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Speedster
Jack McCain is beginning to resemble the antique Auburn Speedster his grandfather left him years ago. Sleek, classy, and powerful in its day, the car is now an anachronism that needs to be sheltered from the harsh realities of its environment to prevent its slipping into an ignoble dotage.
Jack would like nothing better than to keep himself garaged and under wraps next to his Speedster, but fate has conspired against him. Driven to distraction by a manipulative ex-wife, an insensitive girlfriend, and an epic mid-life crisis, Jack finds himself the chance owner of a customized import car. Hoping to sell the car, he joins a car club run by a bunch of twenty-something tuner punks who don't seem to know very much about cars. When one of the members, a beautiful tomboy who happens to be an exotic dancer, follows him home his life begins to spiral out of control.
Meanwhile, a screwball collection of villains including a pair of neon-haired underachievers, a serial sexual predator, and the owner of the gentleman's club called Glitters, scheme to separate Jack from the valuable Speedster. They want to sell it to launch a black tar heroin enterprise on Florida's posh Lower East Coast. They will stop at nothing to get it. Fueled by their spectacular and often hilarious ineptitude, they mire themselves and Jack in a predicament that seems more and more hopeless as it unfolds.
When a murderous deviant named Mateo abducts two women to force his hand, Jack must shake his malaise and come to grips with the boredom and indecisiveness at the root of his troubles. He enlists the help of his best friend, Mike, to rescue the women, but even a bagful of guns and the best of intentions are not enough it seems against a resourceful and determined foe. Tensions rise and bodies fall, from the walled mansions of Palm Beach to the mangrove labyrinths of Florida's Gulf Coast, as events race to an exciting and unexpected conclusion.
Jack would like nothing better than to keep himself garaged and under wraps next to his Speedster, but fate has conspired against him. Driven to distraction by a manipulative ex-wife, an insensitive girlfriend, and an epic mid-life crisis, Jack finds himself the chance owner of a customized import car. Hoping to sell the car, he joins a car club run by a bunch of twenty-something tuner punks who don't seem to know very much about cars. When one of the members, a beautiful tomboy who happens to be an exotic dancer, follows him home his life begins to spiral out of control.
Meanwhile, a screwball collection of villains including a pair of neon-haired underachievers, a serial sexual predator, and the owner of the gentleman's club called Glitters, scheme to separate Jack from the valuable Speedster. They want to sell it to launch a black tar heroin enterprise on Florida's posh Lower East Coast. They will stop at nothing to get it. Fueled by their spectacular and often hilarious ineptitude, they mire themselves and Jack in a predicament that seems more and more hopeless as it unfolds.
When a murderous deviant named Mateo abducts two women to force his hand, Jack must shake his malaise and come to grips with the boredom and indecisiveness at the root of his troubles. He enlists the help of his best friend, Mike, to rescue the women, but even a bagful of guns and the best of intentions are not enough it seems against a resourceful and determined foe. Tensions rise and bodies fall, from the walled mansions of Palm Beach to the mangrove labyrinths of Florida's Gulf Coast, as events race to an exciting and unexpected conclusion.
249 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2013
6 people are currently reading
159 people want to read
About the author
Jonah Gibson
5 books38 followersI live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife, Madeline, and a retired racing greyhound named Bean. Bean is now 70 in people years, and I am 10 in dog years, so we've reached a kind of parity in decrepitude that is oddly satisfying. I frequently wish I could be as good a person as he is a dog. He may have the same feelings about me. I don't know. He doesn't talk much, but he does seem always anxious to know where I am and what I've been up to.
I've been writing for a long time in spite of being discouraged from the pursuit at an early age. Sister Mary Samuela, my 4th grade teacher, was not content to merely grade one of my early contributions to American Letters, but felt compelled to inform my mother that I had an “over-active imagination.” Unfortunately, my mom, a true saint in her own right, was not one of those mothers for whom love of children outweighed even the slightest criticism by a nun. The natural result of this was I toiled long and hard for many years as an accountant where my creative instincts, while applauded if they happened to save someone a few dollars in taxes, were more usually regarded with too much suspicion to be comfortable.
I grew up in Fort Recovery, Ohio—a rural burg with one stoplight, six churches, and six taverns. I only attended one of the churches, Mary Help of Christians Catholic. I got a lot of my values and sensibilities there, but my appreciation for the odd duck, the weird and wondrous, and the downright quirky? I got that swilling beer with my friends in those taverns—all six of 'em.
I've given up beer since, well, mostly. Now, I like a nice big martini before dinner. A martini is a civilizing influence. Martinis have turned me into an uptown boy over the years. I still appreciate the quirky though, and I still have those small town, church-born sensibilities. I like to think it shows in my writing, even though I write a lot about fringe elements of society—thieves, charlatans, grifters, and the like. They're the ones who help you recognize the sweetness when you find it. It's the same reason I prefer my candy with nuts.
When I'm not writing, I'm tinkering at art and probably thinking about fishing. I hardly ever go fishing, though, because I just don't like to get my tackle wet. Ironically, it's the same reason I don't play golf.
You can find me online at http://www.jonahgibsonarts.com. I post regularly about my books, works in progress, goings on, and way more personal rumination than is probably healthy. It's a pretty good place to get to know me because, let's face it, you're not going to find me out fishing.
I've been writing for a long time in spite of being discouraged from the pursuit at an early age. Sister Mary Samuela, my 4th grade teacher, was not content to merely grade one of my early contributions to American Letters, but felt compelled to inform my mother that I had an “over-active imagination.” Unfortunately, my mom, a true saint in her own right, was not one of those mothers for whom love of children outweighed even the slightest criticism by a nun. The natural result of this was I toiled long and hard for many years as an accountant where my creative instincts, while applauded if they happened to save someone a few dollars in taxes, were more usually regarded with too much suspicion to be comfortable.
I grew up in Fort Recovery, Ohio—a rural burg with one stoplight, six churches, and six taverns. I only attended one of the churches, Mary Help of Christians Catholic. I got a lot of my values and sensibilities there, but my appreciation for the odd duck, the weird and wondrous, and the downright quirky? I got that swilling beer with my friends in those taverns—all six of 'em.
I've given up beer since, well, mostly. Now, I like a nice big martini before dinner. A martini is a civilizing influence. Martinis have turned me into an uptown boy over the years. I still appreciate the quirky though, and I still have those small town, church-born sensibilities. I like to think it shows in my writing, even though I write a lot about fringe elements of society—thieves, charlatans, grifters, and the like. They're the ones who help you recognize the sweetness when you find it. It's the same reason I prefer my candy with nuts.
When I'm not writing, I'm tinkering at art and probably thinking about fishing. I hardly ever go fishing, though, because I just don't like to get my tackle wet. Ironically, it's the same reason I don't play golf.
You can find me online at http://www.jonahgibsonarts.com. I post regularly about my books, works in progress, goings on, and way more personal rumination than is probably healthy. It's a pretty good place to get to know me because, let's face it, you're not going to find me out fishing.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 30, 2017
As we all know, no good deed goes unpunished. So when Jack, the hapless hero of Jonah Gibson’s thriller, finds himself buying a car he doesn’t want in order to placate his ex-wife and son, we know bad things are going to happen.
Jack is in full mid-life crisis, on everybody’s black list. His ex-wife says he’s incapable of love and never available when needed. Trophy girlfriend-with-matrimonial-designs, Jodie, is fighting a losing battle trying to tame him into suitable husband material. She says: ‘Really, Jack!’ or ‘Really, Jack?’
Like Gibson’s novel ‘A cup of pending’, the plot starts small then accumulates so many unforeseen developments that it’s like watching a tiny snowball rolling down a mountainside, getting bigger and bigger until it finally crashes into the huge boulder at the bottom sending snow spraying in all directions. What starts as a simple car boost ends up with car chases, boat chases, kidnappings and murders.
A car, in fact, is at the heart of all this mayhem. Or rather two cars. One is the Speedster itself, which sits in Jack’s garage underneath a tarpaulin, a valuable and cherished relic from his grandfather. The other is the little Japanese runaround he buys from his son. It’s not the sort of thing that he usually drives (a big Audi sedan) and definitely not in keeping with his image of respectable middle-aged financial consultant. Deciding to sell, it he calls on mechanic buddy, Mike, to fix it up. $22,500 later, he’s the speechless owner of a shiny purple all-wheel-drive monster with fat tires.
‘It would be ridiculous to keep it. That’s what everyone would say. Ridiculous. That made it worth thinking about.’
Taking a miffed Jodie out for a spin, Jack ends up in the middle of a drooling bunch of post-adolescent fluo-haired car fanatics torn between ogling the miles of chrome tubing under the car’s bonnet or the miles of Jodie’s legs she’s desperately trying to hide under her mini-skirt. Bossing the drooling dudes around is Kelly, beautiful, sexy and smart, who sticks a spoke in Jodie’s wheel by inviting Jack to become a member of a car club. As Jack drops Jodie at her house she frostily informs him that a) she’s a lady, unlike some b) she will not be treated like a bimbo and c) she’s having second thoughts about their relationship. From then on it’s all downhill as events accelerate out of control, and ‘just like that, Jack was in a car club with a bunch of guys and a stripper, all of whom were younger than his own son.’
