Reviews of The Nihilistics
Review of The Nihilistics by Brian "The Boss" Noonan
Addictive page-turner with healthy dose of some of the old ultraviolence! The imagery this novel evokes makes reading it feel like watching a great movie! Somehow, seemingly by turning them on their heads, Mark Damon Puckett has managed to instill some of the elements of my favorite films in a totally unique story that kept me guessing until the very end. Kind of like Natural Born Killers + The Equalizer + Apocalypse Now, all in unrated versions, with a dash of grindhouse thrown in for gory good measure :) I was pleasantly surprised and loved the book...This author is definitely a rising star!
Review of The Nihilistics by Wallace Sanders
The Nihilistics is a banger of a crime novel about spree killers and their hunter, Sheriff Strake. But it may also be to nihilism what Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday was to anarchism. A higher compliment: If Puckett writes 3 more interrelated Sheriff Strake novels—and I sure hope he does—that Strake Quartet might be to 1970s street crime what Oakley’s Warlock was to 1880s rustling: something that takes a sub-genre and its delivery up a notch, which hides something of value in a mostly empty gulch. Two things about the writer’s style. First, Puckett ends paragraphs, chapters, and especially the whole bloody thing really well. I want to demonstrate this, but I can’t think of a way to do it that’s sufficiently spoiler free. Apologies. Secondly, Puckett isn’t aping any of the greats or even the very goods: not Leonard or Westlake, not Duane Swierczynski, not Matt Goldman, not Joe R. Lansdale. He’s in a class of his own. Does the novel entertain? Thrillification—that’s what this book serves up. With a side order, just possibly, of making you think.
