--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Crider"
<macavityabc@...> wrote:
>
> Just thought I'd mention a Gold Medal book called
LET THEM EAT BULLETS
> (great title) by Howard Schoenfled. It's been many
years since I
read this
> one, but I believe it features twin brother p.i.
characters.
Was this supposed to be a parody? Maybe that's why I disliked
it so much. Here's my review:
With a title like that, you'd think the hardboiled hero would
actually shoot someone. A lot. But all he's packing is some
dinky piece he calls "Baby," which he wears "strapped just
below my knee on the inside. It was a hell of a place to
carry a pistol, but it was a hell of a place to look for one,
too." He's always so proud when someone frisks him and
doesn't find it, but he never even draws it, let alone points
it at anyone or fires it. If anyone eats bullets, he does--or
rather, he takes one in the buttocks.
Compounding the disappointing lack of gunplay is the
silliness of an identical twin he calls on from time to time
to mislead someone who's tailing him, or to keep a dame
occupied while he's busy on the case, or even get arrested
for him. When one of them gets a black eye, the other has to
get slugged and take a shiner also, to keep up the twin
routine.
For all that, our private dickish hero still takes a lot of
punishment. He gets worked over by a cop with a rubber hose
in an abandoned warehouse, and someone almost murders him in
a steam box at a Hot Springs spa.
The writing is no great shakes, either. There are like a
million times someone tells him to do something, and he tells
us he did it, i.e.
"She pointed the pistol again and told me to keep my hands
up. I kept my hands up." It's not terribly snappy the first
time, but then you find that kind of thing on damn near every
page, sometimes several in a row, as when someone orders him
through a whole sequence of actions.
The mystery is none too intriguing or mysterious or difficult
to figure out.
Nope, not much to recommend this one. It's a shame that title
didn't get slapped on a worthier story.
originally posted at:
http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2007/08/let-them-eat-bullets-by-howard.html
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