Thu 8 Nov 2018
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: JOHN ANGUS – The Monster Squad.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
JOHN ANGUS – The Monster Squad. Cat O’Neil #1. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1994. No paperback edition.
Angus was born in Germany, has been a bartender and a security guard, and now is a computer programmer. Interesting background. This is his first novel.
Caitllin (“Cat”) O’Neil was a LAPD vice cop for six years, until she shot a perp and then decked her Captain for making unwelcome advances. Now she’s a Deputy Sheriff in Madison, Oregon, and in charge of the Dog Shift, which is populated by a group of mixed miscreants known as “The Monster Squad.”
After her time on the mean streets of L.A. she’s no shrinking violet, and that’s just as well — the group she’s supervising gives new meaning to the words “crude,” “vulgar,” “sexist,” and “tough.” Not long after she’s begun to try to whip them into some sort of shape, one of her crew is found murdered in his squad car, and links with him and a prostitution ring surface, Maybe L.A. Vice wasn’t so bad after all.
Well, this was different. O’Neil is tough as a frozen corn cob and obscenities peg out around 1,000 on the nasty-talk scale. It’s not really a very nice book at all, dealing as it does with teenage prostitution and various other unsavory subjects.
I’d call it macho is the lead weren’t female; macha, maybe? It’s well-written from a prose/packing standpoint, though there’s no lyrical prose (unless the f-, s-, p-, c-, etc. words strike you as lyrical, in which case it’s a whole songbook) and no characterization of any depth beyond O’Neil herself.
Despite the fact of the lead being a strong female character, I can’t see this appealing much to women — but then, I’ve been wrong a few thousand times before about what women like.
Bibliographic Update: This was the only book in the series, and in fact, John Angus’s single work of crime fiction.
November 8th, 2018 at 7:45 pm
The review for Kirkus ends with:
“Sims, always the most incorrigible, even gets killed, leaving behind an underage Thai hooker in his cruiser’s trunk and, almost as an afterthought, an unsavory aroma of county-wide corruption that would make quite a mystery in a more vigorously plotted book. First-novelist Angus sets up his likeable, foulmouthed heroine and her supporting cast as heartlessly as if he were writing a sitcom pilot. Now that he’s assembled his characters, maybe he’d like to give them a story.”
The one in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY concludes as follows:
“Growing accustomed to small-town routines, Caitlin gradually pieces together who killed the deputy and why. Gritty action scenes distinguish Caitlin’s first appearance, but she herself rarely exhibits more than two dimensions.”
November 8th, 2018 at 8:07 pm
SHE’S THE SHERIFF meets Joe Waumbaugh.