What do you think?
Rate this book
Gun Work
When his wife is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel, Carl Ledbetter, unable to come up with the ransom, calls in a favor from one of his old army buddies and gets more than he bargains for when the rescue mission doesn't go exactly as planned. Original.
249 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
9 people are currently reading
403 people want to read
About the author
David J. Schow
197 books144 followersDavid J. Schow is an American author of horror novels, short stories, and screenplays, associated with the "splatterpunk" movement of the late '80s and early '90s. Most recently he has moved into the crime genre.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
July 13, 2011
Barney is a seemingly ordinary guy working at a shooting range with a violent past. One day, Barney gets a call from an old army buddy, Carl Ledbetter, and ends up going with Carl to Mexico to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend. Only nothing is as it seems and after a while, Barney has a whole lot of people to kill...
I was on the fence about what to rate this one. On one hand, it's an action packed story, almost a modern day western at times. The kidnapping ring were a good set of villains but weren't cartoonishly evil. The addition of the luchadores was odd but worked well to keep the plot going. Mano was a good supporting character. The torture scenes were gruesome and you can't wait until Barney gets his vengeance. It almost feels like a movie once Barney finally goes on the warpath.
On the other hand, it was way too long for what it was. The guns are described in lavish detail and the story could have been seventy five pages shorter if Schow would have controlled his gun lust. Someone who's really into guns might enjoy the constant gun descriptions but I grew tired of them. The tale was also pretty linear, aside from the initial twist and the one near the end that was fairly obvious.
Gun Work isn't a bad book and I even enjoyed it at times. It's just firmly in the meh zone as far as Hard Case books are concerned. I'll give it a 2.5 but not a 3.
I was on the fence about what to rate this one. On one hand, it's an action packed story, almost a modern day western at times. The kidnapping ring were a good set of villains but weren't cartoonishly evil. The addition of the luchadores was odd but worked well to keep the plot going. Mano was a good supporting character. The torture scenes were gruesome and you can't wait until Barney gets his vengeance. It almost feels like a movie once Barney finally goes on the warpath.
On the other hand, it was way too long for what it was. The guns are described in lavish detail and the story could have been seventy five pages shorter if Schow would have controlled his gun lust. Someone who's really into guns might enjoy the constant gun descriptions but I grew tired of them. The tale was also pretty linear, aside from the initial twist and the one near the end that was fairly obvious.
Gun Work isn't a bad book and I even enjoyed it at times. It's just firmly in the meh zone as far as Hard Case books are concerned. I'll give it a 2.5 but not a 3.
January 5, 2016
This should have been titled "Gun Porn", not really a bad thing, just a bit too much for me. Schow clearly knows guns & spent a lot of time describing an amazing array. Unfortunately, there were just too many & it hurt the story trying to fit them in. All that time spent working with & modifying the very best models, but they wound up being used in situations where they were as out of place as Jeeves working a smoke-filled dive. Lots of hand crafted ammo & such all unique to a specific gun which no one else on the team had.
There were some colorful characters. Some were despicable, other quite likable, but then there was Barney. He was never a real person, just a vehicle to drive through the story in. Half the time he was all cool professional, the rest of the time he was a moody child.
That's probably a good way to describe the writing, too. There were real flashes of brilliance & nicely turned phrases as well as a twisty plot, but it was also full of conveniences when one was needed. That especially hurt the ending for me & it left some other holes along the way.
Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed. The story never sucked me in, but it was a fun read. I'll read more of Schow's books in hopes of something better, so I'll give this 3 stars, but it's a bit of a gift.
There were some colorful characters. Some were despicable, other quite likable, but then there was Barney. He was never a real person, just a vehicle to drive through the story in. Half the time he was all cool professional, the rest of the time he was a moody child.
That's probably a good way to describe the writing, too. There were real flashes of brilliance & nicely turned phrases as well as a twisty plot, but it was also full of conveniences when one was needed. That especially hurt the ending for me & it left some other holes along the way.
Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed. The story never sucked me in, but it was a fun read. I'll read more of Schow's books in hopes of something better, so I'll give this 3 stars, but it's a bit of a gift.
