I am very happily plowing through the stacks and shelves around my home lately. I have been reading, of course, heavy and tiring things like Foucault’s lectures (biopower) and a book on Mongolian warfare (invasions). Oh, also a really good book on growing and using hostas. Lately, I have been trying to read for quantity and mainly just very light, easy-breezy reads. I have not felt too much like some intricate tome of grand seriousness.
So I read the second book in Armand Rosamilia’s Dirty Deeds series. It is self-published/independently published crime fiction. I read the first book in the series in 2021 and enjoyed it. It ends on a “cliffhanger” (please read this as: a cheat to get the readers to buy the next book in the series.) Book two has been hanging around since then, so I decided to knock out this read without wasting any more time.
These books, which are just very short novels, are like reading 3 Musketeers bars. They are fun and easy to eat and absolutely nothing that one consumes all of the time. The brute fact is that these stories are easy readers, fun, and amusing. It is easy to follow the characters around, easy to suspend disbelief over the storyline or plot elements. The stories require nothing of the reader except a willingness to chuckle at stupid, but clean, humor.
I feel a bit odd trying to “review” these books because they do not lend themselves to reviews. Okay, since they are self-published/independently published there are a few typos/errors (particularly around chapter 11 where even character names are typos). Overall, this was not pervasive through the entire book. I am sure a quick edit would fix this – do people bother to have draft readers at all anymore? It does not matter. Any reader that is critiquing this book with any kind of vigor needs to stop because this is just not that sort of reading.
This is two hundred pages of easy font reading. Marisa has been kidnapped. A handful of characters converge during the main character’s efforts to find and rescue Marisa. Every element is superficial and maybe a touch stereotyped. Remember, this is to be read on hazy springtime days when the pollen has fallen two-inches thick and the chalky stuff is coating your eyebrows. No one is reading this to compare it to Graham Greene. As a reader, I do not want to plod through descriptions and backgrounds and esoteric theories. Just get in the car, stop at Taco Bell, and answer the phone when it rings. Stake out the hotel, have another coffee, argue with the FBI agent. See? Nothing needs to be overwrought or wrung out. No problem.
I honestly do not know why I like these stories. I think I like the main character and the setting. I like how the stories are amusing and almost made for lightweight TV series: like Monk or Psych or something. Its like reading popcorn. I cannot read these books consecutively, but they fit the bill when all my other reading and activities is heavy and exhausting. I’ve been nursing a bone bruise on my thumb from a punch that landed incorrectly. I have been trying to do some stuff outdoors daily to bring things up to speed for spring. I do not want to spend my time reading solely on the dispositif and its effects. I actually like Rosamilia’s writing because I feel like he knows what he wants to write and writes it. He seems comfortable not trying to be some other writer.
Anyway, I am enjoying clearing the to-be-read piles and reading adventurous fun things. Having a blast in 2023!
3 stars
AQ's Reviews 