Scan barcode
A review by thewallflower00
Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston
4.0
An excellent crime novel. It's one of those "wrong place at wrong time" capers that involve fifty different parties trying to get the Maltese Falcon, and the main character has no idea what's going on, but in the end, he successfully screws everyone. There's corrupt cops, mafia, gangs, car chases, and gym bags full of money. Every trope that makes this genre great.
What you don't expect is how sharp and clean the writing is. Short sentences. Short words, but popping with description and energy. It's a fast read, it's satisfying, and there's no element that goes past your head. Everything is well understood and there isn't a trace of purple prose. My only beef is that sometimes you feel like characters are running in circles just to fill words. The bad guys beat him up. Then some different bad guys beat him up. But I think that's a crutch of this type of mystery-crime novel. I rarely read fiction that doesn't have some surreal element to it, but this is one of the best I read.
What you don't expect is how sharp and clean the writing is. Short sentences. Short words, but popping with description and energy. It's a fast read, it's satisfying, and there's no element that goes past your head. Everything is well understood and there isn't a trace of purple prose. My only beef is that sometimes you feel like characters are running in circles just to fill words. The bad guys beat him up. Then some different bad guys beat him up. But I think that's a crutch of this type of mystery-crime novel. I rarely read fiction that doesn't have some surreal element to it, but this is one of the best I read.