Whatever else I think about this book - the first in the crime-thriller category by this author - I cannot deny his way with words. Even when the going takes gruesome turns, the main character, Isaiah Coleridge, has the chutzpah of a Raymond Chandler private eye combined with the philosophical musings of the late Robert B. Parker's Spenser. And that's a good thing; otherwise, Coleridge - once a mob enforcer - wouldn't be a particularly appealing guy. Big, brawny and half Maori, he manages to get on the wrong side of his father and his Chicago mob bosses, who send him north to Alaska. There, his cantankerous genes kick in once again, and he is "retired" to remote Hawk Mountain Farm in upstate New York, where he performs mundane tasks like mucking horse stalls.
Needless to say, the work isn't very challenging, and he misses the hard action of his former life (even he isn't sure whether he prefers getting punched or punching someone else's lights out). Still, he vows not to return to his old ways; but then the Michael Corleone effect kicks in: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
In truth, "they" really aren't the problem; Isaiah simply doesn't have it in him to stay on the right side of trouble. He runs amok of some nasty characters - basically turning their body parts to mincemeat - and saves a wayward young girl from the clutches of some particularly dastardly dudes. Then, in the midst of his having to deal with enemies old and new, the girl he saved goes missing. That hits Isaiah right in the heart (it's stashed right behind his shoulder holster), and nothing - not broken bones, not bloody knife slashes and certainly not threats of a slow and painful death - will stop him from saving her once again.
This is, I believe, the first of a new series - and yes, it's enjoyable enough that I look forward to the next. Thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to read and review an advance copy. Well done!
Blood Standard by Laird Barron (G.P. Putnam's Sons, May 2018); 336 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment