Cherry Bomb - J.A. Konrath

    2009; 278 pages.  Book 6 (out of 11) in the Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series.  New Author? : No.  Genre: Thriller; Crime Fiction; Women Sleuths.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    It’s showdown time.  Both parties agree on that, and both agree that it is going to be a fight to the death.  On one side, there’s Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels of the Chicago Police Department.  On the other there’s Alexandra “Alex” Kork, psychotic killer nonpareil.

    Alex has good cause to hate Jack; half her face is permanently disfigured by Lt. Daniels.  But Jack has an equally just cause to hate Alex, since the latter just murdered Jack’s fiancé.

    You might think Jack has the advantage because she has friends, family, and fellow cops to help her, while Alex is strictly a lone wolf.  But those associates and loved ones can be targeted by Alex, which means Jack needs to protect them as best she can from someone who's out to destroy anyone and everyone important to Jack.  And Alex is very innovative when it comes to devising ways to execute anyone who has the misfortune to cross her path.

    Including the clever use of various explosives.

What’s To Like...

    Cherry Bomb is book six in the “Jack Daniels” series, and the third part (I think) of a trilogy featuring the ultimate badass, Alexandra Kork.  I don’t think it is a spoiler to reveal that the Alex/Jack blood feud will be finally resolved here.

    As with any J.A. Konrath book, there’s lots of cussing, lots of violence, lots of sex, and lots violence combined with sex.  There are thrills and spills on every page, and plenty of wit and oodles of snarky dialogue.  If any of this is not your cup of tea, you really shouldn’t be reading books by Konrath.

    The writing is half first-person POV (Jack’s) and half third-person (Alex’s).  More on this in a bit.  There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of.  Jack has her circle of recurring friends and coworkers; and anyone that Alex meets up with has a very limited life expectancy, whether they know Jack or not.  Phineas Troutt gets fleshed out, and there's a noteworthy new character, Slappy, who I hope will show up in again.

    I learned a new Police slang term, “pigstick”, which Wikipedia and Google totally fail to cover, although Google Images has lots of pics of it.  The lyrics to “Stairway To Heaven” were also explained; I found that to be quite enlightening.  And I chuckled at the new interpretation to the corrupted musical phrase “He ain’t heavy, he's your brother”.

    Everything leads up to a suitably tense and exciting climactic showdown.  It wasn’t particularly twisty, but it was a stutter-step ending, which is always fun.  At 60 chapters covering 278 pages, you’re never far from a convenient place to stop reading for the night. 

Excerpts...

    “What did he do?” I finally asked.

    “Bank robbery.  He tied three road flares together, walked into the drive-through lane, and placed the flares in the vacuum tube container.”

    “Live flares?”

    “No.  Unlit flares.  Along with a note saying it was dynamite, and he would set it off unless they gave him two thousand dollars.”

    Coursey handed me a photo taken by the bank surveillance camera.  The man stood outside the bank window, holding a small black box with an antenna sticking out of the top.  He was smiling and waving.

    “That’s a remote control car radio,” I said.

    “The tellers didn’t know that.”  (loc. 8158.  Note: location numbers are relative to the bundled version of this trilogy, which is the format in which I read this book.)

    “Why else would I have toilet paper in my purse?”

    Phin shrugged.  “Emergencies?  Afraid of being caught without it?  How should I know?  I’m not a chick, I don’t own a purse.  I don’t know why you women keep half that stuff in there.”

    “I only keep essentials in my purse.”

    “You’ve got a wind-up plastic nun in there.”

    “That’s Nunzilla.  She shoots sparks out of her mouth.”

    “That’s essential?”

    “It was … a gift.”  (loc. 10152)

Kindle Details...

    Cherry Bomb presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  The other eleven e-books in the series vary in price between $3.99 and $4.99.  J.A. Konrath offers a number of other novels in the same thriller genre, and they seem to be in a similar price range, with a couple as low as $0.99.  I read Cherry Bomb as part of a bundle of Books 4, 5, and 6, and right now it's selling for $9.99.  J.A. Konrath generously and frequently discounts his books and bundles, and it is not unusual to see them temporarily offered for free.

