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.

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.

.

    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.
.
    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.