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Compelling!

Suddenly very violent. Compelling and well written.

This is has been alternately engaging and as cold as Pluto. The techno jargon is such a drag; the plot device intriguing: in order to solve a crime, the chief investigator travels to “a future” - as all potential futures are accessible. Only once observed by a traveler, that future ceases to exist.

Trip my aged ass out!

First story was by Archie Goodwin with awesome artwork by Angelo Torres.
Got my issues confused back there.
Brilliant cover by Frazetta.

First story’s by the great. Archie Goodwin as were most of the stories published in Creepy & Eerie. Artwork bu Joe Orlando. Very different artwork from that of his earlier EC Comics period.

There’s a letter to the editor by a future Underground Comix legend Jay Lynch.

So far - absolutely brilliant. What a page turner!

Not much progress as I’ve started simultaneously reading another novel (SF/Crime) & rereading old Creepy & Eerie magazines from Warren Publishing I downloaded to read on an iPad Pro large screen (13”).

Thing about this novel… 1st read it when I was 14. The protagonist seemed like a noble bum riding the rails. 50 some odd years later he’s obviously just another asshole on life’s highway causing problems.

No way am I going to be finished with this anthology by the end of the year.
I’ll still be reading these stories as we enter the New Year. But I have to start a Nelson Algren novel I 1st read in junior high school.

Taking this anthology slow.
These interconnected stories are first-person narratives, each voiced by a character calling himself John.
They’re hardboiled tales involving bad cops, ex-cons, guys on the run, guys violating terms of their paroles, working “straight” gigs as loggers in Upstate New York.
Violence dogs them like a bad cough they can’t shake.
Amazing writer - a modern Steinbeck or Hemingway.

Don’t get why the author -Scott Wolven- isn’t being raved about across the reading universe.

Short stories of beautiful-losers, sentimentally unsentimental about real men and women, bent but square shooters, weathering quiet emotional breakdowns and tests of their soul’s resilience.

Criminals and ex-cons working blue collar gigs attempting to go straight.
As great as Wolven’s first collection of stories.

Lost a few days.

Had to do real life crap and set this down for a few.

I only realized today that the Errol Morris documentary film on Manson available on Netflix is related to this book with the author’s assistance.
Saw the documentary- can’t recall seeing any of this stuff covered.

Hard to put this down. Although the author ends too many sections with “?”.

So far, better than average true-crime reading.

So far it’s about a journalist who investigated the effects of the Manson orchestrated mayhem on the Hollywood film and music industries for Premiere Magazine in 1999. But one line here just kills me.

The author quotes a threat made by an alleged “connected” one time smuggler:
”Dead white men will pull your tongue out if you tell this…”
Straight outta James Hadley Chase.

Put down the Scott Wolven anthology to “temporarily” peruse a few pages of this very, very weird account of the Manson orchestrated massacres and the U.S. military’s use of mind control experiments with LSD.
I was immediately hooked after 20 pages accusing Vincent Bugliosi of fraud and of suborning perjury.

How do I know what page I’m on? Who’s counting?
Bought the Kindle edition.
Started this Monday.
The stories I’ve read have truly impressed me.
They’re almost Harlan Ellisonesque and faintly tinted by Charle Beaumont like depictions of human fallibility.
Truly moving speculative fiction occasionally involving situations with nonhuman entities or devices dealing with moral dilemmas caused by careless humans.

Had a family emergency. Hospital visit via ambulance for my wife at 3 in the morning.
Had to put the book down for 6 days. Rejoined -action in progress- last night.

This new one by Jason Bovberg is such a compelling read. Not a wasted line to be found. Super tight writing.

Jason ain’t no amateur. This is exciting stuff!

I was all set to reread a bunch of Dan Marlowe thrillers and a couple of Donald Hamilton non-Matt Helm standalones.

I needed to read something featuring a remorseless protagonist operating outside the bounds of law and then I received this new one by Jason Bovberg.
Can’t express enough my gratitude for a new thriller reminiscent in tone to the lethally professional loners of 60s paperback originals.
Brilliant.

I can’t finish this.
Life is too short.

I’m not rating this book because it would be unfair.
Not for me.

I can’t understand why I am NOT enjoying this novel yet. Might be a hangover from a high caliber, fast-mover of a crime thriller I just finished a couple of days ago.

Riveting.

Hard to put this sucker down. Man -I’m hooked into this one bigly.

It’s really hard to express how good the first hundred pages have been.