Monkey bondage was our cue to leave.  (loc. 10253)

    As with any other J.A. Konrath book, novel, believability is not a high priority.  Alex goes on a killing mega-spree, and the police never seem to connect the dots.  Amazon even lists this as a “police procedural”, which is a complete laugh.  Action and excitement trump any sense of realistic situations here.  If you’re not in the mood for senseless violence, the piling up of the bodies might get a bit tedious.

    OTOH, the thought that Alex puts into making each execution unique and innovative would make Tim Dorsey’s Serge Storms smile with envy.  And I confess, I’m a big Serge Storms fan.

    So throw believability out the window, and settle in to enjoy murder for the sake of murder, and snarkiness for the sake of snarkiness.  If you approach Cherry Bomb with that perspective, you’ll find it to be a thoroughly entertaining page-turner.

        8 Stars.  Book introductions are usually skippable, but I found the author’s comments at the start of this book to be quite interesting.  Here's part of it:

    “I tried my best to make the Jack Daniels series different.  Not only from other mysteries and thrillers, but I also wanted each book to have an individual flavor.  In Whiskey Sour, I mixed funny with scary.  In Bloody Mary, I had a big twist in the middle.  In Rusty Nail, I had multiple bad guys.  In Dirty Martini, I didn’t have any blood.  In Fuzzy Navel, I wrote in real time.

    With Cherry Bomb, I did something no other writer has ever done.  The villain gets half the book.  (…)  Fifty percent of the novel is in the bad guy’s point of view.”

    AFAIK, J.A. Konrath is still writing stories in the Jack Daniels series.  Here's hoping he never stops

Fuzzy Navel - J.A. Konrath

    2008; 250 pages.  Book 5 (out of 11) in the Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Thriller; Crime Fiction; Women Sleuths.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    It’s inevitable:  if you’re a cop, you’re bound to make some pretty nasty enemies along the way.

    Sometimes you make them simply by being at the scene of a crime, when one or more of the perpetrators realize you’ve seen their faces and can identify them in a police line-up.  More often, some criminal you’ve helped put in jail comes back after you, seeking revenge.

    Chicago police lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is doubly blessed.  She’s recently made enemies from each of those two categories, and they’re coming after her.  It goes with the job, and it’s not the first time this has happened to her.  She’s dealt with it before.  But this time, there’s a new, unprecedented aspect to it.

    Both sets of killers have shown up on her doorstep.  At the same time.

What’s To Like...

    Fuzzy Navel is a vintage J.A. Konrath thriller: non-stop action from the get-go that’s just a wee bit over-the-top, crazed psychopathic killers, a gritty policewoman protagonist, and lots of witty banter between her and everyone she's around. 

    There’s a fascinating Author’s Introduction at the start of the book, wherein J.A. Konrath gives the reader some insight about his planning of the story.  He deliberately wrote it in “real time”.  He estimated it would take the average reader about 8 hours to read the book, and the chapters are labeled by which character will have the spotlight therein and exactly what time the chapter begins.  Taken together, those chapters encompass about 8 hours.  Konrath wanted the protagonists trapped in a remote house and ducking snipers’ bullets; and to make this happen he purposely had Jack move in with her mother in the previous book.

    There are two parts to the plotline: a.) a crazy killer seeking revenge for an earlier encounter with Jack; and b.) a group called The Urban Hunting Club, who start out shooting porn-watching perverts and end up taking on the cops instead.  These are not spoilers; this all gets established early in the story.  Konrath’s twist is having the threads converge on Jack’s house at the same time, causing mayhem for all concerned.

