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Thursday, September 29, 2011 ( 9/29/2011 07:08:00 AM ) Bill S.  “NO POINT SECOND-GUESSING YOUR FIGHT AFTER THE BELL’S ALREADY RUNG.” Having announced their new beginnings with the hardbound publication of a new Lawrence Block novel, the folks at Hard Case Crime have happily recommenced releasing fresh paperback pulps. One of the first of these, Christa Faust’s Choke Hold, is the second in a series featuring Angel Dare, a hard-bitten former porn star on the run from Croatian mobsters. When Hold opens, our heroine is working as a waitress down in Yuma, Arizona, after her WitSec cover has been violently blown. A chance encounter with a former industry flame, Thick Vic Ventura, forces her out of hiding after Vic is gunned down at the diner where she’s been working.The catalyst for this sudden burst of gunplay turns out to be Vic’s son Cody Noon, a dumb-ass would-be fighter beholden to an Arizona businessman with ties to south of the border extreme fighting and drug trafficking. Teaming up with Cody’s trainer, a somewhat addled former pugilist named Hank “The Hammer” Hammond, Angel comes up against Mexican thugs and also winds up drawing the attention of the aforementioned Croatian mobsters. It all comes together in a high body count set of showdowns that ends in Las Vegas, where the auditions for All American Fighter are being held. Having not read her debut, I initially wondered how well I’d be able to get into Miz Dare’s sophomore escapade, but Faust’s tough gal heroine and punchy way of delivering her violent plot quickly grabbed this reader. The opening action holds two-thirds of the book, and by the time the Croatians make their appearance I was sufficiently attached to Angel and her punch drunk pals to wonder who would manage to survive this secondary menace. Found myself wanting to go back and read the first book once I’d finished, of course, which is also a testament to Faust’s sexy and damaged narrator -- a character who isn’t above using her porn experience to get what she needs even as she recognizes all that she’s lost in doing this. A definite hard case heroine. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: pulp fiction # |Tuesday, September 27, 2011 ( 9/27/2011 06:37:00 AM ) Bill S.  “YOU DON’T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON HERE, DO YOU?” An energetic low-life comedy of noir, Viktor Kalvachev’s Blue Estate (Image Comics) follows a large cast of schemers and patsies through a convoluted crime plot involving real estate scams, drugs and Russian mobsters. Though the twelve-issue comic mini-series opens on the narration of Roy Devine Jr., a clueless nerd of a would-be p.i. who we first think is going to be our window into this neon lit world, Roy quickly vanishes from most of the first four issues of the comic (collected in trade paperback as Blue Estate: Preserves.) Instead, we’re shown the sordid and bloody double-doings of a variety of hard-edged So Cal types.Chief among there are Rachel Maddow, an alcoholic Hollywood wife whose direct-to-video action movie hubby Bruce appears to be involved in money laundering; her brother Billy, in the middle of a disastrous house flipping scheme for the ill-tempered mobster’s son Tony Luciano and Vadim Radow, Don Luciano’s Russian mobster rival (“The most dangerous Russian this side of Rasputin.”) fronting as a “legitimate” Hollywood producer. Also adding to the show are a cover-stealing fake-breasted pole dancer named Cherry Popz, a 12-stepping hitman and a hopped-up drug dealer who calls himself the King of the Jungle. That last has an unfortunate rendezvous with a meat grinder, though he isn’t the only minor character to meet a bloody demise in the first four issues. (Two nameless college jocks buy it after jumping the stage in Luciano’s club -- strict rules in that joint!) Once we get a gander at the casually gory doings in Blue Estate, we can’t help wondering how the amiably ineffable Roy Jr. is gonna survive this mini-series. Though its sprawling cast may initially throw some readers, Kalvachev’s story (co-written with Kosta Yanev and scripted by Andrew Osborne) and setting should prove plenty entertaining to those attuned to the violent excesses of moderne Pulp Fiction. Kalvachev’s art, abetted by a shop’s worth of additional artists, proves cacophonously expressive. Watching one pen style collide against another in adjacent panels, at times I found myself recollecting the acid-drenched storytelling of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, though Kalvachev and Osborne don’t indulge in the heavy-handed theme pounding of Stone’s ultra-violent road trip movie. Morality tomorrow; dark comedy tonight. . . (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: pulp comics fiction # | |
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