August 17, 2020
In book one, our capable Iraq vet hero tries to help out a war buddy whose hotter than hot wife has been kidnapped by a Mexican crime ring. Things are not what they seem, which means the hero spends book two getting tortured, mutilated, shot, and floating down a polluted sewer. Fortunately, he is rescued by a kindly jeweler and adopted by a set of Mexican wrestlers. After ten months of recovery, our hero is ready to get revenge on all the people who betrayed him. The body count in books 3-5 gets pretty high as a result. Will all the killing destroy our hero’s soul, or will he find his way to peace and real friendship?
An ok book, with plenty of action. It feels like one of those direct to video movies made back in 2008, full of muscles and guns and evil Mexican Crime Lords. The torture, mutilation, recovery sequence is lengthy and dull. The rest is pretty good.
An ok book, with plenty of action. It feels like one of those direct to video movies made back in 2008, full of muscles and guns and evil Mexican Crime Lords. The torture, mutilation, recovery sequence is lengthy and dull. The rest is pretty good.
July 9, 2009
I avoided writing anything about this book when I read it a few months ago, because I was so spun out by it and not sure what I wanted to say. I'm still not. I'm reminded of someone who described to me the works of Andrew Vachss back in the days when Born Bad had just come out. He described Vachss as "beyond noir." Which may have been true then, but Vachss has a rather simplistic political-social agenda, whereas Schow... what the fuck? If anything's "beyond noir," this is beyond noir -- hardcore in the extreme, like Donald E. Westlake's Parker, who always seemed like a nice guy (at least in comparison), went bad.
Gun Work starts out well-written but average enough in theme. Then it takes a turn for the dark, violent and thrilling -- great pulp action stuff, w00t. Then the book just goes bad, horrific and gross, deep into horror territory without ever leaving the crime genre. We're treated to page after page of the most disgusting, gruesome torture, which actually isn't that gratuitous because it's central to the development of the book.
For the latter segments we take a tour through a hardcore military-commando procedural like what I always wish the Don Pendleton Mack Bolan series would be, followed by vastly more extreme violence than the human mind can comprehend, described in loving detail.
Spoiler: It ends badly for pretty much everyone involved. Not a book to be read if you want a happy ending.
Short version: it's intense. Overall, it doesn't quite add up as artfully as I thought it would after the first 30 pages. Even so... holy Christ, it's just a brutal and nasty book, and frankly one of the best-written novels I've ever read. Some of the writing is so impossibly vivid that it just can't be believed.
The only reason it gets four and not five stars is that it's such a fucking bitch to read -- like being brutalized for 250 pages. I'm fairly glad I don't live inside David Schow's brain.
Gun Work starts out well-written but average enough in theme. Then it takes a turn for the dark, violent and thrilling -- great pulp action stuff, w00t. Then the book just goes bad, horrific and gross, deep into horror territory without ever leaving the crime genre. We're treated to page after page of the most disgusting, gruesome torture, which actually isn't that gratuitous because it's central to the development of the book.
For the latter segments we take a tour through a hardcore military-commando procedural like what I always wish the Don Pendleton Mack Bolan series would be, followed by vastly more extreme violence than the human mind can comprehend, described in loving detail.
Spoiler: It ends badly for pretty much everyone involved. Not a book to be read if you want a happy ending.
Short version: it's intense. Overall, it doesn't quite add up as artfully as I thought it would after the first 30 pages. Even so... holy Christ, it's just a brutal and nasty book, and frankly one of the best-written novels I've ever read. Some of the writing is so impossibly vivid that it just can't be believed.
The only reason it gets four and not five stars is that it's such a fucking bitch to read -- like being brutalized for 250 pages. I'm fairly glad I don't live inside David Schow's brain.
July 21, 2017
Gun Work is a terrific fun book that fits well with soldier of fortune or spy novels. It is not a mystery (at least after the first section).
There are three main parts to the book. The main character is Barney, an ex-US Army soldier, returned from battle in Iraq, where he met a news correspondent, Carl Ledbetter. Barney is ensconsed at a gun range in Los Angeles, where he works and practices his shooting every day. He keeps his most valuable possessions in his safe at the gun range and is not terribly connected to modern society. He is the kind of friend polite people don't associate with much except when they need some real muscle and firepower to protect them and get them out of a jam. "When you worked at a range with a piece on your hip, every customer was your pal from bangers to cops." Indeed, "people tended to seek Barney's counsel whenever they fell afoul of some extralegal difficulty, the kind of gray zone balls-up that consistently befalls people you think of as completely normal and law-abiding." The author tells the reader to rate your friends and acquaintances and admonishes the reader that you already know which friend you'd ask for help "when shady bad stuff rears up in your life."
