No Sunscreen for the Dead

No Sunscreen for the Dead by Tim Dorsey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

If you enjoy this series then I think you'll enjoy this book. I read one previously and the basic idea remains the same. Serge and his drug-addled buddy go around playing vigilante and murdering bad guys in unique ways. One has to give the author full credit for coming up with interesting possibilities for killing people. I expect a fair bit of research was required. Serge is manic while his pas is a stoner and I don't care for either form of humour, although I have to concede the author periodically uses a nice bit of satire to skewer certain elements of society. Still I would have probably DNDed this book early on were it not for two subplots which kept things interesting. The main plot is pretty thin but they were first rate.

I didn't think the climax was handled well. Throughout the book, the author presents the serious bag guys as evil lurking just behind the scenes; however, when he brings them to the forefront, they appear as clowns. The disconnect didn't work. It would have been better to have them bumbling about earlier in the book to account for their actions when we come to the climax. In addition the author glosses over why there are ten villains and only the leader has a gun.

Points need to be awarded for a good try, but the author fails to create the level of chaos during the climax I think he was hoping for. That said, it can be wretchedly difficult to combine humour and chaos effectively. It would have been better if he'd focused on some interactions between individual senior citizens and villains. I think the climax would have worked well in a movie but not on the page.

This book was okay but nothing special and I'm not going looking for other books in the series.



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