Author: John Lansing

Published: December 2012 by Gallery Books/Karen Hunter   Publishing

Category: Crime/Thriller/Suspense

As part of my affiliation with PubShelf I was given a copy of this book in  return for an unbiased review

Jack Bertolino has retired from the NYPD on medical grounds and moved over to Marina Del Ray on the West Coast. He’s put the drug dealers, criminals and the world of cops firmly behind him.....or so he thinks.  Until he gets a call from Mia, a confidential informant he’s worked with in the past, saying they need to talk. Jack has a sinking feeling his new-found peace isn’t going to last much longer. How right he is.

When Mia is brutally murdered Jack is inevitably drawn into the investigation. After initially being the prime suspect for Mia’s murder he goes it alone using his considerable experience and contacts to gather evidence against the 18th Street Angels gang and a dangerous and widespread drug cartel.

Thoughts

A very dramatic, gripping and well written storyline crammed with action and suspense. The characters are well-developed, strong and believable. It’s obvious the author knows what he writes about and it shows.

Jack Bertolino is my type of protagonist, a good guy with principles. Not perfect but determined, steadfast and can show emotion. He’s multi layered and easy to connect with. Can you tell I like him ;-)

The story flows well and realistically, showing the extreme differences between the seedy underworld of drug dealers and gang members and the rest of society. The bad guys are frightening and vicious and don’t think twice about ending someone’s life. The violence is chilling, the title of the book has a very macabre meaning.

I like the style of writing very much, it’s vividly descriptive both in dialogue and story structure. I look forward to more Jack Bertolino.

This gamebook was in a word rubbish. It was poorly written and the character that you play is a moron and does not act or speak like the undercover detective that you are supposed to be playing. Granted, while offering some silly choices can put those foolish decisions in the hand on the player, simply having the character open his mouth to a potential source of information, and then saying something completely stupid, just simply did not seem to gel with me.

In this science-fiction book you play an intergalactic federal agent who travels to the planet of Kether to attempt to destroy a drug ring. Why is the drug bad? Well, you are not told, you are just told that it is, and the only time that you see it in action is when you use it to kill an alien. Okay, granted, drugs work differently on different people, and no doubt in a realm occupied by aliens the differing effects can be all too common, but seriously, peddling a drug that kills the user seems to be a little over the top. Granted, drug users that get too caught up in their actions usually end up dead, whether it be through an overdose or a bullet in the head, but in the end dealers have a motive in seeing their customers remain alive, and addicted.

The other thing that jumped out at me was it seemed that in the book you are playing the role of the imperial enforcer. No matter what you think of drugs (and I am not a big fan of them, having been down that road and seen the effects upon others lives, and to an extent my own), the feeling that I get from this book was that it was a part of Ronald Regan's war on drugs, namely a piece of propaganda. Granted, while I have little time or sympathy for those we call the drug barons, I do have a lot of empathy for the user and the street dealer. I have been there, and in many cases it is the result of a misjudgement and an experiment that ends up going wrong. Users and small time dealers (who are usually users themselves and have turned to dealing to maintain their habit) do not need to be incarcerated, but treated, just as an alcoholic requires treatment.

Drugs and sex are similar in many ways. I say that because both can give you the feeling of pleasure, and it is that desire for pleasure that keeps you coming back for more. However, those who promote them and those who attack them may have two different methods, but all end up with the same result, and that is to taste the forbidden fruit to find out what it is really like. In a way I would prefer somebody to approach it thinking the world of it and then being sorely disappointed as opposed to somebody who doesn't think much of it, gives it a try, and then becomes addicted.

When our media constantly bombards us with messages that 'drugs are bad' and the church bombards us with messages that say 'sex is beautiful but only in the confines of marriage' those of us who have never tried it are suddenly filled with the urge to give it a go. Drugs and sex are similar in that to experience them you need to get your hands on it, however where drugs are a commodity, with sex you need a willing participant (otherwise that would be rape). Finding the willing participant can be difficult at best, but then again so can finding somebody who is willing to sell you something that is illegal (and in many cases finding both can actually be quite easy).

This is a book on statistics, not a book that lists statistics but a book that uses statistics to attempt to answer some interesting questions, such as whether teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, why drug dealers live with their mothers, and why has the crime level dropped. The content is interesting, though not something that I entirely agree with.

First the teachers and sumo wrestlers: personally I would not need statistics to prove this, however the statistics do assist in supporting the argument. My opinion is that human sin will say that teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, however with sumo wrestlers there is also a question of pride, and with most sports people the question of pride sometimes (but not always) over rides any desire to cheat. However cheating always has and always will exist. With teachers, when standardised testing came into the US (and now to Australia) this created an inventive to cheat. If ones' performance is measured on the class's performance then bad teachers are going to want to cheat to raise the performance of their class. Teachers who don't like performance testing are likely the ones who are bad and don't want their bad performance to prove that they are bad.

Now for drug dealers: what he explores here is that the gang that he was looking that was run like a corporation, therefore the drug dealers at the bottom of the chain would not be earning as much as those at the top. This is nothing new, whether the dealer is self employed (that is buying wholesale and selling retail) or be a member of a gang (that is being an employee), it is always the ones that the top that make all of the money of the workers at the bottom. Nothing new here.

He also explores real estate agents. Once again, human self interest suggests that real estate agents will work harder when selling their own home, where they pocket most of the proceeds than when selling somebody else's home, where they only pocket commissions. However, in my industry, where I deal with a lot of lawyers, I have noticed that lawyers tend not to put more effort in their own claims than they do when working on other people's claims, which to me suggests that lawyers do tend to be honest and ethical people, which is most likely also true of teachers, real estate agents, and sumo wrestlers (but not drug dealers, who are doing something illegal).