The Dirty Streets of Heaven (edition 2012)

http://ninecats.org/margaret/blog/2012/12/14/dirty-streets-heaven-tad-williams ( )

Sam Spade with a tarnished halo, the dame who walks into Bobby Dollar's life has a hint of brimstone to go along with her perfume. Though Bobby's day to day angelic duties are more Law and Order than P. I. work, when a soul turns up missing he is forced to start investigating things on his own.

It took me a chapter or so to get used to Bobby's noire point of view, but I was hooked once the focus moved from how the immediately-after-life works to pounding the pavement in search of answers.

Angels are a tricky business, and while the character dynamic of THE DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN won me over and had me laughing out loud, the afterlife machinations that had Bobby Dollar on the run never really made sense to me. Heaven erases angels' earthly memories, Hell does not, and it's not really clear to me which practice is being shown as "bad". Williams writes convincingly of angels as "human" workers, advocating to win souls without nit picking on moral matters, but it's still unclear how these flawed foot soldiers fit in to the greater celestial picture. If Bobby's fleshy body and work in the trenches makes him so relatable, I suppose it makes sense that Heaven, which Bobby himself has a hard time remembering, remains amorphous and mysterious. The unfortunate side effect is that the higher angels that reside in Heaven, and that are supposed to add half piece of the urgent plot driving Bobby, never emerge as effective characters.

Full review to follow.

Sexual Content: Sex scenes. ( )

The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

I'm giving this book high marks, but they are high marks that come with a qualifier. If you like this type of book, you will like this book in particular. The problem is finding the right shelf for this type of book. Urban fantasy? yes, that's part of it. But something of the mystery genre mixed in, specifically the noire detective novel. But with a supernatural twist to it too. Supernatural noire mystery. Ya, it's a pretty small bookshelf.

Jim Butcher's 'The Dresden Files' were previously the only other volumes filling that slim shelf. And I love those books. And as quickly as Jim Butcher births those slim volumed paper babies, there's still time between them. And like the addict that i am - the junkie addicted to first-person wise cracking detectives who don't play by the rules and always get the dames - I've been itching for a new one.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven fills that niche nicely. Starring Bobby Dollar, the angel with a few bad habits who doesn't trust anyone and throws out one-liners so bad they make the entire English language weep, this story has all the right ingredients. You've got your convoluted mystery that our hero is pulled in to, your cast of colourful characters both heavenly and hellish, your sub-mystery that may or may not have something to do with the main mystery, and you literally have a "and then she walked into the room" moment.

Williams gets all these things right. It's hard to believe this is the first novel he's written like this. I only have two complaints.

The first is the pacing near the end of the book. I might have been set up for this one. Someone had warned me that the chase scene near the end of the book seems to drag a bit. So maybe I was anticipating it. But I'm going to have to agree. Without giving anything away, there's a segment where our bad ass angel is being chased by badder-asser things. It seems to fall into this roving cycle of "hey we've got you, there's no way out" and then "ha ha, i found a way out, you're chasing me again!". The pacing just felt a little off here. It didn't ruin the book by any means. But in a story where pacing is so important it definitely stood out.

My second complaint would be the ending. It wasn't bad, but it was a smidge too much "tune in next time to follow the adventures of Bobby Dollar" for me. By this time I was hooked, so I will be picking up the next book. But still, a tighter, more complete ending would have made me happier.

In short, if you like The Dresden Files, or Noire mystery in general, you're going to enjoy this book. If you aren't sure, it's worth picking up and trying. It's a fun book, fast paced, and well written.

If you couldn't get into, or even disliked, the Dresden Files, you probably aren't going to enjoy this one either.
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The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

I'm giving this book high marks, but they are high marks that come with a qualifier. If you like this type of book, you will like this book in particular. The problem is finding the right shelf for this type of book. Urban fantasy? yes, that's part of it. But something of the mystery genre mixed in, specifically the noire detective novel. But with a supernatural twist to it too. Supernatural noire mystery. Ya, it's a pretty small bookshelf.

Jim Butcher's 'The Dresden Files' were previously the only other volumes filling that slim shelf. And I love those books. And as quickly as Jim Butcher births those slim volumed paper babies, there's still time between them. And like the addict that i am - the junkie addicted to first-person wise cracking detectives who don't play by the rules and always get the dames - I've been itching for a new one.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven fills that niche nicely. Starring Bobby Dollar, the angel with a few bad habits who doesn't trust anyone and throws out one-liners so bad they make the entire English language weep, this story has all the right ingredients. You've got your convoluted mystery that our hero is pulled in to, your cast of colourful characters both heavenly and hellish, your sub-mystery that may or may not have something to do with the main mystery, and you literally have a "and then she walked into the room" moment.

Williams gets all these things right. It's hard to believe this is the first novel he's written like this. I only have two complaints.

The first is the pacing near the end of the book. I might have been set up for this one. Someone had warned me that the chase scene near the end of the book seems to drag a bit. So maybe I was anticipating it. But I'm going to have to agree. Without giving anything away, there's a segment where our bad ass angel is being chased by badder-asser things. It seems to fall into this roving cycle of "hey we've got you, there's no way out" and then "ha ha, i found a way out, you're chasing me again!". The pacing just felt a little off here. It didn't ruin the book by any means. But in a story where pacing is so important it definitely stood out.

My second complaint would be the ending. It wasn't bad, but it was a smidge too much "tune in next time to follow the adventures of Bobby Dollar" for me. By this time I was hooked, so I will be picking up the next book. But still, a tighter, more complete ending would have made me happier.

In short, if you like The Dresden Files, or Noire mystery in general, you're going to enjoy this book. If you aren't sure, it's worth picking up and trying. It's a fun book, fast paced, and well written.

If you couldn't get into, or even disliked, the Dresden Files, you probably aren't going to enjoy this one either.
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Bobby Dollar is an angel, his role here on earth is to advocate for the souls caught between heaven and hell. As a result of this, Bobby knows about sin, in fact, he wrestles with a few himself; pride, lust and anger. Whether it’s pride or just instinct, Dollar can’t trust his superiors or his fellow earth bound angels so when souls start disappearing, things are bound to get bad; end of the world bad.

Like the Dresden Files, The Dirty Streets of Heaven blends urban fantasy with hard-boiled crime. Bobby Dollar is a great character, but while he isn’t fully hard-boiled he plays the role really well. I don’t think I would want him to be more hard-boiled; as an angel he does need to have a bit of a moral compass and he does have to try to be good, so in this aspect I think Tad Williams got the balance right.

I’ve never been much for fantasy novels, but I really like these urban fantasy novels that take old hard-boiled and noir styles and blend it; I just can’t get enough of them. I believe this is Tad Williams first attempt at this genre but he has done this masterfully; the conflict between heaven and hell with Bobby Dollar and not knowing who to trust makes this novel. I will admit the Angel and Demon warfare aspect of this book is what I enjoyed the most; Williams added some interesting concepts and blended some theology in as well and I think it balanced out nicely.

I wasn’t sure if The Dirty Streets of Heaven was going to turn out anything like Dogma or The Dresden Files, but I think the author took parts of both that he liked and made it his own. It’s dark and gritty, fully of sex and violence but there is also pop culture references and humour with this book. The humour within this book was great; it didn’t over shadow the darkness of the novel and often came unexpectedly.

“You show me what someone listens to; I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)”

I’m pleased this is the first book in a new series for Tad Williams; currently there are another two in the works and I am excited to be thrown back into this world. The more I discover these Urban Fantasy Noir novels, the more I want to read them; I really should read some more from the Dresden Files while I wait for book two. Does anyone have any recommendations for books like this, because I really enjoyed this book, more than I ever expected.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/02/23/book-review-the-dirty-streets-of-heav... ( )