Anthony Neil SmithCritiques

Let's face it, I am no fan of torture porn. Just cannot handle it, do not tolerate it and don't want to read books or watch movies that feature torture in any way.
If you like a quick descend into crass physical violence after a slow start, this is the book for you.
TWs: torture, physical violence, mental illness, psychopathy, animal cruelty, murder, co-dependency.½

Happy to have filled in one of the few missing pieces of my Anthony Neil Smith reading. This is a novelette length tale that takes place during World War 2, and of course it is incredibly gory and grisly, as can be expected from this author. It is just the right length for this sort of thing--a little longer and it would have started to drag. Nice ending, in deeping with the author's seeming overall philosophy, which I'll leave you to deduce by reading his other books. Suffice to say that Smith is one of America's great overlooked authors.½

Wow what a messed up book
A corrupt ex cop Micah Slow Bear, who is a one armed Indian gets on the wrong side of the head of the reservation and casino and is given a mission to uncover the dirty dealings of another former reservation Indian.
Slow bear is not the brightest Indian but has a bad habit of not dying while everyone around him does.
His sort of girlfriend gets kidnapped and sold into sex slavery and he spends the rest of the book trying to find her. Lots of violence lots of dark humor.

This book picks up where Slow Bear left off, only it is a lot more violent and a whole lot funnier ( mostly very dark humor. Oh and it takes place at the beginning of the Covid pandemic!

This is the middle of a 3-part story begun in Slow Bear, and it is non-stop violent action as only Smith can portray it. Our protagonist hooks up with an older woman and rescues two young girls headed for sexual enslavement, fighting the bad guys at every turn. Don't stop to think about the plausibility of some of this--just enjoy it. I can't wait for the finale.

Like a a few of the Dead Man books this starts well (brilliantly in fact) and then gets a bit weaker. I'm coming to the conclusion that this happens with these books because, Matt Cahill, the protagonist, is actually really dull.
Still, the first third is incredibly good, testament to Smith's talent, and if it does go downhill after that it's still a fun read.

The third of Smith's novels that I've read, and another great read - dark, compelling and emotionally powerful, with a superb antihero at its heart.

A really superb novel, gripping, human and thought provoking. The characters are totally believable and the treatment of Islam is even handed and fascinating. I was as moved by the book as I was thrilled by it. First rate.

If you have read Smith before, you know he doesn't hold anything back. If things are going badly in the book, they are bound to get worse. And worse. The violence in this one is right up there with his Billy LaFitte books, but the characters are much more real. A man who, once he has murdered once, feels like he might as well do it again and again. And his unwilling accomplice, the butcher of the title, who...well, he is a butcher. It all revolves around a fundamentalist church, and Smith tells the story mostly through the eyes of the son of the minister--that is, the son who has fallen from grace after an affair with a churchgoer and is not a police detective instead of a preacher. The butcher is his brother-in-law, married to his younger sister. There's a lot going on here, and Smith manages to show the humanity of most of his characters, even while seeming to disagree with the beliefs of the fundamentalists. In any case, if you're prepared for carnage and some interesting characters, or if you have read Smith before and are prepared for anything he can throw at you, jump right in

I'm a huge fan of noir fiction - but it's an easy genre to miss the mark in. This absolutely hit it out of the ballpark. There was plenty of tension, a colorful cast of characters, and a plot that keeps you turning pages. I was impressed by how dark and compelling the story was, truly embracing the meaning of noir. The author has a unique voice, and puts his own twist on the genre. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future, if this is any indication of the caliber of his work. Perfect for those looking for a somewhat gritty, and very dark read.

Insane, over the top, flavorful, atmospheric, and bloody. Enjoyable tale of two post-apocalyptic motorcycle gangs having a brawl. Smith is always very readable, and this is no exception.½

Smith is definitely back on form with this short book--but WARNING, for those easily upset--this is clearly just the first part of the story. Still, it is the type of nonstop violence, with a great setting (North Dakota this time), that has been the hallmark of Smith's other great books. Slow Bear, the one-armed Indian protagonist (don't call him a hero, not yet at least), is a mess of strengths, weaknesses, and emotions. Someone has taken his woman--or maybe she was on his way to becoming his woman--and he wants her back. But the path leads through a bunch of folks who value human life about as much as insect life. I can't wait to see where this one goes. Highly recommended!½

As a writer, Anthony Neil Smith knows no limits--he will go anywhere, and in this book, he goes everywhere, even if the plot never takes out of Duluth, Minneapolis, St. Paul and points between. The portrayal of the environs of Lake Superior in the Winter will actually have you wanting to visit, although you are unlikely to want to venture out onto the ice, given what happens to a character or two here. Where to even start about what goes on in this book? We have good cops, bad cops, local cops, state cops, ex-Marine cops, psycho girlfriends, politicians, bartenders, bad parents, good parents, understanding sisters--and a whole lot of transvestites, transexuals, and at least one person contemplating becoming one or the other. We have frozen lakes, gay dance clubs, stately St. Paul mansions, under furnished apartments, interrogation rooms, lake cabins, theatres, McDonalds restaurants--and quite a barn dance. We have murder, mystery, betrayal, unbetrayals, regrets, unregrets, crossdressing, undressing, real sex, internet sex, imagined sex, hunting, hiding in bushes, drinking, and tasering. And pulling the strings behind all of it, we have a writer who seems incapable of writing a bad sentence. He can write some really revolting ones that put images into your head you wish weren't there, but not bad ones. The characters are fully portrayed and fully flawed. But we can't help but root for our flawed, and very conflicted, protagonist as he tries to get to the bottom of the disappearance of a politician's younger brother (and campaign wizard). Everything, of course is connected, in the most imaginative, disgusting, thrilling, engrossing, visceral ways possible. And of course, you can't tell a story like this from start to finish--you have to jump around in the cop's (or ex-cop's depending on the particular moment) head as he tells the story in the way that makes the most sense to him. And Smith pulls it all off, leaving us with a satisfying, if perhaps temporary climax as we wait for the sequel, which comes out a month after I'm writing this. I have pre-ordered it. You should also.

If you haven't read Anthony Neil Smith, you can't imagine what you're missing. If you want books that grab you by the throat and don't let go until you're finished, this is it.

As one of Mr. Smith’s biggest fans, I was excited to receive this ARC from NetGalley. With Smith, I knew to expect nothing ordinary—with each book he tests (and breaks) the limits in one way or another. Most recently, he has published tow engrossing novels about a Minnesota cop who is thinking about a sex change—all the while dealing with murder, political corruption, father issues, and a host of other bothersome things, such as what kind of women’s clothes suit him best. Before that, Smith wrote about two Minnesota-born Somalis who headed to Africa to become pirates. And of course, there is Billy Lafitte, the former corrupt New Orleans cop who tries to start over in Minnesota, ends up pursued by the FBI, and whose life goes from bad to worse to unimaginably worse as the series goes on. Disgusted by the lack of sales for this incredible series, the author seems to have killed Lafitte off in a blog post…. His one-off books, such as Worm, the story of a guy from Alabama trying to make some good money in the oil fracking fields of North Dakota, where it turns out that his boss is an on-the-run Serbian war criminal, are just as good. Worm is in fact better than the last couple of Lafitte books.

With this kind of track record, I looked forward to what he might conjure up in this new book. Again, he tests the limits. The protagonist, Judd, washed out of the Navy Seals during the final stage after mistakenly shooting and seriously wounding his instructor. After being finally absolved of purposeful intent, Judd returns to Minnesota and finds a boring but steady job in the international money transfer department of a bank. This gives him a great chance for video chatting with an intriguing, beautiful woman named Cat at a Scottish bank. Meanwhile, his instructor, who is unfortunately called “The Cleaver,” has been forced out of the Seals due to his injuries. This is really bad, because it was the only thing he was good at. So, he decides to move to Minnesota himself, do some heavy drinking, and stalk the man he holds responsible—Judd. This goes on for a while and is somewhat interesting, but the book takes a big turn when Judd gets on a plane for Scotland to meet Cat in person, and the Cleaver follows, turning somewhat improbably from a stalker to a protector.

And to paraphrase Mac Davis, it gets weird. Like all of Mr. Smith’s books, it is a page turner, but in this case, I almost didn’t want to turn some of those pages. Even in his pseudonymous XXX Shamus, Smith has never written anything quite so stomach-churning. Or maybe—and I think this is what I really believe—it is just that the characters aren’t interesting enough to make me work through the pain. While the Cleaver shows an additional side to his character, Judd just does one stupid thing after another. He may be a better person morally than Billy Lafitte, but he isn’t half as endearing. As for Cat and her friend Alistair, they are much more one-dimensional than most Smith villains. You will read to the end—you have to—but you’ll be happy that the prospects for a sequel look dim.

