2017 was a garbage fire of a year. I’m talking about a disgusting trash pile filled with old tires, dirty diapers, and toxic chemicals that was soaked2017 was a garbage fire of a year. I’m talking about a disgusting trash pile filled with old tires, dirty diapers, and toxic chemicals that was soaked in motor oil. Once it was lit the smoke burned the eyes and skin of anyone nearby. It seemed like that was going to also be how my reading went too although there were some late surprises that salvaged it.
Disappointment was a big theme because several of my favorite authors came in with efforts that didn’t seem up to their usual quality. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. had a lot of the stuff I usually like from Neal Stephenson, but it just didn’t do it for me like he usually does. It was a bad time to try and make a murderous dirty cop the sympathetic lead of a novel which was my biggest hang up with Don Winslow’s The Force. Stephen King teamed up with his son Owen for Sleeping Beauties which was another book that I shrugged my way through. The most crushing letdown was Since We Fell from Dennis Lehane because I didn’t think he was capable of writing a bad book, but he proved me wrong with that one.
On top of being underwhelmed by some of my favorite writers I read I also had the misfortune to stumble into reading Not Alone by Craig Falconer which was one of the worst books I’ve read in years. That was back in February, and the thought of it still makes my blood boil. I was also profoundly disappointed with my first book by Meg Gardiner who I’d heard a lot of good things about it, but her UNSUB was everything I hate about serial killer thrillers.
Not everything sucked because some of my most reliable authors came through as usual. Ace Atkins kept to his two book a year schedule with Little White Lies and The Fallen and did some of his best stuff with Spenser and Quinn Colson yet. Another guy delivering two new books was John Sandford who shook up his old Lucas Davenport formula with Golden Prey and then followed that up with another strong entry in his Virgil Flowers series Deep Freeze. (I also made a road trip to meet Sandford at a signing so that was one of the highlights in my book year.)
In addition to those Johnny Shaw also added to his on-going Jimmy Veeder fiascos with the fun Imperial Valley. On the sci-fi side of things The Expanse series continued to grow as an obsession for me with the release of the second season of the TV show based on the books, and the excellent new one Persepolis Rises.
One sub-genre that really paid off this year was noir. I finally got around to trying Ross Macdonald with The Moving Target as well as Dorothy B. Hughes’ In A Lonely Place. Hard Case Crime also gave me a couple of winners with An Easy Death which was a nifty little heist novel from Daniel Boyd as well as unearthing the previously unpublished last book of James Cain, The Cocktail Waitress. Probably the best old school hard-boiled crime drama I read this year was the graphic novel The Fade Out from the dynamic duo of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.
I also had some good luck trying new authors like the strange and compelling The Ready-Made Thief from Augustus Rose, and The Blinds from Adam Sternbergh.
Jonathan Moore was the author who made me happiest this year. I’d previously read THE POISON ARTIST from him and liked it a lot, and finsihing up the rest of that trilogy this year was fantastic. (It’s a trilogy in a very loose sense. Each can easily be read as a stand-alone novel.) Both The Dark Room and The Night Market were great books that crossed over a couple of genres. I was so jazzed on those that I gave his earlier novella Close Reach a try and got a terrifying horror/survival story that was also among the best things I read this year.
So even though there was a lot of books that I was less than enthused about there was still enough good stuff sprinkled throughout the year to keep it feeling like a total loss.
If this book actually were a cocktail you’d probably find it was pretty smooth going down, but think that it’s not all that strong while drinking. TheIf this book actually were a cocktail you’d probably find it was pretty smooth going down, but think that it’s not all that strong while drinking. Then you’d be surprised by the twist you found at the bottom of the glass, and when you tried to stand up you’d fall over and realize that you were completely shitfaced after all.
Joan Medford is burying her husband, but since he was an abusive drunk she isn’t exactly upset that he crashed and burned in a drunk driving accident. However, he’s left her stone broke, and his sister is using Joan’s inability to provide for her small son Tad as an excuse to have the kid stay with her as the first step towards claiming custody of him. Desperate for cash Joan takes a gig as a scantily clad cocktail waitress in a lounge where her looks draw the attention of plenty of male customers including the rich but sickly Earl K. White who starts dropping huge tips on her. Joan quickly sees an opportunity to help her get her son back if she can make White fall for her, but she’s torn between working towards that goal and her attraction to a handsome rogue named Tom Barclay. She’s also got a problem with a pesky policeman who thinks that she was somehow responsible for his husband’s death.
