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ajmarquis's review
3.5
A few years ago I had the first panic attack that hit me like a truck, collapsing me directly down to the curb. I had seen a dead coyote, mauled by a car, and its child mutely observing from the tall salt marsh grasses.
That coyote was an incredible machine, sculpted by evolutionary forces into a master of a space that didn't exist anymore. It wasn't made for and couldn't really understand a world where two ton boxes of steel fly by at 45 miles per hour.
Jim Nisbet's Klinger is built for survival too. He knows the cash in his pocket down to the cent and can get through the day on little to booze away the night on the remainder. He knows not to get in too deep with the petty criminals in his orbit, because they play a kind of brinksmanship: dropping a dime on somebody is the atomic bomb but everything else is on the table.
Like the coyote, though, the world has changed around him. The new big score is the IPO and the tech overlords have none of the scruples the corner pickpockets do. Klinger knows to tape his contraband under his stool in case the cops frisk him but he doesn't know a smartphone is as bad a snitch as the tech industry that made it.
Klinger isn't made for snitch world, he's going to get eaten alive and it's going to be very sad.
That coyote was an incredible machine, sculpted by evolutionary forces into a master of a space that didn't exist anymore. It wasn't made for and couldn't really understand a world where two ton boxes of steel fly by at 45 miles per hour.
Jim Nisbet's Klinger is built for survival too. He knows the cash in his pocket down to the cent and can get through the day on little to booze away the night on the remainder. He knows not to get in too deep with the petty criminals in his orbit, because they play a kind of brinksmanship: dropping a dime on somebody is the atomic bomb but everything else is on the table.
Like the coyote, though, the world has changed around him. The new big score is the IPO and the tech overlords have none of the scruples the corner pickpockets do. Klinger knows to tape his contraband under his stool in case the cops frisk him but he doesn't know a smartphone is as bad a snitch as the tech industry that made it.
Klinger isn't made for snitch world, he's going to get eaten alive and it's going to be very sad.
myxomycetes's review
4.0
A small time crook collides with amoral dot-com venture capitalists in modern day San Francisco. What plot there is focuses largely on a top secret under development phone app, but the real entertainment is in Nisbet's prose and vivid depiction of San Francisco. An enjoyable book, both funny and sad in a "Those days are gone, but the people live on" kind of way. However I doubt most cops or crooks are as philosophical as those presented here.
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