KILLER VIBES, the authorial and series debut novel set in "Keep Austin Weird" Austin...not Alex Jones Austin

KILLER VIBES (Peter Key Mystery Series #1)
JACK FRIDAY
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Meet Peter Key: self-proclaimed “laziest private investigator in Texas” (it’s harder than it looks), full-time bisexual, dedicated stoner, and the surprised recipient of a windfall inheritance from an uncle he barely knew. Peter’s life was a mess before he became the owner of a dilapidated house in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Austin, but now he has a mountain of debt to deal with—and pushy realtors popping up on every corner to convince him to sell the land while the market is hot.

But Peter doesn’t like to be pushed around. And when he discovers a bag full of cash and a suggestion that his uncle's death might not have been an accident, he starts asking questions. When they said “Keep Austin Weird,” they weren’t joking. Just about everyone Peter meets seems to have a hidden agenda, and he soon finds himself pulled into a lethal game where not everybody plays by the rules. Fortunately for Peter, he’s never been a rule follower anyway.

Sexy, suspenseful, and packed with Austin’s quirks, Killer Vibes is the start of an iconic new series with a singular, unforgettable cast of characters.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I lived in late 1960s, 1970s, and very early 1980s Austin. I've got a lot of nostalgia for that world. "Keep Austin Weird" is a resonant slogan to me. So I'm primed to be this story's booster by happy association.

There is always an ugly side to any place humans congregate. Austin produced vile scum Alex Jones the Sandy Hook liar, who is my direct peer, being only two years younger than me and a product of the same public schools I went to. Every sunny meadow has shadows, great and small, or you wouldn't see any depth at all.

Peter Key, connoisseur of life's finer things (sex, drugs, skiving off anything that looks like work), has pushed his boundaries with those who toil that he may chillax. He's a slacker in the mothership of slacker culture; but he is, when we meet him, a slacker with a housing and eating problem.

His deus coming ex machina is Uncle Forrest, a barely-remembered relative with a house (mortgaged) that Peter can go live in; and whose death is...hinky. How did a retired daredevil racer lose control of his car badly enough to go over a cliff and die from the injuries he sustained? Why, in his seriously past due mortgaged house, is there a bag of cash? Where's the money from? What was his gambler/adrenaline junkie uncle up to? Did it get him murdered? Peter's aunt's hired a PI to investigate, but with a serious stake in the solution (who doesn't want a home?), Peter takes the PI's offer to keep going only if he'll help help with the investgation seriously.

Practical people who care about Peter are all encouraging him to cash in on his real-estate windfall, as housing in Austin is insanely expensive. Peter decides he wants a home, rolls up his joint sleeves, and begins looking around at the people badgering him for stuff Uncle Forrest "owed" them. It's a classic origin story. It's billed as #1 in a series. It's got modern energy, in that our man-bunned hero is both slacker and hedonist enough to be bi in that casual way younger men often are in my own experience. The pacing is good, the thriller elements are well deployed, the most important element of a series...the hero's ability to command our emotional investment in him...is finely crafted.

I stopped at four stars not for any prose flaw or characterization lack, but for a structural quibble: WHY ARE YOU BREAKING THE SCENES SO OFTEN?! There's no reason, and certainly no excuse, for this choppy execution when there is literally no change of time, of PoV, of subject, between them! I'd lop off another star if I hadn't enjoyed Peter's disastrously bad judgment all coming out okay for...Reasons. I really hope, Author Friday, you won't succumb to the temptation to prevent Peter from growing, from making *new* mistakes in a field he's still learning how to work but which he clearly has a solid aptitude for.

That said, I'm sat for book two.

THE TUXEDO SOCIETY: A Novel, excellent fifteen years ago, moderately fun now

THE TUXEDO SOCIETY: A Novel
PAUL RUDNICK
Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: If Guy Ritchie directed an episode of Queer Eye, it might look something like this hilarious and action-packed spy thriller by Paul Rudnick, acclaimed screenwriter and author of Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, that blends espionage and social commentary, with an elite, gay secret society.

They are fierce patriots. They are licensed to kill. And they are really, really gay. Welcome to democracy’s secret weapon, the Tuxedo Society.

When Andrew Birnbaum, a struggling actor making ends meet by working in a candle shop, gets invited to have dinner with the exclusive Tuxedo Society by his best friend, Brock, his life takes an unexpected turn. What seems like a group of wealthy socialites gathering for gossip and cocktails quickly spirals into a world of espionage, danger, and hilarity.

Andrew soon meets Reggie O’Malley, a Navy SEAL with a penchant for black tie, who recruits Andrew to join the society’s covert mission to protect national security. Armed with gadgets like an inflatable life raft backpack, a yoga mat that doubles as an assault rifle, and, of course, an AMEX Black Card, Andrew quickly finds himself tackling spies, thwarting assassinations, and facing a host of unexpected threats in settings from the White House to the Vatican to the Summer Olympic Games.

The stakes escalate when Andrew and his comrades are sent on a jet-setting mission to uncover the truth about an ancient artifact. Along the way, they clash with oligarchs, crooked senators, and a smarmy televangelist with sinister plans for world domination.

Packed with Paul Rudnick’s signature wit, The Tuxedo Society is a wild ride through decadence, danger, and unexpected heroism, as Andrew discovers that saving the world might just be the role he’s been waiting for.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Take all the silliness of a Bond flick and sprinkle fairy-dust on it, detomate a glitter bomb in a 1979 bath house, pipe in Bette Midler and Streisand and Cher interspersed with Romanovsky and Phillips, and...for the five of you still reading...and here's you a read. The trappings of the twenty-first century feel like they're set dressing. Like, this cisqueer white man cabal of queens sounds like Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Pastiche of the ways and words of the Good Old Days, fun for a while but...wears thin.

