A hapless hit man with a jumpy trigger finger finds himself in trouble with a drug boss, a vigilante, and a Los Angeles police detective. Elliott (Dreaming in Starlight, 2017), the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Into The Void, begins his crime thriller series with this gritty, breathless entry, in which Southern Californian Eddie Vegas, a hit man, gets caught up in a botched debt-collection job. After shooting and killing his target, Bill, as well as Bill's companion--instead of just scaring him into paying his debt, as he was instructed to do--Eddie and his colleague in crime, Floyd, bury both bodies in Angeles National Forest. Drug kingpin Saul Benedict is furious because dead men don't pay their debts. He holds Eddie personally responsible for the monetary loss, and he has hired thugs stalk Eddie across Hollywood. Meanwhile, Detective Alison Lockley is on the case, and she's very eager to apprehend a suspect; she diligently examines crime scenes and susses out possible motives for Bill's murder. Eddie, however, remains on the run from Saul and his henchmen--including Floyd, who now considers Eddie his enemy, and another man named Sawyer. Unexpectedly, he meets a gorgeous Native American waitress named Dakota, who steals his heart. However, it turns out that she has a messy family history and that she's actually in town because she's on a search for her missing sister--someone whom Eddie may already know. Compounding the hit man's problems is Texas assassin Rufus Kane, who's headed his way with a box full of daggers to viciously exact revenge for the death of his brother, Bill. As he makes his way through the state of California, the grisly bloodshed intensifies. Elliott fleshes out most of his characters well--particularly Floyd and Sawyer, who surprisingly engage in some canoodling in the midst of their ongoing search for Eddie. The city of Los Angeles seems to have its own personality, as well, and Elliott's descriptions of the setting are impressively and effectively atmospheric, featuring just the right amount of blistering, unforgiving sun. (At one point, for instance, the sunlight hits Eddie like "a frying pan on his neck.") The author also excels at bringing even minor characters to life through description; bulky security guards, for example, are said to look like "two bowling balls with muscles." Adding to the novel's allure are Alison and Dakota, who both have charisma, toughness, and dynamism that make them remarkable and engaging. Lois, a transgender character, is similarly distinctive, and Elliott portrays her with respect. Also noteworthy are the narrative's frequent nods to classic noir crime thrillers as well as the author's own dark, satirical sense of humor, which acts as a buffer to a good amount of the bloody carnage that rages through the book. Fans of suspense tales that don't skimp on action, including readers of the work of Elmore Leonard and Jim Thompson, will find much to savor here. A multifaceted series opener by a promising new voice in hard-boiled crime fiction.
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August 1, 2019
When you're a third-string enforcer for an L.A. drug lord, and when your head really isn't into enforcing as a line of work, you expect to have some bad days, but Eddie Vegas is on a truly epic roll of badness piled upon badness. It starts when his finger slips on the trigger, and he inadvertently kills a deadbeat. And what about the deadbeat's girl? Eddie, being third-string, gets the short straw and must get rid of her, too. And the big boss is pissed?lost revenue, you know, when deadbeats are killed before they pay up. So Eddie's on the run. Things look up momentarily when he meets a charmingly quirky woman, but she turns out to be looking for the other woman, the one Eddie had to kill. And don't forget the psycho cowboy who's looking for the other dead guy, the one in the way when Eddie's finger slipped on the trigger. Elliott has a real feel for comedic noir in the Elmore Leonard vein, and his debut novel screams cult classic (think Matthew McBride's Frank Sinatra in a Blender, 2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)