Cold! Steel! Justice! / Alexander O’Hara

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Comic Crime/Satire/Parody

Approximate word count: 60-65,000 words

Availability
Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: YES Smashwords: YES Paper: NO
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Alexander O’Hara is the pen name of Irish journalist, author, and playwright Darragh McManus. He has two other novels available – GAA Confidential, as Darragh McManus, and Terminating Hollywood using his O’Hara pen name.

Description:

Kicked off the Dice City Police Force for being too violent, Christian Beretta teams up with his old partner to keep the evil Irish Mayor from taking over the city’s illegal drug trade.

Appraisal:

When I think of comic crime novels, I immediately think of Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder series, which have entertained me for years. If you’re the same, don’t expect Cold! Steel! Justice! to meet that expectation. O’Hara describes it on Amazon this way:

Like all the great straight-to-video cop movies you remember from the 1980s, it's packed with suspense, violence, incident, smart quips, daring deeds, racial stereotypes, gratuitous nudity, men wearing bandanas in flagrant contravention of all rules of taste, and at least one scene where a Mexican druglord is incinerated in his own car. As convention dictates.

Great literature it isn’t, any more than the movies it parodies are examples of great filmmaking. But it is great at what O’Hara intended it to be. I laughed and shook my head at Christian Beretta’s antics, just like with those 1980s cop movies. O’Hara’s twisted descriptions were spot-on, and laugh inducing as well, such as when he described someone as, “feeling as low as a dachshund spelunker suffering from depression” or “feeling like the biggest jerk this side of Lindsay Lohan’s dad.” If you’re in the mood for a read that is neither politically correct nor serious, and feel the need to cut loose with a few guffaws, Cold! Steel! Justice! is the book you’re looking for.

FYI:

This book contains language and sexual situations that might not be considered appropriate for younger readers. The book uses some UK spelling and slang.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: ***** Five stars