Frank Sinatra in a Blender

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 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 show more 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

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 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 show more 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

Frank Sinatra in a Blender. Now THAT is an eye-catching title! I was given the option to pick any novel from New Pulp Press in exchange for a review and when I read the title of Matthew McBride’s book, the choice was easy.

Nick Valentine is the definition of a raging alcoholic. If there’s a bottle of booze within reach, you bet your ass he’s going to down it. Same goes for painkillers, cocaine and any other drug he can get his hands on. Nothing appears to be off limits. If not for the fact that the narcotics helped him produce results, he’d certainly be lying face down in a ditch. Nick is called upon by the St. Louis police to aid in the investigation of an apparent suicide by a credit union employee. When said credit union is show more then the subject of a robbery, Nick gets caught up in the search for a missing duffel bag stuffed with cash.

If Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino were capable of reproducing and they then raised their offspring on Frank Miller’s Sin City graphic novels, they would grow up to be Frank Sinatra in a Blender. This novel defines that old saying, “moving at breakneck speed”. I found myself having to re-read certain passages and pages because I was trying to keep up with just how fast the author was progressing the story. If you’re expecting a lull in the action, you’re going to be disappointed.

I can’t stress enough how much I enjoyed this. It’s one of the first times I can remember reading a novel and thinking, “Damn, I wish I could write something like this.” Not only does the plot lend itself to so many twists and turns, the dialogue is a breeze to read. Any detective novel can often go from good to great if the writer gives us a memorable character with a compelling inner monologue. Sure, the mystery is the driving factor behind the novel but the central character is what turns one book into a long running series. Let’s just hope McBride isn’t finished with Valentine just yet.

I’ve heard that New Pulp Press puts out some really great fiction and given how much I enjoyed this novel, I can certainly see myself visiting this publisher again. Easy 5 stars.

Cross posted on Every Read Thing show less

Like so many others, I was initially drawn to this book because of the title. As a good title should, it sold the book.

After reading the description on the back, I thought the story sounded good. Funny, certainly. It wasn’t until I actually got the book in my hands I began to experience my first waves of doubt.

This book is dedicated to Charlie Sheen and it is endorsed by the man himself. That will give you a good idea what kind of content you’re dealing with, assuming you’ve gotten even the briefest glimpse of celebrity news the last few months. If you’ve somehow managed not to catch any such glimpse, this will help explain what I’m talking about: “We finished our business, had a few more drinks, and did three more lines show more of coke. I took another Oxy. I was about as ruined as I’d ever been when I felt that familiar sense of total disorientation about to overpower me. I thought I’d lost my keys. It didn’t take me long to realize I should’ve never taken that last Oxy.”

Indeed, the protagonist, Nick Valentine, is drunk and/or high throughout the entire book. The book is filled with passages in which the narrator details the crushing up of prescription pain killers so Valentine can snort them for maximum affect or the lengths to which he’ll go to get a drink. This kind of content is not interesting or entertaining to me. I cannot relate and I don’t think it’s funny.

Because of this, I considered abandoning the book about a third of the way in.

However, McBride has a certain writing style I quite enjoyed. All the more impressive considering FRANK SINATRA is his first novel. And he hits the sarcasm hard – not for everyone, but something I always appreciate. Parts of the book are truly funny, though often that humor is raunchy, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, and doesn’t appeal to everyone. Not all of it appealed to me. This story is also graphically violent. Some of the passages turned my stomach, and I don’t consider myself any kind of wimp.

Something I find interesting about this book is the author’s approach. For most of the story Nick Valentine just shows up. The story is happening all around him and he just kind of goes with the flow, drifting along on whatever he happens to be drinking at the time. It isn’t until the latter part of the book that he becomes proactive, thereby driving the story forward. Frankly, it wasn’t until this started happening that I became invested in his success in anyway.

Additionally, I always find it strange and awkward when the story is written in multiple points-of-view. While following Valentine, the narrative is written in first person. While following the other characters, most of them the bad guys, the narrative is in third person. I found it awkward in this book, too.

I always enjoy a story in which the protagonist is somehow damaged or tortured. Nick Valentine certainly fits that bill, and deep down, my impression was one of a good soul and a desire to do the right thing. However, Valentine doesn’t really make any actual attempt to be a better person or to do better; he mostly skates through telling whatever lie will keep him out of trouble. And that isn’t really anything a reader can hang their hat on. The only time we really see any sort of serious gumption or conviction from him is, again, in the very last part of the book when his dog, Frank Sinatra, is threatened. This is the point at which the reader truly has a reason to invest in Valentine and the story.

While I think there are aspects of the story that could be better, it isn’t all bad. As I said, McBride has a writing style I enjoyed. I liked his approach to dialogue, and the dialogue itself is good; snappy, witty, tight. And, overall, I appreciated his sentence structure. (Admittedly, not something that most people get hung up on, but something that can, without doubt, make or, more often, break a book for me.)

I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. If you are a Charlie Sheen or Quentin Tarantino fan, this book might be right up your alley. If you aren’t, think to yourself, “What a great title,” and keep moving. show less

One of the grittier, yet still quite enjoyable detective novels I've had the pleasure of reading. I am definitely going to keep an eye out for more from Matthew McBride in the future and I will keep hope alive that Nick Valentine (and Frank?) get another adventure to read about as well.