Hell's Half Acre

Phineas Poe #3

by Will Christopher Baer

Kidnapping, snuff films, amputee geeks, and a requiem for lost love.... Cast adrift after the blood symphony of Penny Dreadful, Phineas Poe is looking for answers in the form of a woman. He tracks Jude to San Francisco, where he finds her involved with John Ransom Miller, a wealthy sociopath with a mysterious hold over her. Jude is nursing her own revenge fantasy, but she needs Miller's help, and in exchange Miller wants Jude to help him with an unspeakable crime. Alone and outgunned, Poe hopes he can save Jude from herself, make sense of his own past, and navigate the torturous internal landscape he calls hell's half acre.

Genres: Noir, Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Horror, Novels

375 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Will Christopher Baer is an American author of noir fiction, often delving into sex, violence, mystery and erotica. Currently published works include Kiss Me, Judas, Penny Dreadful and Hell's Half Acre, all of which have since been published in the single volume Phineas Poe. His long-awaited fourth novel, Godspeed, was originally set to be published in 2006, but saw several delays before publisher MacAdam/Cage finally announced a release date of July 2009. The novel has since been delayed indefinitely. He shares a fan base with fellow authors Craig Clevenger and Stephen Graham Jones.

Born in Mississippi in 1966. As a child, he lived in Montreal and Italy. He attended highschool in Memphis, TN and moved on to attend Tulane University in New Orleans, LA but he soon dropped out. However, he received a B.A. at Memphis State. He then headed west in 1990 and lived in Portland & Eugene Oregon for several years. He received an MFA in 1995 from Jack Kerouac School at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO. He has lived in California since 1996, primarily in the Bay Area and L.A.

Reviews

[Jason Pereira · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few dark and dusty years ago I was introduced to a fellow by the name of Phineas Poe, an ex-cop bent on drugs still trying to catch loose-leads, with a thunder cloud following his every step. Until...

Jude. Judas. Kiss me, Judas.

A mystery wrapped in pvc pants, cigarette hanging from her mouth, and a tab of ecstasy under her tongue. She's ex-military with all the training.
She can kill you five ways from Sunday before you even hit the ground. She's a bitch. She makes the girl with the dragon tattoo look like a mere Dora the explorer.

When Phineas meets Jude in a shadowy, almost abandoned motel they hit it off - almost too literally. A brief momentary glimpse catches busted lines of coke on the table, razors discarded but with spotted flecks of blood on it, clothes strewn all over the place, and not a condom in sight. It's bare back for Phineas, all the way. Little does he know he has met the worst person he could ever bump in to, or the best person maybe?

Phineas wakes up the next morning, in a bath tub, with his kidney missing.


This summary so far describes the first book in this long twisted journey that is the Phineas Poe files. The appeal for this type of novel for me was, not only the hard-edged synopsis that I found on the back book-cover, but the way it was written as well. I quickly learned about the author, William Christopher Baer.

His writing was a slice of old detective journals, mixed with a raunchy red-light district air of gutter-smug that makes the reader treat the book like a car accident, the kind that only get worse as you pass by. Baer uses only words that need to be used, no literary masturbation here. He wants the person experiencing Poe to know Poe, to feel like Poe, to do what Poe does - struggle to exist. As Kiss me Judas winds to a stuttering halt, with Poe and Jude at odds, Baer keeps the dilapidated train chugging along, whacked-out on speed and switching nerves whenever the mood pleases him. He wrote his first book in 1998 to "mixed" reviews:
Entertainment Weekly gave the book a "C+", writing that Baer's "scalpel-sharp noir style proves a mesmerizing lure, but it can't compensate for a hazy plot that veers from the nauseating (much gratuitous, ornately sadistic violence) to the nonsensical"

While others had a different opinion:
Kirkus Reviews gave a more positive review, stating that "Baer will almost certainly write better books than this, but probably not with such youthful verve, bare nerve-ends, or frigidly droll, dead-on metaphors".

With all of this potentially sinking Baer's good name, I hate to think of all the people who ended up not giving this artist a try. It's sad when you think about it, because if I wouldn't have picked this up, I never would have known that there was this kind of dark, sometimes humorous kind of heart-ripping writing out there. I mean, yes sure, I could always do some interweb searching for neo-noir fiction, or even wacky bizzaro writing like Mykle Hansen's Help! A bear is eating me!, or even, Carlton Mellick III's book Satan Burger which I still need to pick up; but lots of people don't even read these days, which I find very sad. They know not what they miss!

