This novel is sold as a tense noir in the same vein as a classic James M. Cain book with a successful filmmaker recounting his cutthroat rise to fame This novel is sold as a tense noir in the same vein as a classic James M. Cain book with a successful filmmaker recounting his cutthroat rise to fame by stealing his mentor’s film and wife. It had some potential but ultimately, there’s not enough there to really live up to its hype and promise.
The characters aren’t nearly as compelling as they should be and once the lumbering plot gets going about halfway through, it proves to be barely existent beyond a maddeningly basic noir skeleton that can be summarized in a couple of sentences. The entitled asshole protagonist got on my nerves and the femme fatale was completely without nuance. And the ending…goodnes, what a timid cop-out that doesn’t at all stand up to the stories that it professes to be influenced by....more
Noir is sometimes defined by the terrible decisions that our loser "hero" makes. In this latest book by crime author Jason Starr, our protago⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Noir is sometimes defined by the terrible decisions that our loser "hero" makes. In this latest book by crime author Jason Starr, our protagonist stands out, making some of the dumber decisions I've read in a while. But that's not a terrible thing as it was fun reading about this dumbass flounder with every decision he tries to make, digging himself deeper and deeper into the shit, after he tries to spice up his love life by cheating on his wife on a dating app and then subsequently getting caught up in a murder plot.
It's an entertaining, if modest, thriller that takes interesting turns and moves at a great pace. But it doesn't really go far with its drama, chickening out at the end and missing exciting opportunities to take advantage of its cool twists in favor of a disappointingly tidy ending. It was all a little too safe and I wish it was a bit more courageous in its choices. (view spoiler)[For example, a similar plot development happened in Gone Girl, and the ending was much more provocative and satisfying to me. (hide spoiler)]...more
Brubaker and Phillips’s gritty vigilante tale comes to a banging end here! We open with Dylan in a mental institution filled with doubts as to whetherBrubaker and Phillips’s gritty vigilante tale comes to a banging end here! We open with Dylan in a mental institution filled with doubts as to whether the demon was actually real and he's trying to put his past behind him. But other forces won’t let him do that. Not the Russian mob, not Detective Lily Sharpe, not the copycat that’s running around out there killing drug dealers, and certainly not the demon itself.
This final volume goes to places that I didn’t expect but some places that feel totally inevitable. It’ll keep you guessing to the end. And the art here is some of the best in the whole series. It’s a crime if Elizabeth Breitweiser isn’t considered one of the best color artists in comics today. Everything she does rocks.
All in all, this is a great cap to a consistent series that features more of the same excellence that we expect from this creative team....more
The tone and focus that most people are familiar with today in Moon Knight's book is owed almost completely to this run on the character. It rei★★★1/2
The tone and focus that most people are familiar with today in Moon Knight's book is owed almost completely to this run on the character. It reinvigorated the character and focused on more of the gritty, psychological aspects. Marc Spector has been injured and has been seemingly abandoned by Khonshu, we then witness his existential crisis and his attempts to rise again as Moon Knight. It's violent and graphic and a bit overwrought, but David Finch's art is eye-catchingly grimy. Not a particularly great Moon Knight book but definitely an impactful one that should be read by all of his fans.
William Boyle's latest book might also be his most accessible, with a tone that's pretty different from his two previous novels. While it's set mostlyWilliam Boyle's latest book might also be his most accessible, with a tone that's pretty different from his two previous novels. While it's set mostly in the same outskirts of Brooklyn where the other books take place and it's just as offbeat, this one is filled to the gills with quirk, witty comedy, and hope; a bit of a departure from the earlier crime downers and melancholy character pieces. It tells the story of a mob widow, an ex-pornstar, a precocious teen girl, a mid-level gangster, and an 80-year-old Viagra-popping pervert, bouncing off each other as they flee the wrath of a psycho hitman armed with a sledgehammer.
