Monday, November 28, 2011

In Nine Kinds of Pain -- Leonard Fritz

In Nine Kinds of Pain is a knockout of a book. Leonard Fritz takes a lot of chances with his narrative, including comic strips, authorial intrusions, and fragmented story-telling, but he manages to pull it off, giving us a nightmare vision of a hellish and decaying Detroit with plenty of bad people making plenty of bad decisions. There's Baby, a prostitute, and Dante, her worthless boyfriend. There's Dallas, the cop who has more problems than the usual cop, and his friend Ron Frady, who's too deep into a big scheme to make himself rich. It's hard to describe. You just have to read it to see what I mean. And I do recommend that you read it. Fritz is a powerful voice, and he has something to say about all kinds of things.

New Pulp Press proves again that being willing to take a chance on a really different kind of novel can pay big dividends. Readers who take a chance on this one will see what I mean. Check it out.

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