COMMODORE by Philip Fracassi

I went into this prepared for a Stephen King-inspired coming-of-age drama laced with horror tones similar to Hearts in Atlantis or The Body, with its 1950’s small-town setting, and a story about a group of curious boys looking for adventure. What I did not expect was a mysterious and disturbing horror of haunting imagery, body trauma that will make you cringe, and inexplicable cosmic occurrences. 

The novella follows five young friends in the fictional town of Sabbath who head to a vast junkyard to find a fabled black car that’s become a town legend. The story is well-written and quick and easy to read, but what’s really exciting is realizing that this is one smaller story in a bigger mythos that Fracassi is building with the town of Sabbath. While the story here is creepy on its own, the hints at deeper horrors in the town were even more unsettling to me. Even at the beginning of this book, you get a sense that something isn’t quite right in this small town. And are the residents aware? Are they okay with this? Do they even have a choice?

And discerning Fracassi readers will recognize that the events in this story were referenced in the first Sabbath short story, “Soda Jerk,” which can be found in his latest collection, Beneath A Pale Sky, or as a bonus story at the end of his novella Shiloh. 

GRADE: B+

MAN DOWN by Roger Smith

Roger Smith is known for his brutal, grim, violent crime novels and Man Down might be one of his most nihilistic and that’s saying a lot. This suspenseful thriller uses a home invasion story as its basis, but it expands in surprising ways until you get a stronger sense of what sins of the past have influenced the attacks on John Turner, his wife Tanya, and his daughter Lucy, South Africans who emigrated to the U.S. and found some success. 

The first thing that struck me was how “off” Smith’s writing felt compared to his other work. It came off to me as a bit wordy, with constant run-on sentences that felt a little lofty and pretentious, very different from my experience with other novels by Smith. I was also a little turned off by the non-linear structure, which normally I don’t have a problem with, but it felt like it distracted from the story and there was no rhyme or reason when certain storylines and timelines were paired. 

But ultimately, the story did click for me halfway through. Smith really brought it home by the end and I was actually pretty satisfied. There are hardly any redeeming characters (even John our protagonist was pretty reprehensible), but I was riveted for the last half of the book once it all started coming together. 

He felt a moment of powerful vertigo, a curious lurching, like an elevator coming suddenly uncoupled from his winding drum, and, despite clenching his fist, jaw, and asshole, the feeling persisted, as if something so deep within his being that he had become aware of it only by its absence had broken its tether and was now lost to him forever.

GRADE: B-

SLOW DOWN by Lee Matthew Goldberg

This novel is sold as a tense noir in the same vein as a classic James M. Cain novel with a successful filmmaker recounting his cutthroat rise to fame by stealing his mentor’s film and wife. It had some potential but ultimately, there’s not enough there to really live up to its hype and promise. 

The characters aren’t nearly as compelling as they should be and once the lumbering plot gets going about halfway through, it proves to be barely existent beyond a maddeningly basic noir skeleton that can be summarized in a couple of sentences. The entitled asshole protagonist got on my nerves and the femme fatale was completely without nuance. And the ending…goodness, what a timid cop-out that doesn’t at all stand up to the stories that it professes to be influenced by. 

GRADE: D

THE ODDS by Jeff Strand

I wonder what Jeff Strand thinks of Squid Game? 

This book by Strand, released a year before the popular Netflix show, is a cautionary tale following a gambling addict who is presented with a game with odds so good that it would be silly to turn it down. But then as the rounds to the game go on, the stakes become a lot higher! I‘m starting to think that Strand is incapable of writing a bad story. At the very least they’re all very entertaining and this one is no different. As a matter of fact, this one might be one of his most entertaining as our hero digs himself deeper into the game until we ask ourselves if it’s even possible to win. On paper, it works as a great thriller but it’s really all Jeff Strand in all his audacity. All the background and characters behind the game are so ridiculous but done with such conviction that only Strand is capable of. I finished the book wanting to know more and wishing that it was a hundred pages longer. 

GRADE: A-