Matthew McBride

Simply fantastic. McBride starts off out on the verge of being out of control and stays that way for the whole book without ever running off the road. The story is half-narrated in the first person by an ex-cop whose drinking habits are prodigious. The rest of the book is third-person, telling us about the doings of one set of bad guys who set up a credit union robbery and are now searching for the missing loot, and a second set of bad guys who are trying to steal the money from the first show more set--with the aid of our narrator private eye. Despite the back and forth between all these characters, this reader never lost the plot thread or forgot who was who due to McBride's incredible talent for creating memorable characters (including the title character, a Yorkshire Terrier.)

This book is funny, violent, gruesome, over-the-top, and impossible to put down. From time to time, I read writers who are trying to achieve the same sort of extreme pulp atmosphere that McBride does, but they almost always are unable to carry it through to the end. In McBride's case, a very solid plot provides all the framework that is necessary to hold together this spectacular car chase of a book. Based on this, I will read everything he writes.

Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommended! show less

Another winner from McBride. Nonstop violence and depravity from cover-to-cover, but with a depth of (usually disgusting) characterization that sets it apart. The story of cop Dale Banks' involvement with a bunch of meth-heads in a backwoods Missouri County is going to win any awards from that state's Chamber of Commerce, but it will keep you entertained--unless you have a weak stomach--for a few hours. The audio version, read by John McLain, is superbly done.

A title like this can be a bait & switch, like Canadian wacko poet Crad Kilodney's "Lightning Struck My Dick," which never mentions the calamity of its name. McBride delivers the goods.
See, Frank Sinatra is Nick Valentine's little Yorkie. Nick's a professional drunkard and part time P.I. assisting the St. Louis PD. A "Bad Lieutenant" with a moral compass driving him to true north, even if it means plowing a garbage truck through a brewery.
A bank job goes wrong, his father's friend the Chief show more of Police asks him to put his ear to the street, and of course, he gets tangled up with some very unsavory local thugs. Some of whom are the closest he's got to best friends.
McBride paints his colorful characters, even an ex-Amish detective, in moral shades of gray. Their motives are unquestionable, purely driven by character and human nature. It is a brutal story. Brutally violent in places, and brutally funny in others. English Sid and No-Nuts are two of the greatest villains I've read in a long while, and Nick's only superpower is his mighty tolerance for alcohol, and his proclivity for inserting violence in the uncomfortable pauses where normal people are thinking about the consequences.
I used to love P.I. novels, and I still read the best, like Lawrence Block. But McBride, like Josh Stallings, has breathed new life into the genre for me with believable street people like Nick, a likeable anti-hero straight out of Bukowski, with a shotgun and a chainsaw in his trunk, a la Army of Darkness. But back to the title. The pure brilliance of it. As soon as we know the cantankerous little Yorkie's name, we know what's coming. Will he chop, puree or liquefy?
You'll have to read it to find out. This is no nihilist noir tract. It has heart.
And Nick will be your Valentine, for ten scotch, ten bourbon, and ten beers. show less

Such a sad book, filled with desperate people leading desperate lives. Some of them are just evil, others totally over their heads with no future and an ugly present.

Reading about them is compelling, however, always wondering what other tragedy lies just over the hill.

You won't like any of the characters -- well, perhaps Olen is an exception, -- but you'll feel sorry for some, pity others, and be very glad you play no part in their lives. Most of them I suspect would be waving Confederate show more flags at a NASCAR race.

I hope McBride writes from imagination and not experience. I fear the latter. His Goodreads' page notes that “These people are the people I know and see every day, and this is the world I know.” show less