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Hell of a Mess
The heist should have been a simple infiltrate the top floor of a luxury New York City penthouse, steal a server with compromising data from under the noses of the unsuspecting guards, and slip back out. Fiona, master thief and occasional assassin, has pulled off similar jobs dozens of times. But with a massive hurricane bearing down on the East Coast, the timing is tight and the escape routes are limited—and that’s before she discovers something horrific in the penthouse’s master bedroom. Now Fiona’s on the run, trying to stay one step ahead of rising floodwaters and an army of hired assassins. Her husband Bill, the finest hustler between Florida and Maine, can’t help he’s been kidnapped by a group of dirty cops who want the secret millions left by his former employer. The night will take the two of them from the heights of money and power in Lower Manhattan to a haunted island in the East River where no secrets stay buried forever. It’s going to be one hell of a night… and one hell of a mess.
234 pages, Paperback
Published August 25, 2022
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Nick Kolakowski
66 books118 followersNick Kolakowski is the author of several horror and crime novels, including “Absolute Unit” (Crystal Lake Publishing) and “Where the Bones Lie” (Datura Books). His short stories and nonfiction essays have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including House of Gamut, Mystery Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Rock & A Hard Place, and (upcoming) Best American Mystery & Suspense 2024. He lives and writes in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 9, 2022
★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S HELL OF A MESS ABOUT?
Well, isn't that a tricky question? There is too much. Let me sum up. There are multiple people who start off intending to commit one crime and end up doing something entirely different.
Fiona's been hired to steal something, and it's a timely thing (and she's not deterred by much), so despite an impending hurricane, she goes for it. Sure, the Inside Man tries to wave her off, but, again—she's not deterred by much. Which is a shame—she should've paid attention to either the weather or the Inside Man. She ends up with a price on her head and multiple people around the city.
While she's busy, Bill's trying to prep for the storm in the home they're squatting in when some police break in looking for the man who lives there. One thing leads to another, and they kidnap Bill, believing he can lead them to the millions his former employer had hidden away.
Thankfully. that assassin they thought Fiona killed at the end of A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps survived—readers knew that, but Fiona and Bill didn't. Not only did he live, but he's been keeping tabs on them. He's been trying to live a different—less lethal—life and he has a chance to help them. Will he be enough?
(I have no idea if the above makes any sense—trying to cram it into three brief paragraphs doesn't do the plot any favors. In the non-condensed version, it works. Trust me.)
THE UNNAMED ASSASSIN
Up to the point where it looked like Fiona killed him (maybe a little sooner), I thought that the hitman who was sent after Bill in the first book was the protagonist. His is the only first-person perspective we get through the series—almost like he's relaying what he knows and hears about this crazy couple while he's dealing with his own problems like they're a diversion for him.
His personal arc is very different from theirs—they claim to be trying to get out and live a straight life, if only they get one more decent score to set them up. The unnamed assassin is going a different path, he's still a violent criminal, but like Jules Winnfield, he's looking for something more. There are lines he won't cross anymore (he seems to be making those rules up on the fly, but at least he has them.
As you can probably tell, I find it difficult to articulate his development and role in the series—but using him (sparingly, on the whole) and his arc throughout in juxtaposition to Fiona and Bill adds a layer to these books that few authors would have utilized, but make the whole thing better.
Be sure to check out my Q&A with Kolakowski (posting later today) for more about him.
UNASNWERED QUESTIONS
The thing that really kicks off the Fiona storyline is her stumbling across something she wasn't expecting while discovering the thing she came to steal wasn't there. Her discovery of the other nefarious action—and the way she prevented it from being completed*—is what starts the manhunt for her, more than the attempted heist. If she'd just walked away, I think it's likely no one would've come after her.
* It is so tricky to discuss this obliquely.
Then when it comes time for Fiona to go save Bill, that storyline is dropped. Which is actually fine and good, because ultimately what it's replaced by is more interesting. But in the back of my mind couldn't stop asking—and, a week later, still can't—what happened? What led up to Fiona's discovery? What happened after she and the unnamed killer ran off to rescue Bill?
Typically, leaving these threads hanging would annoy me enough that I'd downgrade a novel over it—but Kolakowski pulls it off. If you're going to abandon a plotline, this is the way to do it.
