Book Review of The Fall of Billy Hitchings by Kirkus MacGowan

The Fall of Billy Hitchings

by Kirkus MacGowan

gets 4 stars.

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I received an advance copy of Kirkus MacGowan's The Fall of Billy Hitchings and then completely failed to read it before his release. I apologized profusely, of course, and snuck my Nook into meetings and luncheons so that I could read between boring status updates and stuffing my face with crème puffs. Still, I didn't finish until about 3 hours ago…and alas, that's what happens during the holidays.

 

Kirkus MacGowan is a good person, friend, and up-and-coming mystery author that also has a thing for fantasy books. His blog "Diapers, Bookmarks, and Pipedreams" has about the best freaking title I've ever heard for a blog (besides my own brilliantly creative one, of course!), and he's very supportive of other writers. If you haven't met him, you need to. Go say hi on twitter, and while you're there, say hi to me, too, because I'm an obsessive tweeter and hopelessly addicted.

 

The Fall of Billy Hitchings is the first of a mystery series. It follows three men from three different walks of life as they try to piece together the mystery surrounding a massive explosion that killed one person and severely wounded several more. These three leading men are: John Reeves, a bodyguard and expert in all things bad ass; Dr. Amfar Ditpra, a brilliant paleontologist with all the right connections and no clue about women; and Billy Hitchings, an orphaned young man who works at a fast food joint and lives with his grandmother. The explosion and the subsequent chase scenes all have to do with Billy, even though no one quite knows how or why.

 

What I Liked

The Characters: MacGowan majored in psychology. While some of you just chuckled, think about it for a second: he has extensively studied the human condition, as well as the way we interact with each other. He's analyzed what we do and why we do it. This gives him a fantastic insight when it comes to characters.

 

He created a wide array of brilliantly unique male characters. You can even see this in his choice of narrators: a warrior-esque BAMF, a paleontologist who's nervous around women, and a fast food cashier who sucks at fighting. These are three starkly different characters that all tell you the same story in different ways. Each perspective is pivotal in its own way, and you would not read the same story from just one of them. MacGowan's main characters add a unique depth to his novel that is rarely seen in debut authors.

 

Descriptive Nuances: MacGowan has moments of literary brilliance, and I don't use that term lightly or for just anyone. There are moments where all I could do was nod my head and say "yep, I do that!" There are passages I tore through because they're so vivid that I visualized the lightning as it flashes, illuminating the half-hidden faces of armed foes in the dark…and got goose bumps. There are minor but insanely realistic details that sucked me into scenes and made me not just visualize, but hear and smell my environment.

 

That's the mark of good writing, and I think that this novel is a good start to MacGowan's writing career.

 

Dialogue: The dialogue is, on the whole, fairly realistic. There are some conversations that I just don't think would take place in the real world, like one character telling another character, "He's fallen" when he really means his spirit has been broken or he's in a depression. Those moments aren't too common, and on the whole, aren't really noticeable.

 

 

What I Disliked

Pacing that relies on backstory: Oh, pacing. Even though not everyone appreciates what it is, virtually any reader can tell whether a novel is well-paced or not. Pacing, for those curious, is another word for the story arc's movement, or "flow." It's the inexplicable thing that keeps you reading, that moves you from one page to the next. It's the hook that keeps you up until 4 am even though you have to leave for work at 7. A well-paced novel will hook you and make you yawn in your morning meeting, but damn it, that book was good.

 

I actually toyed with whether or not to put MacGowan's pacing in the like or disliked section. It's a tossup. Half of his novel is a page turner because of the descriptive nuances I mentioned above. The other half, however, involved development, reveals, and backstory. While a reader needs most of this latter information to appreciate the climax and resolution, I just know that we didn't need all of the backstory.

 

Backstory, as you probably guessed, is anything that happened before the story the author is telling now. In the second chapter, Billy has a few "man in the bathtub" moments, where he reflects on his life-to-date and reveals everything from the fact that he's an orphan to his coworkers' nicknames and the fact that his grandmother broke a hip at one point. It's hard for me to get involved in this sort of development, because I'm an impatient Generation Y-er and want to know about the now.