This is one of those Hard Case Crime offerings where they’ve dug up some unpublished treasure, and this time it’s from noir master James Cain. Cain wrote and rewrote multiple versions of the novel until his death, and it’s a helluva interesting and tricky read. You can see elements of his best known books like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce, but what’s interesting here is how he’s almost subverting his previous work by heading down similar paths yet still making The Cocktail Waitress something different.
It’s a subtle thing, and a good portion of the book just seems to be this hard luck woman struggling to overcome her circumstances and people’s perceptions of her. The police and her husband’s family think she might be a killer. Many people assume that she’s willing to flirt and flash some cleavage for tips, and maybe even do more than that. When she gets into the relationship with White it seems like a classic gold digger scenario. And yet the first person narration that Joan gives us make it seem like she’s just a decent practical woman trying to do her best to improve her situation enough to make sure she gets her son back.
The great thing about the writing here is that by the end you’re still sympathizing with Joan until the point where you look back and realize that there’s a whole lot of fishy stuff in her story. Is she an unreliable narrator who has been feeding the reader a line the entire time? Are we just as big of suckers as the rubes that Joan works for tips? Or is it really just a string of bad luck that is making Joan look bad, and she is just trying to set the record straight as she claims?
Those are the kind of questions you’ll find yourself asking, and it’s the way that Cain made Joan come alive as a character so that you’re not entire sure that makes this a fresh approach to a classic noir story....more
Because of its format some might say that this is fantastic crime comic. That’s true, but I’m going to take it a step further and say that it’s some oBecause of its format some might say that this is fantastic crime comic. That’s true, but I’m going to take it a step further and say that it’s some of the best noir I’ve ever read which I’d rate right up there with the likes of James Cain or Jim Thompson.
Seriously, it’s that good.
It’s got the ultimate noir setting of post-war Los Angeles, and the plot involves a screenwriter with a drinking problem knowing about the cover up of the murder of an actress that the studio fixer has made look like a suicide. With that as a starting point we meet a variety of characters from despicable producers, publicists who put a glossy coat of paint over ugly truths, movie stars with secrets, blacklisted writers, commie hunting Feds, and even appearances from real people like Clark Gable and Dashiell Hammett.
There’s been no shortage of wannabe James Ellroys who try to do the old school Hollywood thing, and very often it feels just like bad actors putting on fedoras and trench coats so they can mouth clichéd tough-guy dialogue with a cigarette in the corner of their mouths. What really impressed me about this is that Ed Brubaker didn't fall into that trap but instead wrote an ACTUAL noir in which everyone is compromised, nobody is interested in the truth, and seeking justice is a fool’s errand.
Brubaker’s regular partner Sean Phillips does his usual brilliant job of making the art be a perfect marriage to what the story needs, and colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser adds a richness to it that is way more interesting than just a black-and-white comic which is what lesser talents might have done for something like this. This collected edition of the entire run of the title also has some great extras including high quality reproductions of the amazing covers as well as some interesting behind-the-scenes features of how it was all put together from the researching stage to the writing and artwork.
I got this as a present last Christmas, and I’m ashamed that I let it set in a stack of unread stuff for almost a year before getting to it since it’s one of the best things I’ve read in 2017....more
The first volume set up the premise of a young man named Dylan saved from an attempted suicide from aIt’s hard out here for a masked vigilante killer.
The first volume set up the premise of a young man named Dylan saved from an attempted suicide from a demon who now demands that he kill at least one bad person a month or forfeit his own life. While reluctant at first Dylan is getting better, if not downright enthusiastic, about murdering jerkfaces. Unfortunately, this makes him a little cocky and sloppy, and he soon has both the NYPD and the Russian mob on his trail. And of course there’s still a distinct possibility that the cheese is slipping off Dylan’s mental cracker, and that there is no demon.
What I’m really enjoying about this is the way that it pops the fantasy balloon of gun toting vigilantes being the best way to clean up the streets. Dylan may have a certain knack for finding and killing assholes, but it’s always a messy and bloody business that ultimately solves nothing and creates more cycles of escalating violence. Maybe best of all is that Brubaker and Phillips have stripped out any notions that this is ‘cool’. There’s no smirking Charles Bronson blowing away punks nor a Punisher with a bad ass skull logo on his chest dispensing street justice. It’s just a scared and probably disturbed young man with a ski mask and a gun causing a lot of unintentional damage to everyone around him whether they deserve it or not....more
This is an almost perfect example of what I both like about a well written modern comic as well as the things that make me think I’d be happy never reThis is an almost perfect example of what I both like about a well written modern comic as well as the things that make me think I’d be happy never reading another superhero book from a major publisher again.
Scott Snyder came up with a great concept of Batman trying to get Two Face to a destination almost 500 miles away in the hopes of finally curing his split personality. The problem is that Two Face has offered a huge amount of money to anyone who frees him as well as threatened to release all of the dirt he’s accumulated over the year as both Gotham’s DA and a criminal kingpin. This pretty much sets every villain in Gotham on their trail as well as turning some of his most loyal allies against Batman.
So it’s a classic road story like a Midnight Run with Batman being attacked by villain after villain with even average people he encounters ready to pick up a gun and take a shot as he drags Two Face across the countryside. That’s a fantastic idea for a Batman comic that I haven’t read before.
Yet because this is a modern comic we can’t just have a cool superhero story. It’s got to be tied into a secret history of Batman somehow, and this involves a childhood friendship between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent when they were both put into a private home for wealthy troubled boys.
I guess this is also tied into this Rebirth stuff that DC is doing, but I’m not gonna touch that with a ten foot pole. If it would have stuck to that cool core idea then it would have been an easy four or five stars. The Bruce/Harvey kid stuff knocks it down a peg as does the bland stories padding out the length of the paperback. And I’m not a fan of the art of John Romita Jr. although the characters look a little less like Lego blocks than his usual square edged stuff....more
You’d think the biggest danger in the Arctic Circle would be freezing to death or being eaten by a polar bear, but as always it turns out that people You’d think the biggest danger in the Arctic Circle would be freezing to death or being eaten by a polar bear, but as always it turns out that people are worse than anything Mother Nature can throw at us.
It starts out with a Coast Guard ship on patrol in the Arctic when a man on skis approach the ship over the ice. He says his name is Thomas Anderson, and he’s the only survivor of a disaster at a research outpost called Zodiac Station. Anderson tells a story of how he was a lowly lab tech whose once promising career had been derailed when he gets a sudden offer to come to Zodiac and work with his old mentor on a project. Unfortunately, right after he gets to the station they find his mentor dead after apparently falling into an ice crevasse, but the circumstances and several of the people at the station seem suspicious to Anderson. After the Coast Guard discovers other survivors at the station they hear other viewpoints that cast doubts on Anderson’s version, but when the tale involves possible conspiracies that might be related to climate change, oil companies, and Russian espionage it becomes impossible to know who to believe about what.
Overall, I was impressed with how well written this was. I thought it might be a pure airport bookstore type, but this is solid writing that builds up interesting characters and an increasingly puzzling scenario. The descriptive stuff about living and working at an Arctic research station was exceptionally well done, and it showed what a hard and dreary existence that would be spiced up with the dangers of living in such a harsh environment. So it’s a very solid thriller told in a unique way with an ending I never saw coming.
However, I very nearly didn’t read it.
This book popped up as a recommendation from Amazon after I read another cold weather tale of survival recently, and since I’m fascinated by the idea of scenarios involving polar research stations I thought I’d give it a try. (I blame The Thing for biting me with that particular bug in my teens.)
It was a quick skim of reviews I did before getting it nearly waved me off. A whole lot of people on Goodreads complained about an ambiguous ending that doesn’t resolve anything and some other problems. So I had doubts, but tried it anyhow since I already had it reserved at the library. I'm glad I did. Frankly, I thought the ultimate wrap up was very clever, and if I was a different kind of asshole I might say that those people who hated the ending missed the point.
In fact, I’m kind of shocked that not one of the reviews I read mentioned a key point, and I think it’s this factor that is going to shift your perspective a lot as to how you view the ending. Here it is. (view spoiler)[ Frankenstein. This is a story that uses Frankenstein as a template from the start with a ship finding a man with with a wild story out on the ice, and then it is ultimately revealed that a genuine creature created by science is the catalyst for all of this. The creature turns on it’s creator, and in the end the creature leaves the ship.
Yes, the stuff about Anderson’s ex-wife and husband being alive and hiding in a secret lab where they’ve created a new kind of human is something for which there is no groundwork laid and sounds like something out of a B movie. But to work this plot as written it really needs to come as a complete surprise with no hint of what kind of story we’re getting which is kinda of a rebooted retcon of Frankenstein for the 21st century….Maybe? Whatever. It worked for me. (hide spoiler)]
Having said all that I understand if a reader knew all this and still was angry at the end because it does take a spectacular leap that might leave someone feeling blindsided. Or if you didn’t catch what I discussed in the spoilers it’s still understandable that you’d feel like you got bait-and-switched by this book. Those are legitimate views that I wouldn’t argue with if you felt like you had been burned.
Yet I find a lot of what’s done in genre fiction cliched at this point, and to be completely surprised by something coming out of left field like that was a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed. So if the setup sounds like something you’d be interested in I’d just say that you should be ready for the story to go off in a wild direction at the end.
