Review of Hard Bite by Anonymous-9 (Blasted Heath, 2012)

Three years after his daughter was killed in a hit-and-run accident in LA, Dean Drayhart has turned vigilante, hunting and entrapping rogue drivers using some creative internet scams, then killing his victims.  This is no mean feat, as in the same accident, Dean lost the use of his legs, most of his colon, one of his hands, and in time his wife.  He’s aided in his quest by his new girlfriend, Cinda, an escort, and Sid, his wayward helper Monkey who he’s trained to administer a hard bite to the jugular.  His latest victim is the son of a widow who has inherited her husband's 'godfather' status in the Mexican mafia.  Suddenly the tables are turned and Dean and Sid become the hunted.  The only thing that might save them is LA cop, Detective Doug Coltson, who knows he’s investigating a strange case, but has little idea how bizarre it’s going to get. 

I’m not quite sure how I ended up with Hard Bite on my kindle as I don’t remember reading any reviews.  Someone must have pointed me towards the book.  Whoever it was, I’d like to thank them.  Hard Bite was a joy to read.  Original, witty, smart, dark, and hard with a soft-centre.  Elaine Ash (Anonymous-9) writes in very assured and sparkling prose that is all show and no tell, and which swaps between the first person narrative of Dean and the third person of the other characters, including Sid.  I was hooked from the first sentence (see here).  The plot is very nicely put together, and whilst it could have twirled off into a screwball noir, it manages to be darkly comic without descending into farce, and wheels an interesting path through a morally fraught landscape.  Dean is a remarkable lead character, strong in vision and drive but weak in body, and Ash doesn’t fall into the trap of portraying him in an ableist light.  Sid is great fun as a helper monkey who was dropped from his training programme for attitude problems, and the other characters are all nicely realised.  Along with good contextualisation, there is also a decent sense of place in both LA and Mexico.  One of the most original crime and enjoyable novels I’ve read in a good while and thoroughly recommended. 

Lazy Sunday Service

I finished reading Hard Bite by Anonymous-9 last Thursday and it's been rattling around my head ever since.  Just when you think there's no more angles left to explore in crime fiction, along comes a book with a fresh perspective.  Here's the opening page:

"I like to kill people. 

It's important to admit the truth to yourself even if you lie to others, and I do a lot of lying in my business. Inside my head I try to keep the truth black and white, no grey area: I like to kill. I love to kill people. Certain people. 

Sid knows we're going somewhere tonight because my eyes keep flicking to the clock, and it usually means we've got a job to do. 

I found my latest target online at a news site. A national story local to Los Angeles. Killing locally is a necessity since I'm not really mobile. A Mac with assistive technologies enables me to work the keyboard. 

Assistive technology is a code word for "stuff that helps cripples use a computer." Easy to understand, right? Because it's the truth. People have a hard time with truth when it comes bent and deformed, crushed, or hideous—so they invent terms like assistive technologies to sidestep the one word that makes it crystal clear: cripple. 

Crippled. 

Crippling.

I went from noun to action verb riding a year-long bed of pain. After flirting with suicide, which lost its appeal contemplated deeply, a fresh start in rough justice sounded right. Why settle for cripple when you can be crippling, ha ha. 

I admit, I don't look very imposing. It's my motorized wheelchair, the steel hand, my pencil neck that looks like it could flop over and crack from the weight of my head. I look useless, you think. You think wrong. And fuck you, by the way, for your perception. I bring righteous vengeance to evil people."

You've got to keep reading, right?  Well, I did as I was already hooked at this point.  I'll post my review tomorrow, but needless to say, Hard Bite was one of my favourite reads of the last couple of years. 



My posts this week:

Review of The Diggers Rest Hotel by Geoffrey McGeachin
Social media etc
New EU university ranking exercise - U-Multirank
Review of City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance
January reading
The signal in the noise