Not a big fan of this book. It was written like a mashup of the Johnny Dollar radio show (which is where I think Tad Williams got the idea to name the main character “Bobby Dollar”) and the Kolchak tv series. Very Sam Spade, hardboiled detective, old film noir, complete with gangsters, dames, booze, shoot-outs, and double crosses; heck, it even has a golden stand-in for the Maltese Falcon. The big change is that instead of detectives, cops, and gangsters, you have angels and demons, having court trials to decide which direction each soul goes. Of course there’s a conspiracy and Bobby not knowing who he can trust or how far it all goes, and of course the book leaves a lot of questions unanswered to set up for the next two books; the problem is that I just don’t give two shakes about any of it. I have absolutely no interest or desire to read any further; the characters are unlikable, the action is formulaic, the plot is cookie cutter; you’ve seen at least one Humphrey Bogart movie you can probably see where it is all going. Now I realize that in most Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett books the hero is always more of an anti-hero, but at least there he’s slightly interesting; the only thing Bobby Dollar has going for him is that he drives a 1971 Matador Machine in copper with checkerboard interior. The car may be ugly as sin, but at least it sounds interesting. (Of course, when I mentioned this fact to my mother, she could perfectly recall the “What is it? It’s a Matador!!!!!” commercials that were out in the ’70’s, so at least the car is memorable if the book isn’t.) Probably the only other thing that I found memorable about the book was that the main moll female lead was called “Casimira, the Countess of the Cold Hands”, or as I lovingly referred to her, “Casimira, the inspiration for Jay and the Americans’ Come a Little Bit Closer“. Probably everything I needed to know about this book before I bought it was that Amazon recommended it in it’s “People Who Bought This Also Bought” for The Devil’s Advisor. There is also one angel who the others stationed on Earth call Clarence (after, of course, It’s A Wonderful Life) that I just wanted to take a crowbar to his head; “Gee willikers mister, I’m just so innocent and earnest” gets old real fast.
At 441 pages, this book does not speed by like a bullet, it drags like molasses. I’ve heard Tad Williams is an excellent writer; I guess I just hit him on a bad book. There is just one good quote in all of it:
If the road to Hell is paved in good intentions, a friend of mine used to say, the road to Heaven is paved with bulls**t and busy work.