Comments referencing the ending that aren’t hidden by a spoiler tag will be deleted....more
If I told you that Deadpool was in a mental hospital, and his psychiatrist is an unhinged woman who falls in love with him you might reasonably assumeIf I told you that Deadpool was in a mental hospital, and his psychiatrist is an unhinged woman who falls in love with him you might reasonably assume that it was the title engaging in some of it’s typical meta-satire of the genre to poke a little fun at DC’s Harley Quinn, right?
Unfortunately, instead of doing anything clever the entire story is an extended gag about how she’s not a supermodel so DP finds her disgusting. This is a guy whose face would let him play Freddy Kruger without using make-up, and he was recently hooking up with a disgusting alien during his space adventure. But hey, this chick is UGLY!
They could have done something with this if they would have played up the angle of it being a twisted version of the Harley/Joker story, or if the main point was that this woman is just too crazy even for Deadpool. That’s actually touched on, but you always get the impression that if this lady was hotter than DP would be totally into the whole thing. Even though there’s actually a few good moments where the shrink is making some valid observations about DP’s mental state it’s all tossed aside for the lazy and cheap stuff.
If you were a single gal living in post-war Los Angeles you’d probably find Dix Steele absolutely dreamy. After all, he’s a big handsome fella who dreIf you were a single gal living in post-war Los Angeles you’d probably find Dix Steele absolutely dreamy. After all, he’s a big handsome fella who dresses well and likes to dine out in swell places. He was a fighter pilot in the war, and now he’s working on writing a mystery novel so he’s certainly leading a colorful and interesting life. Just one problem. About once a month he feels a compulsion to strangle a strange woman to death.
Oh, well. Nobody’s perfect, right?
We spend the entire book in Dix’s head starting with him on the prowl for his next victim on a foggy night in the hills, and then he visits his old war buddy Brub. Dix is such a cool customer that he doesn’t flinch when he learns that Brub is one of the police detectives working on the strangler murders, but Brub’s wife Sylvia seems a bit cool to him. As we follow Dix through this daily life we learn that he’s a man filled with anger and resentments as well as wild mood swings that intensify when he starts dating a beautiful neighbor lady.
I was only dimly aware of Dorothy B. Hughes until the recent re-release of this novel made a bunch of the crime writers I follow on social media start gushing about the book and film loosely based on it. That caught my attention, and I can see why they were excited about it. The main thing about it is that it seems way ahead of it’s a time in its depiction of the mindset of a serial killer.
Coincidentally, it also made a good companion piece to be reading while in the middle of watching Netflix’s new series Mindhunter, and Dix seems to exactly fit the pattern of a certain type of woman hating killer. And Dorothy Hughes was creating this character long before the psychology and terminology referring to them would become mainstream thanks to serial killers becoming a profitable true crime industry as well as a staple of thrillers in print and on screen.
Overall, it was a solid piece of work that I would have rated as a strong 3 stars, but then I read the afterword by Megan Abbott which made me think even more highly of it. Mighty Megan makes a lot of great points about how Hughes had tapped in a strain of misogyny that the genre often used, and that she then cleverly subverts it in places in ways that crime fiction hadn’t seen. That hadn’t occurred to me while reading, and it made me realize that there was another layer to the book that I hadn’t quite wrapped my arms around so I bumped it up to 4 stars....more
Deadpool wants to end it all, but death doesn’t come easy when you’ve got a super-duper healing power. What’s a half-insane motor-mouthed mercenary suDeadpool wants to end it all, but death doesn’t come easy when you’ve got a super-duper healing power. What’s a half-insane motor-mouthed mercenary supposed to do?
Well, if you’re in the Marvel universe you can try having the Hulk pound on you until even your atoms are squished into jelly. But how do you make him angry enough to kill you? That’s easy. Just nuke him. Twice.
As you can tell rational schemes aren’t really Deadpool’s thing.
This was pretty entertaining and had just a little more to it than the silly fanboy question of “What would happen if Hulk and Deadpool fought?” I think DP has been at his best when interacting with the other super types. Wade makes an interesting dilemma for somebody like Spider-Man because he isn’t a villain in the sense of doing evil like a Dr. Doom and he’s often trying to do good in his own way, but his insanity and general disregard for the damage he does make him extremely dangerous.
Which is exactly the position that Hulk gets put into here because he really doesn’t want to kill Wade, but when DP is setting off nuclear weapons and saying that he won’t stop until somebody stops him permanently it kind of limits the options.
Filmmaker Walter Hill has written a comic. Can you dig it? CAN YOU DIG IT?!!? CAAAANNNNN YOUUUU DIGGGGG ITTT??!!!??
