Jef

Nearly forty years ago, in 1979, Walter Hill directed the cult classic The Warriors. Less than a decade later, amidst other gigs, he penned the story for Triggerman. In 2015, Rue de Sèvres releases the French language graphic novel Balles Perdues (translated 'Stray Bullets')

Lucky for those of us do not speak french, Hard Case Crime just released the first edition English graphic titled "Triggerman". It is 124 pages of gritty prohibition badass. Individual issues were released last year, but show more this collection soles the piecemeal problem many of us have with buying singles.

Machine Gun Roy Nash is dead. A fat bloated body attributed with his name was riddled with bullets inside a prison and cremated. Nash is delivered inside a pine box and on opening, Roy Parker is born.

Roy has a knack for locating people and extracting from them anything which requires extracting. Today, he is charged with locating three men who performed a job and then bolted before paying up. It isn't the money that is the problem, it is the disrespect.

Roy is personally invested in this job. Travelling with the three men was lovely Lena, the woman that makes his clock tick and his life meaningful. It doesn't hurt that any cash recovered will remain his, to the tune of half a million dollars.

The art in this novel is solid.. Like a brick rock through a window.
The writing is amazing, relying on the interplay with imagery, it drags you along at just the right pace.
The tommy guns frequently blurt out 'Budda-Budda-Budda' and everytime, you feel the lead to body 'conversation' is absolutely justified.

A couple things helped legitimize this story. First, Nash.. I kept making mental comparisons to the similar last name of Elliot Ness, a true life special agent who battled Al Capone. They are no where near mirrors of each other but I was in a prohibitionist state of mind and perhaps needed a beer while reading this. Second, the gangster in Chicago who is offended and pays for this adventure happens to be referred to as Al, regardless of any last name, it FEELs right when reading it.

Hard Case Crime has been releasing solid fiction for a few years now and looks to be continuing the trend.

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Disclosure: This was provided to me for review purposes. While I could choose to murder the reviewed work in it's sleep, I really did like it and will attempt to hide it from our mutual enemies to ensure it doesn't receive cement shoes. If I hated it, I would have written my review in emoticons that are not relevant to the era of the work and would have been a whole lot less fun. show less

Good, strong beginning! And a good tale overall! Roy Nash is a hard-driving gunman in LA in the 1930's, a man who does what he has to do. Tough, cold, and deadly! His is a violent tale, and a good one! It's funny, the beginning reminded me so much of the “Last Man Standing" starring Bruce Willis, and I was tickled when I found out this author also wrote that movie! It also reminded me a lot of "Road to Perdition", a story written by fellow Hard Case Crime writer Max Allan Collins! I'm not show more writing that to criticize, just something I noticed. I liked "Triggerman" on it's own, connections or not! show less

This book is combination of "Red Harvest" and "Road to Perdition" .... as a matter of fact it is your standard gangster novel about lone wolf fighting in the end for the right cause.

Our protagonist is hired gun that gets sprung out from the jail by the Chicago mafia because he is the man with skills to find people that have double crossed the Chicago mobsters.

Of course what starts as a rather simple task evolves into situation where blackmail, back stabbing and betrayal flourishes. Soon our show more hero will find himself fighting the uphill battle and in the end losing more than he expected.

You might say all of the above is seen in many movies and read in many crime novels and I have to agree. This one is not aiming towards the originality but to tell the story of a man seeking redemption while doing some pretty nasty deeds.

Art is very good and our hero looks very much like Alain Delon in his appearance.

Recommended to fans of the crime stories. show less

Roy Nash sale de prisión en plena Ley Seca, gracias al capo de la mafia de Chicago. A cambio, deberá hacerle un «encargo»: cazar a tres matones que se quedaron con un botín y asesinaron a uno de sus hombres. Para tentarlo, Lena, una exnovia. Roy se adentra en los bajos fondos de Los Ángeles, molestando a la mafia local, a un detective corrupto y a sus propios jefes. ¿Qué moverá realmente a Roy: la venganza, el dinero o Lena…?

Matz y Jef adaptan al cómic un guion original del show more cineasta Walter Hill (48 horas, El fugitivo, The warriors), que contiene todos los ingredientes de las historias de gánsteres: dinero, mujeres, polis corruptos y tiros, muchos tiros. Un cóctel explosivo agitado por un misterioso protagonista y teñido de nostalgia por un amor perdido. show less