Carl, in a panicked telephone call from a payphone in Mexico City, tells Barney that he was recently married, they vacationed in Mexico, and his wife has been kidnapped with one million dollars ransom being demanded. And, Carl doesn't know what to do. Of course, Barney, being the hero that he is, flies down to help Carl. Carl doesn't seem to know how to handle a gun and is taken aback when Barney brings weapons to the hostage exchange location. Everything seems to go wrong and Barney ends up suffering in a hostage hotel in some really horrible ways. After he escapes (and if he didn't, there wouldn't be much of a story, so that's not giving anything away), he plans his revenge with three other gun-toting vigilantes, almost like the posse heading to the rescue in a Western, guns blazing away.
The action takes this story from Mexico City to Manhattan to Los Angeles. There is plenty of gun play and fighting and the author seems to take immense pleasure in detailing the precise weaponry and defensive armaments that Barney and his small army are wielding. Although the start of the book is like a pulp-era travel adventure, the majority of the book is a mean, lean action story that reads incredibly quickly. Besides the action, the book includes one of the most dangerous femme fatales the world has ever seen and dozens of masked wrestlers.
If you open this book expecting a hardboiled detective novel in the Sam Spade tradition, forget about it. This book is an action-packed adventure from beginning to end. Well done.
There are three main parts to the book. The main character is Barney, an ex-US Army soldier, returned from battle in Iraq, where he met a news correspondent, Carl Ledbetter. Barney is ensconsed at a gun range in Los Angeles, where he works and practices his shooting every day. He keeps his most valuable possessions in his safe at the gun range and is not terribly connected to modern society. He is the kind of friend polite people don't associate with much except when they need some real muscle and firepower to protect them and get them out of a jam. "When you worked at a range with a piece on your hip, every customer was your pal from bangers to cops." Indeed, "people tended to seek Barney's counsel whenever they fell afoul of some extralegal difficulty, the kind of gray zone balls-up that consistently befalls people you think of as completely normal and law-abiding." The author tells the reader to rate your friends and acquaintances and admonishes the reader that you already know which friend you'd ask for help "when shady bad stuff rears up in your life."
Carl, in a panicked telephone call from a payphone in Mexico City, tells Barney that he was recently married, they vacationed in Mexico, and his wife has been kidnapped with one million dollars ransom being demanded. And, Carl doesn't know what to do. Of course, Barney, being the hero that he is, flies down to help Carl. Carl doesn't seem to know how to handle a gun and is taken aback when Barney brings weapons to the hostage exchange location. Everything seems to go wrong and Barney ends up suffering in a hostage hotel in some really horrible ways. After he escapes (and if he didn't, there wouldn't be much of a story, so that's not giving anything away), he plans his revenge with three other gun-toting vigilantes, almost like the posse heading to the rescue in a Western, guns blazing away.
The action takes this story from Mexico City to Manhattan to Los Angeles. There is plenty of gun play and fighting and the author seems to take immense pleasure in detailing the precise weaponry and defensive armaments that Barney and his small army are wielding. Although the start of the book is like a pulp-era travel adventure, the majority of the book is a mean, lean action story that reads incredibly quickly. Besides the action, the book includes one of the most dangerous femme fatales the world has ever seen and dozens of masked wrestlers.
If you open this book expecting a hardboiled detective novel in the Sam Spade tradition, forget about it. This book is an action-packed adventure from beginning to end. Well done.
November 19, 2008
Maybe I should have given this four stars, it's much cleaner prose than the last Hard Case book I read [the previous month's offering, a reprint]. Schow is good at what he does and the writing is nimble, never clunky and often packed with nice turns of phrase. I loved the Mexican wrestlers, didn't like that of the only two women one was eviscerated quickly whilst the other was basically some kind of spawn of Satan.
It's very much a book for guns and ammo fetishists. If you're hankering for a high body count in a twisted story of revenge among the criminal classes chock full of descriptions of human flesh being blown apart by military technology, look no further.
I get these in the mail so I have to read them, but it was a little strange picking this up while I had misplaced Johnny Got His Gun. Reminds me of the 80s Rhode Island punk rock song called "Complex World", though I don't think the lyrics to that number got into descriptions of heavy artillery tearing off human heads.
It's very much a book for guns and ammo fetishists. If you're hankering for a high body count in a twisted story of revenge among the criminal classes chock full of descriptions of human flesh being blown apart by military technology, look no further.
I get these in the mail so I have to read them, but it was a little strange picking this up while I had misplaced Johnny Got His Gun. Reminds me of the 80s Rhode Island punk rock song called "Complex World", though I don't think the lyrics to that number got into descriptions of heavy artillery tearing off human heads.
September 22, 2009
One reader described this as "gun porn," and now I understand why: In Gun Work, a kidnapping-cum-revenge novel, David J. Schow describes a seemingly endless array of firearms with the sort of detail and enthusiasm usually reserved for desciptions of the female body in bad sex writing. Nevertheless, I found myself fascinated (and more than a little creeped out) by these guns and the men who love them so damn much. Schow's writing helped a lot: He has an elegantly dense hard-boiled style, and his action scenes are among the clearest and most vivid that I have read. But my enthusiasm for this book is in part due to its novelty to me: If I should encounter "gun porn" a second time, I susepct that I will find it fairly tedious.
January 3, 2009
Jesus, this was awful. Predictable. Like a bad movie on the Xtreme movie Channel. I can see the gun freak with a mullet and a Harley Davidson with a wooden matchstick in his mouth and manly stubble. Lorenzo Lamas, your new movie is here!
December 26, 2008
A pretty solid revenge/crime story, but the book leans heavily on the gun porn with loving descriptions of weapons, bullets and shooting techniques.
December 9, 2016
The typical hardboiled detective type with his alienation from society and normal human relationships dialled up to 11 and a serious (and I do mean serious) gun fetish.
April 20, 2020
Ok so it aint Faulkner, but this gritty little noir novel was quite satisfying. There is a likeable but flawed protagonist, a colorful cast of minor characters, some really despicable villains, an ugly betrayal, and then a quest for revenge that builds into a satisfying conclusion. Not a bad way to spend a few hours. For what it is, it's well done. Among the better entries in the Hard Case Crime series.
January 29, 2018
The 49th volume in the Hard Case Crime series, David J. Schow's Gun Work is a fun, fast paced read. Centering around Barney, an ex-military expert shootist that prefers the loner lifestyle (he purposefully keeps even his few friends and any potential girlfriends at arm's-length). When an old army buddy calls from Mexico asking for Barney's help in rescuing his kidnapped wife, it sets off a chain of events that makes Barney question his self imposed exile and attitudes about friendship.
Without really giving anything away, Barney's rescue of the kidnapped wife goes awry and he eventually suffers injuries that make him one of the most interesting fictional gunmen I've ever come across (look closely at the book's cover art and see if you can figure it out....).
If you had to label it, Gun Work is a revenge tale but Schow does a good job of making the reader actually care about Barney along with both his physical and emotional transformation. The gunfights and violence are described in a modern, in-your-face style which is much at odds with the subtle and understated descriptions one often finds in Hard Case Crime's reprints of the older and classic crime novels. There is much to be said for the more subtle approach in the classic crime tales but Gun Work is a novel of our violent age and its raw visceral descriptions fit the tale perfectly.
My only (and large) problem with the novel is the often discussed but little seen main female character. Her kidnapping and its aftermath drive the novel but the final scenes with both she and Barney feel very rushed and anticlimactic. Because she is only obliquely seen or discussed throughout the majority of the novel her motivations, cunning intelligence and personality just did not come across as believable. The whole journey up to those brief scenes was a great ride, however, so all in all I recommend Gun Work as a good, fast paced revenge tale with a compelling hero at its center. Another good selection from the very reliable Hard Case Crime series.
Without really giving anything away, Barney's rescue of the kidnapped wife goes awry and he eventually suffers injuries that make him one of the most interesting fictional gunmen I've ever come across (look closely at the book's cover art and see if you can figure it out....).
If you had to label it, Gun Work is a revenge tale but Schow does a good job of making the reader actually care about Barney along with both his physical and emotional transformation. The gunfights and violence are described in a modern, in-your-face style which is much at odds with the subtle and understated descriptions one often finds in Hard Case Crime's reprints of the older and classic crime novels. There is much to be said for the more subtle approach in the classic crime tales but Gun Work is a novel of our violent age and its raw visceral descriptions fit the tale perfectly.
My only (and large) problem with the novel is the often discussed but little seen main female character. Her kidnapping and its aftermath drive the novel but the final scenes with both she and Barney feel very rushed and anticlimactic. Because she is only obliquely seen or discussed throughout the majority of the novel her motivations, cunning intelligence and personality just did not come across as believable. The whole journey up to those brief scenes was a great ride, however, so all in all I recommend Gun Work as a good, fast paced revenge tale with a compelling hero at its center. Another good selection from the very reliable Hard Case Crime series.
October 12, 2012
Firtly, why does this book only have a Good Reads rating of 3.46? I thoroughly enjoyed it and couldn't put it down. I have read a lot of Dave Schow's early horror short stories and his novel THE KILL RIFF. I was also familiar with his column in Fangoria and some of his screenwriting. As I'm a big horror fan I avoided this book and his more recent 'crime thrillers', and I am kicking myself for doing so. GUN WORK is a real gritty page-turner and I found it difficult putting the book down until I'd finished it. GUN WORK centres around the 'hero', Barney. Former soldier, now a gunman, who works in an LA gun range. In a previous life Barney was trained by the Old Assassin. He is conned by an old friend into a 'job' in Mexico City. The job leaves Barney without both index fingers, shot 4 times and left floating in the toxic Arroyo De La Llorona river. When Barney's pulled out and nursed back to full health he has one thing on his mind. Simple revenge against the people who conned him, and the others who toutured and left him for dead. He'll be doing some gun work! Awesome, first rate crime fiction.
June 1, 2013
Purchased Gun Work off my local libraries discard shelf along with a Mickely Spillane softcover from the same "Hard Case Crime" series. I remember David Schow from the days of my subscription to Fangoria magazine, and expected this to be a light, fun, pulpy read. I wasn't disappointed (mostly because I had no expectations). Sure, the supporting characters are cardboard cookie-cutter charicatures and the leading man is of the tight-lipped, revenge-driven fringe all action storylines require. So what?! Its fun, and arguably better for you than the latest big-budget film. I enjoyed it more than similar novels from more heartily heralded crime authors.
One gripe: It seems a catastrophic oversight NOT to include lucha libre wrestlers in the cover art, when they figure so prominently in the storyline. Hardly Mr. Schow's fault.
One gripe: It seems a catastrophic oversight NOT to include lucha libre wrestlers in the cover art, when they figure so prominently in the storyline. Hardly Mr. Schow's fault.
May 8, 2009
I really wanted to like this, but it was just...bad. Or, I don't know, maybe I'm the wrong audience. I was hoping for some cool noir but what I got was a lot of blah blah blah about different kinds of guns. I didn't care about the characters & the plot was just convoluted & boring enough that I really had trouble making myself finish it. The ending seemed tacked on. I'll probably try other books in the Hard Case Crime series, but I doubt I'll read anything else by this author. I plan to pass my copy of this along to my ex-husband.
June 5, 2012
Wow. What a roller coaster. Our hero(?), Barney, is in deep shim with what looks like no way out. Double-crossed, abused, left for dead, and then, then, everything turns, and turns some more.
Kidnapping, murder, mutilation, Mexican wrestlers...you name it, this Hard Case Crime entry has it, and mostly in spades. When you suspend your disbelief, this is a ride that is way more better than Space Mountain.
If you like your revenge served hot, this one will fill the bill nicely.
4 stars.
Kidnapping, murder, mutilation, Mexican wrestlers...you name it, this Hard Case Crime entry has it, and mostly in spades. When you suspend your disbelief, this is a ride that is way more better than Space Mountain.
If you like your revenge served hot, this one will fill the bill nicely.
4 stars.
December 26, 2012
My wife said this series is like romance novels for men. I totally agree. There is little brain investment, and little to the plot. I can appreciate that, and can enjoy these novels. That said, this one wasn't worth it. I like these when they are more noir than blood.
![Profile Image for Ed [Redacted].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1429513592i%2F3968676.jpg&w=128&q=75)
September 19, 2012
Pretty good book, flawed in many ways. Reminds me a bit of "The Excecutioner" but much better written.
Read
November 12, 2012I want to be a good reader and writer
November 22, 2025
A book in three parts:
Part 1 -- Carl's wife is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and held for ransom. He reaches out to his Afghan war buddy, Barney, to help get her back. Things go wrong.
Part 2 -- Barney is a captive of the Mexican cartel. He has no friends and no family, so he is useless as a hostage. So, he is brutally tortured ala the Saw movies, including having the index fingers of both hands cut off, so even if he survives, he will never again be able to indulge in his one passion, shooting guns.
