Sunday, March 27, 2005

Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice -- Ken Bruen

I bought this one at Noir Night last week. It's like a stripped down Gold Medal Book, only 124 pages long. It's great that someone's writing (and selling!) books like this one, as opposed to the bloated doorstops that there have been far too many of in the last couple of decades. It hits the ground running, and it doesn't slow down for a second. Dave Cooper is a tough guy, but he's never met anybody like Cassie, a psycho with a liking for the poetry of Louis MacNeice (which is about the best thing you can say for her). Unlike a lot of Gold Medal heroes, Cooper doesn't want to be involved with the femme fatale, but she doesn't give him much choice. Make that any choice.

One of the things about noir fiction is that the poor shmoe who's caught in the downhill spiral knows that he's screwed, but he keeps on trying to unscrew himself, getting more and more desperate as he goes along. And of course it never works out. That's life.

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