Far From Brooklyn

Hard-boiled, mistaken-identity caper featuring Russian gangsters, poetic thugs, drinking buddies who just happen to be heavily armed, and a downtown (present day) New York that never ever existed.

This is one violent ass book.  Man, is it blood-soaked.  I generally bail on books that get this graphic.

I also generally bail on books that are (like this one) frontloaded with backstory.  In this case, the narrator’s improbable rise and fall as a high school baseball player, followed by a car wreck that left his passenger dead, all of which provides a cloying series of metaphors and recollections through the rest of this otherwise very stripped down story.

Whatever criticisms I level, though, it’s only fair to say I read it to the end, which is not the case for so many books that I pick up.  In fact, if I was being more thorough with this blog, I’m pretty sure I would log more unfinished books than finished ones…

Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston