Pulp Fiction Review

Pulp Fiction Reviews and Sweet Money Won

Uncategorized
August 10, 2013

New Pulp Author Ron Fortier returns with another Pulp Fiction Review. This time out Ron takes a look at Sweet Money Won by Mycroft Magnusson.

SWEET MONEY WON
By Mycroft Magnusson
ISBN -13:978-1481952811
401 pages

Here’s a trick question for you. Can any well written book ever be too long for its own good? I would have thought that impossible until reading “Sweet Money Won.” Which is going to make this review a delicate balancing act as I want all of you to understand how much I truly liked this book; in many, many ways. Save one. So allow me to applaud what is a truly superbly well crafted crime comedy reminiscent of Elmore Leonard’s best efforts.

Rick and Liam are two small time conmen living in the seedy Koreatown section of Los Angeles. They survive hand to mouth on their meager rewards for the small cons they perpetuate, mostly on middle-class tourist visiting L.A. for the first time. Magnusson deftly defines both their personalities so that they immediately appealed to this reader. Liam, the smarter of the two, is the philosophical gambling addict who loves the Boston Patriots whereas Rick is the more reckless, by-the-seat-of-his-pants character who has a problem with pornography and sex, the latter being what gets them both into a world of hurt.

When Rick takes their entire money reserve to rescue a Russian porn-princess named Svetlana, whom he’s met on-line, from her muscle-bound pimps, he puts them both in harms way. Liam had placed a bet on a Patriot’s game, the cash being his debt should the Pats lose. Of course the Pats lose and the Korean strong-arm bookies are none too pleased when Liam doesn’t have the money to cover his bet. Now he and Rick have just twenty-four hours to come up with twenty thousand dollars. It is at this point when Svetlana agrees to help the boys by having sex with and then blackmailing a rich, up and coming congressman.

Reading “Sweet Money Won” is a truly engrossing, fun literary escapade that plays fast and loose with gunfire pacing. Again, Magnusson’s prose is both insightful and inventive when it needs to be. His writing is what is excellent and why I’m recommending you pick up a copy of this top-notch crime novel.

But Magnusson has to learn when scenes are extraneous and should be cut. Any scene that does not serve the plot should be excised and there are several of these that frustrated me. Rick’s Mexican weekend and Liam’s sports ticket scam are both unnecessary. A good editor could have trimmed this book by a hundred pages and helped shape it into an even better story. I hope that’s a lesson he learns soon. Rick and Liam and awesome characters and I’d love to see them in action again.

Pulp Fiction Review and the Big Clear

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June 24, 2013

New Pulp Author Ron Fortier returns with another Pulp Fiction Review. This time out Ron takes a look at The Big Clear by Christopher Harris.

THE BIG CLEAR
By Christopher Harris
Short Cypher Press
275 pages

Mason “Dub” Storm was a Special Forces sniper in the first Gulf War and then worked in East African locales such a Somalia with an elite secret platoon. In the end Storm began to question his own justifications for his assignments and just who his puppet masters really were. Ultimately he left the service and returned to his home base of Austin, Texas to pick up the pieces of whatever remained of his soul.

As the book opens, Dub, is a two bit stoner working, whenever he can get a customer, as a private investigator. Because of his drug connections, he comes in contact with Angela Easley, the strung out youngest daughter of one of the richest men in Texas. Her three year old son, Hunter Parsons, has been kidnapped and she begs Dub to find him for her. Well aware he is venturing into a world as alien to him as the foreign battlefields of his past, the weary private eye agrees to help out until the police take over. It all seems easy enough.

Right. Until Dub recalls Angela’s older sister, and her Daddy’s chief business assistant, is none other than the high school sexpot from his youth, Heather Easley. One look at her in her expensive mannish business suit over her hour glass, trim body and Dub finds himself floating in ancient dreams that were never ever going to come true. Then, a friend named Kid, who had been helping him with surveillance, is brutally murdered and Dub’s hands are once again covered in other people’s blood. Gunfights, steamy sex and a mystery with enough twists to give us a queasy stomach abound in these pages.

Harris’s style is a mix of traditional noir and punk giving the narrative a smooth jolt throughout and becomes quickly addictive. He deftly mixes Dub’s confused present with his hellish past and when the two collide viciously towards the finale, it is a satisfying resolution though still an ambiguous one. Dub Storm is one of the most complicated heroes I’ve encountered in a long, long time and one I’m hoping to see in action again soon. This is a well-executed thriller by a writer worth keeping an eye out. Go pick up “The Big Clear” and prove my point.

Tagged: Pulp Fiction Review