Baer launches the reader into another tail spin with his sequel to Kiss me, Judas: Penny Dreadful. I found this book to be even crazier, darker, and down-right weirder than the first. The second book washed over me like a blood-soaked tidal wave, its random body parts poking and prodding my brain, looking for a hiding place to set down some lines, and eventually have its way with my psyche. The book is a literary version of Rohypnol, it relaxes you to the point of darkness, and when you wake up you have no memory of the last twenty-four hours. Don't let that sound like a warning, because it's not. Simply, it is a disclaimer. Penny Dreadful should have the same saying as Las Vegas - what happens there, stays there.

“I have saved no one but myself and now I watch for the other universe to unravel in my skull, for the sky to become my own skin and fill with stars.”
― Will Christopher Baer, Penny Dreadful

Now on to the end, the proverbial last stand we the reader's have with our friend Phineas Poe. First, let me share that Baer's last book (this one) Hell's Half Acre was a bitch to obtain. Apparently it is not print in Canada anymore, thus making me scourge and plunder my way through every ratty used book store to find this lost and dusty gem. Luckily for me, I finally got my grubby hands on it! Success!

This book opens much like the others, Phineas is lost and without Jude, he has an idea where she might be, but of course, he has no resources and little energy to find out exactly where that is. HHA (Hell's Half Acre) is littered with more of Baer's excellently stylized neo-writing, with no important punctuation except for periods, and maybe some commas and question marks strewn here and there. His dialogue has no quotation marks, not single nor double marks for active speaking parts. This just adds to the overall disjointed feel of this trilogy. It feels like Baer breaks minor boundaries in his writing, and how he tells his story, he doesn't care about rules and just "goes for the gold", so to speak. There is no worrying about what people will think of him, or his characters for that matter, he's not writing for the straight edged folk. These stories almost feel like he only wanted to write for himself, and by chance they happened to get some sort of attention, so he let them go down the same dark paths that Poe have gone down; the road of uncertainty; the highways of disillusion. He holds up in a motel, and pummels out a fabulous piece of art.

I finished this book an hour ago, and I am so pleased with the way it ended. Baer has been a great literary discovery for me and I hope that if anyone happens to read this review, they will at least give Mr. Baer a chance. I won't make any promises that you will love these books as much as I did (i have odd 'likes'), but I will say this:

“Anything you can imagine is probably true. And the worst you can imagine is probably worth money.”
― Will Christopher Baer, Hell's Half Acre

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know what to think of this book. I'll try to form some sort of..review.

I really dreaded writing this because I wasn't really sure how to put my thoughts on this into a review. Whenever I feel negative or just..weird..about a book, the review seems a lot harder to do than when I love something. In this case, it's even harder because I can't really pinpoint exactly what this book did wrong. The structure was pretty similar to that of Kiss Me, Judas. From page one, to the end; almost every main character is on some sort of drug or mood-altering substance. I'm not sure why but after reading Penny Dreadful, it was hard to go back to what KMJ (Kiss Me, Judas - for those not following along) was like in terms of overall narrative. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I had any problems following along Baer's twisted neo-noir fantasy - I just didn't enjoy it as much this time around.

Poe's main antagonist this time, aside from Jude's twisted psyche, is John Ransom Miller, a wealthy lawyer. Miller agrees to provide Jude with Senator MacDonald Cody, one whom she completed a hand amputation on a few years back while living in Mexico. Cody spots Jude somewhere in California and immediately sets out to have her destroyed - it's basically a "you can't get me if I get you first" kind of thing. The only thing that Miller wants in return is her participation (and a few others) in the creation of a snuff film. A snuff film in which the victim’s identity will not be revealed until the murder occurs.

Miller is just too out there. His character is so all over the place that it made me crazy. While I understood Poe's reasons for cooperating, it gets to a certain point where it no longer made sense to me. It gets so complicated, so insanely twisted, that I was just annoyed. I can appreciate some of the moral dilemas..but these characters are all completely out of their minds. By who they are and how they came into this situation, none of them should even be aware of any moral obligation they hold to anyone.

