SHORT RIDE TO NOWHERE by Tom Piccirilli

High on my list of favorite authors, Tom Piccirilli has been known to have written some dark shit. This novel is no different as it's one of those downer noirs that we wrote in the last half of his career. It's narrated by Jenks, a man who's lost everything in the recession, now homeless on the streets of Manhattan, and now searching for answers in the wake of his old friend Hale's violent death, a man who shared the same economic fate.

The worst thing about having a wife and kids and dog was trying to keep it all. Once it was gone, Jenks had to admit, so was the pressure of fighting for it. You were never so free.

Prepare yourself for a dreary and gut-wrenching odyssey through the grimy streets of New York, from homeless shelters to hooker alleys, as Jenks not only trolls for answers but seems like he's aching for to vent his frustrations through violence. In an interesting look at how destruction can not only be contagious but possibly destined, we watch as Jenks flirts with bloodshed everywhere he goes. No one does true modern noir quite like Piccirilli.

He would listen to the sound of the blade opening and shutting, the way he was listening to it now, and he would discover in that last moment what the next page in the great book of life, written in God's own hand, would have to say about his sins.

GRADE: A-