Mon 19 Jan 2015
A Review by Barry Gardner: STEPHEN SOLOMITA – A Good Day to Die.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
STEPHEN SOLOMITA – A Good Day to Die. Otto Penzler, hardcover, 1993. No paperback edition.
Solomita has switched publishers, and given us a new lead after five novels featuring the maverick cop Stanley Moodrow. Roland Means is, like Moodrow, an NYC cop. Means is half Native American, and known as “Mean Mr. Means.” An eighteen year veteran, he has been exiled to Ballistics for his past sins, which are legion.
He is offered a chance to get back on the street by assisting a black Captain, Vanessa Bouton, in her search for a serial killer known as “Mr. Thong” for reasons too indelicate to detail in this family journal. The NYPD is going crazy trying to catch him, but Bouton has her own ideas, and has gotten permission to form a two-person task force to try them out.
At the beginning of the book, we see a blind Asian woman abducted by a man and a woman who are obviously psychotic. Can, the reviewer asked breathlessly, these cases be connected?
This reads like vintage Solomita: hard, fast, and mean. There’s a tinge of Andrew Vachss here, too, due to Means’ background as an abused child, and much talk of many serial killers being similarly abused. The viewpoints alternate between Means and the blind captive, and the story moves along nicely.
It’s action-adventure, well written and with enough characterization to keep it from being pure escapism; but barely enough, and not all of it struck me as believable. We’ll probably see more of Means and Bouton, though.
[UPDATE] 01-19-15. There were three more books in Solomita’s Stanley Moodrow series, but Barry guessed incorrectly in his final paragraph. For whatever reason, there was never a second Means and Bouton novel. The remainder of Solomita’s output, continuing through 2014 with The Striver, appears to have been standalones.
January 19th, 2015 at 8:53 pm
I lost interest in the serial killer novel and haven’t been able to kick start it again, I didn’t even read the last Hannibal book.
I’m sure this has the qualities that Barry attributes to it, but it will take at least a SILENCE OF THE LAMBS to get me to read another serial killer book unless its about Jack the Ripper, and even then my head might explode.
January 19th, 2015 at 9:19 pm
I’m with you, David. Not my cup of tea, and it never has been. I haven’t seen or read SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, either book or movie. All things considered, I probably never will.
But perhaps someone will speak up for the serial killer novel. There certainly are enough of them.
Off on a tangent, I watched a movie last night called RELENTLESS, only because Robert Loggia was in it, only to find out that the case he and his rookie partner are on involves a serial killer on the loose in Los Angeles.
Usually that’s the key to hitting the Stop button, but I watched to the end, and I don’t quite know why. I haven’t written my review yet. I was planning to tonight. I wonder what I’m going to say.
January 20th, 2015 at 4:41 pm
I can tolerate them on television or in a movie more than a book. The problem is in order to make most serial killers interesting you have violate all the things that make them serial killers. In truth the only interesting thing about them is that they kill people and how they do it. Who they are is pathetic losers incapable of fitting into society and with exaggerated belief in their self. They kill because it is the only outlet to express themselves, because only through thru the suffering of others can they even have a face.
We have created a cult around people that barely function.
January 20th, 2015 at 5:40 pm
Solomita is a really great writer and I eagerly devour anything of his I can get my hands on.
January 21st, 2015 at 12:01 am
I probably won’t read this one, for the same reason David brought up in Comment #1 and in general I agreed with in Comment #2. I hope Solomita doesn’t always wrote about serial killers. Is there another book of his that you’d recommend?