As much as it pains me for one of my favorite authors, I have to give this one just three stars. It would be nice if all authors could just get off this Navy Seal kick. Its much more interesting to see what a corrupt ex-cop or an ordinary guy trying to make some money in the fracking business can get themselves into—and how they try to figure their ways out. The characterization in those books runs much deeper, and the end result is a read that, however dark and disturbing, is also immensely rewarding.

Interesting that this author portrays the FBI agent as having his own agenda and looking to support that agenda rather than seeking the truth.

More violent than I like, I prefer escapism.

The great thing about being a member of netgalley is the opportunity it offers to the avid reader to explore genres and authors that would have otherwise have passed him by. Equally it gives new authors the chance to reach out to a much greater audience when hopefully their books will receive a warm welcome. I thought The Cyclist was an excellent example of an exciting story that kept me captivated from first page to last and all in one sitting! Not bad for an author whose writing I had only just met...so what's it about?

Judd almost became a navy seal, his friend and mentor Burt "cleaver" worries about him following an incident with live ammo during a field training exercise..."Whatever made him think he was a SEAL material, God only knew".... Judd in his own mind is a washed out failure spending his time cycling and surfing the net in the hope?..........Cat is the answer to his dreams an online companion who finds him funny outgoing and personable, the fact that she lives in Glasgow and he in Minnesota is but a small problem. Judd makes the decision to take out his meagre life savings and make the long journey to Scotland hopeful and confident that Catrina is the love of his life. What follows is an exciting thrill a minute tour de force as Judd tries to comprehend the complex Cat as they journey and cycle north of Inverness in the harsh yet beautiful Scottish countryside. To disclose more would spoil the delights and gruesome pleasures that await you dear reader of my review! I will only add that "Cleaver" shows the meaning of true friendship, and Cat will need to explain to an infatuated Judd just what her relationship with Alistair is?

Many thanks to the good people of netgalley for sending me a gratis copy of The Cyclist in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written. Highly Recommended.

The second part of Anthony Neil Smith's Castle Danger series seems to tie up most of the loose ends--except for Manny Jahnke's ongoing gender identity struggles. On the down side, the plot is truly unbelievable. Even with my low opinion of politicians and their enablers, I'm not inclined to think they get their kicks from torture porn sites on the dark web, but perhaps I am naïve! In any case, once the book hits its stride, about halfway through, it doesn't matter if it is plausible or not. You have been sucked in--or perhaps chained to a wall--and you are locked in for the duration. The unlikely partnership between Manny and Joel is again at the center of the story, although Joel's dominating girlfriend, Robin, who played a key role in the first book never puts in an actual appearance, although she is referred to frequently. I guess her active involvement would have added at least another 50 pages to the book, which it doesn't need.

As always, Smith takes the story to places few other writers dare go, and he writes so well you can't help but follow. It would be futile to try to summarize the plot; just enjoy the situations and the characters. I should NOT have used the word "enjoy" there....

Where does it go from here? Will Manny and Joel continue book after book as some sort of alternate-Minnesota version of Hap and Leonard? Smith puts his characters--not just in this book--through such hell that I often think they deserve a long rest. Certainly Billy Lafitte does (did?)

Smith should be read by anyone who wants a novel to be more than just a pleasant entertainment or a way to pass a few hours. If you value great writing, you must check him out. I can't wait to see where he goes next.½

A fun piece of PI fiction cowritten in some obscure manner by two
writers. It is a quick read and nonstop action. Great crime fiction. Z Z
Del Presto is hired to spy on a man's wife but instead gets involved
with the lovely daughter Rachel. Unfortunately, several eyewitnesses
see him stab Rachel just as the police pull up. But maybe he is safer in
the pokey since all kinds of hit men are after him. There are places in
the story where the sense of humor particularly with regard to the
descriptions of people and places is just terrific. Indeed, the scene on
the commandeered boat is not to be missed. There are great charcters
here as well. Worth your time reading.

Billy Lafitte figured out at an early age that the best way to bend the law was to be the law. This book – the first in a trilogy – kicks off like it’s a plain and simple of story of brutally bad backwoods America, where every shed hosts a meth-lab and every corrupt lawman demands his dues.

But then the narrative escalates into something much bigger. There’s a coherent, carefully crafted plot driving the action. There’s more than money motivating the stone-cold killers who’ve rolled into town and are making bloody examples out of the local lowlives.

At the centre of it all is Billy, already a two-time loser. On his last chance with a law enforcement badge. An adrenalin junkie with a penchant for making exactly the wrong call at the vital moment. And an intriguing character; not a cardboard cut-out, not a two-dimensional hillbilly bad-boy, but a convincing person motivated not just by greed and lust (although they sure play a part)

Yellow Medicine brings something of Louisiana’s laid-back lawlessness to the chilly, big-sky snows drifts of Minnesota, and the squeaky-clean college town of Ann Arbor. It’s less gruesomely explicit than some recent ‘country noir’. Although the pace is driven relentlessly by a succession of escalating violent encounters, it has more the feel of a mature thriller than a hack-n-slash horror crossover.

At its core, Yellow Medicine peels apart some of the most important issues in contemporary politics and Billy himself provides a conduit to examine American motives and actions on the worldwide stage of religious conflict. Author Neil Smith flings his net wide, using what a first sight appears to be a ‘simple’ crime novel to say in public some of those troubling thoughts which usually only get discussed in private.

And he tells a ripping yarn, too.
8/10

Some caveats: If you haven't read the first three books in the series, you aren't going to know what the hell is going on or who all these people are or what their significance is. If you have read the first three, you are going to wonder what Billy is supposed to be up to and you're going to be amazed or frustrated at the very strange ending--which leads right into the next sequel. It seems Billy is like Jason from Halloween - you can't kill him.

All that may make it seem like this book isn't that good, but that wouldn't be the case. Despite the total nihilism that reigns throughout, Smith creates his violent set pieces with such mastery that you just have to watch. Even better than a good train wreck. The Lafitte series has passed beyond the realm of anything that can be evaluated using any normal criteria. Some people will hate it, and not get past book one (Yellow Medicine). Others will persist and be happy to award the author his meager royalties--BECAUSE THE MAN CAN WRITE. No one can get more mileage out of the pain, suffering, and stupidity of his characters than Smith can, and in this book, there are certainly some characters. In addition to Lafitte, who is worse than ever and a menace to anyone around him, including some unfortunate innocents, we have a waitress-from-hell who falls in (mutual) love with the former Black Gulf Mob (BGM) member whose brother Lafitte killed before the opening of the first book. Although he has given up the mob life and become a successful professional gambler in the ensuing years, he still has to murder Lafitte. He should have read the first three books and moved to Las Vegas instead. The waitress is more murderous than he is, and after all, working at the Waffle House was a pretty dead end job....

We also catch up with Franklin Rome, the obsessive FBI agent who has been trying to catch Lafitte since the first book. I won't spoil that subplot, which is one of the weirder ones I've ever encountered. And there is more. You'll just have to find out for yourself.

So, I'm giving it 3 1/2 stars because despite the entertainment value and the amazing episodes, Smith can still do better, as when he injects a note of seriousness such as in Worm or his Adem & Mustafa series.

I'll be back for volume five, though, I can tell you that.½

Banned from Amazon!

Anthony Neil Smith set out to write a novel (under a pseudonym) that would test all the boundaries and break them--at least in terms of sex and violence. Actually, only the sex goes beyond what you'll find in his other books. It is raw and painful--for the characters in the novel and the reader. About a third of the way in, however, Smith's inerrant ability to draw you into the plot wins out and you'll stick it through to the end. It concerns the hunt for a pregnant 17 year old, who may or may not have been abducted or worse. All in all, the story works about about like it should. However, and this is a big however, the protagonist is such a dick (yes, that has a double meaning as he's a private investigator also) that this novel just can't be rated up there with Smith's classic novels (see my other reviews). All he (not Smith--I'm talking about the protagonist, Hopper) has to do is walk into a room and women are ready to give themselves to him in whatever way hasn't already been checked off from the book's list of sex acts. So, bottom line, this is proof that Smith can do just about anything he wants to do and still end up with a pretty compelling read--but I hope he has better things to do with his time than write a sequel.

The reason Anthony Neil Smith is a writer and I'm not is that he is absolutely fearless. This story plumbs the depths of man's depravity (and when I say "man's" I mean "men's") about as deep as you can, and yet even the worst characters have elements of humanity. When a Serbian War Criminal may not be the worst person in the book, you know how bad things must be. For the way he delves into the minds of multiple characters, this may be Smith's best book yet, which is really saying something. No one else writes books that are so consistently riveting from the first page to the last. But this isn't just potboiler material. It reeks of reality. Smith's portrayal of the fracking fields of North Dakota will have you sweating during the summer passages and looking for your heater and long underwear during the winter ones. The book's protagonist, Finn, nicknamed "Ferret" by his boss, is just trying to make a good buck and manage to keep his family together. But that takes money--a lot more than oil work pays, even at the inflated salaries that are drawing a stream of hopeful men to North Dakota, only to find out that in boom times, the price of everything goes up. Way up. Smith's portrayal of the town, with its strip clubs, Walmart, and Hardees is unforgettable. This may not quite have the gravitas and grandeur of the Grapes of Wrath, but it isn't a stretch to compare Smith with some of America's great writers, including Steinbeck and Hemingway. As dark as it was, I still loved this book. Smith's ability to take us to another world, whether it is Minnesota, North Dakota--or Somalia--is unparalleled. Read it. Read it. Read it.

If Anthony Neil Smith isn't the best writer in America, I don't know who is. Taking up three years after the previous book, All The Young Warriors, left off, this book follows Adem back to the Middle East in search of the woman he fell in love with in the first book. Meanwhile, his father, Mustafa, back in the Twin Cities has decided the only way to locate and free the daughter of his Somali cousin in Kenya, who has been taken to America as an enslaved prostitute, is to rejoin and take over his old Somali gang, which should provide him with the leads he needs to find the girl.

Let's just say that neither father or son are making very good decisions throughout most of this book! The book's chapters alternate between the two stories, and each is as strong as the other.

Adem is, however, a bit savvier than he was in the first book, and the stories of how he gets out of several scrapes with death form some of the most exciting parts of the book. This is a non-stop thriller that you won't be able to put down (unless someone cuts your arm off.) That doesn't happen in this book, but plenty of other gruesome things do. These are dealt with pretty matter-of-factly, though not without some grim detail. It's a wicked world we live in, as someone said in a song.

Along the way through this wild ride, there are occasional moments of implausibility, but things move so fast and the overall narrative is so strong that these occasional lapses are soon forgotten. The book's ending is satisfying, but definitely leaves room for a third volume. You don't have to read the first volume of this series to appreciate Once a Warrior, but I highly recommend you do. If you haven't discovered Smith's writing, you don't know what you're missing.

Victor Gischler, writes off-beat little gems. This one was co-authored by Anthony Neil Smith. It was 99 cents for my Kindle and worth much more.

Z.Z. Delpresto, P.I. is not having a good week. He’s been hired to spy on the mother of a girl he ends up making love to only to have her be killed and he is found with the murder weapon in his hand. Delpresto finds nothing going his way. “Amazing how fate can work against us sometimes. We like the think we’re the center of the Solar System, everything revolving around. More likely, we’re the center of the vortex when we flush the toilet.”

Warning: not literature, just fun and when you get as old as I, fun often trumps obscurity. I do, however, draw the line at Gischler’s X-men stuff.

This is Smith's best book yet (as of August 2013, anyway), which is saying quite a lot, as the Billy LaFitte series is tough competition. Like the LaFitte books, ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS is full of gut-turning violence, filthy language, and characters of questionable morality. But whereas LaFitte has a bit of an over-the-top cartoon superantihero feel to him that detracts a little from the otherwise gritty nature of the stories, ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS is taken straight from reality. It starts with a hideous murder of two small town Minnesota police, then follows the two young Somalis, Jibriil and Adem, who were involved from Minnesota to Somalia where they go to join the fight against--well, the West, I guess, but the ragtag Somali militia they join spends a lot more time stealing from its own people and meting out blood-curdling punishments to members of their own group for various offenses. One of Smith's great strengths as a writer is that he doesn't flinch at anything. He will go where the story needs to go and he will write what he has to write--whether it is a stoning for adultery or cutting someone's hand off for stealing bread.

The book alternates chapters between what is happening in Somalia and a Minnesota cop's very personal pursuit of the killer. It's personal because one of the police who was killed was his lover--three months pregnant with his child--and he was in the process of leaving his wife for her. The cop, Ray Bleeker, is not a sympathetic character no matter how much we feel for his loss. He is constantly on edge, a danger to himself and everyone around him, and he goes out of his way to offend. This is quite problematic since in order to track down the killer, he needs the help of Adem's father, Mustafa, the ex-leader of a Twin Cities Somali gang who quit for his son's sake and now works at the Target warehouse! Mustafa is not a person to be trifled with, but in a nice twist, it is the ex-gang leader who is the calming influence in this mismatched duo. Slowly they begin to understand and trust each other enough to start to trace the whereabouts of Adem, whom Mustafa believes to be innocent of the murder, and Jibriil, who he is convinced pulled the trigger.

From Minnesota to Somalia, this is a riveting tale of almost non-stop action that the author never lets get out of control. There are a lot of other memorable characters along the way, but I won't give away any more of the story than I have. This is a book you must read. Smith is quite simply one of the best writers I have ever read, and this is a masterfully told story that will grab both your gut and your heart.