Tia Ja'nae

This is a Jackie Collins book I missed coming up in my teens, that I only discovered at age 40. At some point in its life it was renamed/rebranded as The Love Killers, but I was able to cop an OG copy and well, it was damn good, and honestly, even better than that. Now for all you readers out there that know Muvah Collins as the queen of sex and raunch, this book ain’t it. In fact I will fucking tell you right now this is as close to indie crime fiction fest in the belly of the grime and urban noir side of things that she ever nosedived into, and a hell of a lot more realistic than the cheezy soap opera style commercial crime Italian mob fiction of the Santangelo series. This is more of a novella than a novel, just a bit bigger than The Bitch or The Stud, but nowhere as epically meaty as Chances.

***Disclaimer*** I was asked to ARC the book before I even knew who Vern Smith was, well before he won the award for it, and & wrote this review on my website way before I even though to write Flicking The Bic (this book's prequel), but I loved it enough to negotiate to write Flicking The Bic after I was done reading it. That should let you know how much I liked it.

Flint should not be Scratched without supervision.

Who the fuck is Vernon Smith was the first question I had when asked to arc this novel. Like I had never read anything about him or knew shit about his work. This one one of the few cases where my arcing skills got around and I was asked to write a cool little thing for the book. So I sat down thinking it was going to bore me and I could back out of it.

What a fucking pleasant surprise I read it cover to cover in about two hours because I just could not put it down until the end.

No matter what country you’re in, people love cop duos. Starsky and Hutch, Reggie and Cates, Riggs and Murtaugh, Cagney and Lacey, Crockett and Tubbs are the American standard on hard ass cops that go through a lot of shit but somehow avoid bitterness and keep their hearts of gold. Oh, and in the backdrop keeping them in line is one of the nastiest motherfuckers on God’s green earth keeping them in line. Could be a Captain, Lieutenant, Chief, whatever, but that crazy irate son of a bitch that is destined to die of a heart attack screaming at one of his officers that goes off the book too much is on the scene.

Vernon Smith’s Scratching The Flint says fuck all that, take my Canadian cop duo that defies all American buddy cop rules and deal with it.

Alex Johnson and Cecil (pronounced Sessil because he’s Canadian) are the detective dynamic duo in the anti-fraud department, with the former knocking on the sweet smell of retirement with what should be a simple gig and the latter being on the fucking job for way too long without walking around like a dog shitting tacks in a diarrhea fit. Alex is just tired and worn out and trying to make careful steps so he doesn’t spend retirement in a body bag. Cecil is the disillusioned cop like fucking Frank Serpico that feels victims should get justice and criminals should get theirs while following the letter of the law. People in hell want ice water and Alex and Cecil find out that Toronto’s Police Department isn’t interested in prosecution but how much they can make on the ass end of corruption.

Cecil pretty much bites his stiff upper lip until he and Alex are thrown into a fucked up situation investigating chop shop shit held by the best villain of all time Jean-Max Renaldo. I mean this guy is a true asshole that could bring Joker to his knees with his sadistic need to taunt motherfuckers he orders murdered as they die in the most fucked up conceivable ways imaginable. And yes, I love a good villain and totally am caping Team Jean-Max, the fucker. Anyway, Jean-Max is a smart Canuck of the French variety and ain’t even about to let two anti fraud cops get in the way of his chop. It ain’t shit for him to order somebody dead with everybody from the lawyers in the court system to the cops within the department to do his bidding via proxies to deliver information to him on how the case is going and taking out all his former employees that can incriminate him. That, he thinks will shut a few folks up. It does but it doesn’t, which leads to this paranoid spiral of him sending his Three Stooges out to kill anybody that he thinks might roll over on him. His paranoia is worse than a coke head locked in a plastic bag with a kilo of cocaine to the point he’d probably order the death of the person who could identify the smell of his farts if given a chance.

Cecil is in his motherfucking feelings when one of the witnesses, a homie from his stomping grounds that he promises to help out of a jam being involved with Jean-Max, gets executed in a manner that makes it hard eating and reading his death. He loses his faith in the Toronto legal system, the Toronto Police Department, and more importantly his superiors and his partner. He becomes a one man Jack Kersey Death Wish band when his subordinates seem not to care to investigate properly Jean-Max’s connection with his homie’s death. In other words like Axel Foley and his buddy that got killed, the Chief wants Cecil to stay out of it. Like Axel, he can’t do that and gets that time off pseudo vacation like Axel that lets him do his own investigation his way without Alex or anybody else keeping an eye on him so he doesn’t do something stupid like challenge Jean-Max into being his nemesis like Khan challenged Kirk without the scream.

That’s when things just spiral all to hell and we got us a story. This is literally like the beginning of the book, so you can just imagine what that disillusioned son of a bitch is about to do to stick it to Jean-Max. Trust me, Jean-Max ain’t likeable even though I LOVE LOVE LOVE him as a villain, so ain’t no love lost going after such a motherfucker that emulates the precise point where old dog shit on your shoe turns white.

Cecil ain’t letting shit go and neither is Jean-Max. Both of these bastards give zero fucks about rules, the law, and doing anything other than handling their business. Badge or no badge they both seek to get their fucking way even if it takes a consistent trail of bodies falling out of both bra straps to get it. This is war. Cecil is on the bivouac tired of traditional policing. Jean-Max is struggling, growing tired of correcting the incompetence of the idiots he keeps having do his dirty work. Both are holding on to their own personal moral code of ethics and morality, inciting damn near a riot on a crash course to settle scores and collect dues.

This book was just pedal to the medal action without trigger warnings the way nature intended. Oh, and it has the best sex scene with two old black buzzards in their 60s written by a white boy evah!

Now let me just make a note down here for the people that actually are going to go buy this motherfucker and sit down and read the shit out of it. It may be a little rough starting this bitch. This is a Canadian novel and as such is written in Canadian English. There is a difference getting into the swing and tempo of it if you’re use to the American pigeon English we speak so fluently, so you need to slow your roll and re-read parts that you might find challenging and get the vibe in the first two chapters before you take off like a bat out of hell speed reading this. The slang is definitely different but shouldn’t constipate you during your toilet reading time.

Now go and scratch that flint and buy two copies of the book, read one and give the other one out as a gift so people know you’re not a cheap bastard this year.

A deliciously dazzling read, Poser unlocks the world of some of the most unluckiest sons of bitches God ever put in the United States and gives us a voyeuristic read into the fucked up car crash lives of a group of people whose coincidences keep bumping into each other. There are multiple storylines running around all centering around Ambrose, a hard luck criminal that is floating on favors and lies while he sorts out a few fucked up things that have went wrong in his life. While he’s figuring it all out he befriends and falls for Jessica, the sister of a good friend co-worker who happens to be trapped in a questionable marriage with a questionable asshole with questionable tendencies who is also trying to figure her shit out. While both of them come to grips with their fucked up secrets and lies, the other cast of supporting characters tied up into their love affair are also trying to work their shit out as their reality and sanity come crashing down into each other’s lives like no tomorrow into an ending that left me on the edge of my seat wanting more.

You'll have to go to my website to read the full review.

I fucking loved the story of Mafia III: Plains Of Jars like I love Mafia III as a game. It was the first time in video game history where these assholes in corporate America got it right and let us play the racist, sexist, and misogynistic south we all learned about in the history books with a black exploitation character out there burning shit up and living past the credits. I’ve played the Mafia Trilogy over twenty years of my life – do you know how fucking fantastic the story must be for that type of replay value? Trust me, it ain’t easy. Those crazy Czechs might not speak English but they know American rage and pain, I’ll tell you that. For the rest of this review so it doesn't take up too much space go to my Random Thoughts on Articulate Madness.