REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:

   

MICHAEL MANN & MEG GARDINER – Heat 2. William Morrow, hardcover, August 2022; softcover, January 2024. Novelization of forthcoming sequel (in development?) to the film Heat (Warner Brothers, 1995; directed by Michael Mann).

   This.

   Is.

   A sequel, by director Michael Mann, and by successful suspense novelist, Meg, Gardiner, to the popular crime film, Heat starring. Robert de Niro, Brad Pitt, and Al Pacino,

   Okay, sorry, I won’t write all of the review in the style of the book. Unfortunately, unlike this book, I have some vague idea what syntax means and how sentences are constructed.

   If you have a copy of this book you have seen the rave reviews it received.

   I have no idea what these people were smoking.

   Heat 2 picks up where the film ends. Ghris Shiherlis (Brad Pitt) is wounded and hiding out in Koreatown hallucinating from his wounds and oxycodone while policeman Vince Hanna (Al Pacino) is hunting him. Neil McCarthy (Robert de Niro) is dead, but that won’t keep him out of the novel (I use the word reservedly) which switches back and forth from seven years before the events in Heat to now.

   The novel is written in a stream of consciousness fragmented jagged present tense voice that amounts to 613 page of nails on the blackboard prose. Reading it is as close to recreating the pain I used to suffer with Cluster Headaches as I hope to ever experience.

   You may want to borrow one of the oxycodone tablets Chris Shiherlis keeps popping, but honestly I don’t think drugs would help, though this book often reads as if it was written on them.

   I’m not going to go into the plot. Instead I’ll just quote a few short bits.

   Before I start you may want to find a bullet to bite on.

   Chris head swam. My cut from the bank heist…

   Will be safe. I’ll set up an account from a Delaware trust. You can access it by phone, fax, computer. But where you’re going, don’t draw on that money unless it’s an emergency. No flash. You can’t stick out.

   I need to get some of it to Charlene and Dominick.

   Charlene, luring him into a trap. Why?       (The italics are the authors.)

   And.

   Jeans, boots, T-shirt. The Shooter. Someone named Wardell. A corpse.

   Words. Fragments. Thoughts. A novel. Not.

   “On top of me. You. Now.”

   He looks at her and smiles. She’s outrageous.

   She laughs.

   It’s like she’s a fighter pilot who has landed an F-18 on a carrier deck. She’s ready to accelerate and take to the sky again.

   Did I mention metaphor and simile get the crap kicked out of them in this book?

   I really wanted this to be good. Where’s Elmore Leonard when you need him? Elmore Leonard? I’d settle for Orrie Hitt.

   I’m weary. Now. I need a. Drink. A Scotch. Maybe you. Do too.

   This is Heat 2. Be. Afraid. Very.

   Afraid.