Jonathan Ames……and misses! BOOM! WRAP IT UP!
No but really I am trying to figure out why I didn’t like this novella. I think it plays at something and it can’t figure if it’s taking it seriously (and coming across severely unauthentic) or taking it with a kind of irony (and being boringly serious). So regardless what this comes across as an underdeveloped trope driven crime story that plays upon themes of revenge and trauma but does nothing with that that is remotely novel or interesting.
An ex-military ex-FBI contract criminal for hire is hired by a New York State senator to find his daughter who’s been sold into some kind of drug/prostitution ring. Don’t worry because if you want to know how he feels about committing violence, we will know…if you want to know how much he works out, he will tell you….if you wanna know how close…how close he came to killing himself, but stops himself at the last moment….just in time for a redemption narrative…you will get that too.
If the novel was written by someone with less of a reputation, I wouldn’t be hard on it….and if it had been long enough to actually try to earn the gravitas it plays at, I would also take it more seriously. But it doesn’t do those things. It recounts familiar stories, it borrows from better writing, and that’s all it has. The writing is fine, but both annoying and forgettable. So it doesn’t even get credit for that.
(Photo: https://improvresourcecenter.com/forums/index.php?threads/9-20-the-moon-with-jonathan-ames-chris-gethard-todd-hanson.74046/)
(Photo: n-with-jonathan-ames-chris-gethard-todd-hanson.74046/)