The only character I really felt anything for other than Poe, was Molly. Molly was one of the actresses hired for the snuff film, which may or may not be Miller's present girlfriend. She really didn't have any interests in most of the insanity other than trying to create a memorable performance. The scenes in which she connects with Poe were well done and had me rooting for the two to get together - however, I think it's more so because Jude enraged me 99% of the time.

Baer really missed this one for me. It was necessary for him to continue the story for Jude, with her absence from the 2nd novel but he made me hate her so much that the ending just fell flat.

** On another note, for a book so over-the-top violent and sexually charged, I'm bothered by other trivial things. Kind of says something about what I'm used to reading.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was had the potential to be a fantastic conclusion to the series, which is quite a feat considering a certain lacking in Penny Dreadful to make up for. Very dark, surprisingly funny, and somehow redemptive, Hell's Half Acre is brought to a screeching halt but what I can only describe as an incomplete ending - not an ambiguous ending to grow on with relevant questioning, but one that had me checking to see if my copy simply had a last few chapters missing. An inconclusive note can be very satisfying in the sense of some kind of reader participation, but this screams a lack of ideas for the rest of the plot. This rating is perhaps the saddest that I've ever had to make, for what IS written is startlingly beautiful, but with no sense of resolution what-so-ever.

[devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a pretty personal book for me, so this is more of a journal rant than a book review. So, there's really no reason for anyone to read this. I just finished the book and have a lot of thoughts on it.

I first read HHA when it was released in 2004. Probably a bit before that, actually. I had a dark orange ARC, this mysterious and lovely thing. It's gone now, lost between the years and the states. I forgot about it until just now. I read an ebook this time round. How time marches on. I probably should have bought another hard back from ebay. I've lost and handed out more Poe books than I would ever tell a financial adviser, one who I can't afford because I hand out too many books.

I was 15 then. I liked Baer's writing because it was dark, and sounded cool, and maybe I didn't understand all of it, but I still loved it. It sounded like poetry but made a lick more of sense. It had sex and violence unlike the books at school, and my English teacher didn't care if I read unassigned books in class; I was failing anyway.

I was part of a small online community, back when the internet had small niche forums instead of behemoth social media sites. That's how I got the ARC I think. Maybe a contest I won. The site was dedicated to Baer and of course Clevenger and Jones. And that community definitely helped define who I am today, just like the books the community was for. They were the best and continue to be the best. But anyone reading this would know that. All the friends I made there, I'm still friends with here. Hey guys!

I've read the first in the trilogy, Kiss me Judas, more than I can count. Same goes for Penny Dreadful. It's a rainy day book for me. A comfort book. You can pick it up and read a few sentences and maybe you'll read the whole book over the next day.

But Hells half acre? I had read it only once. Only that ARC copy, 14 years ago. I have no idea why I never picked it back up again. Maybe because it's the ending? Because it's the last thing Baer has put out in the past 14 years? I have no answer. But I just read it again for the second time, and it was damn good.

Reading Hells Half Acre now, 14 years later, I can see a lot more through Poe than I ever did as a teenager. I can feel how vulnerable he is. I can relate in some ways that I probably never wanted to relate to Poe. But then there's other ways that I wasn't expecting -- the way he latches to the child. The way he acts around Jude after a traumatizing break up. His shaky relationship with baseball, drugs and superheros. I never noticed how damn vulnerable Poe is in this one, and it hit me hard. I always pictured him as this kind of stoic bad ass. Noir one liners. Drugs and guns. Sex and more violence. That's kind of all I thought it was when I was sixteen. A car chase, an exploding house, a kidnapped kid. Maybe I was just too young to see that Poe's this sad, broken guy that really wants to go fuck off somewhere with Jude and live happily ever after and all this other stuff is just happening around him.

It's weird reading Baer's work now because of the radio silence he's been broadcasting for, what, 13 years? It's hard for me to separate the artist from the art sometimes, and it's especially true when the artist is a ghost. A blank slate you can imagine anyone into. I don't know what happened to Baer, why he disappeared. I remember he said he had HHA printed and left on top of his fridge for years before it was published. I remember reading someone say that he probably wrote the poe trilogy when he was in a very dark place and he's moved on, and doesn't want to be reminded of these books. I can see that. I can relate to that. Maybe he has multiple versions of Godspeed on multiple hard drives. Maybe he's writing the book again and again and again until it's perfect.

Maybe he's publishing happy YA novels under a pen name. Maybe WCB was a pen name.

I'm sure the most logical answer is true -- the man wrote a few novels that got mildly famous, and as poe says, he never wanted to be famous. So Baer stopped and never looked back. Baer was a taxi cab driver before he was a writer, and he's probably a taxi cab driver again. I don't know. If he wanted us to know, he'd start a website again. I do know someone keeps buying his domain name, so he might have a digital guardian angel, or he might not be planning on being a ghost forever. I can only hope he has GODSPEED up on his fridge now, waiting for the right time to publish it. I'll be waiting for it, like Poe waiting in the desert for a picture and a hotel key.

Okay, maybe not like that, because that's like, actually life changing. I'm so happy poe went out by starting a family with Jude. It's the perfect ending. Jude shows small vulnerable moments of motherhood throughout the book, and I don't know if they'll actually be a good family, but I can see it. I can see them raising some innocent child who just wants video games and books and a normal life and is nothing like their parents, just like all children.

WCB's prose infected my teenage brain, and I have a weird relationship with it. Around the first time I read him, I got in trouble handing out copies of Kiss me Judas at school. A small claim to fame. When the principal called me into her office, she read the short blurb about Hells Half Acre. I remember her face when she read it. She said 'snuff films' like it was a nasty insult. I laughed, she laughed, I got suspended. And that's been just about the story of my life so far.

If the rest of my life resembles the last 15 years of it, i'll be googling Baer's name damn near monthly, hoping to see something come up. Someday there will be a Godspeed release. And if there's not, that's alright too.

It's not like he wasn't leaving hints:

"Disappear, she says. I love that word.”

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Her voice goes cold. Take a good look at my face and tell me about danger”

“The inside of my own head is a half acre of hell”

A detective novelist in the traditional grand style- with some twists. And way more edge. Echoes of how I imagine Norman Mailer writes but romantic electricity like Kerouac, Miller; and violence of Bret Easton Ellis.

The character of Jude is transfixing

“There are four chanbers in the heart, four rooms. I stumble through the house of Miller and my chest is full of terrible voices”

“The soft flash of honey eyes”

“Now she takes my hand and I feel her pulse with the tip of my middle finger and this is not what anyone would call a handshake because our hands are not moving but holding each other and our skin is the same temperature and after a long silence one of us lets go”


“Her fingers taste of salt.. the shadow bends, as if to kiss me. Her hands find my throat and I tell myself not to fight…the taste of her mouth is like chewing on rose petals sweet with mint, poison…
“Violence and whispered apologies.

“Jude comes in colours. How could I forget”
“Im coming says Jude.
And holds her breath. Orgasm is brief, nonviolent.
What colour? I say.
Devastating blue, she says. Rhe pale blue eyes of a murdered boy”

P108 - heroin sex.

“I am briefly tempted by the horror of another rented room”

Beyond noir. Or noir to its natural conclusion? The down and out section reminded me of an American gothic.
He goes beyond things that a noir would focus on; noir is detachment but he goes into monogamy: “I don’t belong to her because our love is unsafe in the marrow”…therefore Jude and I are each set free with the flickering hope that we may come back to each other and the knowledge that we may not”

“Her eyes are closed tight but she’s staring hard at something unseen”

… the plot becomes hokey, uninvolving schlock… but the happy ending and the pulling of punches is welcomed

[Colin Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars, but reaching higher.

Omnibus review:

Will Christopher Baer is a more respectable version of Chuck Palahniuk. They’re very similar—both are dark, first-person storytellers with a predilection for the twisted underworld of sex and violence—but I’d place Baer more on the side of dark storyteller and Palahniuk on the side of shock writer. Plus Palahniuk bled one narrator into (many, but for sure his initial) four novels; Baer just accepted his love for that voice and made a trilogy.