    I liked J.A. Konrath’s tastes in music: Jim Croce, John Denver, Keith Richards (with the obligatory Keith Richards joke), and one of my personal faves, The Kingston Trio.  I also liked that the two biggest and bad-assiest characters were both females.  The titular cocktail drink name gets worked into the story about halfway through, but really it’s just there because all the titles in this series reference mixed drinks.  Finally, if you’re a gun enthusiast, you’ll find lots of details about the weapons used here, the pros and cons of various scopes, and which types of ammo work best in which situations.

    The storytelling is a curious blend of 1^st-person and 3^rd-person.  The former is reserved for our two protagonists, and the latter for everyone else.  There are 74 chapters if I counted right (they aren't numbered), of varying lengths depending on what’s going down at that moment, and averaging out to about 3 pages per chapter.

    The ending is suitably climactic and exciting.  J.A. Konrath calls it a cliffhanger, and I hate cliffhangers, but actually it’s a teaser for the next book, where our two combatants apparently will go another round and we’ll find out who got shot at the hospital.  Both main story threads here are resolved, so I can call this a standalone story in good conscience.

Excerpts...

    Another bullet hits the fridge, a few inches above his head.  I consider crawling down the hall, back into the kitchen, but that would leave Harry stranded in the hallway, an open target.

    “Run, Jack!”

    I can’t believe it.  Harry isn’t the heroic, self-sacrificing type.

    “Run in front of the bullets!” he yells.  “Shield me!”  (loc. 5519.  Note: location numbers are relative to the bundled version of this trilogy, which is the format in which I read this book.)

    “Push me up with your hand,” I say.  Then I add, “Your real one.”

    The aforementioned hand lands softly on my ass, and he squeezes.  I freeze up.

    “McGlade, there is so much wrong with what you’re doing right now.”

    “I’m not enjoying it either, Jackie.  You’re not exactly heroin chic.”

    Fighting words.  “Are you saying I’m fat?”

    “No.  Of course not.  You’re … what’s the opposite of anorexic?”  (loc. 7108)

Kindle Details...

    Fuzzy Navel presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  The other ten e-books in the series vary in price from $3.99 to $5.99.  J.A. Konrath offers a number of other e-thrillers, and most of them seem to be in a similar price range, with a couple as low as $2.99.  I read Fuzzy Navel as part of a bundle of Books 4, 5, and 6, and right now it goes for $9.99.  J.A. Konrath generously and frequently discounts his books and bundles, and it is not unusual to see them offered for free.

“There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are circling the wagons.”  (loc. 5351)

    I went on a Jack Daniels kick in 2008-09 by reading the first four books within a year or so, and in their proper order.  After that, I didn’t read any more of the series until now.  I’m not sure why; I suspect it was a “so many books, so little time” thing.  The only two characters I remembered were Jacqueline and her police ex-partner, Harry McGlade.

    I didn’t feel like my enjoyment of Fuzzy Navel suffered from the 9-year layoff, and I get the impression you can read these stories in any order and not lose much of the overall storyline.  So the next time you see one of J.A. Konrath’s “Jack Daniels” e-books discounted at Amazon, my recommendation is to snatch it up and give him a try.

        8 Stars.  Bottom line, any J.A. Konrath book is about as low-brow is you can get, and I mean that in the most-positive way.  Fuzzy Navel was a fast, fun, and easy read.  The author has carved out his own little niche in the thriller genre, and I for one am happy he did.

Afraid - A Novel of Terror - J.A. Konrath

    2012; 286 pages.  New Author? : No.  N.B. : "Jack Kilborn" is a pen name of J.A. Konrath.   Book 3 of the “A Novel of Terror” series.  Genre :  Thriller.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    The sleepy town of Safe Haven – population 907 – lies in northern Wisconsin, and in the middle of nowhere.  It’s quite and isolated, so when a helicopter crashes one night just outside of town, that’s something to get excited about.  Things get even better when the whole town wins the Lottery.

    The rest of the night is going to be exciting too.  Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Safe Haven, it’s gonna be the “bad” kind of excitement.

What’s To Like...
    The title sums it up succinctly : Afraid – A Novel of Terror aims to scare you out of your socks.  The action starts right away, and the terror is not far behind.  The “what” is revealed fairly early, so the big question is “why”.  J.A. Konrath delights in answering this gradually and deftly.

    There’s lots of blood and gore, of course; along with lots of killing.  Safe Haven’s population of 907 takes one heckuva hit.  There’s a romance or two to balance the violence, and a monkey and a dog that are both uber-kewl.  This is not a paranormal book; it’s more a matter of science gone wrong.

    The pacing is crisp; Konrath is an author who simply will not allow any slow spots in his books.  There are lots of twists, yet the storyline holds together nicely and builds to a nail-biting climax.  The book is a standalone, and the loose ends tie up nicely without prolonging the page-count.

Excerpts...
    “You think you know pain, old man?  You know nothing of pain.  You’ll answer every question I have and beg me to ask more of them.”
    “No,” Sal said, folding his frail arms, silently swearing on Maggie’s head to not give this bastard the satisfaction.  “You won’t get anything out of me.”
    It took less than three minutes for this intruder to prove Sal wrong.  (loc. 318)

    Though a firefighter, Erwin knew he wasn’t a particularly brave man.  Unlike his friend Josh, who wanted to leave Safe Haven for a bigger town with more danger, Erwin was perfectly fine here.  He hadn’t risked his life once in six years on the job, and that suited him.  But he knew that it was only a matter of time until he’d be forced to do something heroic.
    Unfortunately, it looked like the time had come.  (loc. 867)

Kindle Details...
    Afraid – A Novel of Terror sells for $3.99 at Amazon, as do the other two books in the series – Trapped and Endurance.

“Which head belongs to which, you think?” (loc. 232)
    I have to believe writing thrillers is a daunting task.  A horror movie can scare you by pulling you into the victim’s eyes and letting you watch the oncoming evil.  But a book has to rely on words on a page to imprint the fear into your brain.  How scared can you be by a bunch of sentences?

    There’s nothing subtle, complex, or highbrow about A-ANoT.  It should be judged by how well it traumatizes your mind and keeps it that way, with your only “relief” being to turn the next page.  It succeeds frighteningly.  8 Stars.

Dirty Martini - J.A. Konrath

2007; 324 pages. Book #4 (out of 6 now) in Konrath's Jacqueline 'Jack' Daniels series. Genre : Psycho-killer thriller. Overall Rating : B.

  .Chicago cuisine is to die for. Literally, because someone calling himself 'The Chemist' is poisoning food in all sorts of restaurants and supermarkets. The Chicago Police Department tries to keep things calm by not announcing all the deaths. They appoint our hero, Detective Jacqueline Daniels, to head the crime team, and give her two choices. Solve it and be a hero; don't solve it and be demoted to traffic cop.

What's To Like...
    The story is formulaic, but it works. A smug, psychotic killer committing gruesome murders as part of a larger plan; eventually taking on Jack herself. In the meantime, anyone knowing Jack is also a target, including her BF Latham, who seems to end up in the ICU in every book.

  .The action is non-stop. The humor will make you chuckle - especially the repartee between Jackie and her former partner, Harry McGlade. You gotta love any bad guy who goes by the moniker "The Chemist".

  .OTOH, Dirty Martini is the polar opposite of a police procedural story. Clues are routinely ignored, so don't try to solve the case alongside Jack. The Chemist brazenly invades two precinct houses to destroy old records, and the cops somehow don't find that worth looking into. When he releases thousands of cockroaches into a police station, no one stops to ask themselves why. The case-cracking clue comes out of nowhere, and with no explanation as to why the normally meticulously cautious Chemist suddenly gets sloppy.

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    Read this book for what it is - a page-turner. Turn off the analytical half of your brain and enjoy a story with a strong female lead (with more lives than a cat) and lots of thrills, spills, and chuckles. Ignore the implausibilities and rejoice in the fact that in the end, Jackie won't be directing traffic. Konrath isn't trying to give you a feel for what it's like to be a police detective; he just wants to entertain you for a few hours. He gets a "B" from me for his efforts.

A couple of trivia tidbits...
    Despite several dozen people dying in a variety of ways, not one drop of blood is spilled in Dirty Martini. This is a pleasant change-of-pace from the previous book in this series.
.After Book #3, Rusty Nail, Konrath went on a 3-month promotion tour, visiting 600+ bookstores in 27 states and driving more than 13,500 miles. He met over 1100 booksellers, and takes time at the end of Dirty Martini to thank them all by name. Kewlness.
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    Finally, if you read the hyping blurbs in the front of this book (OCD readers do), you will note that two of them are David Ellis and Jim Munchel. By strange coincidence, one of the characters in Dirty Martini is named Davy Ellis, and one of the characters in the sneak-preview of Book #5 (Fuzzy Navel) at the end of Dirty Martini is named Jim Munchel. So be sure to write Konrath and let him know how much you enjoy his books. You just might end up seeing your name in the 7th book in this series.

Rusty Nail - J.A. Konrath

2006; 386 pages. Genre : Slash, gash, and stash. Third book in the Jacqueline "Jack Daniels" series. Overall Rating : C+..

    A psychotic killer roams the greater Chicago area, kidnapping people loosely associated with an earlier Jack Daniels case, playing "Operation" on them, and sending Jack snuff tapes of the ordeals. Jack's partner, Herb, is on the disabled list throughout the story, so she reluctantly finds herself using the services of a pair of PI's - her ex-partner, Harry McGlade, and his eager-to-please fiancée, Holly Frakes.

.What's To Like...
    Konrath sticks to his tried-and-true formula - a strong, no-nonsense, female-lead, clever one-liners mixed with in-your-face violence, a fast-paced story, and a stubborn, mind-of-its-own cat.
.There is an abundance of clichés. The psycho just feels compelled to try to snuff Jack; Jack's burnt out and tired of living alone; and everyone that's friends with, or related to her can pretty much count on being assaulted somewhere in each book. Especially anyone who goes out with her. I'm still not sure whether Konrath's obsession with these clichés is deliberate satire or uninspired story-telling.

.Ms. Daniels hasn't changed one bit since Book #1; and the baddies are stereotypical nutzos. OTOH, Herb and Harry are fleshed out a bit; both showing a bit of noble character that we hadn't seen thus far.
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Going to pieces over mutilations...
    Ultimately, your enjoyment of these Jack Daniels books will probably depend on your GQ (Gore Quotient). Konrath keeps those scenes textually short, but they're a bit too graphic for my taste. The book was a page-turner, partly due to the non-stop action; partly due to wanting to rush through the gore as quickly as possible. We'll give it a C+, and hope that the fourth book, called Fuzzy Navel and sitting on my TBR shelf, isn't just more of the same.

Bloody Mary - J.A. Konrath

2005; 338 pages. Genre : Witty gritty bang bang. Overall Rating : C+..

This is the second in Konrath's Jacqueline 'Jack' Daniels; series. A pair of detached arms show up at the county morgue. In handcuffs. More exactly, in a pair of Jack Daniels' handcuffs.


.Jack and her Viagra-popping partner search for clues to the victim's identity, and try to keep the latest Chicago serial killer's body-count from going too high. Meanwhile, Jack's mom decides to move in with her, and brings along Jack's ex- for company, which not surprisingly leaves her current beau a bit less than enthralled.
.

What's To Like...
This is similar to James Patterson's Alex Cross detective series, but with more wit and snappy dialogue. There's lots of action, and gratuitous gore. Great literature, it ain't. But it's a quick read and keeps your attention. Wikipedia calls this sort of book an airport novel. While the storyline is typical murder-thriller stuff, you at least get to see how Konrath, a male author, handles his female protagonist and her soap-opera-ish life.
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If there's a downside, it's the story's believability. It turns out that Mr. Psycho-killer's been dismembering folks for many years, and getting away with it just fine. Why then does he suddenly feel compelled to leave body parts at the morgue, with purloined police equipment planted on them? Later on, after wiping out half of Chicago's police force, instead of making an easy getaway, he (you guessed it) heads straight for Jack Daniels' home for the epic confrontation. Yeah, that's smart.


Bottom Line...
Read Bloody Mary for its entertainment value only. There's at least five mixed-drink-titled books in this series, and I'll probably end up reading most of them. It's appparent that they all are going to have a standard serial-slayer plot, with Jack's personal life progressing a bit from one book to the next. I suppose that isn't a very ambitious goal, but Konrath is good at it, and hey, that same template is used by the scriptwriters of Cold Case, one of my favorite TV shows.

Whiskey Sour - J.A. Konrath

2004; 289 pages. Genre : Murder Mystery. Overall Rating : B-

    .A serial killer is abducting young women, playing Operation on their torsos, and dumping their naked bodies butt-cheek-upwards into local 7-11 dumpsters. Police Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels tries to find the common link, and catch the self-dubbed Gingerbread Man before all of Chicago goes into a panic.

What's To Like...
    If you like James Patterson's "Alex Cross" detective novels (that's before he went all sucky with his "Maximum Ride" stuff), you'll like J.A. Konrath. The killings are tastefully lurid (which is probably an oxymoron), and Konrath also mixes in a bit of punnish humor. Jack Daniels is non-stereotypically middle-aged and average-looking.

Excerpt...
    An example of the Whiskey Sour wit :

"He may be disfigured or disabled. He might have severe acne scars, or scoliosis."
"That's a curvature of the spine," Dailey added.
"Is that a hunch?" I asked.
"Just an educated guess."
I thought about explaining the joke to them, but it would be wasted.

On the other hand...
    There are several places where you just go, "Am I expected to believe that?" For instance, our protagonist's police car is broken into, and a bag of candy is left on the seat. Suspicious? Nah. Daniels' partner tears into the bag without any hesitation and falls for the old razor-blade-in-the-candy-bar trick.

   .Then there's the "lucky break" itself. Interviews of the victims' family and friends get the usual response : "So-and-so was just the sweetest person around. We can't think of anyone who would want to kill her." Yet when the connecting link is finally found, it's something that even a remote acquaintance would recall and instantly think of as a motive for murder.

Then there's the clichés...
    The books is riddled with them. Some, such as the two clueless FBI agents with their computer-generated profiling, are obviously deliberate. Ditto for the doughnut-loving partner of Daniels, who IMHO is ripe for killing or severe-hospitalization is some sequel.

    .But the not-so-deliberate clichés can be annoying. The oh-so-confident psychopath decides to also include our heroine on his hit-list. Gee, that's worked what - zero percent of the time - in the past? This naturally results in our heroine being pulled off the case. Which of course never stops any cop from staying involved one bit. Then there's the poor schluck who goes out on an arranged date with Daniels. Yeah, that's a ironclad guarantee for bodily harm by the jealous stalker.
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    Finally, there's Daniels herself. She's a burnt-out, workaholic, insomniac whose marriage was ruined by her devotion to the job, and who drinks way too much. Sometimes I think that is de rigeur for fictional detectives .
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A little bit about J.A. Konrath...
    Konrath's website is at http://www.jakonrath.com/. His bio claims he wrote nine novels and received more than 500 rejections for them before #10 (Whiskey Sour) was finally accepted/published. He has done 612 book-signings in 28 states, and has sent 7,000 letters to libraries touting his books. I'd say he paid his dues.
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    If you visit his website, you'll be able to read the first seven chapters of most of the books in his Jack Daniels series (5 of them, I think). Except for Whiskey Sour itself, whch you can download in its entirety as a pdf file. Gotta love that.

    .In conclusion, this was a bit of enjoyable light reading. It doesn't strive to be anything more than an entertaining story, and to that end, it succeeds. We'll give it a B- and hope that the sequels have a few more twists and a few less stereotypes.