That said, I'd pony up twice the typical Shotgun Honey novella price today to get Love & Bullets #5 if it picks up right after this to tell the rest of that story. Maybe thrice.
SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT HELL OF A MESS?
The previous three installments were novellas, but this is a novel, clocking in at 50-100 pages longer than the rest. And it didn't feel like it at all. It was the same adrenaline-fueled, not-quite-frenzied pace and was over before I was ready for it to be. My daily schedule kept this from being a one-sitting read, but I think I could've done it in one sitting without realizing it.
This is pulpy fun. There's action, there's heart, there's comedy (some subtle, some absolutely not), there's a lot of violence, and you can't forget the bunch of heartbroken saps that are at the center of things. They're crooks and killers that really seem like decent people when you stack them up next to the nastier crooks and killers they can't stop encountering. In the middle of all that chaos (and you can't forget the chaos of the storm), there's hope, forgiveness, and love. And who can't use a little of that?
I don't know if Kolakowski is going to come back to these characters in the future—I'd be content with what he's given already, but I also know that I'd jump on any future installments, too. I encourage you to do the same.
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
---
WHAT'S HELL OF A MESS ABOUT?
Well, isn't that a tricky question? There is too much. Let me sum up. There are multiple people who start off intending to commit one crime and end up doing something entirely different.
Fiona's been hired to steal something, and it's a timely thing (and she's not deterred by much), so despite an impending hurricane, she goes for it. Sure, the Inside Man tries to wave her off, but, again—she's not deterred by much. Which is a shame—she should've paid attention to either the weather or the Inside Man. She ends up with a price on her head and multiple people around the city.
While she's busy, Bill's trying to prep for the storm in the home they're squatting in when some police break in looking for the man who lives there. One thing leads to another, and they kidnap Bill, believing he can lead them to the millions his former employer had hidden away.
Thankfully. that assassin they thought Fiona killed at the end of A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps survived—readers knew that, but Fiona and Bill didn't. Not only did he live, but he's been keeping tabs on them. He's been trying to live a different—less lethal—life and he has a chance to help them. Will he be enough?
(I have no idea if the above makes any sense—trying to cram it into three brief paragraphs doesn't do the plot any favors. In the non-condensed version, it works. Trust me.)
THE UNNAMED ASSASSIN
Up to the point where it looked like Fiona killed him (maybe a little sooner), I thought that the hitman who was sent after Bill in the first book was the protagonist. His is the only first-person perspective we get through the series—almost like he's relaying what he knows and hears about this crazy couple while he's dealing with his own problems like they're a diversion for him.
His personal arc is very different from theirs—they claim to be trying to get out and live a straight life, if only they get one more decent score to set them up. The unnamed assassin is going a different path, he's still a violent criminal, but like Jules Winnfield, he's looking for something more. There are lines he won't cross anymore (he seems to be making those rules up on the fly, but at least he has them.
As you can probably tell, I find it difficult to articulate his development and role in the series—but using him (sparingly, on the whole) and his arc throughout in juxtaposition to Fiona and Bill adds a layer to these books that few authors would have utilized, but make the whole thing better.
Be sure to check out my Q&A with Kolakowski (posting later today) for more about him.
UNASNWERED QUESTIONS
The thing that really kicks off the Fiona storyline is her stumbling across something she wasn't expecting while discovering the thing she came to steal wasn't there. Her discovery of the other nefarious action—and the way she prevented it from being completed*—is what starts the manhunt for her, more than the attempted heist. If she'd just walked away, I think it's likely no one would've come after her.
* It is so tricky to discuss this obliquely.
Then when it comes time for Fiona to go save Bill, that storyline is dropped. Which is actually fine and good, because ultimately what it's replaced by is more interesting. But in the back of my mind couldn't stop asking—and, a week later, still can't—what happened? What led up to Fiona's discovery? What happened after she and the unnamed killer ran off to rescue Bill?
Typically, leaving these threads hanging would annoy me enough that I'd downgrade a novel over it—but Kolakowski pulls it off. If you're going to abandon a plotline, this is the way to do it.
That said, I'd pony up twice the typical Shotgun Honey novella price today to get Love & Bullets #5 if it picks up right after this to tell the rest of that story. Maybe thrice.
SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT HELL OF A MESS?
The previous three installments were novellas, but this is a novel, clocking in at 50-100 pages longer than the rest. And it didn't feel like it at all. It was the same adrenaline-fueled, not-quite-frenzied pace and was over before I was ready for it to be. My daily schedule kept this from being a one-sitting read, but I think I could've done it in one sitting without realizing it.
This is pulpy fun. There's action, there's heart, there's comedy (some subtle, some absolutely not), there's a lot of violence, and you can't forget the bunch of heartbroken saps that are at the center of things. They're crooks and killers that really seem like decent people when you stack them up next to the nastier crooks and killers they can't stop encountering. In the middle of all that chaos (and you can't forget the chaos of the storm), there's hope, forgiveness, and love. And who can't use a little of that?
I don't know if Kolakowski is going to come back to these characters in the future—I'd be content with what he's given already, but I also know that I'd jump on any future installments, too. I encourage you to do the same.
August 26, 2022
“A worldwide pandemic and its variants, despite the horrors, had one key benefit: you could hide your face in public and nobody thought twice about it.”*
HELL OF A MESS is book 4 in the Love & Bullets series. Even though I haven’t yet read any of the other series installments, I had no problem getting up to speed on the characters and their relationships with each other.
In the midst of a hurricane, Fiona and her partner Fireball attempt a heist, which goes horribly wrong. Meanwhile, her husband Bill is kidnapped by a group of corrupt cops, who want Bill’s intel to find hidden money.
The action is wonderfully relentless as Bill uses his criminal savvy to stay alive until Fiona figures out his dilemma and comes to his rescue, once she gets her own urgent issues sorted of course. The hurricane acts as an antagonist compounding all the characters’ problems.
My favorite thing about the book is Fiona’s characterization. She is the force to be reckoned with and Bill celebrates her mad skills. Kolakowski shows his writing prowess by giving a taste of her backstory in the form of a memory of her father which makes a reader crave more.
The black humor is delightful. The character who teams up with Fiona to rescue Bill has the best lines. Boz, who hired Fiona for the heist, is wonderfully eccentric.
When Fiona goes off to rescue Bill, she leaves a couple of characters behind. As a big fan of epilogues, I would have liked to have seen the plot circle back to them at the end. Nevertheless, the book is a heck of a fun read.
For me, HELL OF A MESS is a four and a half star read, rounded up to five.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thanks to the author for providing an Advance Reader Copy.
*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.
HELL OF A MESS is book 4 in the Love & Bullets series. Even though I haven’t yet read any of the other series installments, I had no problem getting up to speed on the characters and their relationships with each other.
In the midst of a hurricane, Fiona and her partner Fireball attempt a heist, which goes horribly wrong. Meanwhile, her husband Bill is kidnapped by a group of corrupt cops, who want Bill’s intel to find hidden money.
The action is wonderfully relentless as Bill uses his criminal savvy to stay alive until Fiona figures out his dilemma and comes to his rescue, once she gets her own urgent issues sorted of course. The hurricane acts as an antagonist compounding all the characters’ problems.
My favorite thing about the book is Fiona’s characterization. She is the force to be reckoned with and Bill celebrates her mad skills. Kolakowski shows his writing prowess by giving a taste of her backstory in the form of a memory of her father which makes a reader crave more.
The black humor is delightful. The character who teams up with Fiona to rescue Bill has the best lines. Boz, who hired Fiona for the heist, is wonderfully eccentric.
When Fiona goes off to rescue Bill, she leaves a couple of characters behind. As a big fan of epilogues, I would have liked to have seen the plot circle back to them at the end. Nevertheless, the book is a heck of a fun read.
For me, HELL OF A MESS is a four and a half star read, rounded up to five.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thanks to the author for providing an Advance Reader Copy.
*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.
January 13, 2023
this was what I was hoping for from the Love & Bullets Hookup series. It had what I wanted in this entry and a good thriller novel and worked with the other three books. The characters felt like the same characters and I enjoyed what I read.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
January 20, 2023
Nonstop thrilling action. Relatable characters (especially the assassin) and vivid descriptions situate the reader as if a fly on the wall. Good investment.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews