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dantastic's review
3.0
Since the last Bruen and Starr Hard Case effort, Max Fisher has been thrown in the hoosegow for his illegal dealings and Angela is on the run. Max lands in Attica and starts making enemies all over the place. Angela meets up with a suave Englishman who isn't what he seems. Throw in a prison riot, a murdered landlord, and an author who is obsessed with the M.A.X. and there you have it.
If you've read the other two Bruen and Starr books in the Hard Case line, you already know about Angela and her rotten choices in men and Max's line of bullshit. They're the same characters they've been in the previous two books. Every time Max, or The M.A.X. as he refers to himself, opens his mouth, I cringe a little. Not because of the writing but because Max is a dead ringer for a boss I used to have. He was a conceited douchebag too.
While I enjoyed reading about Max making the dog's breakfast out of his prison stay, Angela's part of the story wasn't much different than in her other two appearances. I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I enjoyed this book, it wasn't quite as good as Slide or Bust, although the prison setting was interesting. If you've been following the unsympathetic protagonists this far, you might as well give this one a shot. I wouldn't start my Hard Case experience with it, though.
If you've read the other two Bruen and Starr books in the Hard Case line, you already know about Angela and her rotten choices in men and Max's line of bullshit. They're the same characters they've been in the previous two books. Every time Max, or The M.A.X. as he refers to himself, opens his mouth, I cringe a little. Not because of the writing but because Max is a dead ringer for a boss I used to have. He was a conceited douchebag too.
While I enjoyed reading about Max making the dog's breakfast out of his prison stay, Angela's part of the story wasn't much different than in her other two appearances. I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I enjoyed this book, it wasn't quite as good as Slide or Bust, although the prison setting was interesting. If you've been following the unsympathetic protagonists this far, you might as well give this one a shot. I wouldn't start my Hard Case experience with it, though.
psteve's review
2.0
Has all the ingredients of something I'd like, but it in the end if feels like more a collection of in jokes than a real story. Not a lot of fun.
psteve's review against another edition
3.0
I hadn't read any novels about these two characters before. There is a lot of good action, and lots of the dialog is interesting, particularly Max who in prison pretends (not very convincingly to me, but is to the other inmates) to be a hard case, a murderer etc. But I didn't find the humor, with all the in-jokes about other mystery novels, very engaging or for the most part even funny. I gave it a 3, mostly for the cover art.
5wamp_creature's review
3.0
No surprises here. Delivers the goods. I’m not getting the joke in the ending.
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