A lot of the humour in this book arises from the incongruous. Jack the ‘old geezer’ with his totally unsuitable car and an equally unsuitable new girlfriend who is half his age, an expert on car engines, takes off her clothes for a living, and has no trouble outsmarting the various male idiots who see her as easy meat. Top of the idiot list is Dwayne, her would-be boyfriend. Ah, Dwayne, Dwayne! All Gibson’s characters are well-drawn but Dwayne is the cherry on the iced bun. He is his own worst enemy, his whiny voice coming off the page loud and clear as he bemoans a destiny full of blows and bludgeonings, none of which are deserved and all of which are the fault of somebody else. Why couldn’t he just for once in his life catch a break? Later in the book Jack gets into another unlikely partnership, this time with aging, decrepit, chain-smoking taxi driver Hattie, whose uniform consists of a mumu and a pair of flipflops. There are more beautifully comic scenes as Jack manages to talk her into helping him out in a bid to foil sadistic, homicidal drug dealer, Mateo. But Hattie is her own woman with her own terms, telling him:
‘I didn’t get to be this old and rundown by bein’ stupid.’
As the snowball gathers momentum, there’s a sense of incredulity that the characters, like those in a Cohen brothers’ film, behave in the most incomprehensible way, a way that any rational being would know with utmost certainty is going to end in tears (sometimes tears of laughter, other times tears of terror as they come face to face with the book’s nastiest character, serial killer Mateo). In this respect the book is similar to others I’ve read in this genre (Hiaasen et al), set in Florida. Forget ‘the new normal’, this is ‘the Florida normal,’ a story which is outrageously absurd yet somehow convincing. Our hero, from a simple good deed, ends up driving round Florida in yet another unsuitable car, this time the Speedster, enjoying renewed sexual vigour and self-esteem with the ravishing Kelly, being pursued by a stone killer, and acting like Captain America in a bid to save the girl (girls, actually, as yet another unlikely combination occurs when Kelly and Jodie find themselves, if not exactly best buddies, at least mutual protectors in the face of a common foe).
Plenty of thrills, plenty of surprises, plenty of cracking dialogue and good laughs, what more could a reader ask for?
Jack is in full mid-life crisis, on everybody’s black list. His ex-wife says he’s incapable of love and never available when needed. Trophy girlfriend-with-matrimonial-designs, Jodie, is fighting a losing battle trying to tame him into suitable husband material. She says: ‘Really, Jack!’ or ‘Really, Jack?’
Like Gibson’s novel ‘A cup of pending’, the plot starts small then accumulates so many unforeseen developments that it’s like watching a tiny snowball rolling down a mountainside, getting bigger and bigger until it finally crashes into the huge boulder at the bottom sending snow spraying in all directions. What starts as a simple car boost ends up with car chases, boat chases, kidnappings and murders.
A car, in fact, is at the heart of all this mayhem. Or rather two cars. One is the Speedster itself, which sits in Jack’s garage underneath a tarpaulin, a valuable and cherished relic from his grandfather. The other is the little Japanese runaround he buys from his son. It’s not the sort of thing that he usually drives (a big Audi sedan) and definitely not in keeping with his image of respectable middle-aged financial consultant. Deciding to sell, it he calls on mechanic buddy, Mike, to fix it up. $22,500 later, he’s the speechless owner of a shiny purple all-wheel-drive monster with fat tires.
‘It would be ridiculous to keep it. That’s what everyone would say. Ridiculous. That made it worth thinking about.’
Taking a miffed Jodie out for a spin, Jack ends up in the middle of a drooling bunch of post-adolescent fluo-haired car fanatics torn between ogling the miles of chrome tubing under the car’s bonnet or the miles of Jodie’s legs she’s desperately trying to hide under her mini-skirt. Bossing the drooling dudes around is Kelly, beautiful, sexy and smart, who sticks a spoke in Jodie’s wheel by inviting Jack to become a member of a car club. As Jack drops Jodie at her house she frostily informs him that a) she’s a lady, unlike some b) she will not be treated like a bimbo and c) she’s having second thoughts about their relationship. From then on it’s all downhill as events accelerate out of control, and ‘just like that, Jack was in a car club with a bunch of guys and a stripper, all of whom were younger than his own son.’
A lot of the humour in this book arises from the incongruous. Jack the ‘old geezer’ with his totally unsuitable car and an equally unsuitable new girlfriend who is half his age, an expert on car engines, takes off her clothes for a living, and has no trouble outsmarting the various male idiots who see her as easy meat. Top of the idiot list is Dwayne, her would-be boyfriend. Ah, Dwayne, Dwayne! All Gibson’s characters are well-drawn but Dwayne is the cherry on the iced bun. He is his own worst enemy, his whiny voice coming off the page loud and clear as he bemoans a destiny full of blows and bludgeonings, none of which are deserved and all of which are the fault of somebody else. Why couldn’t he just for once in his life catch a break? Later in the book Jack gets into another unlikely partnership, this time with aging, decrepit, chain-smoking taxi driver Hattie, whose uniform consists of a mumu and a pair of flipflops. There are more beautifully comic scenes as Jack manages to talk her into helping him out in a bid to foil sadistic, homicidal drug dealer, Mateo. But Hattie is her own woman with her own terms, telling him:
‘I didn’t get to be this old and rundown by bein’ stupid.’
As the snowball gathers momentum, there’s a sense of incredulity that the characters, like those in a Cohen brothers’ film, behave in the most incomprehensible way, a way that any rational being would know with utmost certainty is going to end in tears (sometimes tears of laughter, other times tears of terror as they come face to face with the book’s nastiest character, serial killer Mateo). In this respect the book is similar to others I’ve read in this genre (Hiaasen et al), set in Florida. Forget ‘the new normal’, this is ‘the Florida normal,’ a story which is outrageously absurd yet somehow convincing. Our hero, from a simple good deed, ends up driving round Florida in yet another unsuitable car, this time the Speedster, enjoying renewed sexual vigour and self-esteem with the ravishing Kelly, being pursued by a stone killer, and acting like Captain America in a bid to save the girl (girls, actually, as yet another unlikely combination occurs when Kelly and Jodie find themselves, if not exactly best buddies, at least mutual protectors in the face of a common foe).
Plenty of thrills, plenty of surprises, plenty of cracking dialogue and good laughs, what more could a reader ask for?
October 2, 2013
I ask only one thing of a book I read - I want to be engaged for the time I allot to reading each day. Speedster not only engaged me, it transported me, and the time I allotted for reading grew as I got deeper into the book. I put aside work I needed to be doing to "hang out" with this motley band of characters whom I felt I knew as well as I know the people I meet and speak with every day. Granted, I would go out of my way to avoid some of them on the street - but all will become clear as you read.
The story line grabs you from the first paragraph and you MUST turn the page - there aren't a bunch of formulaic cliffhangers in this book - if you like a predictable read, Speedster is not for you. This book is as unique and as far from "ordinary" as I have ever come across. Each time I thought I had figured out what was going to happen next, I was stunned with a plot twist that amazed and entertained. And, right in the middle of the most terrifying events, I would run into something that made me burst out laughing - so loudly that my dog came running to see what on earth was happening.
Suffice to say that this book will grab you and keep you. You will want to share it with your friends. That's something I CAN predict.
The story line grabs you from the first paragraph and you MUST turn the page - there aren't a bunch of formulaic cliffhangers in this book - if you like a predictable read, Speedster is not for you. This book is as unique and as far from "ordinary" as I have ever come across. Each time I thought I had figured out what was going to happen next, I was stunned with a plot twist that amazed and entertained. And, right in the middle of the most terrifying events, I would run into something that made me burst out laughing - so loudly that my dog came running to see what on earth was happening.
Suffice to say that this book will grab you and keep you. You will want to share it with your friends. That's something I CAN predict.
June 8, 2017
Thumbs up for all thumbs
A pushover in midlife limbo on automatic pilot, two neon-haired meatheads, a paunchy wannabe gangster, an over the top Mexican according to Trump, three Easter European lowlifes according to formula, an armed mechanic who makes house calls to fix literally anything except the kitchen sink, a nice, talented girl who’s only there to show some skin, an old car that just came out of the closet, and a bimbo on a biological deadline who steps in with guns blazing...
Speedster is a rollercoaster read that keeps one turning the pages to follow an amazingly incompetent cast as they bumble from one harebrained impulse to the next, using anything but their heads.
Characterizations and dialogue work so well one can forgive the occasional blooper like the sudden reappearance of a conspicuous car that crashed and burned in the previous chapter. What I’m less inclined to appreciate is the relegation, once more, of a strong female character to the disappointing role of damsel in distress...
A pushover in midlife limbo on automatic pilot, two neon-haired meatheads, a paunchy wannabe gangster, an over the top Mexican according to Trump, three Easter European lowlifes according to formula, an armed mechanic who makes house calls to fix literally anything except the kitchen sink, a nice, talented girl who’s only there to show some skin, an old car that just came out of the closet, and a bimbo on a biological deadline who steps in with guns blazing...
Speedster is a rollercoaster read that keeps one turning the pages to follow an amazingly incompetent cast as they bumble from one harebrained impulse to the next, using anything but their heads.
Characterizations and dialogue work so well one can forgive the occasional blooper like the sudden reappearance of a conspicuous car that crashed and burned in the previous chapter. What I’m less inclined to appreciate is the relegation, once more, of a strong female character to the disappointing role of damsel in distress...
November 21, 2013
Speedster is the type of book that leaves me puzzled after completing it. I wonder why I liked it so much. I really do. Perhaps it is that the story moves right along without asking the reader to think too much about the situation at hand. The characters, such as they are, do not impede the reading process, almost as if they aren’t really there and only the actions they take matter.
For example, take the lead actor here, Jack McCain. What is his back-story, his origins and his life before we meet him here? He is divorced with an adult, married son who needs help and so Jack ends up with a car for his troubles. He then drops over $20,000 into the car and gets a tricked out racing crate for his efforts.
That covers about the first ten pages of Jack’s story and then all of that drops to the way-side and the real story begins in earnest, the one about the other car and the heroin and the doofus thugs hired out by the strip club owner and the murderous Mexican who likes to do nasty things to hookers before killing them.
I asked myself, ‘What does Jack do for a living to have this kind of money to sink into a used car?’ And I only had to wait 120 pages before discovering he is into “Financial consulting, investments, asset management, that kind of thing” to quote Jack himself, although the line is said in such an off hand manner it made me wonder if the statement was true.
I say that because I wouldn’t want this guy anywhere near my money. His actions throughout the story are rash beyond belief. Within a few pages he has customized the used car, joined a band of delinquent car racers in some nebulous “car club”, takes up with a stripper/car enthusiast, allows her to drive his other car, the prized antique automobile he inherited from his grandfather, nearly getting them both killed, and ends up throwing his life around with reckless abandon when both the stripper and his girlfriend are kidnapped by the homicidal, drug mule Mexican Mateo.
Oh yes, there is plenty of action here, the book’s saving grace, even if it is more of a cartoon variety than your standard action novel type. That is until it stops being funny and body parts start disappearing in “mists of blood”, the hostage scenes take on a dark perversion, and the bodies start to fall.
And the book struggles to define itself. Is it a mid-life crises story? Is it a dramatic tale with the light-hearted Dwayne and T-Ball thrown in to add comic relief? Is it a macho tale of action complete with Jack’s buddy Mike, ex-soldier with a duffle bag full of weapons that are just waiting to be fired? A love-gone-bad tale of Jack and his two women trying to figure out who gets who, which one loses and who will survive the ordeal.
Speedster is a jumble of a story, yet never confusing, set along both of Florida’s shores, thereby offering scenic backdrops to enhance the tale. Don’t think about it too much, sit back for the ride and you should be okay.
For example, take the lead actor here, Jack McCain. What is his back-story, his origins and his life before we meet him here? He is divorced with an adult, married son who needs help and so Jack ends up with a car for his troubles. He then drops over $20,000 into the car and gets a tricked out racing crate for his efforts.
That covers about the first ten pages of Jack’s story and then all of that drops to the way-side and the real story begins in earnest, the one about the other car and the heroin and the doofus thugs hired out by the strip club owner and the murderous Mexican who likes to do nasty things to hookers before killing them.
I asked myself, ‘What does Jack do for a living to have this kind of money to sink into a used car?’ And I only had to wait 120 pages before discovering he is into “Financial consulting, investments, asset management, that kind of thing” to quote Jack himself, although the line is said in such an off hand manner it made me wonder if the statement was true.
I say that because I wouldn’t want this guy anywhere near my money. His actions throughout the story are rash beyond belief. Within a few pages he has customized the used car, joined a band of delinquent car racers in some nebulous “car club”, takes up with a stripper/car enthusiast, allows her to drive his other car, the prized antique automobile he inherited from his grandfather, nearly getting them both killed, and ends up throwing his life around with reckless abandon when both the stripper and his girlfriend are kidnapped by the homicidal, drug mule Mexican Mateo.
Oh yes, there is plenty of action here, the book’s saving grace, even if it is more of a cartoon variety than your standard action novel type. That is until it stops being funny and body parts start disappearing in “mists of blood”, the hostage scenes take on a dark perversion, and the bodies start to fall.
And the book struggles to define itself. Is it a mid-life crises story? Is it a dramatic tale with the light-hearted Dwayne and T-Ball thrown in to add comic relief? Is it a macho tale of action complete with Jack’s buddy Mike, ex-soldier with a duffle bag full of weapons that are just waiting to be fired? A love-gone-bad tale of Jack and his two women trying to figure out who gets who, which one loses and who will survive the ordeal.
Speedster is a jumble of a story, yet never confusing, set along both of Florida’s shores, thereby offering scenic backdrops to enhance the tale. Don’t think about it too much, sit back for the ride and you should be okay.
December 4, 2017
I couldn't put this book down until I finished it.
This is a fantastic story. The technical aspects that normally slow other authors down by trying to show off their research into subjects that they really know nothing about.
I'm both used to, and tired of obvious errors by other authors that usually only get noticed by the enthusiast.
I would think they would understand that books of this type get read by people in the know more than the casual reader.
This book is one of the very few that can be enjoyed by both.
Sometimes poor research will present itself with glaring mistakes.. (another author's sig sauer silenced revolver comes to mind...doesnt and can't exist on many levels)
I am a car enthusiast, someone who shoots at paper targets for fun, and I lived in South Florida for 9 years before the real estate bubble burst.
I can honestly say I found everything from the locations mentioned, autos used and descriptions of the weapons spot on.
At times obvious errors in other books remove me from the believability of a story and ruin the fantasy. Which is the purpose of reading a work of fiction.
This book doesn't have gangsters shooting endless rounds of ammo, unrealistic bravado, or car chases reaching 200mph.
When a 44 magnum revolver gets fired, the effect on the shooter is real. The violence isn't over the top. It could almost be a true crime novel.
Spoiler---
The import car the hero spends cash money on only gets mentioned in the beginning, breifly. He spent all that cash making it awesome, why not a fall back car chase using it's abilities?
Other than that and maybe stretching my belief that just anyone could get into an Auborn and just drive it away with no prior knowledge of piloting a truly classic car (with spark advance, and fuel trim in the center of the steering wheel) and a slight misspelling of the word heroin, adding an (e). Most likely a autocorrect mistake.
It was as close to perfect grammatically and technically as I've read.
Not only that, but the lack of errors made a wonderful story even better.
Great book! Great job man!
I don't know the author, but I could see him rise to the ranks of Dorsey or Haissan.
This is a fantastic story. The technical aspects that normally slow other authors down by trying to show off their research into subjects that they really know nothing about.
I'm both used to, and tired of obvious errors by other authors that usually only get noticed by the enthusiast.
I would think they would understand that books of this type get read by people in the know more than the casual reader.
This book is one of the very few that can be enjoyed by both.
Sometimes poor research will present itself with glaring mistakes.. (another author's sig sauer silenced revolver comes to mind...doesnt and can't exist on many levels)
I am a car enthusiast, someone who shoots at paper targets for fun, and I lived in South Florida for 9 years before the real estate bubble burst.
I can honestly say I found everything from the locations mentioned, autos used and descriptions of the weapons spot on.
At times obvious errors in other books remove me from the believability of a story and ruin the fantasy. Which is the purpose of reading a work of fiction.
This book doesn't have gangsters shooting endless rounds of ammo, unrealistic bravado, or car chases reaching 200mph.
When a 44 magnum revolver gets fired, the effect on the shooter is real. The violence isn't over the top. It could almost be a true crime novel.
Spoiler---
The import car the hero spends cash money on only gets mentioned in the beginning, breifly. He spent all that cash making it awesome, why not a fall back car chase using it's abilities?
Other than that and maybe stretching my belief that just anyone could get into an Auborn and just drive it away with no prior knowledge of piloting a truly classic car (with spark advance, and fuel trim in the center of the steering wheel) and a slight misspelling of the word heroin, adding an (e). Most likely a autocorrect mistake.
It was as close to perfect grammatically and technically as I've read.
Not only that, but the lack of errors made a wonderful story even better.
Great book! Great job man!
I don't know the author, but I could see him rise to the ranks of Dorsey or Haissan.
July 4, 2017
I really enjoyed this one! I'm not a car buff so I was surprised at how much I liked this book. Basically, it is about a couple of guys who want to steal a car, and things escalate to the point of kidnapping and even murder. There were funny moments, but I'd say this was more of an action thriller than anything. I loved how when it seemed like things were almost coming together, there was one more obstacle in their way. And the ending came together really nicely with justice for everyone. My favorite character was the best friend, Mike. Although I actually sort of loved T Dog and how his repeated attempts to be the sensible one got brought down by his idiot friend.
There were some moments of disbelief here and there when characters did things that seemed completely irrational, but I have to admit, I was able to suspend my disbelief because I enjoyed the book so dang much!
This was a fantastic book for anyone looking for an intriguing fast paced thriller! I couldn't put it down.
There were some moments of disbelief here and there when characters did things that seemed completely irrational, but I have to admit, I was able to suspend my disbelief because I enjoyed the book so dang much!
This was a fantastic book for anyone looking for an intriguing fast paced thriller! I couldn't put it down.
June 10, 2017
As a female, if I’d picked up this book in physical form in a shop, I’d have read the first page and put it straight back down again, because what takes place on it is so vile and disgusting and the man doing them such a (insert worst four letter word you personally can come up with) that I certainly didn’t want to know any more. But since I already had this book on Kindle, I didn’t have to decide whether to walk out of a shop with it, so turned to page two. Here you are introduced to the hero and realise that page one is about establishing just how brutal and twisted the villain is. The hero doesn’t seem to have learned from his first marriage – he’s still whining on about both his ex-wife and his current girlfriend. It’s clear he’s emotionally clueless and gone and got himself a carbon-copy of his ex. This hapless hero then proceeds to fall accidentally headlong into a Young Adult novel and enter stage left come two young dudes who are basically Laurel and Hardy in orange technicolor with flames on the side of their car. (Apologies to the American audience – I don’t know who the equivalent of Laurel and Hardy are!). He then proceeds to plunge into an unlikely middle-aged male fulfilment fantasy which turns into a gun-toting thriller/adventure with increasingly incompetent and/or decrepit participants turning up to create further chaos. Humorously written with lively dialogue, and a fast pace, this book is basically a black comedy for 70% of the journey, and then just turns black. And then even inkier. I found the first 50% quite amusing and laughed aloud a few times. The second half of this book would probably go down better with a male audience.
The main problem I have with this story is that the females are only there to whine and control, or strip and have sex. I expected the story-line to go the way of the gutsy female helping the dopey male rescue the other female, with all the subtle tensions that would entail, but unfortunately the females are only there to spend the rest of the book stark naked and staked out like tethered goats with their legs spread. I know that unpleasant events have to take place in a thriller, or else there’d be no story, but as a person who has worked in the trauma counselling of real women who have been abducted/raped/abused, it turns my stomach to see such things used as entertainment. A few of the other male characters in the book voice opposition to this treatment, varying from mild unease, to a desire to rescue them. But basically, the role of the women in this book are as objects to be abused and then rescued. And even worse, we are told towards the end of the story that the character who apparently shows some signs of trauma as a result of the horrific treatment has just exaggerated it for the sympathy vote and bounces back immediately she gets some invites to star on chat shows, and the other one shows no sign of trauma at all and is making jokes about stripping again. I had hoped we were beyond this crass depiction of the place of women in this modern day and age.
The main problem I have with this story is that the females are only there to whine and control, or strip and have sex. I expected the story-line to go the way of the gutsy female helping the dopey male rescue the other female, with all the subtle tensions that would entail, but unfortunately the females are only there to spend the rest of the book stark naked and staked out like tethered goats with their legs spread. I know that unpleasant events have to take place in a thriller, or else there’d be no story, but as a person who has worked in the trauma counselling of real women who have been abducted/raped/abused, it turns my stomach to see such things used as entertainment. A few of the other male characters in the book voice opposition to this treatment, varying from mild unease, to a desire to rescue them. But basically, the role of the women in this book are as objects to be abused and then rescued. And even worse, we are told towards the end of the story that the character who apparently shows some signs of trauma as a result of the horrific treatment has just exaggerated it for the sympathy vote and bounces back immediately she gets some invites to star on chat shows, and the other one shows no sign of trauma at all and is making jokes about stripping again. I had hoped we were beyond this crass depiction of the place of women in this modern day and age.
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September 6, 2020Speedster is not the first novel I ever attempted, but it is the first to make it all the way through my convoluted processes to completion. I like to think it's full of surprises. I'm sure that it is very different from the book it looks like. It looks like a man's book. It's got a car on the cover, the same car that gave it its title. It's got hot rods and car talk inside, along with strippers, guns, boats, and two scenes celebrating the joys of fishing. It looks, feels, sounds, and smells like a man's book, but it's not - not really.
In a real man's book, men triumph by doing manly things. Here in my book, manly things may be tried, but they do not succeed like they ought. I did this for two reasons; first, it's just funnier that way, and second, it's way more realistic. I mean, really, how many of your schemes have borne fruit right out of the chute? Yeah, mine either. Jack McCain, the protagonist, is not a man's man. He is almost the opposite, and even though he eventually rises above his nature to risk everything, it's not enough to save the day. This is not the way of men's books.
I think there's something in here for everybody. So far, more women than men have read this book. So far, the women are universally enthralled with the characters and the quirky plot twists. I won't say I planned this exactly, but I do enjoy writing female characters more than male characters. I think they are way more interesting, and it's possible to convey something of their personalities just by describing their clothes. Characterizing women makes use of a larger and more nuanced palette. It's more fun.
When the lady who proofs my manuscripts read the description of Kelly, the stripper, costumed and primped for work, she said to me, "Even I would buy a lap dance from this girl." Honest to God, I don't think I could have asked for a more gratifying comment on my work.
I hope you enjoy reading Speedster as much as I did writing it.
In a real man's book, men triumph by doing manly things. Here in my book, manly things may be tried, but they do not succeed like they ought. I did this for two reasons; first, it's just funnier that way, and second, it's way more realistic. I mean, really, how many of your schemes have borne fruit right out of the chute? Yeah, mine either. Jack McCain, the protagonist, is not a man's man. He is almost the opposite, and even though he eventually rises above his nature to risk everything, it's not enough to save the day. This is not the way of men's books.
I think there's something in here for everybody. So far, more women than men have read this book. So far, the women are universally enthralled with the characters and the quirky plot twists. I won't say I planned this exactly, but I do enjoy writing female characters more than male characters. I think they are way more interesting, and it's possible to convey something of their personalities just by describing their clothes. Characterizing women makes use of a larger and more nuanced palette. It's more fun.
When the lady who proofs my manuscripts read the description of Kelly, the stripper, costumed and primped for work, she said to me, "Even I would buy a lap dance from this girl." Honest to God, I don't think I could have asked for a more gratifying comment on my work.
I hope you enjoy reading Speedster as much as I did writing it.
June 6, 2017
If you are a big fan of the Fast-and-the-Furious movies then you will probably like this book. A clear attention to detail when it comes to the car specs and a good guy that needs to save the girl, Speedster will appeal to the car buff audience. At first, I thought that the plot would follow a fairly predictable line but there were enough twists and turns to keep me reading through.
October 1, 2014
Speedster is not the first novel I ever attempted, but it is the first to make it all the way through my convoluted processes to completion. I like to think it's full of surprises. I'm sure that it is very different from the book it looks like. It looks like a man's book. It's got a car on the cover, the same car that gave it its title. It's got hot rods and car talk inside, along with strippers, guns, boats, and two scenes celebrating the joys of fishing. It looks, feels, sounds, and smells like a man's book, but it's not - not really.
In a real man's book, men triumph by doing manly things. Here in my book, manly things may be tried, but they do not succeed like they ought. I did this for two reasons; first, it's just funnier that way, and second, it's way more realistic. I mean, really, how many of your schemes have borne fruit right out of the chute? Yeah, mine either. Jack McCain, the protagonist, is not a man's man. He is almost the opposite, and even though he eventually rises above his nature to risk everything, it's not enough to save the day. This is not the way of men's books.
I think there's something in here for everybody. So far, more women than men have read this book. So far, the women are universally enthralled with the characters and the quirky plot twists. I won't say I planned this exactly, but I do enjoy writing female characters more than male characters. I think they are way more interesting, and it's possible to convey something of their personalities just by describing their clothes. Characterizing women makes use of a larger and more nuanced palette. It's more fun.
When the lady who proofs my manuscripts read the description of Kelly, the stripper, costumed and primped for work, she said to me, "Even I would buy a lap dance from this girl." Honest to God, I don't think I could have asked for a more gratifying comment on my work.
I hope you enjoy reading Speedster as much as I did writing it.
In a real man's book, men triumph by doing manly things. Here in my book, manly things may be tried, but they do not succeed like they ought. I did this for two reasons; first, it's just funnier that way, and second, it's way more realistic. I mean, really, how many of your schemes have borne fruit right out of the chute? Yeah, mine either. Jack McCain, the protagonist, is not a man's man. He is almost the opposite, and even though he eventually rises above his nature to risk everything, it's not enough to save the day. This is not the way of men's books.
I think there's something in here for everybody. So far, more women than men have read this book. So far, the women are universally enthralled with the characters and the quirky plot twists. I won't say I planned this exactly, but I do enjoy writing female characters more than male characters. I think they are way more interesting, and it's possible to convey something of their personalities just by describing their clothes. Characterizing women makes use of a larger and more nuanced palette. It's more fun.
When the lady who proofs my manuscripts read the description of Kelly, the stripper, costumed and primped for work, she said to me, "Even I would buy a lap dance from this girl." Honest to God, I don't think I could have asked for a more gratifying comment on my work.
I hope you enjoy reading Speedster as much as I did writing it.
March 1, 2017
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. At first glance I didn't think I was going to like this one, but it didn't take long to change my mind. This story about Jack McCain getting mixed up with heroin dealing Mexicans, slave trafficking Czechs and dumb-ass locals Dwayne and T-Ball, whilst his priceless vintage Speedster car is stolen and his ex and current girlfriends are kidnapped, turned out to be a very funny ride back and forth across Miami. I really liked Dwayne and T-Ball, so incompetent you wonder how they got themselves up in the morning. Mateo the Mexican was a real nasty piece of work and Jack and his friends were all likeable in their own ways. Overall this was very enjoyable win.
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