 

It's important to establish your characters, so don't get me wrong. A little backstory is bound to slip into even the most impatient author's writing because it's just necessary. However, I prefer that backstory to be subtle. Show me that he's an orphan when he passes by an old photo and has to stop for a brief moment to collect himself, but doesn't tell us the details quite yet. Imply that something happened, then tell us later, when he's having a heart-to-heart with someone. That's a slightly over-used example, but you get my point, right?

 

Lack of Female Characters: Okay, so you all know that I'm not exactly a feminist. Usually, I don't even notice the gender balance in a story. However, there are only a handful of female characters in MacGowan's novel, and most of them are in the sidelines. Only one of them has a significant speaking role, and even she disappears half way through. While I'm sure that most guys won't even notice this, it makes it harder for me as a woman to relate to the story because it limits the characters that I can relate to. It's hard for me to relate to the bad ass John Reeves, even though he's my favorite character in the novel, because I've never even thought about interrogating a corrupt police chief at gunpoint while said man is on a toilet in a public restroom. That thought just never crossed my mind, and as ridiculously BAMF as that might be, I can't exactly slip into that man's shoes.

 

Twists: It's hard to surprise me. Besides the fact that I come from a long line of "What'd ya get me for Christmas? Tell me!"-ers, I'm not a bad guess when it comes to endings and plot twists. That's why it's so aggravating to watch a movie with me or anyone in my family: we always guess the ending within the first thirty minutes. And we say it out loud.

 

I definitely wasn't expecting MacGowan's plot twists, which could be either a good or bad thing. I think it both intrigued me and rubbed me the wrong way, because I'm so good at guessing. To me, the source of all this commotion came out of nowhere and confused me because it seemed completely random.

 

However, you have to step back for a minute. It's a mystery. If it were obvious, it wouldn't be a mystery. You'll need to decide for yourself when you read. To me, like I said, it seemed to come out of nowhere.

 

Caution: the next few paragraphs are spoiler-esque.These make much more sense if you read the book first.

 

In one scene, we discover that one of our lead narrators stole something from one of the other lead narrators, but the thief doesn't reveal it to the reader until much later in the book. So there's this disconnect in time and events that left me scratching my head, because there was an opportunity for dramatic irony that was completely lost in what I think was an effort to contribute to the mystery. However, instead of adding any suspense or intrigue, it just made me trust the narrators less. I felt like something had been deleted in an edit, or missed in the narrative. I actually re-read the chapter where the item is stolen because I was certain I had just skipped over a paragraph on accident. I didn't.

 

Additionally, the ending kind of came out of nowhere. I didn't get the feeling that Billy's new-found ability had any backing, based on what I'd learned throughout the novel. It was largely based on the thematic element that power can be used for good and healing as well as evil and destruction, but his ability and his sudden mastering of said ability just didn't make sense to me. It's possible that I missed something, since I had to read over a long period of time instead of my usual couple of days. If that's so, I'll update my review with corrections.

 

End of Spoilers

 

Despite my qualms, I must admit that I in no way guessed what was going to happen. Billy ultimately grew as a person and learned what it meant to do something right. And for anyone who thinks I gave away the ending – I never said he survives. Ha! Now you have to read it.

 

 

The Bottom Line

I think that The Fall of Billy Hitchings is a good debut. MacGowan's background in psychology means that he has a gift for realistic characters, even if there is the occasional hiccup in realistic dialogue. You're bound to be fond of at least one of his leads, and his moments of descriptive brilliance will leave you wanting more. There are some twists and turns that will likely leave you stumbling, and ladies will likely be without a heroine to admire, but all in all I think you should pick up MacGowan's debut novel and gives this mystery series a chance.

 

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Want a copy of The Fall of Billy Hitchings? Get it here:

 

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Cover photo courtesy of the author.