It's fun, suspenseful, and delightfully oddball. What few action scenes there are never go quite the way you expect. The chapter in the first third of the book where all of our characters collide in the Bronx is one of the best chapters of any book I've read in a long while! It's well-written with absorbing characters, but Boyle does show a constant issue with narrative momentum as he's always interrupting the flow of the story at the worst moments just for the characters to reminisce. It always helped deepen my understanding of the characters but I wish it was done with a bit more finesse.
I had a great time reading this one. It's a tale of how friendship can be found in the most unlikely places, and how sometimes all you need is the right people around you in order to discover who you really are.
*Advanced Copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review*...more
William Boyle's new novel isn't exactly a sequel to his previous one, Gravesend, but we do follow Amy, a small side character from that first noveWilliam Boyle's new novel isn't exactly a sequel to his previous one, Gravesend, but we do follow Amy, a small side character from that first novel, a party girl who formed a relationship with Gravesend's heroine, Alessandra. In The Lonely Witness she has cut herself off from her past life after Alessandra abandons her, and sequesters herself socially in her Brooklyn neighborhood, where she volunteers for a local Catholic church, providing in-home communion for the elderly.
Once again, Boyle provides us with a deep study of an emotionally lost character as she drifts through a detailed Brooklyn steeped in sadness. The novel is all about identity as Amy struggles to figure out her place in the world. She constantly believes that the life she's set up for herself as a helper to the ignored is the right one, but she keeps finding herself pulled in other directions. Old friends from the past and the people who inhabit her life presently all know different Amy's, but the real question that she has to ask herself is which one is the real her. You get the sense that Amy has hidden behind all of these personality facades all her life and now she's on a journey to realize who she truly is. Amy, as well as most of the other characters in the book, set about to leave their dead end lives, sometimes with tragic consequences.
Like Gravesend, this book is a slow novel and a bit meandering, but the reason why it doesn't fully succeed for me the way Gravesend did is because where that first novel switched back and forth between equally fascinating POV's, keeping it fresh, this one just focuses on one character, one that happens to be a hard nut to crack, so the pace and other issues were more evident. But the novel's conclusion as well as Boyle's keen-eyed observance really clicked with me.
The Lonely Witness come out May 1, and this is my review of an advanced copy that I received in exchange for an honest review!...more
Moon Knight is a strange bird, and definitely one of the more intriguing superheroes. He's an ex-mercenary named Marc Spector, who, in exchange for a Moon Knight is a strange bird, and definitely one of the more intriguing superheroes. He's an ex-mercenary named Marc Spector, who, in exchange for a second chance at life, made a pact with the Egyptian moon god Khonshu to be his avatar on Earth, protecting travelers of the night. But it's also left him with multiple personality disorder, as his brain tries to comprehend the deity's "four aspects." So he's kinda like Batman but only more batshit crazy, dressing in an all-white costume to ensure that the bad guys can see him coming before they get their asses kicked.
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Many writers and artists have had their hands in Moon Knight over the years, but he's never really taken off with most mainstream audiences. Mostly because he's a strange enigma of a character and hard to pin down. With this volume, Warren Ellis tries his hand at the vigilante, aiming to reintroduce him to new-era audiences through the Marvel Now line. Giving the character a reset after Brian Michael Bendis's controversial run on the character, Ellis presents his short run as a series of one-shot stories that serve to illustrate the character in various ways, whether he's fighting ghosts, disgruntled sniper veterans, or fighting his way Raid-style through an apartment building to save a kidnapped girl (in one of the best action sequences I've ever seen in a comic book).
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The art in this really stands out as well, not only rendering well-choreographed action and creative paneling, but also sporting inventive, award-winning color work by Jordie Bellaire, who paints the hero in such stark white and no hint of color whatsoever, that it leaps off the page, creating simple but pretty eye-catching visuals! It's as if Moon Knight is cut and pasted in from another dimension!
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