Reviewed by Carissa

 

TITLE:  Pretty Boy Dead

 

SERIES:  Kendall Parker Mysteries #1

 

AUTHOR:  Jon Michaelsen

 

PUBLISHER:  Wilde City Press

 

LENGTH:   277 pages

 

BLURB:  

 

A murdered male stripper. A missing go-go dancer. A city councilman on the hook. Can Atlanta homicide detective Sergeant Kendall Parker solve the vicious crime while remaining safely hidden behind the closet door?

 

When the body of a young man is found in a popular midtown park, police and local media quickly pin the brutal killing on a homeless gay kid with AIDS. But Homicide Detective Sgt. Kendall Parker isn’t convinced, even when the suspect is accused of assaulting a police detective with a deadly weapon.

 

City leaders want the heinous murder solved yesterday and they jump at the chance to pin the crime on the drug-craving teen. Besides, it’s an election year and remaining in office is their top priority, even at the sacrifice of the young man. Sgt. Parker isn’t easily persuaded and is determined to prove Hopper’s innocence, despite protest from his colleagues and the great citizens of Atlanta. And all threatens to expose the deep secret Parker has carefully hidden from his comrades for years.

 

REVIEW:  

 

It should be noted that the following review/rating is based more on my own experiences reading the story than what someone else, who doesn’t have my hang-ups, might have given the book.  It also has quite a few spoilers.

 

This books starts out in Jason’s pov, and for the next few chapters we are taken through his life as he attempts to screw over his boss/lover (a mobster of ill-repute) and flee the country.  Things don’t go according to plan, he ends up being killed, and then the real story begins, drawing in the lives of police detectives, newspaper men, criminals, and councilmen.

 

I have conflicting feelings about this story.  On one hand, this is a very well researched, well written crime-thriller.  On the other…I kinda spent a vast majority of the time I was reading this trying to come up with reasons as to why I should finish it.  I have never found it particularly reassuring when I have to promise myself copious amounts of sugar and/or alcohol if I reach a certain page number in a reasonable timeframe.

 

There were some things that were done incredibly well.  Like I said, it is very well written, and the descriptions of not only the crime scenes, but of the police work (as a whole), read like the author knew what he was writing about.  This was also not a romance, and it never tried to be.  I totally appreciate that when setting out to write what is a crime-thriller, and not a romance, that the author stuck with his guns and did not throw a romance in at the last minute, to tick off some box.  There were relationships playing out in this story, both romantic and platonic, both past and present, but it never tried to be what it was not.

 

But what it was, on the whole, supposed to be, was a mystery.  Except you don’t get even a fifth of the way through the book before the readers find out who the killers are.  Not the police, or anyone else investigating.  Just the readers.  And it takes almost the whole book before anyone else figures it out.  So for a vast majority of the story I was unsure why I was even still reading.  I knew who did it.  I know why they did it.  I know who it was done to (sort of…more on this later).  Forget that I dislike having to read the bad-guy’s pov (because sometimes it just can’t be helped and I should just put my big-girl britches on and get over it), but to unveil the killers so early in the story, just killed something in the book for me.

 

This was partly because I like a real mystery, one I can twist and turn in my own mind as the book goes along, but it was also because I didn’t connect with hardly anyone in this book.  Jason is self-absorbed asshole, Parker in a whining alcoholic (not that anyone ever calls him on it…more on this later), Slade is obsessive and annoying, and just about every police officer on the force–with the exception of Parker and Brooks–were homophobic asshats with enough roid-rage to make a bodybuilder jealous.  I don’t go into stories expecting to like all the characters–or even most of them–but when the only person I find remotely in tune with is the bumbling rookie who gets hardly any page time? This is not good.

 

Maybe this was a product of the way the characters were introduced, or the way their backstory is related to the readers.  Long monologues of ‘My Whole Life Story’ are boring.  And a little unrealistic.  Who, when in a conversation with a stranger, decides that it is necessary to relate every tidbit of interest (or uniterest) to the other party with no nudging or signaling that this is wanted or desired?  Well, other than my grandparents…and there is a reason I try not to get into conversations with them (well, other than the whole ‘you’re going to burn in the fires of hell’ thing.  That is a real mood killer).  I don’t need to have entire backstories related to me.  If it is necessary to the plot, then by all means, throw it in, but don’t go out of your way to inform the readers of every nuance about every single character in the story.  They will find it as an excuse to consume unhealthy amounts of Hershey Kisses.

 

Now back to some of the things I mentioned earlier (major, MAJOR SPOILERS):

 

The whole Cage/Jason switcheroo?  What the fuck?  The narrator, in chapter 26 had Cage up and walking around.  He said his freaking name.  The narrator, who is supposed to hold at least a tiny bit of credibility has apparently no qualms about lying to us, and if he/she/it lied about this, then what the hell else has the narrator lied about?  After this point I basically had trouble believing anything that was told to me, by anyone.

 

Also, why the hell was the only time anyone ever called Parker on his drinking, the one and only time the dude was not on duty while intoxicated.  They didn’t seem bugged by it when it happened before he partner got jabbed with the dirty needle, they didn’t seem all that bothered when he continued to drink after his partner was bleeding on the concrete outside.  Not when he was drinking with suspects, or hell when he decided to have a drink with the dude that had just knocked him unconscious.  At no point did any of his fellow officers, or his commanding officer, point out that drinking on the job is a fucked up thing to do.  If for no other reason, then if Slade decides to print it in his papers, then they are all royally fucked.  They are all trying so hard to keep everything out of the papers, yet no one thinks ‘Cop Drinks While Partner Bleeds’ is going to come back and bite them in the ass, if the news decides to take another bite of the department.  And I’m not even going into the legalities of all this idiocy.  For the most part, this book does a great job going into the police work of the various detectives, but this just put me off in a big way.

 

And while I loved the realism the author tried to bring to the story, the intense, and graphic nature of some of it was way too far for me.  This is something I can see as a personal issue, and others may have no problem with it, but there were several times I was close to losing my breakfast over some of this stuff.  I come from a family that has had several cops in it, I studied to be one (till I realized it would require me to actually talk to people), so I am used to the morbid sense of humor that comes with being a cop.  I am used to the stories.  I still could have done without the graphic recreation of what exactly happens to skin after a few days of decomposing.  And I am still unsure what was the point of the autopsy scene, other than to make me reconsider lunch.

 

This book was at its best, not for me, and at its worst, a little slapdash with the plot.  The writing, while incredibly well done, did not do enough to rescue the story from a pile of issues that started accumulating from the beginning.  I am willing to admit that this may not have been the story for me, but there are still some parts that would have let me down, even if the others were magically fixed to my liking.  It may be worth the read to other though.  There were an excessive number of homophobic slurs thrown around in this book, though, so if you do decide to pick it up, just be warned.  By the end I am just happy that my dinner is safe from interruption (it is St. Paddy’s, after all, and I’d kill anyone who’d come between me and my corned-beef and cabbage).

 

RATING:  

 

BUY LINKS: Wilde City Press Amazon