda sorta her fault. So she takes it on herself to go gather up the remaining Alderaanians (Alderaans? Alderaanicans? Figure it out for yourself, nerd!) and find them a new home to protect them from Imperial vengeance.
I had pretty high hopes for this since it was written by Mark Waid, and I’ve loved what he did on Daredevil, but this fell short of my expectations. The artwork is pretty good, and he adds some nice layers to Leia by exploring the responsibility she feels to her people as the last surviving member of their royal family which is an angle the movies never had time for.
However, it suffers from some of the problems inherent to any tie-in novel or comics like the other spin-off about Darth Vader that depends on introducing new story and characters. I’m just not all that interested in those new elements and people I've never seen in the movies because I know they really don't matter. When Leia appoints a new character, Evaan, as her right hand woman to help her out with this mission I can’t get too invested in her because I know she wasn’t in Empire Strikes Back so she’s not that important in the long run or she’s dead meat walking.
The main Star Wars comic title worked very well because it was all about Luke, Leia, Han, Vader, Chewbacca, etc., etc. When you do an off-shoot story that depends on just one of them than it’s almost always disappointing because you can’t help but wish the gang would get back together.
So it’s a good tie-in title that has some interesting things, but it didn’t blow my hair up into cinnamon buns over my ears.
* The first two paragraphs of this review contain irony in which I knowingly wrote false statements in order to get some laughs based on the success of the new Star Wars movie. Sadly, my Goodreads history has taught me that I must make disclaimers like this for people who read everything literally with no sense of humor and then tell me what an idiot I am in the comments. The joke is on you, nerf herder!...more
It's a quickie hardcover thrown together to sell at grocery stories in Kansas City toThis is the greatest book ever written!
Ah, but seriously folks...
It's a quickie hardcover thrown together to sell at grocery stories in Kansas City to capitalize on the Royals winning the World Series. The articles are presented as if they were news stories written at various stages of the season, but there's no attribution so I highly doubt they came from any real sports writing.
Still, it's got a lot of great pictures, and the price is right if you receive it as a Christmas present. It's also got the happiest ending ever going for it. So it's a decent coffee table book for Royals fans....more
Even a Sith Lord like Darth Vader has a boss he has to answer to, and when he failed at his last assignment which resulted in a Death Star going KERBLEven a Sith Lord like Darth Vader has a boss he has to answer to, and when he failed at his last assignment which resulted in a Death Star going KERBLOOEY then he sure wasn’t going to pass that next performance review.
So Vader is really in the Emperor’s dog house which results in him suffering a demotion and having to take orders from an Imperial officer who sees him as simply a weapon to be used. However, Vader also has his own agenda like finding out exactly who was that Force-strong pilot who blew up his shiny new Death Star.
This shares a story line with the main Star Wars comic that Marvel has been doing, and I very much enjoyed the first half of this which brought up some plot points that I had never thought about like how the Emperor probably wouldn’t have been very happy with Vader after the events of A New Hope. The second half fades a bit because Vader uncovering a secret program that the Emperor has been hiding didn’t seem like anything special.
I also thought the new droids Vader acquires, Triple-Zero and Bee-Tee, were a nice touch since they’re essentially C-3PO and R2-D2 if they went bad and developed a taste for torture and murder.
It was entertaining and did find some new angles to probe with Vader as a character and his role as the Emperor’s enforcer, but it felt like maybe the highlights should have just been put in the main Star Wars book rather than being it’s own title because it did start to feel thin after a while....more
And I don’t just mean good as in “This is pretty good for a tie-in comic book.” I mean that this is seriously good as in, “We shouThis is really good.
And I don’t just mean good as in “This is pretty good for a tie-in comic book.” I mean that this is seriously good as in, “We should use plastic surgery to alter Jason Aaron's appearance so that he is identical to George Lucas. Then we'll invent time travel and send Aaron back to 1999 where he will kidnap and replace Lucas. He will then write better prequels and save us all from much misery and suffering.”
That’s how good it is.
Set shortly after A New Hope, the good guys are trying to infiltrate and destroy an Imperial weapons manufacturing factory only to have their plans complicated when Darth Vader shows up, and during the ensuing battle he gets seriously interested in that untrained kid waving the lightsaber around. Unaware that Vader is on his trail, Luke is getting frustrated that he has no one to train him to be a Jedi while Leia urges the leaders of the Rebellion to keep pushing their temporary advantage against the Empire, and she’s continually frustrated by that scoundrel Han Solo who keeps hanging around.
There’s a lot of smart choices here that build on the events of the first movie. It all flows together in a very organic way, and all of this stuff makes for a compelling story that starts to bridge the gap between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. In addition to that the characters are very well done so that Han Solo in this comic really feels like Han Solo, and it’s not much of a stretch of the imagination to see a young Harrison Ford saying these lines. The art is also very well done with great details that all feel very Star Wars while still having a great sense of pacing for the action.
I did have a small issue with the way that Boba Fett is shoehorned in here. It makes sense that Vader might hire a bounty hunter to backtrack Obi Wan Kenobi and figure out who that kid with him was, but bringing Fett in means that things have to get cute when he confronts Luke because the subsequent movies don’t indicate that they had any previous meetings. That part does feel like a bit of forced fan service.
Still, this was incredibly fun. It feels like you’re reading the script and storyboards to a long lost Star Wars movie. ...more
After Robert B. Parker died his family decided to farm out his characters to other writers, and that’s tricky business. However, the hiring of Ace AtkAfter Robert B. Parker died his family decided to farm out his characters to other writers, and that’s tricky business. However, the hiring of Ace Atkins to take over Spenser turned out to be an inspired choice that revitalized the series. I’d had a fairly low opinion of the Jesse Stone books, but oddly enough had liked the TV movies based on them starring Tom Selleck because they’d toned down the elements I didn’t care for and turned them into a well crafted set of low key mysteries with a brooding atmosphere. So picking one of the main producers and screenwriters of those to carry on seemed like a natural fit.
Well, it looked like a good idea on paper.
There’s a lot to question about Michael Brandman’s choices here. First off, he seems hellbent on shaping the books to conform to the TV movies by having Jesse buy a new house that matches the one that the Selleck version lives in, and he also dumps the budding romance that RBP had started for Jesse in his last book. There’s no real purpose to it other than to try and make the books match the movies and discovering that Jesse and Sunny have gone their separate ways in between books is a bummer if you’d been rooting for those two crazy kids to finally get together.
Even worse is the story here because Jesse comes across as a rogue cop who is also a raging hypocrite. After a string of car thefts turns into a murder case Jesse’s reaction is not to investigate or try to do anything through normal police channels. Instead he immediately launches an off-the-books sting operation in which he illegally holds a suspect for days in a locked room and threatens to murder him. A lot of crime books feature a cop getting his hands dirty at some point, and Jesse has never been above breaking a rule if the situation called for it, but going Code Red right from the jump before even trying to do anything else to stop the bad guys seems like a huge overreaction.
Then we’ve got a subplot involving a revenge seeking ex-con coming to Paradise because Jesse’s beating of him back in his drunken days with the LAPD left the guy with brain damage. Seems like that man has a legitimate beef.
Another subplot finds Jesse trying to help a teenage girl who has been bullied by her classmates. That seems like a pretty noble cause. Yet Jesse meets this girl while she’s holding a gun on her principal. Jesse blames the principal for not helping the girl enough and never charges her with anything. In fact, he then proceeds to shame the principal mercilessly for failing to help the girl enough. Which is true, but it’s just completely nuts that in this day and age that Jesse doesn’t arrest someone who brought a gun to a school and threatened somebody with it.
So Jesse is willing to illegally kidnap a suspect and hold him without due process, he once used unnecessary force that permanently disabled a man, and he doesn’t charge a student who threatens someone with a gun in a school. That’d make you think that Jesse is completely off the rails here and doesn’t give a damn about the rules, right?
Yet when the town’s PR lady (Who just happens to be Jesse’s latest sex partner.) is trying to set up a rock concert Jesse points out that the town curfew is 11 PM, and that he’ll enforce any noise ordinances after that time even if she gets a waiver from the city council.
Yeah, that Jesse is a real stickler for the the rules...
The whole thing is just a mishmash of inconsistent character traits that make the book a mess, and while reading I was hoping that someone would stop Jesse’s reign of terror. The only good thing about this is that it gave me a new appreciation for what a great job Ace Atkins did with the Spenser series, and I can only hope that when the series is handed over to the next writer in a few books that it improves....more
This reminded me a lot of the movie Titantic not just because it’s about a disaster at sea, but also it would have been a lot shorter and better withoThis reminded me a lot of the movie Titantic not just because it’s about a disaster at sea, but also it would have been a lot shorter and better without the romantic subplot. Only in this case it was U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Edith Bolling Galt instead of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Although I gotta admit that the scene when ole Woody sketched Edith in the nude was pretty hot…..
Wait. I might have mixed something up there.
This is part of the continuing trend of Erik Larson’s books for me. He has this weird knack of being able to write something that is about 50% interesting, but the other 50% always seems like it’s him stretching to tie some other kind of element to give it a hook it doesn’t really need. He can’t just tell us the story behind the 1893 World’s Fair, he has to make half the book about a serial killer. (Some people would tell you that it’s vice versa as to what’s good about that one). Or instead of doing a non-fiction pop history novel about the invention of the wireless by Marconi, he had to tie it into the capture of a famous murderer of the day. Giving a day-to-day account of living in Nazi Germany wasn’t good enough so he had to put half the focus on a promiscuous American woman and her boring father in Berlin.
So this time out we’ve got the sinking of the Lusitania, a fascinating historical event about which many intriguing questions remain to this day, and yet a good chunk of this book is spent detailing how President Wilson found love again after the death of his first wife. If this was a book about Wilson, or if it was some kind of deep dive into his response to the attack where knowing his mindset at the time is critical to the story, then I might understand why so much time is spent on detailing how the two of them met and how their courtship progressed.
However since none of those things really matter I had that that same feeling while reading that I had when watching the aforementioned Titantic: Quit falling in love and hit the damn iceberg already. (Only it’s a German U-boat instead of a chunk of ice this time.)
As usual with the parts I actually care about Larson does a pretty decent job of creating narrative history to give us a vivid account of what life was like for the passengers and crew of the ship as well as the Germans on the submarine. He also gives us a good idea of the touchy political situation that existed between the various nations involved because of World War I.
He does seem to prefer doling out trivia and anecdotes rather than dealing in any meaningful way with the bigger questions of the event. The conspiracy theories about why England didn’t do more to protect the ship and speculation about the what caused a secondary explosion after the torpedo hit are barely touched on, but at the same time I know what kind of wallpaper was in the reading salon on board. Or I learned that Woody and Edith ate chicken salad on their wedding night, but nothing is said about the critical role she later played in his administration after he suffered a stroke later.
It’s not bad, but it’s also a fairly shallow look that seems more interested in telling you what happened rather than really digging into the questions of how or why it did. It’s like the Hollywood screenplay version of history. With romance!...more
Since Matt Murdock is blind it doesn’t seem fair to criticize his fashion sense, but he has made some stunningly bad choices with his superhero costumSince Matt Murdock is blind it doesn’t seem fair to criticize his fashion sense, but he has made some stunningly bad choices with his superhero costumes in the past. Sure his red tights are now an all-time classic, but his original yellow and black outfit? Ugh. That all black ensemble with a sock pulled over his head left him looking like a low rent ninja? Boring. And we’re all pretending that faux armor abomination back in the ‘90s never happened, right?
So it seems a little risky for Daredevil to change up his look again, but now that everyone knows his secret identity Matt doesn’t feel the need to hide behind a mask anymore. It takes a bold guy to pull off a red business suit with a DD belt buckle, but they don’t call him The Man Without Fear for nothing, folks.
Matt has other things going on besides his makeover. He’s still adapting to his new role as celebrity superhero in his new home of San Francisco, and he’s balancing that with his law practice as well as his writing his autobiography for an $8 million dollar payday. Hey, those red business suits ain't cheap, people!
More great stuff from writer Mark Waid who manages to deliver satisfying close-ended superhero stories while also always having something cooking as on-going tales in Matt’s life. It’s immensely satisfying stuff that really breathed new life into an old character.
Too bad it’s all gonna end soon in the interest of rebooting the entire Marvel universe. ...more
You gotta love a comic book series with dialogue like this:
”So there’s a lunatic on the loose. Do you figure his parents just assumed he’d grow up to You gotta love a comic book series with dialogue like this:
”So there’s a lunatic on the loose. Do you figure his parents just assumed he’d grow up to be evil when they named him ‘Zebediah Killgrave’?”
“Yeah. We call that the ‘Victor Von Doom’ paradox.”
Ha!
There’s two stories in this collection. The first is the obligatory tie-in into one of the giant crossover events with Matt dealing with the aftermath of a shattering revelation about his father that came out of Original Sin. Thankfully, it’s a well done story-line that’s wrapped up in just a couple of issues that involves Matt’s mother being extradited to Wakanda for a minor crime.
The second story involves Killgrave (a/k/a The Purple Man), and if you’ve been watching the new Jessica Jones series on Netflix then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what an evil bastard he is. It turns out that Killgrave has spawned a brood of kids that have inherited a variation on his mind control powers, and the emotional blast that Matt receives while trying to stop them leaves him teetering the verge of falling back into the pit of depression and despair that has defined the character since the days of Frank Miller.
Terrific stuff here with a long overdue conversation between Matt and his mom about why she left him and his father, and the story about Killgrave and his kids also highlights the delicate balancing act of Matt trying to leave the darker parts of his history behind him while not ignoring them either. The superhero parts of the story find Daredevil having to use his brain more than his fists as he’s confronted with problems that he can’t just punch his way out of, and that combined with the strong character bits makes for a highly entertaining comic....more
Jesse Stone meets beautiful twin sisters in this one, but instead of doubling his fun it’s twice the amount of murder he has to deal with.
The ParadiseJesse Stone meets beautiful twin sisters in this one, but instead of doubling his fun it’s twice the amount of murder he has to deal with.
The Paradise cops discover the body of a professional thug in the trunk of his car with a couple of bullets in his head. The investigation leads to a the dead guy’s employer, a Boston mobster with a unique living situation. He’s married to one of the gorgeous twins, and another gang leader is married to the other. The sisters like to be close so the two gangsters have neighboring houses in Paradise, and you gotta imagine that having two organized crime leaders living side by side has gotta wrecked the property values of the entire neighborhood. Jesse soon finds reasons to take a close look at the woman who have a long history of promiscuous behavior as well as using their identical appearance to play games with their sex partners.
As he’s trying to unravel this mess Jesse is also trying to determine the exact nature of his relationship with another character moonlighting from her own series, Sunny Randall, but the two of them have plenty of hang-ups with their ex-spouses to make this problematic. Sunny is also working a case in Paradise that involves trying to determine whether a young woman living in a religious commune has been brainwashed or is there of her own free will.
This is the last Jesse Stone book that Robert B. Parker wrote before his death, and since it also features the final appearance of Sunny Randall it’s his last word on two of his major characters. Fortunately, it ends on a relatively high note with both Jesse and Sunny finally beginning to move past their obsessive relationships with their exes that had consumed their earlier books, and it’s a relief that the two of them had finally started to break out of the doomed cycles the author had imposed on them for far too long.
They crime parts of the story aren’t anything special. As usual with a later RBP book everything is driven by motives related to sex and relationships, but it’s fairly entertaining. I especially liked a very cold blooded move that Jesse pulls at the end of this one.
It’s not a fantastic final story with Jesse and Sunny, but it could have been a lot worse....more
Come and listen to a story about a man named Matt A blind lawyer superhero who carried a small bat Then one day he was fighting a bad guy And he decided Come and listen to a story about a man named Matt A blind lawyer superhero who carried a small bat Then one day he was fighting a bad guy And he decided that he could no longer lie.
Secret identity, that is. All over the news. Gone bye-bye.
Well, the first thing you know ol’ Matt’s been disbarred The Avengers said, “Matt, you gotta give up that ID card.” Said “Californy is the place you ought to be.” So he loaded up his devil suit and moved to....San Francisco?
Damn, it was nearly the perfect parody song. ...more
Hey, it’s a collection of Stephen King stories out just in time for….Thanksgiving? Really, Scribner? You had a book from the master of modern horror iHey, it’s a collection of Stephen King stories out just in time for….Thanksgiving? Really, Scribner? You had a book from the master of modern horror in your pipeline and decided to release it three days after Halloween? I’m no marketing guru, but I think this may be a clue as to why the publishing industry is struggling so much these days.
On to the review...
Any long time Stephen King fan should be willing to admit that the man can shit the bed every once in awhile, and when he writes a real clunker of a novel then you’re stuck with that bad taste in your mouth until the next, hopefully better, one comes out. The great thing about reading a bunch of short stories from Uncle Stevie is that even when there’s a turd in the punch bowl you can just roll into the next one immediately and usually find something much better.
That’s pretty much the case here in which the mixed bag of stories range from King at his wonky worst to some really strong character pieces on serious topics like aging, poverty, and morality. So while I might have been rolling my eyes at the ending of Mile 81 or the general goofiness of the villain in Bad Little Kid the mood only lasted until I hit one of the better ones like Afterlife or Herman Wouk Is Still Alive.
A lot of the stories have echoes to other King works. Ur has a link to The Dark Tower series as well as more than a passing resemblance to 11/22/63. The evil car concept in Mile 81 is something else he’s done before in Christine and Trucks, and there’s a lot of From A Buick 8 in there. Obits shares some DNA with the Everything’s Eventual short story, too.
But King has been doing this a long, long time so coming up with something totally new is like asking The Simpsons to find a job that Homer hasn’t already held. Mostly these are comforting echoes with enough upgrades and twists that you still feel like you’re getting something new in the guise of the familiar.
Overall, it’s a solid collection, and there are as surprising number of stories with no supernatural elements. That may disappoint some King fans, but I found those to be the best ones....more
007 returns to his roots with this story set in the late ‘50s that begins with the spy tryinBond. James Bond.
And a very old school James Bond at that.
007 returns to his roots with this story set in the late ‘50s that begins with the spy trying to save the life of a British race car driver who has been targeted by the Soviet’s deadly SMERSH division, and this leads to a plot created by evil Korean millionaire Jason Sin against the American space program. Along the way Bond meets a mysterious and beautiful woman named Jeopardy Lane who also has a keen interest in the activities of Sin.
I’ve only read a couple of the original Bond books so I’m much more familiar with the movie version of the character, but this does seem like one of the old Ian Fleming novels. Since Anthony Horowitz credits a unused outline that Fleming wrote as part of a never made TV series as an inspiration for this book it’s no surprise that it’s got a lot of the old Bond flavor to the story.
This creates a bit of a dilemma in that Bond in his original incarnation is kinda horrifying when you apply modern standards to him. At first it seems as if Horowitz was just going to let Bond be the same kind of guy he was as written by Fleming with the book starting shortly after the events of the Goldfinger novel. Bond is shacked up in London with Pussy Galore, a lesbian he *ahem* cured by banging her straight, and now she’s making him breakfast and has a cocktail waiting for him when he gets home after a hard day of spying.
All of that seems pretty cringe worthy at first until you realize that Horowitz is actually showing how their relationship isn’t working, and there’s a pretty hilarious moment when Pussy turns the tables on him. Likewise, there’s a scene in which Bond meets an old acquaintance who is a homosexual, and it’s clear that James has a history of being horrible to this guy because of it. However, the character gets to rip into Bond in a speech that Fleming would never have done.
So Horowitz manages a tricky tightrope walk of presenting Bond as the type of man he was as originally written while pointing out all his failings and still somehow making him heroic despite those flaws. Even the villain Jason Sin gets a backstory that humanizes him, and his portrayal is done without the racism that tarnishes older Bond books.
Overall this is an entertaining retro version of a James Bond story that is kind of bonkers but fun. If you like the Fleming books or the Sean Connery movies like Dr. No and Goldfinger then you’d probably enjoy this....more
If you’re gonna write a comic book that puts Daredevil in Kentucky for part of it then at least do a crossover with Raylan Givens from Justified.
Matt If you’re gonna write a comic book that puts Daredevil in Kentucky for part of it then at least do a crossover with Raylan Givens from Justified.
Matt Murdock has got a lot on his plate. He’s trying to support his best friend Foggy during his life-threatening fight against cancer as well as keep their law practice going, and as Daredevil he’s battling the insidious infiltration of New York’s judicial system by the Sons of the Serpent, a white supremacist group. So naturally a chunk of this story revolves around Daredevil going to Kentucky and meeting characters like The Mummy and The Wolfman.
You could say this collection has a bit of a problem with it’s tone…
It’s too bad really because the stuff with Foggy and the Serpents is a great story that sets up major changes in DD’s life going forward as they launch a new volume of the book after this. (Because we have to have #1 issues every 2 to 3 years these days, right?) But the whole diversion to the backwoods for an occult tie-in and monsters just seems weird and out of place.
Having Daredevil deal with something out of his area of expertise like magic and consulting Dr. Strange also highlights the problem of using another superhero in a cameo role in a story like this. Why doesn’t Dr. Strange deal with this or at least help DD rather than just provide information? The takeover of critical New York institutions by a racist group using ancient black magic as a tool isn’t a big enough problem to rate the involvement of the Sorcerer Supreme?
Still, the others parts are very strong, and it does provide a shake-up that will be critical to the DD stories. At least until the next reboot wipes it all out....more
Either I’m a lot dumber than I thought, or this book isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. Or maybe both. Ambiguity! It’s a bitch.
Scott McGrath used to Either I’m a lot dumber than I thought, or this book isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. Or maybe both. Ambiguity! It’s a bitch.
Scott McGrath used to be a hotshot investigative journalist until he started looking into mysterious and reclusive film director Stanilas Cordova who has been holed up in his remote estate making underground masterpieces of suspense that seem to ruin the lives of almost everyone involved with them. (Think M. Night Shyamalan before we all realized that he actually sucks.)
McGrath trashed his career by making accusations against Cordova based on a single source he didn’t verify. When Cordova’s talented daughter Ashley commits suicide by leaping down an elevator shaft in an abandoned building McGrath decides that he can vindicate himself by looking into her death as a way into once again digging into Cordova’s life. Circumstances force McGrath into a reluctant partnership with a shady young man with a personal connection to Ashley and a young actress wannabe who met the doomed woman shortly before she died.
That’s when things start getting weird. Is Cordova a brilliant but eccentric filmmaker, or is he an evil puppet master willing and capable of destroying people’s lives via unknown forces? Was Ashley just a confused young woman who met an untimely end, or was she stalked by supernatural evil brought about somehow by her father? McGrath’s investigation dumps him into a maze that leaves him questioning reality itself.
As a kid growing up in the ‘70s there were some horror movies that took on an almost legendary quality back in those pre-Internet days. You’d hear adults talking about something called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and someone with wide eyes would confidently assert in a whisper that it was based on a true story. Or some kid at school would tell you that that his brother had told him that the devil was actually in The Exorcist. There’s a story in my family about how my aunt was so terrified after seeing The Shining that she demanded that my uncle take her to another movie immediately afterwards because she was positive that she wouldn’t be able to sleep for days if she didn’t do something to try and get it out of her head that very second.
That’s the power that horror movies used to have, and I think a lot of that has been lost in these days of DVD directors' commentaries and IMDB trivia pages. What I liked a lot about Night Film is that it seemed to recapture some of that old spirit. One of the creepiest aspects was that idea that a movie can be dangerous because some filmmakers are so deranged and/or tapped into something strange that could literally cause psychological damage to a viewer. Cordova as this mysterious figure whose films inspire underground viewings and a cult following was suitably spooky and unsettling. There’s an underlying theme of hidden worlds that can be accessed or expressed via film that I would have liked more of.
I think where I ran into problems personally is that the book tries to have it both ways. It’s functioning on some levels as a pretty standard thriller, and if you judge it like that, I found things like the characters actions and plot machinations kind of cliched. However, if you look at it as more of a David Lynch kind of experience, something where the normal rules get checked at the door, then it feels more ambitious and even a little dangerous.
Yet, it doesn’t seem to want to just dive in and go bananas either. It was almost like the grounding of the story dug in a little too much and started to feel like an anchor that really didn’t let the weird aspects hit their fullest potential. It’s hard to explain without writing an entire essay about the plot. I can sum it up by saying that while I know the story is about the ambiguity of walking through the shadows, I think it either needed to turn the lights completely on or off at some point. Which isn’t entirely fair because it’s obvious that the author was trying to walk that line and does it pretty well, but for me I would have liked a bit more commitment one way or another.
One other note about the multimedia aspects. The book has a lot of graphics in the form of pictures, news stories, and web pages, and I downloaded the app that lets you scan some of these that provides bonus content like audio recordings or a diary of a character. That was generally well done as a way to provide some extra atmosphere without being too much of a distraction. I wouldn’t want it in every book, but for a story like this it was a gimmick that worked well without being overused....more
“Matt’s a blind lawyer with super senses that he uses to fight crime as a vigilante dressed like Satan. Bruce is a brilliant scientist who turns into “Matt’s a blind lawyer with super senses that he uses to fight crime as a vigilante dressed like Satan. Bruce is a brilliant scientist who turns into a rampaging green giant when angry. When they get together hilarity ensues on The Super Odd Couple! Coming this fall to NBC.”
Oh, come on. You know you’d watch that show. It’s gotta be better than Gotham, right?
This is one of those hodge-podge collections that pulls together some shorter stories from one or two issues including a couple from Indestructible Hulk. The primary one has Matt daredeviling his ass off as he tries to keep the law firm together while Foggy is out because of his cancer treatments. The bully who tormented young Matt now needs his help because an old affiliation with an evil group he once briefly belonged got him arrested, but the Sons of the Serpent try to kill the guy in court which puts Daredevil in the role of John McClain when the building is locked down. Then DD hangs ten with the Silver Surfer while chasing an alien criminal which is fun because Matt gets to ride the Surfer’s board, but sadly he never says, “Cowabunga, dude!” The final story has the Hulk and Daredevil teaming up to try and keep some super weapons out of the hands of Hydra.
Overall, it’s a good set of stories that highlight the less grim version of Daredevil even as he has to deal with some fairly heavy issues like helping Foggy as he fights cancer. It’s an entertaining read, but doesn’t hit the highs of the best of Waid’s run on the title. ...more
The title of this one makes it sound as if Lisbeth Salander and Travis McGee had a baby, but it’s far more like James Cain than Stieg Larsson or John The title of this one makes it sound as if Lisbeth Salander and Travis McGee had a baby, but it’s far more like James Cain than Stieg Larsson or John D. MacDonald. Actually, let’s just skip the comparisons and say that it’s 100% Lawrence Block, and his fans know that this is a very good thing.
Doak Miller is a retired NYPD detective who moved to Florida where he now does the odd job as a private detective. A local sheriff has gotten word that beautiful Lisa has tried to hire a hit man to do away with her wealthy husband, and now the sheriff asks Doak to meet with Lisa as the hired killer to record evidence of her conspiracy to commit murder. However, Doak becomes infatuated with Lisa’s picture and instead cooks up a way to warn her off which is the start of a steamy affair between the two of them. It’s also got Doak thinking of ways that he could actually pull off the murder so that he and Lisa could get all that money.
That sounds like a familiar set-up, but this isn’t just your typical story of the adulterous couple trying to kill off a spouse. From its traditional start the story morphs into what would can only be described as metafiction in the way that Doak acknowledges that he’s essentially living in a noir story as he watches movies like Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings while planning his crime. (I’m a little surprised that Body Heat wasn’t mentioned because the plot, Florida setting, and steamy sex scenes seem like it’d be a natural one to bring up, but maybe Block was worried about Doak catching that one on TCM.)
However, this never feels like a flashy gimmick because it’s a compelling story told to us from the third party perspective of Doak. At first it seems like Doak could be another version of Block’s Matt Scudder. A retired police detective with some some regrets about his past living a low-rent life as he works as a PI is very Scudder-esque, but Doak is a different kind of animal which we learn from his willingness to turn killer as well as his interactions with Lisa and other women.
Those interactions include several graphic sexual encounters. Block has never been shy about throwing kinky scenes into some of his books, and as the cover indicates this one has no shortage of them. He uses them very effectively to a way of establishing Doak’s character as well as providing a believable twisted bond between him and Lisa beyond just some kind of insta-love thing which probably would have seemed hokey. Despite the lurid potential of some of this Block does a great job of portraying it in a matter of fact way that trusts that his characters and readers are adults who can handle it.
This is a master crime writer doing a sharp and clever take on noir tropes, and it’s a great read for fans of the genre.
Even though he’s the police chief of a small town Jesse Stone has faced some big time threats like murderers, professional thieves and organized crimeEven though he’s the police chief of a small town Jesse Stone has faced some big time threats like murderers, professional thieves and organized crime. So it seems like kind of a let down that his two enemies here are a Peeping Tom and a female high school principal inspecting the underwear of some of her students. It's not exactly Sherlock Holmes facing Moriarty.
In his later work Robert B. Parker seemed content to have every scene be about his characters having coffee and doughnuts or throwing down a few cocktails while they exchange banter. It’s got a style and rhythm that’s familiar so it’s as if you’re listening to a song you like but have heard so many times that you don’t even really hear it anymore. It is a little weird that (view spoiler)[ while Jesse’s body count has been relatively low compared to Spenser that he and his two best officers end up shooting the peeper in what was effectively suicide-by-cop. Yeah, the guy had escalated to threatening women with a gun to get them to undress and photograph them, but he was written to be more pathetic than villain so it’s jarring that he’d be someone that Jesse ends up shooting when he’s dealt with far worse people that he didn’t kill. (hide spoiler)]
So this is a typical example of the kind of 3 star book that RBP churned out like a human printing press in his later years. It’s not as good as his early stuff, but it’s still got the elements that his fans enjoyed. However, I’m really tempted to give it 5 stars for the ending.
(view spoiler)[I nearly stood up and cheered when Jesse finally told his horrible ex-wife Jenn to take a hike, and it was extra sweet that it was in the context of moving forward with a relationship with Sunny Randall who also shows signs of finally letting go of her ex-husband. It’s like both characters got slightly redeemed here. It was way too long in coming, but was kind of shocking because I would have bet money that RBP was incapable and/or unwilling to finally acknowledge that Jesse’s obsession with is ex was the sign of an unhealthy relationship rather than a form of true love in which a character had to suffer the flaws of their partner. I’m so satisfied with it that I’m worried about reading the last book in this series that RBP wrote before his death lest he revert back to his usual form. (hide spoiler)]...more
The setup here goes back to the second book of the series Trouble In Paradise in which Police Chief Jesse Stone faced a crew of professional thieves iThe setup here goes back to the second book of the series Trouble In Paradise in which Police Chief Jesse Stone faced a crew of professional thieves including Winston ‘Crow’ Cromartie that looted an entire wealthy island of Jesse's ocean side community. Crow got away, but he’s returned now that the statute of limitations has run out on that crime, and he’s taken a job to locate the missing daughter of a crime kingpin from Florida. However, Crow balks when the kingpin orders him to murder his wife who was trying to hide the kid from him which forces Jesse into an uneasy partnership with Crow to try and protect the women.
The idea of a cop having to team up with a guy he knows is a criminal isn’t half-bad, but the execution is so completely botched that all the characters come across as incompetent and unlikable to the point where I was kinda hating everyone by the the end of it. Robert B. Parker’s books were never police procedurals, and he often had flawed characters bending the law for the greater good, but this one just stretches credibility far past the breaking point.
First and foremost, we’re supposed to buy into the idea that even though Crow was involved in multiple felonies including murder, kidnapping, bank robbery, and the deaths of two police officers that Jesse makes only a token effort to build a case against him before giving up and just trying to keep an eye on him in a half-assed kind of way. I’m pretty sure that the FBI would have more than a few things to say about the bank robbery alone. It also seems that Jesse and his cops forget all about their two guys who died during a crime that Crow was part of because none of them seem to hold a grudge other than a few random comments about their deaths. Even when Jesse knows that Crow has been running around shooting people later in the book he just shrugs it off.
RBP loved writing about certain types of badasses who are all of a kind that recognized and respected each other no matter what side of the law they were on, and that’s what he was going for here. However the circumstances under which Jesse met Crow in the previous book just do not allow for any type of believable plot other than Jesse doing everything he can to immediately arrest Crow. It really felt like RBP was trying to take a character he’d created as a pure criminal and tried to retcon him into being another Hawk. Plus, the whole idea of the statute of limitations being a factor also creates a huge problem with the internal timeline of the series.
There’s the usual nonsense with Jesse’s ex-wife Jenn and their inability to either let each other go or maintain a healthy relationship, but because of RBP committing to the ten year time frame (Which aligned to the publishing dates of the books as well.) it also means that Jesse and Jenn have now spent over a decade in which they’ve been unable to get their shit together even with the help of therapists. The idea that the two of them having been doing this same exact routine for that long with no improvement or end in sight just makes me tired.
We’ve also got severe problems in that Jesse is supposed to be bending the rules and working with Crow because he’s trying to save a girl. However, she’s an unlikeable little shit who also is involved with some truly evil stuff. (view spoiler)[She helps get her own mother murdered without a second thought or moment of regret, and she’s also willing to set Crow up to be killed. (hide spoiler)] Yet by the end Jesse has risked the lives of his officers as well as his own career to help this girl, and absolutely nothing is done to hold her responsible for her actions.
Overall, Jesse comes across as even more than a sap than ever because at least it’s usually just his ex-wife that he allows to manipulate him, but here Crow plays him for a chump as well. Even the other supporting characters who have generally been reliable also turn into sex crazed idiots, and yet it’s all played as if it’s a cute source of amusement.
(view spoiler)[Bad enough that Suitcase Simpson apparently has a thing for older married women, but it’s especially galling when Molly has a one night stand because not only has she been the conscience of Jesse's department, she also frequently reminds everyone that she's happily married with four kids. She was also disgusted and repulsed at the behavior of promiscuous people when watching sex tapes as part of another case in an earlier book. It seems extra skeevy that Suitcase is sleeping with a women who is being a pain in the ass to Jesse by trying to keep poor kids from being bussed into her area, and that Molly sleeps with Crow with little thought or regard that he's a killer who was involved with a crime that resulted in the deaths of two of her fellow cops. It’s extra salt in the wound that it’s Jenn, who is incapable of monogamy with Jesse, who gives the blessing to this business that absolves Molly of any guilt. (hide spoiler)]
I’m not even sure of who I was supposed to be rooting for because the supposed hero of this series came across as complete rube who is not only incapable of arresting a guy he knows committed multiple crimes, he essentially ends up getting played for the entire book in the interest of trying to save a worthless kid who is guilty of terrible things herself. ...more
(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at firs(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at first when there wasn’t a serial killer on the spaceship.
In the year 2066 telescopes spot what can only be an alien ship near Saturn as it docks with a previously unknown object in orbit. The governments of the United States and China both want to get there first which leads to a rushed program to quickly put together ships capable of making the long journey. Political tension and potential sabotage make the voyage into space even more dangerous as crews from both nations race to Saturn.
Sandford (Real name John Camp.) regularly puts two new crime thrillers on the best seller’s list every year so it seems a little odd that he’d forgo one of them to team up with photo-artist Ctein to do a pure sci-fi novel. However, Sandford’s bio and his books have also highlighted his interest and knowledge of subjects like art, photography, archaeology, surgery, and computer technology so it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that his mind might turn to this kind of book outside his normal genre.
There’s an authors’ note at the end in which they explain that the core of the idea was based on needing to get to Saturn in a certain time frame. From the details in that you can tell it was the focus of their thinking on how come up with some realistic near-future spaceship propulsion methods. By working up a couple of different ways to accomplish this they set up a kind of tortoise and the hare race between the Americans and Chinese which also helps set up the drama to the story. (The authors’ note also provides a very satisfactory answer as to why they decided to name the US ship after Richard Nixon.)
It also helps that Sandford has had a lot of practice at creating characters in familiar genre situations while still making them seem like real people who all work, bitch, commiserate, screw, take drugs, drink, scheme, and joke while risking their lives as part of a potentially disastrous contest with a rival nation to try and meet some aliens.
There are a few things here that make clear that Sandford’s not working on his usual turf. One of his strengths is writing scenes in which people have to act fast when things start going wrong, and generally his pacing is nearly flawless when it comes to building tension. However, the nature of this story requires a timeline in which months of boring traveling is involved, and while they do their best to use this downtime to set up story, build characters, develop the setting, and add humor, it just doesn’t have the sense of frantic momentum that Sandford can usually deliver except for a few scenes.
Plus, this is the only book of Sandford’s I’ve read which doesn’t focus on one single lead. While Sandy Darlington seems like he’s going to be the main character at first this actually turns into much more of an ensemble book, and that added to a sense that the story is drifting at times. I also question how much time and effort was spent describing the various cameras and the best way of using them, but that’s what happens when one of your authors is a photographer.
There’s also a slight letdown related to what they discover when they get to the alien object. It’s not a complete fumble, but it does show that Sandford and Ctein put more thought into how they’d get to Saturn rather than what the characters would find when they got there. (view spoiler)[While I thought the idea of the alien trading post managed by an AI was fairly clever, it really just existed to give the Chinese and Americans something to fight about on the way back to Earth. It was a bit disappointing that in a novel about people risking everything to make first contact that they essentially just end up getting an answering machine message. It gave me the impression that most of the creative juice was spent on propulsion systems and orbital mechanics which left me wishing that some of the same kind of care and effort was put into coming up with something equally well-thought out for an alien race. (hide spoiler)]
It’s still an entertaining read with some exciting fast paced parts, but those not interested in problems like how you vent excess heat from a spaceship engine might find it a bit dull at times.
3.64 stars.
(Also posted at Kemper's Book Blog. I also wrote a similar, but different, review for the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog for which I was paid after I had written and posted this.)...more
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