Mr. Reichenbaugh’s prose is slick and smooth, and his handling of Kent is unflinching; he is a bad man, with just enough saving graces to make us care as he tries to keep himself alive and out of jail, even as he thinks about hitting on the female detective who is investigating his case.
There are a ton of juicy plot twists in this novel, which I cannot reveal, and several characters,who seemed uninteresting at first, become essential to the story because of Mr. Reichenbaugh’s clever plotting. Kent’s wife Denise is particularly interesting, and relevant, but spoiler’s prevent me from saying too much. I can tell you that she is a every bit a classic noir character as Kent, perhaps even more. All of this keeps building and building, as we see Ken, an accountant, sneaking through the streets of Phoenix, breaking into houses and firing guns, until we reach a slam-bang climax, violent and twisted as anything out of Pulp Fiction, which ties up all the ends we have known, and reveals a bunch that I had no clue about. It’s a particularly fitting, and grim end to a tale that I enjoyed, but didn’t really feel good about. That is real noir. |
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July 2020
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