Title: On your mark, get set, kill.
Product review: Hardcase by Dan Simmons could be thought of as hardboiled crime fiction on steroids. The action is not merely violent, it is brutal with a take no prisoners attitude.Former PI Joe Kurtz has just been paroled from Attica after a rather long stay. His first act as a free man is to hire himself out as a stalking horse for the head of a western New York crime family whose fortunes are rapidly dwindling. This is a novel with a very fast paced, action packed narrative. The body count mounts up at a dizzyingly accelerated rate, with no shortage of new and improved ways of dispatching the ever shrinking cast.Does Hardcase qualify as great literature? No. The plotting, though not without some unexpected twists, is contrived and not believable. The characters are generally over-the-top stereotypes who lack nuance. Still, for what it is, Hardcase is very competently written. If you like action-adventure laced with graphic violence, you could do considerably worse than this book.
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