The finger amputation is not a spoiler, because it is depicted on the cover. One might be tempted to dismiss the cover art as a bad AI rendering, except the book predates AI images by about 15 years.
Part 3 -- Miraculously, Barney survives being left for dead, and after a year's convalesceance, goes after the five people he blames for his capture and torture.
<
Part 1 -- Carl's wife is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and held for ransom. He reaches out to his Afghan war buddy, Barney, to help get her back. Things go wrong.
Part 2 -- Barney is a captive of the Mexican cartel. He has no friends and no family, so he is useless as a hostage. So, he is brutally tortured ala the Saw movies, including having the index fingers of both hands cut off, so even if he survives, he will never again be able to indulge in his one passion, shooting guns.
The finger amputation is not a spoiler, because it is depicted on the cover. One might be tempted to dismiss the cover art as a bad AI rendering, except the book predates AI images by about 15 years.
Part 3 -- Miraculously, Barney survives being left for dead, and after a year's convalesceance, goes after the five people he blames for his capture and torture.
<
October 29, 2017
Despite a Mexican setting, which I generally like, I found this hyper-violent, rather unbelievable crime novel not very much to my taste. I like what one Amazon reviewer wrote, that the book is for "gun aficionados who enjoy tales of extreme violence unencumbered by character development or coherent plotting....One would really have to have an in depth knowledge of armaments in order to fully appreciate or even care about the detailed specs given each and every time a new weapon is introduced."
Read
May 15, 2022The forty-ninth hard case crime novel done and it’s a 2008 tale of an old war buddy going to help a friend recover his kidnapped wife in Mexico 🇲🇽 but it quickly turns dark and brutal and flips into a revenge story. Perhaps a little long, too much time spent hallucinating after injury, so many pages of recovering in different locations, a little too much torture and excessive descriptions of weapons and ammunition. The writing is still reasonably sharp with a few entertaining turns of phrase. The last 60 pages were pretty good. But possibly too little and too late for me to care.
December 24, 2022
I liked this one quite a bit. Is it a little obsessed with guns? Yes, definitely. Does it get a little long in the loving descriptions of guns? Also, yes, but it’s called Gun Works, so I can forgive it a bit.
There part that really started losing me was the endlessly long description of what Barney has to go through to survive. It is almost like experiencing the torture yourself (ok, not nearly that bad, but still).
Even still, the book has great twists and turns. The plot and ending were very satisfying.
There part that really started losing me was the endlessly long description of what Barney has to go through to survive. It is almost like experiencing the torture yourself (ok, not nearly that bad, but still).
Even still, the book has great twists and turns. The plot and ending were very satisfying.
May 15, 2025
Schow writes good action. The first part of this is a pretty neat mystery, but then the story seems to derail a little as the mystery is solved and the main character is captured and tortured. After he gets free, however, the story ramps up again with a whole lot of action. There's a brutal but captivating denouement to the main story, followed by a kind of neat epilogue that would fit well in an iconic western.
January 16, 2021
Gun porn for all the lovingly described guns and ammo used in service of the plot, which doesn't particularly hang together as much as provide an excuse for spasmodic outbreaks of violence. So, your basic over the top noir which has its moments. Any book involving a heroic gang of Luchadores gets a thumbs up by me.
October 4, 2021
This was a BRUTAL book. Not at all like a Mickey Spillane, easily cool, violent story. Learning that the author wrote Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies made a lot of sense.
The overacrhingplot, to me, didn't make a lot of sense, but I liked the 'good' characters quite a bit. It definitely was a page turner for me.
The overacrhingplot, to me, didn't make a lot of sense, but I liked the 'good' characters quite a bit. It definitely was a page turner for me.
June 8, 2024
This book was only OK. The story, a double cross and revenge, has been done many times before. The endless descriptions of guns and bullets became tedious after a while. The implausibility of the hero surviving the injuries he incurred, plus the predictable Mexican tropes and stereotypes, made reading this an unpleasant experience.
February 20, 2022
This is a book called "Gun Work" from a publisher called "Hard case crime", so if you don't know what you're getting, you shouldn't be reading it. The writing is terse and cynical and compelling. It's the most hard - boiled novel I've ever read.
August 8, 2018
3.5*\5.
May 22, 2022
Starts as an amusing if bogstandard thriller and then drifts into splatter mixed with technical jargon about guns without any real satisfying payoff or character development.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews