Ugly as Sin

Ugly As Sin by James Newman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nick Bullman used to be The Widowmaker, the baddest man in sports entertainment. That is, until two crazed wrestling fans kidnapped him and cut his face off. Now he's disfigured and drifting through life after assaulting his former boss, Lance McDougall. When a daughter he hadn't seen in years tells him the granddaughter he never knew existed is missing, Nick goes looking to find the people who took her...

This is the nineteenth book in my Kindle Unlimited Experiment. For the 30 day trial, I'm only reading books that are part of the program and keeping track what the total cost of the books would have been.

There isn't a ton of crime fiction featuring a former pro-wrestler as the main character. In fact, Hoodtown is the only other one I can think of. Since this one is redneck noir with a former wrestler as the lead character, it was right in my wheelhouse.

The title, Ugly as Sin, seems to refer to Nick Bullman's disfigured state, but it also refers to the ugliness Nick encounters while looking for his granddaughter. Nick enters a world of meth, crack, prostitution, and pedophiles. Nick approaches the mystery of his missing daughter much like he did his wrestling matches, like a battering ram knocking aside all obstacles.

There's not a lot more I want to reveal. The main villain is easy to hate and the cops turn out not to be totally clueless assholes for once. I loved that the town's theater was called the Lansdale Drive-In.

I wanted to give this a five but I had to dock it a bit for something really illogical that happened near the end. Other than that, this book was pretty great. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Current Kindle Unlimited Savings Total: $108.40.


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Wolf Hunt

Wolf Hunt by Jeff Strand


When thugs George and Lou are hired to transport a man in a cage, it sounds like a gravy job. Only the man is actually a psychotic werewolf just waiting to go on a rampage...

This is the eighteenth book in my Kindle Unlimited Experiment. For the 30 day trial, I'm only reading books that are part of the program and keeping track what the total cost of the books would have been.

As far as classic monsters are concerned, werewolves often get the short end of the stick. How many really good werewolf movies or books can you name? That's what I thought. From now on, though, Wolf Hunt is going to be the first book I think of when people mention werewolves.

While Wolf Hunt has more than its share of gore and general werewolf carnage, I'd say it's more of a dark comedy. The violence is tempered with grim humor. For instance "He was pretty sure the first female orgasm he ever witnessed was when his grandmother found an antique coffee table."

Ivan the werewolf makes a great foil for professional lowlifes Lou and George, a psychotic killer driven by his base desires. George and Lou just keep plugging along, trying to recapture him so they don't end up sleeping with the fishes. Hostage Michelle throws a wrench in the works but proved she wasn't just bait or an available orifice for the main characters.

Wolf Hunt has a lot of things going for it; gunplay, comedy, gore, and car chases. It's almost like Smoky and the Bandit with a werewolf in it at times and is even more fun than it sounds. Four furry howling stars!

Current Kindle Unlimited Savings Total: $104.41.

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Crustaceans

Crustaceans by William Meikle


When an alcoholic fisherman pulls a strange crab out of the Atlantic, he has no idea what is about to befall the east coast; giant armored crabs with a taste for human flesh!

This is the seventeenth book in my Kindle Unlimited Experiment. For the 30 day trial, I'm only reading books that are part of the program and keeping track what the total cost of the books would have been.

In some ways, Crustaceans, like Clickers, is an homage to Guy Smith's Crab books, which I confess I have yet to read. Giant crabs hit the coast and go on a killing sprees, slicing people in half and devouring them. Oh, and these crabs are bulletproof.

As per usual, I'll be doing the compliment sandwich in this review, since I did like it more than I disliked it.

Crustaceans was a fun read, full of the carnage one comes to expect from something involving giant monsters. I came in expecting killer crabs on the rampage and that's what I got.

However, there were some issues with the editing. Stark is called Stack the first three or four times he's mentioned. Also, the book doesn't have anything signaling the transition from one viewpoint character to another, making it kind of jarring. Even an extra line break would have helped. The characters are pretty much stock characters: army guy, lady scientist (complete with insta-love) and alcoholic fisherman.

Again, though, I didn't come into this expecting a Michael Chabon book. I loved the underground action, especially when the heroes ran into progressively bigger crabs. The nod to Aliens about nuking the site from orbit was a nice touch. Meikle managed to create an homage to B-movie giant monster horror but still managed to deliver a fairly compelling book that begs to be made into a SyFy original movie.

3 out of 5 stars. I've never wanted to eat crab legs so much in my life.

Current Kindle Unlimited Savings Total: $100.42.

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Hacksaw

Hacksaw: The Jim Duggan Story by Hacksaw Jim Duggan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hacksaw is the biography of pro wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

This is the sixteenth book in my Kindle Unlimited Experiment. For the 30 day trial, I'm only reading books that are part of the program and keeping track what the total cost of the books would have been.

I first became a wrestling fan when I was around 7 years old, about the same time Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, right around the time Hulkamania exploded on America and changed the wrestling business forever. As I got older, I became a workrate snob decades before I ever heard the term, gravitating toward Ricky Steamboat, The British Bulldogs, and similar wrestlers. However, I always had a soft spot for a crosseyed brawler named Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

First off, this book was way better than I thought it would be. I can usually gauge how much I'm going to enjoy a wrestling book by how much of the book is devoted to a guy's pre-wrestling life. Duggan was in the ring before the 10% mark, after stints in the NFL and CFL.

Unlike a lot of wrestling books, Duggan doesn't portray himself as one of the all time greats. In fact, he's not afraid to tell stories that make him look like a dumb ass. He also talks about how important his family is to him without preaching about it.

This book is a little thin but packed with road stories, of adventures on the road while working Mid-South with Terry Gordy, Ted DiBiase, Steve Williams, and the Junkyard Dog. He talks about the incident when he got caught driving drunk and stoned with the Iron Sheik, whom he was feuding with at the time, as well as a fight on an airplane with Koko B. Ware. Like most wrestlers, he mentions his respect for Harley Race.

His time in the WWF during the boom is a little glossed over and he doesn't rehash what we've all heard before about WCW, although he talks about the Bruise Cruise, which I vaguely remember from commercials but never saw written about before.

The WWE bringing him back for one last run gets a fair amount of time, as does working the independents and getting inducted in the hall of fame. Like all wrestling books, I would have read more road stories but I didn't really have any complaints about this book.

3.5 out of 5 stars. What do you think about that, tough guy? Hooooooooooooo!

Current Kindle Unlimited Savings Total: $96.43.


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Between the Ropes

Between the Ropes: Wrestling's Greatest Triumphs and Failures by Brian Fritz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Some guys who host a wrestling radio show rehash the last 15-20 years of wrestling.

This is the fifteenth book in my Kindle Unlimited Experiment. For the 30 day trial, I'm only reading books that are part of the program and keeping track what the total cost of the books would have been.

I'm not sure what I was expecting but it wasn't this. Since the authors host Between the Ropes, I thought there would be wrestler interviews in this. Nope. It was mostly a recap of the last couple decades of wrestling, most of which was during the height of my fandom. There's very little new information here for me, and what little there was could have been found on Wikipedia if I'd cared enough about TNA Wrestling to investigate. There weren't even any opinions thrown in. Give me something! Even some arm-chair quarterbacking would have been nice.

There were some interesting quotes from wrestlers scattered throughout the text but it wasn't enough to make this book feel necessary. I'm glad this was part of the Kindle Unlimited program and I didn't actually have to spend money on it. 2 out of 5 stars.

Current Kindle Unlimited Savings Total: $87.04.

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Clockers

Clockers by Richard Price
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A drug dealer is gunned down in a diner and the brother of another drug dealer is the prime suspect. Did he do it? That's what Rocco Klein wants to find out. But can he get the suspect's brother, a crack dealer named Strike, to cooperate?

This is the fourteenth book in my Kindle Unlimited Experiment. For the 30 day trial, I'm only reading books that are part of the program and keeping track what the total cost of the books would have been.

Like most people who have read this in recent years, I loved HBO's The Wire and Price was one of the writers. This feels like the novelization of four Wire episodes in the best way possible.

Clockers is a crime book but it's also a window into the lives of cops and the crack dealers they're trying to catch. Much like The Wire, Clockers shows that both sides of the conflict are fairly ordinary human beings, not knights in shining armor or scene-chewing villains.

Strike and Rocco, the two leads, are both well-drawn, conflicted characters. Neither is particularly happy with his lot in life. Rocco sees an actor as his way out of the cop's life and Strike just wants to make enough money to get out.

The mystery is actually secondary. The real focus is on the lives of Rocco, Strike, and the rest. The crack business is a lot more complicated than I thought and now I'm even more keenly aware of why so many cops wind up divorced, alcoholic, and/or eating their guns.

The writing is a notch above most crime books, akin to Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos. I thought the plot meandered a bit but not as much as in the last Price book I read, Lush Life. The city of Dempsey is almost a character.

Four out of five stars. Maybe it's time I rewatch the entire run of The Wire.

Current Kindle Unlimited Savings Total: $77.48.

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Kindle Unlimited Experiment: The Halfway Point

Has it only been 15 days since I embarked on this mad experiment?  It feels like centuries...

My current savings total is $67.49, well on track to hit $100 by the end of the trial.  I'm reading Clockers and liking it quite a bit.  I've even managed to reKindle my enthusiasm for the project to a degree.  However, the selection is still dragging me down and I feel like I'm stuck going to one restaurant and scouring the limited menu for things I want to eat.

All is not lost, however.  I've found a couple pro-wrestling books I'm interested in, as well as a few horror books and even a couple Bizarro titles.  Since I'm over the hump, I'll let momentum take its course.

Still not planning on paying for the service, though.  At least not until they beef up the selection.