Gord Rollo

Gord Rollo seems like a nice enough fellow. I mean, he has a rather pleasant "NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR" section in the back of this story, which is free on Amazon. The problem is, if this story is a sample of his work, I'd rather not read anything else he's written.

First and foremost, Rollo needs an editor like Tom Cruise needs therapy. I will attempt to make my point with examples, but the entire story is broken. These are just a few errors I found:

"...peaked his interest..." should be show more "...piqued his interest..." This one is early on, but it's only the precursor to many other problems.

Rollo has a problem with commas. Simple rules are broken, as with this bit of dialogue: "I'm kidding man." There should be a comma after "kidding". This happens quite a few times in this short story, but sometimes Rollo screws up and uses the proper comma placement, which makes me sure that he knows the rules but simply doesn't care to follow them at all times. Besides, commas are subjective, right? *cue the crickets*

Then we have this sentence: "This went on for nearly four years, until the month before Randy was turning fourteenth."

This next issue isn't really an error, but I think it speaks volumes: "There wasn't a lot of blood, wasn't squirting out or anything like that, but there was enough that it pooled in the palm of Randy's hand and dripped down onto his torn pajamas." Like I said, not really erroneous, just bad writing. See also: "He was so scared right now he was close to wetting his pants." A simple, "He was close to wetting his pants," would have sufficed. It's boring, but it would have worked better.

"... an stress-induced compulsive..." Is another small error that might have been caught by even a proofread.

Many sentences in this story start with "Of course..." as if we should already know what Rollo is going to tell us. And if we already know, why tell us?

One more for the road: "With a practiced flair, he rubbed his hands together and made a fist with his left hand then blew on it before slowly let his fingers fall open." Le sigh...

Now, if you can get past all that (mind you that's only a small fraction of the errors I found), you are graced with a story so full of holes you could drain pasta with it.

Our main character, Randy, works as a cook in the kitchen of an insane asylum. He hears tell of a patient who likes to peel his own skin off so that he might open a door to another... something. In an attempt to meet this "Peeler", Randy befriends a crazy magician and convinces the man to aid in Randy meeting Peeler. This is where the story becomes nonsensical. In a maximum security asylum, two patients (one with a history of peeling his own skin off) are allowed to meet once a month, alone. During this meeting, Randy is to sneak into the director's basement office that isn't really the director's main office but a side office, kinda like he's cheating on the main office, where Randy is supposed to hide in a closet until the two psychos are left alone for their monthly pow-wow. Now, get this: Randy picks a lock on what the author says is "a sturdy steel door" with a "two-paper-clip method". Have you ever tried picking even a simple lock with a paperclip, much less one on a "sturdy steel door"? Paper clips bend. Easily. Anyway, to top things off, the guard who's left to stand guard outside doesn't have a key to access the door to the office wherein the two crazy people are holding palaver. This is an obvious storytelling device, because he needed time to finish up the insane happenings that occur in said office. Because the guard doesn't have the key, they have to wait on the director to run down from the top floor of the asylum so that he can unlock... You know what? Fuck it. Read it for yourself, or don't. I've probably spent more time on this review than the author did on writing and editing this disaster.

In summation: A reader's time is as valuable as their money. I couldn't care less if this was free. I wasted my time on a story that the author himself didn't seem to care about. show less

Rollo's second novel (hot on the heels of his amazing debut, THE JIGSAW MAN), is a mixture of Stephen King's IT, Ed Lee's INFERNAL series, and a violent men's prison flick.

In 1977, four young friends discover an underground bomb shelter and decide to make it their fort. But before long they help to unleash a demon who's been hell-bent on escaping its temporary prison for over 20 years. After being tormented by a huge spider and talking scarecrow, one of them is eventually murdered by this show more dark being, and (oddly enough) things sort-of go back to normal.

Flash forward to 1986. Johnny has become the youngest person ever to rise to power in Canadian Parliament, and his friend David is continually plagued by gruesome nightmares stemming from their childhood experience. And worse---David begins to realize the creature has come back to use him and his friend Tom for its grand plan: it frames him for a savage murder, and David winds up with mutliple life sentences.

Hence we come to the third section of the book, set in 2006: David spends his time behind bars, trying to convince himself he's better off where he is with no creature to cause further harm. Johnny comes to visit him one day and reveals an awful truth about the creature and his father. On top of this, David is forced to be a "corner man" for one of his friends in a brutal underground prison fight known as The Game--where the loser doesn't leave alive. He begins to suspect one of the participants is under the creature's control but discovers there are worse things coming his way than he could ever had imagined.

From its shocking opening pages to the horrific conclusion, Rollo's CRIMSON--while featuring a familiar story and several been-there-done-that scenes--manages to give it all his own flavor and ends up with quite a satisfying read. As with his previous novels' updating of the Frankenstein Mythos, CRIMSON will be enjoyed by anyone into the coming-of-age tale. 'Big plus here for Chapter 25's prison fight scene: it'll have you rooting and cheering like the first time you saw ROCKY.

(Note: Prime Books originally released this as a Trade Paperback in 2002) show less

Two very well written historical crime stories playing in the 19th century Scotland and England respectively. The first one deals with two body snatchers - a practice which become quite virulent at that time. Well, I have to confess, in this one I felt already sympathetic with these two god-for-nothings. On the other hand: The rather mystical end of the story irritated me, was too unreal for me.

Even more I enjoyed the second story: A remake of the good old 'Jack the Ripper' theme in which show more the heinous murderer is not a man but a young female student of medicine 'practicing' in the East End of London. Two stories I had to read in one piece ... show less

A modern take on the classic Frankenstein story for the ages. This is my first novel by Rollo and simply put, it won't be my last. I've read some amazing books in 2014. Jigsaw Man is now not only my favorite for this year, but many other years as well. The writing is crisp and the story is one twisting turn after another. Some you can see coming. Most of them you can't. And boy does Rollo grab you by the throat with an iron-like vise of a grip. He had me believing the unbelievable every step show more of the way. At no point was I like "Oh that's BS. I can't buy that!". No, Michael Fox was a sympathetic character you could relate to and you rooted for him, gasped with him, and experienced his dread as if you and him were one and the same. Dr Marshall and his henchman Drake were deliciously evil without being a cardboard cut out of the stereotype. You hated them with every fiber of your being. That's impressive and hard to do. We've all read stories where the villains weren't realistic. You couldn't buy in and be completely invested. That's not the case in Jigsaw Man. I couldn't put it down. I had to see what was around the corner. And every corner I came to had something lurking that was even worse than the previous one. This story was a roller coaster ride that you didn't want to ever end. This may have been my first read by Gord Rollo, but it won't be my last. Before this review, I downloaded everything else of his I could get my hands on. If the rest of his work is only half as good as Jigsaw Man, I will consider it money well spent! Enough gushing on my part. The Jigsaw Man needs to be the next story you read. Period. show less