I'm the target audience for this book. I liked it. I really laughed, in pleasure, at the jokes. It gave me the happy nostalgia of knowing someone out there still remembers my heyday.

But it's twenty-fuckin'-twenty-six, y'all. Plug your hearing aid into the charger. Suicide bombers are fiendishly hard to track down using modern data analysis...gaydar shit-sure got no chance. I think we're past this kind of spying being used for humor because we're past this kind of spying being usable in real-world settings, which is always the fun of an espionage novel. It's not realistic or the CIA/NSA/MI{numeral} folk would be on the publisher, the writer, and the writer's mama with every resource they possess; but we-the-reader need to feel it *could* be and that it *could* happen like this.

But there are some lines that truly glitter like well-cut diamonds. Can't quote them because no really good examples don't also spoil stuff, annd if you don't live in fear of the Spoiler Stasi, you haven't been nastygrammed by any of 'em yet. Spoiled things.

Still a fun read, but one I'll send you to the library to check out, not your Bookshop.org cart.

ROB HART'S PAGE: The Assassins Anonymous series one and two

ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS (Assassins Anonymous #1)
ROB HART
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this clever, surprising, page-turner, the world’s most lethal assassin gives up the violent life only to find himself under siege by mysterious assailants. It’s a kill-or-be-killed situation, but the first option is off the table. What’s a reformed hit man to do?

Mark was the most dangerous killer-for-hire in the world. But after learning the hard way that his life’s work made him more monster than man, he left all of that behind, and joined a twelve-step group for reformed killers.

When Mark is viciously attacked by an unknown assailant, he is forced on the run. From New York to Singapore to London, he chases after clues while dodging attacks and trying to solve the puzzle of who’s after him. All without killing anyone. Or getting killed himself. For an assassin, Mark learns, nonviolence is a real hassle.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: A support group for assassins trying to get, and stay, clean. Self-consciously in the mold of pop-culture phenom John Wick, it goes into details that read as bloody, as twisty and twisted, as that franchise's visuals.

The idea of the reluctant assassin or killer is, it seems to me, evergreen and always uncomfortably celebratory of the killing part. Mark, our PoV recoveree, is the victim of his own former life's violence. It starts him on a journey that MUST be taken...no assassin leaves a job undone, so this attempt while unsuccessful heralds more to come...while he does his best to stay clean, not killing anyone on his way to both a resolution of the assassination contract on him and earning his one-year-clean chip. This time. Not his first try at going clean.

Harder now of course. The assassination must logically be connected to one of his past successes, so reliving those and thus reinforcing his skills and so his addiction to killing...well, the set-up is tailor made for twenty-first century storytelling tastes.

I tried to get into book two, The Medusa Protocol, but really kept losing the thread and the desire to keep hunting it. Clearly I needed to get this first book in the series. It was a good decision...Mark as the recoveree explains much about that story...and his trajectory is a great deal more satisfying in this read knowing what I know now. (Sorry, though, I'm too scared of the Spoiler Stasi's shrieking outrage to tell you why. The review is below. Read it at your own risk. I take no responsibility for your actions.)

It's like reading a native Kotaro Isaka writing a similar series. I enjoyed the bootstrapping recovery group gag enough to give this read a whole star more than the translated ones.

Maybe twenty years and a country change matter more than I thought.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE MEDUSA PROTOCOL
ROB HART
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Welcome back to Assassins Anonymous, the only twelve-step group where joining can be deadly.

When Astrid, known in her assassin days as Azrael, stopped showing up to Assassins Anonymous, the group assumed her past had caught up with her. Only her sponsor Mark, formerly the deadliest killer in the world, holds out hope that she’s okay. Then, during a meeting, the group gets a sign, or rather, a pizza delivery. Is there another psychopath out there who actually likes olives on their pizza, or is Astrid trying to send Mark a message?

Meanwhile, Astrid wakes up in the cell of a black site prison, on a remote island. A doctor subjects her to mysterious experiments, plumbing the depths of her memory and looking for a vital clue from her past. She’ll do anything to escape, except…killing anyone. Hmm. Turns out it’s not easy to blow this joint without blowing anything, or anyone up.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I too like olives on my pizza. Green ones. Go Astrid!

Again a story with lots of flashbacks to the triumphs of the assassin's past, only this time it's embedded in alternating PoVs of Astrid, and Mark from book one; it sounds like it should be confusing but Author Hart is very explicit about the changes between the varying frames of reference. Thank goodness for that! There are also a lot of spoilers for Assassins Anonymous, so don't read them out of order. Astrid's career as an assassin wasn't as interesting to me as Mark's was. I'm no longer fresh to the idea, so that was inevitable.

This read is a lot more about the sense of found family, of a genuine loving community, formed under these truly unique pressures and these impossible-to-share life experiences. I really found that facet of the story very relatable and quite moving. The family Astrid and Mark share is so powerfully bound that they risk everything to help one of their own out of a threatening situation...and redouble their efforts when they learn how bad it really is.

This statement is deeply profound, and both useful and insightful in this time of increasingly-prevalent found families:

“You know that saying, blood is thicker than water? It’s a misinterpretation. The full saying is: The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. It means that the blood you choose is thicker than the blood you’re born with. The point is, family isn’t blood, it’s who you bleed for.”

Astrid, the character developed in the flashbacks and the one enduring a deeply unpleasant present, comes across as someone you'll believe the found family of Assassins Anonymous will risk this much to rescue. It could easily, absent those moments where she's really working her program, been very much otherwise.

Solid job, Author Hart. You've cemented this series on place on my "read soonest" list.