Pink Vodka Blues

Rating:
Summary: Didn't make me laugh, just made me mad
Review: I read a short story by Neil Barrett in an SF compilation and was impressed enough with the writing to try one of the novels. This one sure didn't do it for me, though. Besides the fact that the main character is an un-heroic drunk (which the author attempts to depict with humor), the plot is about as thin as they come. If they do make a movie of this trash, I won't be buying a ticket. The most aggravating device devised by lazy action authors (this is an action book) is to have "the day" saved by someone who walks in unexpectedly. Every action scene in this book is saved in this way. There are at least eight times in the book where the characters are in a sticky situation and are suddenly saved, not by their own wits, but by an improbable appearance by an unexpected acquaintance. It just kept happening over and over again! And over again! and Again! get it? So I was pretty disappointed in the plot. The MacGuffin turns out to be something that is not very savory to think about and is well beyond the limits of ANY good taste. In the end, the perpetrator of a sickening crime is portrayed as a powerful and respected character - able to get off scott-free with only the smallest hint of regret for a twisted crime. I'm sorry, but if I as a reader have to be subjected to sick ideas from an author, I at least expect atonement. Didn't get it. Finally, following the adventures of two drunks fighting most of the time (the hero and heroine of the novel) became extremely tiring. Bad plot, not-so-funny humor, and tasteless plot elements make for a page turner - because you just figure it's got to get better. Nope.

Rating:
Summary: Scary, funny, mystery novel
Review: Neal Barrett, Jr. is well known to me as a SF/Fantasy writer, but until just recently I was unaware of his mystery novels. _Pink Vodka Blues_ is the first I have read. It would seem from internal evidence that it is not part of an ongoing series.

The lead character is Russell Murray, a seriously alcoholic writer for a literary magazine in Chicago. He returns from a trip to Dallas for his editor with absolute no memory of where he's been or what he's done. Worse, he wakes up in a hotel room with a woman he doesn't recognize -- and minutes later a couple of hitmen smash there way into the room and kill the woman -- Russell escapes in terror by sheer luck. Naturally enough, he is soon the prime suspect in the murder of the woman, and he is quickly on the run. He still has no idea what happened in Dallas -- he was supposedly delivering a manuscript to a reclusive author while his editor, who was supposed to do the job, spent the weekend with his girlfriend. Soon Russell learns that his editor is the nephew of a local mob boss, and that two factions in the mob want whatever Russell was supposed to deliver, which delivery apparently never happened. Russell can't help, because his memory is shot. He ends up in a rehab facility after passing out in his car -- and there he meets a beautiful and rich alcoholic woman. When the mob track him down, he and the woman escape, and rather clumsily and drunkenly wend their way across the US, to Dallas, Florida, and back to Chicago, chased by two strange sets of hit people, trying to figure out what Russell has forgotten.

The book is quite funny at times, though it's also a scary (and accurate seeming) portrayal of alcholism. The main characters are nice enough that we root for them, but they are by no means hero and heroine -- they are losers, and if they end up halfway solving their problem, only some of the bad guys get their due, and the good guys only partly get a happy ending also. Which qualifies as fairly realistic, I guess. This fits more or less into the Elmore Leonard end of the crime fiction genre, though I'd call it not as good as Leonard, but worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Great fun to read! Nothing for a conservative person though!
Review: This was the first book from Neil Barrett I read. I read it in about 3 days, causing a bad lack of sleep... The author throws you right into the fast movements of the plot and you can't stop once you started reading it. This plot is very inpredictible and moving very fast. I can't understand how someone would not like the speed and the humor the genre is presented in.

This is not a book for people who have a problem with profanity, and the non-hero main character. But come on, non-heroes have been around in literature for a very long time, at least since 100 years! It is a great book for all people that like "road-movie" plots that take you all over the place like a roller coaster ride.

This is a book people either like or dislike. No shades of grey, obviously. Isn't this true for a lot of great works in art? Go and find out!