The Price You Pay

Unsuspecting apartment dweller Jack Price is descending in the elevator when it stops unexpectedly just one floor below his. The doors open and he discovers a multitude of policemen milling around. The little old lady who lives downstairs has been murdered, execution style.

This sets Jack to wondering what the fuck is going on? (First trigger warning; Jack’s language is not that of a Sunday school teacher) “Why would anyone want to murder Didi? How did this happen just the floor below me without my knowing? Did they make a mistake and was it me they were after?”

Jack wants answers. You see, Jack is not snow-white when it comes to matters legal. He is discreet but not snow-white. He wonders if this is something to do with his less show more than legitimate business dealings. Is someone sending him a message? Is someone pissing in his pond? Does he need to take action?

Jack’s asking questions leads to consequences and consequences lead to further consequences. “The Price You Pay” is a murder mystery, an adventure thriller, a raging rampage which builds a respectable body-count. Be warned, this is not a cozy-crime novel; it is a wild adventure that I found very entertaining. I saw a review that described it as “Tarantino on steroids”. I would find it difficult to argue with that.

This is a story that exemplifies, and even paraphrases the saying, “Everyone is a hero in their own story.” The story is about respect, losing face, and fairness.

I have pondered on occasion how Frederick Forsythe’s professional assassin in “The Day of The Jackal” could carry on his business and source the tools of his trade if he were travelling in the modern world of security checks at airports and other methods of surveillance and counter-terrorism measures. Truhen indicates how the Internet and the gig-economy could facilitate such work. Some scary ideas of how today’s mobile, e-commerce, App-enabled world could be abused to facilitate illegal actions with little or no chance of being detected are described.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be reading any further books produced by Aidan Truhen. The book is not for the squeamish but it is a roller-coaster ride with the brakes off. show less

The Price You Pay is entirely in the first person present-tense voice of Jack Price (pun intended and explicitly emphasized) and his immediate interlocutors. It's all internal monologue and external dialogue with not a quotation mark in sight, not even that em-dash alternative, and never a "he said." Simple paragraph breaks and sparing direct address do all the heavy lifting of speaker identification, and they do it well.

Where plot is concerned, the book is a clear if remote descendant of John Buchan's seminal "thriller" The Thirty-Nine Steps, although set in the 21st century with an elite coke dealer protagonist and a lot more collateral damage (also, no war propaganda). To the episodic man-on-the-run structure are added extra helpings show more of violence, plus the energy and ambivalent misanthropy of an early Chuck Pahluniuk novel.

"I am a fucking asymmetric criminal startup. I got limited expertise in criminal strategic warfare. I hotdesk and I outsource and I franchise but what I mostly have is a core concept, forward momentum and the unassailable fact that I'm crazier than a fibreglass hairball." (73)

I don't think this book has any socially redeeming value other than being twisted and funny as hell. show less

This is a weird book. A cocaine dealer's inner monologue as he is caught up in - and enthusiastically escalates - a ridiculous and pointless onslaught of extreme violence, horrifying enough that it becomes cartoony. No one learns anything. Most characters don't survive. Nothing is gained, and the world is objectively worse off. And it's continuously entertaining. The sociopathic narrator has a voice that is fun to read. You like him as a character, while he also makes it completely undeniable that he is a horrible person. A true "wtf did I just read?" sort of book.

Affluent drug dealer Jack Price is surprised to learn that the woman who owns the apartment below his penthouse has been murdered execution style. Wondering if this is somehow related to himself he asks around and sets off an incredible chain of events that will change his life forever when a ruthless gang of assassins are put on his trail.

This is a very violent and profanity infested, humorously dark tale that I have briefly described elsewhere as being the illegitimate offspring of Elmore Leonard and Guy Ritchie. This is written in a first person narrative and the pace is pretty much unrelenting. Situations often verge on the absurd but there are also insights into how the world which these people inhabit could be operating right show more under our very noses utilising the dark web and businesses that operate at the edges of legality. Personally, I loved it but it won’t be for everyone.

PS. Negan’s bat is now my 2nd favourite thing named Lucille. show less

Wie abgefuckt ist denn bitte dieses Buch? Und das meine ich nicht mal negativ.
Aiden Truhen hat es echt geschafft mich mit seinem ganz speziellen Schreibstil sehr sehr schnell in den Bann des Buches zu ziehen.
Ob all die Methoden wirklich möglich sind, die der Protagonist Jack an den Tag legt, um dem Gespann der besten Auftragskiller zu entkommen, ist fraglich. Aber in jedem Fall einfallsreich und das eine oder andere Lächeln hüpfte mir da schon mal übers Gesicht, wenn einer von denen das Zeitliche gesegnet hatte.
Wer nichts gegen angefuckte Sprache hat, die auch mal böse unter die Gürtellinie geht und dabei noch Lust auf einen spannenden Thriller hat, sollte sich dieses Buch nicht entgehen lassen.

" ... I guess everyone's the morally conflicted hero of their own narrative am I right? .."

Jack Price is a cocaine dealer, targetted by an international syndicate of killers - the Seven Demons - and Jack's out for revenge - that's "... the price you pay ...".

The story is sassy, descriptive, mouthy, fast paced, punchy. Jack Price is a thoroughly despicable character - self- involved, egotistical, sociopathic, infallable, sardonic; creative and enterprising. There are just too many good one-liners in this story, to many LOl moments that you just have to read this.

Not everyone is going to appreciate Truhen eloquent use of language or his lack to traditional punctuation (I myself have lamented this of other writers) - yet it works here - show more and works really well.

" ... coffee is the judge of a person .." - I love coffee, Jack loves coffee - Truhen nails it! show less

I loved this. It was so funny—vulgar and violent, yes, but also over-the-top funny. The unique first-person narration carries the book, and, maybe surprisingly, is sustained the whole way through. (Unfortunately, the plot falters a few times.)