Unfortunately there’s not that muchFilmmaker Walter Hill has written a comic. Can you dig it? CAN YOU DIG IT?!!? CAAAANNNNN YOUUUU DIGGGGG ITTT??!!!??
Unfortunately there’s not that much here to dig.
In 1932 professional gun man Roy Nash gets creatively sprung from prison by the mob in order to track down three hoodlums who double crossed them after a bank heist and killed the boss’s nephew in the process. After Roy tracks them down and kills them he can keep any money left from the robbery he comes across in the process, but his main motivation is finding the old girlfriend who ran off with one of the thieves. When his desire to find her conflicts with his mob mission Roy runs afoul of all kinds of gangsters and crooked cops.
This is a perfectly fine set up for a crime comic, and it’s done well enough. But you’d think the guy who came up with movies like The Warriors and Streets of Fire would have done something with some visual flare and memorable characters. Really, it’s just a series of bland panels in which guys with fedoras and trench coats punch and shoot each other. It’s not entirely fair to blame Hill for this since he didn’t draw it, but on the other hand it all looks very much like his lackluster Bruce Willis Prohibition-era shoot-em-up Last Man Standing so it seems like he just gave some of those old storyboards to the artist and called it a day. Plus, the story is just your standard anti-hero tough-guy killing people for personal reasons rather than for money.
It’s not terrible, but it’s not anything particularly great either....more
I received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
M-O-O-N. That spells Andy Weir’s new novel. (OK, if you haven’t read Stephen King’s TI received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
M-O-O-N. That spells Andy Weir’s new novel. (OK, if you haven’t read Stephen King’s The Stand that joke won’t make sense to you, but rather than think that’s a failure of my review I’m going to say that it’s your own fault for not having read The Stand. Serves you right.)
It’s the near future, and there’s a city on the moon called Artemis. Jazz Bashara is a young woman who has grown up there, and knowing the place like the back of her hand makes it easier for her to hustle a living legally by being a porter who hauls stuff around. Illegally, she makes money on the side with a smuggling business. If she could get her EVA certification she could make a lot more by showing tourists the sights outside, but a hardware problem makes her fail the test as well as nearly killing her. So when a rich guy offers her a huge payday to perform a dangerous act of sabotage on a business rival Jazz takes the gig. Things don’t go quite as planned and soon Jazz is in danger of being deported back to Earth or murdered, and she isn’t sure which one would be worse.
Just to get this out of the way: No, it isn’t as good as The Martian. But it’s still a pretty fun read and got a lot of the stuff I liked about that one so no shame there.
Weir has built up a lot of detail about life on the moon from the nuts-and-bolts stuff science stuff as well as how the Artemis society functions. One detail I particularly liked is that the moon citizens trade in ‘slugs’ which stands for ‘soft landed grams’ which is a weight based credit system to have things shipped from Earth.
We’ve also got another likeable lead character in Jazz just as we did with Mark Watney in The Martian. Jazz is a borderline criminal, not an astronaut, but like Mark she’s got a can-do attitude mixed with a fun way of explaining all the technical stuff to the reader. She’s also got a similar smart-ass nature, and that could have gone wrong because snarky leads can turn into annoying joke machines if not done well. Yet Weir never lets it get away from him and keeps it funny.
So why not as good as his first book? While it’s great that Weir made his main character a young woman who is a lapsed Muslim he didn’t exactly do anything with those traits. Jazz could have easily been a young male of any religion so it seems like an easy nod to diversity rather than incorporating anything that might have deepened her. Also, while this one has Jazz getting into plenty of predicaments it lacks the tension that The Martian had its best. Granted, one is a survival story and one is more of a sci-fi thriller so it’s comparing apples to giraffes to some extent, but I just never felt like Jazz was in any real danger whereas I legitimately didn’t know if Watney would make it off Mars.
Still, it’s got the same kind of enthusiastic attitude of his first book, and it’s nice to read about smart people doing smart things. This isn’t great literature, but Weir has an entertaining style. He’s also great at blending science, story, and humor into a nice little sci-fi stew....more
This is a review of a Stephen King (& Son) novel being posted on Halloween. SPPOOOOKKKKYYYY!!
Eh….Not so much.
Around the world all the women who fall aThis is a review of a Stephen King (& Son) novel being posted on Halloween. SPPOOOOKKKKYYYY!!
Eh….Not so much.
Around the world all the women who fall asleep become enveloped by mysterious cocoons that form almost instantly once they go night-night, and they aren’t waking up. They’re still alive, but if anyone tries to cut or tear open a cocoon the lady inside will pop awake in a psychotic rage in which she’ll immediately try to murder anyone around and then will immediately fall asleep and be cocooned again. (I can relate because I also fly into a homicidal fury if awoken from a nap.)
The small Appalachian town of Dooling is like everywhere else with the women struggling not to fall asleep, but as days pass the number of those awake begin to dwindle. Everything begins to fall apart as some men try to watch over the sleeping women they care for to protect them from jerkfaces who would do them harm. A lady named Evie is arrested for a horrific crime just as everything goes to hell and is locked up in the local women’s prison. Evie shows a supernatural awareness of the people and events around her, and it’s quickly obvious that she’s immune to what’s happening to all the other females. Meanwhile, the sleeping ladies find themselves someplace familiar but very different.
The main idea here is pretty clever as hybrid of a fairy tale story and the beginning an apocalyptic end-of-society-as-we-know-it novel. Trying to get that mixture right is one of the places where I think the book falls down a bit because the more hardnosed elements where people are having to come to terms with what’s happening and prepare for the worst was more compelling than when it went deeper into the paranormal realm aspects of Evie. Yet that’s a vital component to the flip side of the book where we find out what’s going on with the women while they snooze which the book needs. So I’m left struggling to put my finger on why I didn’t like this more.
Maybe the writing itself is a factor. With Uncle Stevie collaborating with Cousin Owen I wasn’t sure what to expect, and you can tell that this isn’t a Stephen King solo effort. It doesn’t feel exactly like one of his novels, but it’s not exactly unlike one either. Even his books co-written with Peter Straub felt more King-ish to me which seems odd. I listened to the audio version of this which included an interview with both authors at the end, and they talked about how instead of trading off chapters or sections that they would leave holes in the middle of what they wrote for the other to fill in a deliberate attempt to keep a reader from figuring out exactly who wrote what. Mission accomplished, but I’m not sure that made for the best book possible.
Another interesting bit in that interview is that this started out as a potential TV series that they wrote some scripts for, and I think that shows through in some of the structure. There’s something that feels episodic about this although again I’m not able to explain exactly why that that is. It’s not all that different from any other book with multiple characters in different locations doing things, but I felt like there were moments when the credits were going to roll. It just reads like a TV show at times is the best way I can explain it.
I’m sure some will be upset at the overall message here which is essentially that women are routinely fucked over by men, and that men overall are pretty awful. (Breaking News: That’s all true.) I admit that there were a few points where I found the male bashing a bit much, but not out of any nutjob MRA style faux indignation about double standards. It’s because I’m a cynic and a misanthrope so I’m fully committed to the belief that deep down all people, men and women, are pure garbage. So while I agree in general that women are less prone to violence as a solution and several other points the book makes I still don’t think that women would make a perfect world. Better? Probably. But not perfect. They’d just find more subtle ways to fuck things up. So for me the Kings’ idea that most women are saints who will always do the right thing that they present here was more wishful thinking than reality.
It’s not a bad book. (Certainly its miles better than The Fireman, another novel written by a King offspring in which a strange disease puts society in peril.) It’s got a good core plot, interesting characters, and decent writing, but it’s too long and never quite gets into the top gear it was straining for. It’ll fall somewhere in the middle of my King rankings....more
It turns out that being a gun-toting vigilante who kills people indiscriminately isn’t as easy and fun as Charles Bronson made it look like in those DIt turns out that being a gun-toting vigilante who kills people indiscriminately isn’t as easy and fun as Charles Bronson made it look like in those Death Wish movies. Who knew?
Dylan is a grad student with a lonely crappy life and a history of depression so it’s not that big of surprise when he decides to end it all one night by jumping off the roof of his building. What is a surprise is that he lives, but then he starts seeing a shadowy demon who claims that it saved him and now he owes a debt of one life a month. Dylan has a hard time believing this at first, but then he grows deathly ill near the end of thirty days so he reluctantly decides that it’s better to kill some bad people then die himself.
Unfortunately, he quickly learns that being a vigilante killing bad people is tough gig. How do you get a gun that can’t be traced? Or how do you find a truly bad person who deserves to die? And killing people is way messier than it looks in the movies. Also, is that demon real or is Dylan just crazy?
I’m a big fan of Ed Brubaker and his partnership with Sean Phillips has produced some great stories. They have a real knack for taking genre stories and standing them on their heads, and the idea of having this depressed everyday kind of guy becoming a murderous vigilante is right in their wheelhouse. There’s no comic book glamor in this, and Dylan has to settle for a ski mask instead of a cool skull themed Punisher outfit while becoming a killer with a double life only complicates his personal problems.
Why it’s almost as if murder is wrong and engaging in it takes an immense toll even if you try to do it only to those who deserve it.
I’m looking forward into reading more of this title....more
I received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
I got sneak preview of this one last spring when I made a long drive to attend a John SandforI received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
I got sneak preview of this one last spring when I made a long drive to attend a John Sandford signing, and he told us about the current book he was fighting a deadline on that he was going to have to spend the evening working on when he got back to the hotel. All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but it makes John one of the best and most productive thriller writers on the bestseller list.
It’s another hard Minnesota winter in the small town of Trippton, but there’s a spot near the sewage treatment plant where the river doesn’t freeze. That’s where the body of the lady who owned the local bank pops up, and soon state cop Virgil Flowers is on the job. Virgil is familiar with Trippton because his fishing buddy Johnson Johnson lives there, and he also worked another case there just a few books back.
Complicating the murder investigation is the side gig his bosses want Virgil to help with that involves a ring of the locals adding sound chips to Barbie dolls that make it sound as if their having orgasms and selling them on the web. The Mattel corporation has no sense of humor about these aptly named Barbie-Ohs and has dispatched a private detective to serve cease-and-desist orders, but the hard boiled lady gumshoe is having no luck tracking down the people involved. Virgil isn’t happy about such a silly distraction, but he finds out the hard way that times are so tough in this struggling small town that the people involved are desperate to keep anyone from interfering with the income they make from selling the dolls.
This is pretty typical Sandford in a lot of ways. Virgil gets a case in a rural Minnesota town, and he tries to solve it using his sneakily low key way of chatting up people and tapping into local gossip. Like most of his books we know right from the start who the killer is, and the tension comes from the cat-and-mouse game between the cop and criminal. Sandford often holds back some info from the reader that is a critical part of how the bad guy will be found and figuring that out provides the mystery element to his books rather than a straight-up whodunit. He adds a new wrinkle to that in this one because while we know who killed the woman we also know that he left the body in her house after trying to make it look like an accident. One of the interesting aspects in this one is that the killer is as confused as we are as to how she wound up in the river.
There is also all the typical Sandford stuff about Virgil having funny conversations with people, and one of the better running gags in this one is that everyone he asks about the leader of the Barbie-Oh gang acts as if they’ve never heard of her though he knows damn good and well that every one of them knows exactly who she is.
There’s one potential problem here with a big unresolved plot point. Sandford doesn’t always wrap everything up neatly, but even if the cops don’t know everything by the conclusion the reader always does. It’s also possible that he’s leaving a loose thread for a future book, but that's not really his style so it’s odd that it isn’t even mentioned in the wrap-up as a loose end. It really does seem like something that Sandford just forgot to address, but his plotting is usually air tight so it really made me scratch my head at the oversight.
Overall, it’s still another satisfying thriller from a writer whose casual readability masks how intelligent, well conceived, and executed his books really are....more
I’d like to tell you about this comic, but it’s a SECRET!
Actually, it isn’t. The title really doesn’t make sense, and it’s really just a nod towards tI’d like to tell you about this comic, but it’s a SECRET!
Actually, it isn’t. The title really doesn’t make sense, and it’s really just a nod towards the first big Marvel crossover Secret Wars. (Which also really wasn’t a secret either now that I think about it.) This also has plenty of other things you could rip on it about. Like you have to have a fairly detailed and current knowledge of the Marvel comics universe including Hickman’s run on Avengers to have a prayer of understanding it. There’s a ridiculous amount of content you’d have to read to get the whole story. (137 individual comics come up on the Marvel Unlimited app for this event.) And if you just check out the core Secret Wars books there’s a lot that will seem rushed and unexplained because the some parts of the story are happening elsewhere. In short this is one of those giant crossover events, and this one is also carrying the weight of being a way to reboot and retcon chunks of Marvel. Been there, done that, bored to death by it, right?
And yet I actually kind of liked this.
Yeah, I’ll concede all those flaws and more, but I appreciate that Hickman really swung for the fences even as he was dealing with the limitations and problems inherent to these epic stunts. The idea that all of the Marvel universes were colliding and destroying each other, and that Doctor Doom, of all people, is the one who manages to salvage pieces of the multiverse which he stitched together into a world he appointed himself god of was pretty ambitious and had some cool angles to it. I also liked that the central figures here are characters like Doom, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Dr. Strange, and Black Panther because they usually end up as the supporting players in something like this, but by taking Tony Stark and Steve Rogers out of the picture back in the Avengers it gives other heroes a chance to shine. Plus, Tony and Steve were really being annoying jerkfaces so good riddance for now.
I could easily revert to more cynical comic nerd self and roll my eyes at how Marvel did all of this with the promise of a new refreshed universe, and yet as I understand, the only things that are really different are things like bringing the Miles Morales version of Spider-Man into regular continuity and ending the Fantastic Four. (And that was as much about a pissing contest with Fox over film rights as it was a story decision.)
Still, it had its appeal from the big ideas to some of the smaller character bits with some heart such as (view spoiler)[ Ben Grimm letting himself be killed rather than fight one of Sue’s children. (hide spoiler)] I did like that at the end of it all it boiled down a very personal fight between two of Marvel’s older characters. There was probably a much better and simpler way to do this that might have made this something truly great, but for what it was I found myself entertained for the most part....more
I thought I'd do a larger review of Hickman's whole run of Avengers here at the end, but since this isn't really the end at all I'm gonna hold off on I thought I'd do a larger review of Hickman's whole run of Avengers here at the end, but since this isn't really the end at all I'm gonna hold off on that until I read Secret Wars which will hopefully be the true finale of this story.
Things regressed a bit from the high of Vol. 3 with this feeling more scattered. There's about two to many major plots, and I really would have been happy with one planet ending threat at a time going on. That's part of what Hickman's going for here with battles spanning multiverses to try and save all of existence going on, but there's just too much going on here. Some stories work better than others, and sadly probably the least interesting one is Iron Man vs. Captain America.
The rift between the two was interesting in Civil War because you could relate to both sides and it seemed like an unavoidable conflict. Cap's earnest sincerity to put principle above all vs. Tony's absolute confidence in his ability to predict the future justifying his whole you-can't-make-an-omelette-without-breaking-a-few-eggs attitude was a real dilemma that left both of them sympathetic even as they were fighting.
But angry old Cap caring less about the end of everything and more about his determination to punish the Illuminati for going against his personal ideals seems stupidly pointless while Tony being right but also being more of a dick than usual is exasperating. The difference between here and Civil War is that they the conflict made both of them feel awful about fighting a friend. Here, they're just two jerks who hate each other so much it blinds them to what's really important, and if you're rooting for them to kill each other there's not much left to care about in that subplot....more
I'll do a longer review about the entire Hickman run once I get through the last one, but at this point what started out as seeming like a mishmash ofI'll do a longer review about the entire Hickman run once I get through the last one, but at this point what started out as seeming like a mishmash of wild sci-fi stuff and B-characters has rapidly turned into a story that I'm really starting to enjoy. Despite how epic the scope is it seems to get better the closer down to the major characters Hickman takes it like how Captain America continues to be in a mouth foaming rage at the Illuminati members for daring to take action he disagreed with when faced with the potential end of the Earth and/or universe. There's some good twists and a shocking betrayal here, but all of it feels earned at this point. Bonus points for the Guardians of the Galaxy showing up with Rocket letting all the Avengers know exactly just what kind of idiots he thinks they all are....more
It's disappointing that when Steve Rogers finally starts showing his age that he reacts by turning into a bitter bastard who just wants to attack everIt's disappointing that when Steve Rogers finally starts showing his age that he reacts by turning into a bitter bastard who just wants to attack everyone smarter than him and refuses to listen to anyone who contradicts what he believes no matter how sane and logical they're being. In other words, he's just another old white American, and I'm pretty sure he's spending his days watching Fox News.
Hickman's run has a lot of stuff that I've gotten increasingly tired of in big crossover events, especially ones leading to giant reboots. Too many characters, too much plot, not enough focus, and superheroes are fighting superheroes.
Still, the storyline has enough meat on its bones to keep me interested, and the writing is sharp enough to make these internal conflicts fresh again even though a lot of it is rehashed Civil War stuff. It reminds me a bit of Game of Thrones in the way that so many people in this world want to just fight each other rather than deal with the far larger looming threat that's coming....more
Captain America is seriously pissed off in this. I haven’t seen an old man this angry since that time the local Cracker Barrel ran out of hashbrown caCaptain America is seriously pissed off in this. I haven’t seen an old man this angry since that time the local Cracker Barrel ran out of hashbrown casserole.
Cap’s got good reason to be grumpy though. He’s hunting some of his best friends down for their role in destroying alternate Earths to save our own, the Avengers are in shambles, the world government is cutting deals with super-villains, and he’s finally starting to look like his real age.
The shape of Hickman’s run is really starting to emerge, and he’s doing a lot of very cool things here. The underlying problem of how to deal with the incursions of other Earths is a great moral dilemma as well as a threat, and he's doing a lot of great character stuff. I especially liked how he’s turning Sunspot into someone I actually enjoy reading about after thinking he was just spoiled brat for years. The subplot that Roberto would just use his family fortune to buy out evil A.I.M. out was brilliant and hilarious....more
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