The Phineas Poe trilogy—Kiss Me, Judas; Penny Dreadful; and Hell’s Half Acre—is narrated by the disgraced ex-cop turned ex-junkie of the same name. In Kiss Me, Judas, Poe wakes up in a bathtub full of ice, missing a kidney. He spends the rest of the novel chasing the hooker, Jude, who stole it from him, bumping into other characters—some friends, some enemies—and inadvertently dragging them into this mess, if they weren’t involved already. Though the novel is a dark neo-noir, it is also sophomoric. Usually adding the term sophomoric to any review (since authors are supposed to be the deft and mature minds of the world) is a slight, but it works in Kiss Me, Judas. Hell’s Half Acre sheds a bit of the noir skin, but ends the series strong as Poe and the other surviving characters participate in the making of a snuff film in which no one knows who is going to be the one to die.

The problem is Penny Dreadful. Most fans of the series are split on this middle book. You either think it’s the best or the worst of the three. Unlike Kiss Me, Judas and Hell’s Half Acre, Penny Dreadful jumps through several character’s viewpoints, most of which end up sounding far too similar. Phineas Poe unknowingly enters into “the game of tongues”—a subcultural game turned deadly when one of the role players begins killing people instead of simply biting their tongue to claim victory. The problem? It’s incredibly dorky. We’re talking LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) dorky.

Where Kiss Me, Judas and Hell’s Half Acre are four star and 3.5 star reads respectively, Penny Dreadful is a two star shoulder shrug of what it should have been—a mild side note to a much longer novel or a different novel that didn’t involve Phineas Poe. The events that take place in Penny Dreadful seem more set apart, disconnected from the bookend novels. The minor Kiss Me, Judas characters could have been involved, made it a fun side-by-side comparison of the universe Will Christopher Baer has created, but the force of the love/hate relationship between Jude and Phineas Poe is diluted by what should have been a small plotline. Though the trilogy is graphic in violence and sexual abuse (including gang rape), Baer also displays scenes of incredible tenderness in this twisted mess, perhaps more tender because of coldness of the surrounding text. Flashback scenes to Poe’s terminally diseased wife are some of the trilogy’s finest. Despite the flaws of Penny Dreadful and what can be viewed as too many loose ends come the end of Hell’s Half Acre, Baer has crafted a sleek, quick-read trilogy for fans of the darker side of fiction. Three stars.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, how I'd missed Jude, my biggest literary crush since Marla Singer or Lauren Hynde (though, she could dismember both with her bare hands). Just a mind blowingly good novel. I absolutely loved 'Kiss Me, Judas', and was very skeptical at everyone who told me the other books in the trilogy were even better, but after reading them, I completely agree. 'Hell's Half Acre' was definitely my favorite of the three, and that's saying something. I genuinely wish I could have my memory erased in some kind of 'Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind' procedure so I could read this trilogy all over from scratch. Now that Craig Clevenger has finally finished his new novel 'Mother Howl', all we can do is hope Baer releases 'Godspeed' sometime this decade. Godspeed, Will Baer, Godspeed.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every sentence of this book was premeditated. Just how I like it. I can usually care less about what's going on if the language is beautiful. I don't like poems but I enjoy poetic writing. This book was an epic. The author is very well read, and he's slightly enamored with J.D. Salinger...he references him a lot. His work was hard to get into. The first chapter was shaky and seemed like it needed editing. But once I got past it, I was hooked. I love Jude. I didn't really enjoy book 2 of the trilogy because she wasn't included. I still think my favorite was book 1, but not by much. The first book was vague enough to make perfect sense. In this book, Jude is vulnerable and unstable, which is unusual for her. The book ended how I wanted it to end, but I'm still somewhat disappointed.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given how much I loved the first two books of this trilogy, I stayed away from this book for a very long time because, well, how could I be anything but disappointed?

But I should not have stayed away, because, while I will admit that it's not as good as the first two (there are stray sentimental strands that Baer seems unable to help himself from excluding), it's still THE RETURN OF JUDE (who isn't in the second book, by the by), and so it's still entirely worthwhile.

