Jack Strange's Blog - Posts Tagged "thriller"

See this #AmazonGiveaway for a chance to win: Confessions of an English Psychopath (Kindle Edition). https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/cf483cc... NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends the earlier of May 31, 2017 11:59 PM PDT, or when all prizes are claimed. See Official Rules http://amzn.to/GArules.


"I loved this book. Brilliant, dark and so funny." - Goodreads reviewer

This is another of my occasional book giveaways.

I'm giving away a book written by someone else for a change.

Here's a link to enable you to enter the sweepstake:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/a817d90...

Just so you all know, Manchester Vice is on a Goodreads Giveaway right now.

Please tell your friends.

Here's a link to the giveaway page:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

Here's a link to the book on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

All the details and links you need to take advantage of the offer are right here:

https://coffinhop.com/crime/noirvella...

Last Year's Man by Paul D. Brazill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I’m a big fan of Paul Brazill’s use of prose. His books have other virtues, of course, beyond his writing style, but the fact that he’s a prose stylist deserves special mention. On almost every page of Last Year’s Man, and sometimes, it seems, in almost every paragraph, there’s a line you want to read out loud to a friend.

His books have three other standout qualities:

(1) the memorable characters who populate them – eg, Drella, one of Seatown’s bigger villains: “His face was pallid and his lips were red, as if he’d been scrubbing them with a Brillo pad….Drella had a raspy voice that only added to the sinister appearance. A Welsh accent lurked beneath the surface.”
(2) his inventive use of dialogue – “Sic transit Gloria bloody Gaynor,” said Drella.
(3) the details he picks up on to give texture to his stories – “I saw a pack of bikers riding across the beach wearing wolf masks.” “I peeled off the price tag from the tartan Ben Sherman shirt I’d bought at the Scope shop.”

Last Year’s Man has all these Brazillian (if I can call them that) touches in abundance.

The plot can be summed up in a sentence: an ageing hit-man's past catches up with him.

This is a tale which draws you in from the opening sentence - “I leaned against an oak tree and pissed into a plastic Pepsi bottle” – and keeps a tight grip on your attention right to the final one.

It’s humorous, but it’s more than just an amusing book - it manages the difficult balancing act of being funny – often hilarious – and at the same time elegiac.

My one criticism? It ended a little too quickly. I would have liked to have read a lot more about Tommy Bennett, the main character in Last Year’s Man. Maybe there will be a sequel?



View all my reviews

A Case Of Noir by Paul D. Brazill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


All Killer No Filler is the title of one of my favourite albums. It's also a fitting description for Paul Brazill's book A Case of Noir.

Mr Brazill doesn't write at length. As he says: "I slice off the gristle." (Interview with Toe Six Press).

This guarantees there isn't so much as one wasted word. The result: his books are eminently readable, and you finish them wanting more (which is rather better than wishing there had been less, as is the case with many authors).

He's above all a prose stylist. He works within a tradition which was probably started by Raymond Chandler.

Chandler himself once said: "The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time."

Paul Brazill seems to have taken this advice to heart, irrespective of whether or not he's familiar with the quote. His style is as beguiling as it is instantly recognisable. Like Chandler, he's a lover of unusual similes and outrageous wisecracks. But he is far from being yet another Chandler imitator. His voice is distinctly his own, as is the world he's created.

His world, by the way, isn't the world of the rich or of the master criminal, it's a world of low-lifes, drunks and ne'er do wells. They're all memorable, even those with walk-on parts. Sometimes you feel his secondary characters are so good they're wasted on the minor roles he gives them, and they should have books of their own.

A Case of Noir follows this pattern, and is similar to a Chandler novel in that it's told in the first person by the wisecracking protagonist Luke Case. But unlike Chandler's lead character Phillip Marlowe, Case is not a Private Eye. He's a journalist with a shady past which, over the course of the novella, gradually but inexorably catches up with him. And where Marlowe follows a moral compass, Case follows only the principle of doing whatever hedonistic deed suits him at the time - with hilarious results.

I suspect that Brazill didn't set out to write a novella. A Case of Noir seems to be stitched together from a number of short stories (a working method similar to that adopted by Chander when he wrote The Big Sleep).

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts - although the parts are so good you’ll savour them individually, as you work your way through them.

I forgot to mention: this book is a whole lot of fun!



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Confessions of An English Psychopath is on sale for limited period - the price has been viciously slashed to 99p/99 cents.
Grab your copy here! http://mybook.to/ConfessionsE

Get this book for only 99p/99cents while you can!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

That's right, I have a new book out. It's published under my pen name Jack D Mclean and I have a co-author - Martin Mulligan.

Follow this link for more info:

https://books2read.com/u/bwK9w0