I'm really looking forward to whatever Baer writes next, and I think that leaving Poe behind him can only work for the better.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book more than the others in this series. I do feel as if this was the second book in the series, and the Penny Dreadful book was kind of out in left field. You can see how his writing has evolved and it was much easier to follow the story line this time around. I really do feel as if the second book wasn't his favorite and he decided to get back on the track he was originally going with the Jude vs Poe vs insanity vs the bad guys vs internal desperation vs the world. Entertaining, easy, quick read. Definitely glad I gave it a chance and didn't give up because of Penny Dreadful.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yaaassss! This was a strong finish for the trilogy! If you're looking for a trilogy where the characters are all basically pretty awful people, and nothing good happens, here it is! And I mean that in the BEST way! (Okay, maybe one good thing happened once. But given the characters' track records, I'm sure they messed everything up eventually.) If I tried to describe the writing style, I would say it's edgy, crisp, and sporadic. It's punctuated with short, blunt sentences and thoughts. It's quite difficult to describe, but it's great!

[Simon Friel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I want to like this and it has some really good parts but ultimately it's just painfully not true. The writer is creating a world full of bizarre characters that he wants you to believe could actually exist, but it just isn't believable. These people, or some form of them, can and do exist but he doesn't know them (he really really wants to). For all the good things, there is nothing worse than somebody pretending to be something they are not.

[C.B. Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the mid-series deviation of Penny Dreadful , this book reads more like a follow-up of the first book in the series, albeit a lesser version. The main character Poe seems a little more bumbling and less capable; he's lost his edge it seems. It feels as if it's building up toward an epic conclusion, but doesn't quite get there.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this trilogy and would recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind their fiction on the surreal, dark, and gritty side. The first novel in the series is called Kiss Me, Judas. Pick it up, and know that the following installments are even better.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

At least the other two, on some level, made sense. Kind of.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

:( I hope the authors shoes are forever untied.

[Jace Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best Phineas Poe story out of the 3 and an amazing conclusion.

[Wade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ends up being a bit disappointing compared to the previous 2 in the series. Some big narratives swings that I don't think worked that well.

[Linus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific. My personal favorite of the trilogy. It's sort of cute how Baer tries to cover up certain links from the previous books (i.e., the sly hint at Jude's allusion to Penny Dreadful's Game of Tongues when she tries it on Phineas). But anyway… this book seemed like the most focused out of all three. There weren't so many fluctuations in plot for one thing. There was just one plot arc that took longer to develop, and allowed Phineas more of his own voice and interiority. I think what we enjoy most about these noir psycho thrillers is the protagonist having to come out of some fucked up situation he's faced with, which was basically what Hell's Half Acre is about: Phineas Poe trying to prove not to be just a big old dummy.. that's the only way I can think of to describe it anyway.

John Ransom Miller is a very compelling psychopath. His introduction in the beginning makes you wonder, "Will the rest of the book back up the character outline we first get of him?" and sure enough he is a really perfect villain. The ending scene is also the best ending of all three books, even better than Kiss Me, Judas, because of the weird moodswings and everything.

This is the second piece of fiction that has successfully ripped off Glamorama and done a way better job—the first being Zoolander of course. But of course W.C. Baer is way more articulate than Bret Easton Ellis and does a way better job of conveying a protagonist's world not being differentiated from that of a movie, because in this case it actually makes sense. Poe is basically insane and can't view the world as real, as he's said before, and Baer pulled it off well. I wish I could say more about this book but there's else nothing really. The ending was in fact too good. I found myself short of breath.. even forced a tear.. but Aaaaanyway..

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

With HELL'S HALF ACRE we're back to a Phineas Poe/ Jude story after the bizarre, surrealistic mindfuck that was PENNY DREADFUL. PENNY DREADFUL was definitely a little detour after KISS ME, JUDAS, and HELL'S HALF ACRE sort of gets us back on track.

Sort of.

There's still something a bit PENNY DREADFUL about HELL'S HALF ACRE. And that's the meandering tendency that Baer created in PD. We sort of start at D wind up at W, go back to A, and end on N.

That kind of thing. And the way everything goes, you don't really know where you're headed.

You didn't really know where you were headed in KISS ME, JUDAS, either, but it felt a little more fluid.

I think that has everything to do with that first book being a little more compact and a little less complicated.

Like PD, HELL'S HALF ACRE is chock-full of characters. Like, a ton. And, like PD, Phineas spends half the book kind of wandering around the town the story takes place in. Baer has some kind of Ulysses kick that started with PD, I think.

And, like PD, we're not really privy to the characters' motivations for remaining in the hells they've created for themselves.

Anyway, given all that, if I actually talk about the STORY of this book, I'd easily give up too much too quickly. Or I'd get lost telling it.

I'm already writing this review like Phineas would, and I'm worried I'll spook you.

This book is a big kerplunk of cement in your gut. That's how it goes.

The sky was pink, the color of muscle.

And so on.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The new trends being explored in neo-noir are impressive. Perhaps no author/voice in the genre is more interesting and compelling than Christopher Baer. The staples of noir are all intact here, although not always immediately recognizable. The themes are dark and the action is violent. The protagonist is guided by a moral compass, which rusty though it may be, results in a great deal of personal conflict. Therein is the real attraction of neo-noir. Protagonist Phineas Poe is a protagonist living in an abysmally cruel world in which he does and does not belong. To say he is deeply conflicted is a gross understatement. For the world in which is lives is undeniably of his own making, at least partially. As a character, Poe is intensely flawed: a sometimes nihilist, a drug addled ex-cop, and murderer in his own right. Yet there is still something undeniably sympathetic about Poe. He is not amoral, at least not when it counts, and especially not when compared to his foil, John Ransom Miller. Make no mistake this is a dark novel. But the writing is at times salient, and Baer almost waxes poetic--thankfully and wisely, not giving in fully to the impulse. The result is quite extraordinary--a wonderfully written novel of bleak, bleak substance. Highly recommended for noir fans and beyond.

[Petalbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second attempt to finish this book.

Despite - or maybe because of its manic energy, this books reads at a fast clip. Not even a day and I'm already past the halfway mark, doggedly following the distracted (imagined?) misadventures of Kiss Me, Judas's ex-cop antihero protagonist Phineas Poe despite my internal clock's best efforts to start my nightly allotment of sweet, sweet sleep. Other readers accustomed to light, airy things might find the narrative of drugs, sex, violence appaling. For the rest of you who enjoy a tale so twisted it's no biggie getting back on the main track (and Hell's Half Acre reads just like you missed your exit on the interstate - go a little further and you'll find your way again), it's quite the sick/pleasurable ride.

Eta. Finished 27 November.

[Carol]

So far, this is disappointing. Hell's Half Acre is the third in a series of trippy thrillers by a guy a went to high school with. The tales are of Phineas Poe, a junkie ex-cop. The first in the series is Kiss Me, Judas, which I can recommend for a good ride, crisp and surprising. In the first book our protagonist gets his kidney stolen by a beautiful assassin, who he later falls in love with. The second novel follows easily with the prerequisite violence, drugs, sick attitude towards women. In this third novel I am still interested in Phineas (call me sick), but the language is tired and overthought. See, "I try to imagine how Jude feels, how it would feel to be a woman raped and mutilated. She is still stupidly beautiful, to my mind." Ugh. Can I finish this?

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

i try not to review the same author more than once on here, but i will break these rules for my favorites. of which baer is most certainly one. the rad conclusion to the phineas poe trilogy, it's every bit as dark and weird as the others, but with more tom waits references. and that's always good by me.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read in years. He goes way out there. Makes you wish a world like this really existed.

But you should read Kiss Me Judas first, but its not as good. You just need it for the context.

[michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the way WCB continued Poe's story bringing you back to the secondary characters of Kiss Me Judas. It was a great escape from my personal reality and his writing style was adjusted from the first book to the second to clarify the sudden scene changes and internal character shifts.

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

It definitely kepy my attention throughout the whole book. It was very well written and full of twists and turns. Murder, sex, drugs, kidnapping, blackmail, and amputees, all of the ingredients to a good book.

[Neospooky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than Penny Dreadful but still not measuring up to Kiss Me, Judas, Hell's Half Acre is a solid installment in the Phineas Poe saga. Baer, as I said before, sets a mood and doesn't go where you want him to which amplifies the sense of discomfort his novels engender.

[Mkwoa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading. The film was intriguing and unsettling, and the last half of the book was very captivating. However, the whole trilogy just seems so disjointed. There were some very interesting ideas and stories, but nothing seemed to fit, and there really didn't seem to be an end.

[Zee · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this book. I hated most of the characters in it and I spent 75% of the book ranting about Jude and how much I hate her.

But the last 20 pages or so wrap up the whole series so well that I can forgive any faults. It's a great read. Crazy, but great.