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Pike
Douglas Pike is no longer the murderous hustler he was in his youth, but reforming hasn't made him much kinder. He's just living out his life in his Appalachian hometown, working odd jobs with his partner, Rory, hemming in his demons the best he can. And his best seems just good enough until his estranged daughter overdoses, and he takes in his 12-year-old granddaughter, Wendy. Just as the two are beginning to forge a relationship, Derrick Kreiger, a dirty Cincinnati cop, starts to take an unhealthy interest in the girl. Pike and Rory head to Cincinnati to learn what they can about Derrick and the death of Pike’s daughter, and the three men circle, evenly matched predators in a human wilderness of junkie squats, roadhouse bars, and homeless Vietnam vet encampments.
224 pages, Paperback
First published June 13, 2011
About the author
Benjamin Whitmer
14 books161 followersBenjamin Whitmer was born in 1972 and raised on back-to-the-land communes and counterculture enclaves ranging from Southern Ohio to Upstate New York. One of his earliest and happiest memories is of standing by the side of a country road with his mother, hitchhiking to parts unknown. Since then, he has been a factory grunt, a vacuum salesman, a convalescent, a high-school dropout, a semi-truck loader, an activist, a kitchen-table gunsmith, a squatter, a college professor, a dishwasher, a technical writer, and a petty thief. He has also published fiction and non-fiction in a number of magazines, anthologies, and essay collections.
Pike
is his first novel.
He lives with his two children in Colorado, where he spends most of his free time trolling local histories and haunting the bookshops, blues bars, and firing ranges of ungentrified Denver. Right now, he’s probably sitting with a book in hand, staring out his window and dreaming of a tar paper shack somewhere in the Rockies, about fifty miles removed from his nearest neighbor.
He lives with his two children in Colorado, where he spends most of his free time trolling local histories and haunting the bookshops, blues bars, and firing ranges of ungentrified Denver. Right now, he’s probably sitting with a book in hand, staring out his window and dreaming of a tar paper shack somewhere in the Rockies, about fifty miles removed from his nearest neighbor.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
March 7, 2012
Reformed criminal Pike's life is turned upside down when his estranged daughter dies and a twelve year old granddaughter he never knew existed is tossed in his lap. Pike and partner Rory head to Cincinnati to find out what happened to his daughter. Meanwhile, a dirty Cincinatti cop named Kreiger has interests in Pike's daughter and granddaughter...
Benjamin Whitmer's debut novel is a bleak noir tale that explores the Kentucky backwoods and seedy underbelly of Cincinatti in the old days of 1985. He does equally well depicting the redneck way of life as well as the ghetto life of pimps, junkies, and whores.
Pike reminds me of an older version of Richard Stark's Parker. He'll do whatever it takes to get the job done, dragging Rory along with him. It's essentially a detective story, Pike digging into his dead daughter's past as a junkie and prostitute, but it also feels like a western at times. The violence is frequent and brutal.
As I said before, Pike reminds me of Richard Stark's Parker and I can see Stark's influence in the writing at times, but the primary authors Pike brings to mind are Jim Thompson and Chester Himes. Pike's struggles with his past remind me of Thompson quite a bit and I couldn't help thinking of Chester Himes when Pike and Rory went to Cincinatti. They reminded me of redneck outlaw versions of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. Normally I don't go for stories written in the present tense but I feel Whitmer used it well here.
Any complaints? Not really. I wouldn't have minded more of Pike's granddaughter Wendy and a little more of Kreiger but those are pretty nitpicky complaints.
That's about all I can say without blowing any of the plot. The book is short but really powerful. Much like a good punk rock song, it was perfect at the length it was and any more would probably have been too much. It's an easy four star book.
Later:
I did an interview with Benjamin Whitmer on my book blog and it's one of my favorite ones.
Benjamin Whitmer's debut novel is a bleak noir tale that explores the Kentucky backwoods and seedy underbelly of Cincinatti in the old days of 1985. He does equally well depicting the redneck way of life as well as the ghetto life of pimps, junkies, and whores.
Pike reminds me of an older version of Richard Stark's Parker. He'll do whatever it takes to get the job done, dragging Rory along with him. It's essentially a detective story, Pike digging into his dead daughter's past as a junkie and prostitute, but it also feels like a western at times. The violence is frequent and brutal.
As I said before, Pike reminds me of Richard Stark's Parker and I can see Stark's influence in the writing at times, but the primary authors Pike brings to mind are Jim Thompson and Chester Himes. Pike's struggles with his past remind me of Thompson quite a bit and I couldn't help thinking of Chester Himes when Pike and Rory went to Cincinatti. They reminded me of redneck outlaw versions of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. Normally I don't go for stories written in the present tense but I feel Whitmer used it well here.
Any complaints? Not really. I wouldn't have minded more of Pike's granddaughter Wendy and a little more of Kreiger but those are pretty nitpicky complaints.
That's about all I can say without blowing any of the plot. The book is short but really powerful. Much like a good punk rock song, it was perfect at the length it was and any more would probably have been too much. It's an easy four star book.
Later:
I did an interview with Benjamin Whitmer on my book blog and it's one of my favorite ones.
May 15, 2017
The holes they dug themselves into were exactly the shape of their dreams.Whitmer's writing is contemporary noir in perfect pitch. Just like his title protagonist, his prose is muscular but spare. It only speaks when it has something to say, and when it has something to say, it packs a punch with very little. This is the type of fiction I love.
The book focuses on four damaged characters who know what they are and don't ask for sympathy. Pike, a hard-ass with a violent past who seems to be quietly enduring some sort of penance, his best friend Rory, an aspiring boxer who is haunted by his parents' deaths, training for one last shot at success by winning a tough man tournament (and has an unhealthy dependence on Vicodin), a corrupt Cincinnati cop that has his own twisted moral code, and a dirty-mouthed girl named Wendy who's 12-years-old-going-on-45, and happens to be the child of Pike's estranged daughter who has died recently of a supposed heroine overdose. These are strong characters and although I wanted a little more, I was fascinated by how engaged I was with them, with such little information given.
"Take it from an ex-con, the market in redemption is running low."Afterwards, I felt like I wanted to know more about Pike and Wendy, and more detail about how they change one another, but part of me feels that if Whitmer focused more on that, it would introduce a sentimentality that would be completely out of place here. This book features some of the most impressive writing I've read all year, and I'm excited to read more from this guy.
He smokes his cigarette until there's nothing but a smoldering scrap of paper between his fingers, staring at the tombstone as though some kind of answer might bloom out of it.
None does. He doesn't even have a good question.
October 22, 2011
This book comes at you like a redneck with a broken bottle in a roadhouse on a Saturday night after you insulted his favorite NASCAR driver.
As a young man, Pike had left his Kentucky home town and embarked on a trail of criminal shenanigans that culminated in some Mexican misadventures. Now back in Kentucky in the mid-1980s, he’s trying to live a quiet life working home renovations with a young man named Rory. Rory dreams of being a boxer and is engaging in weekly fights staged at a bar while training for a tough man completion.
Pike learns that his daughter, a hooker and drug addict, has died from an overdose and takes in his granddaughter, a 12 year mouthy girl named Wendy. A corrupt cop from Cincinnati named Derek Kreiger comes to town while trying to lay low during an investigation of an incident that sparked a riot. Derek takes an big interest in Wendy, and Pike sets out to find what the link was between the dirty cop and his dead daughter. Rory joins him and the two men end up dealing with addicts, whores, disgruntled Vietnam vets as well as someone who went to the Michael Vick school of animal care.
I’d never heard of Benjamin Whitmer until I saw him on a panel about sex and violence in crime fiction at Bouchercon in St. Louis last month. He made a lot of interesting points during the discussion and his book sounded interesting so I made a point to pick up a copy and got to chat with him several minutes. I’m very glad I did because otherwise I might not have ever read this.
The story isn’t quite as linear as a summary makes it sound like, and it’s one of those that demands the reader keep up rather than having everything explained to you. At times it reminded me of Winter’s Bone, No Country For Old Men, the TV series Justified and a Steven Soderbergh film starring Terence Stamp called The Limey, but it definitely has its own style with a dark and violent story to tell.
As a young man, Pike had left his Kentucky home town and embarked on a trail of criminal shenanigans that culminated in some Mexican misadventures. Now back in Kentucky in the mid-1980s, he’s trying to live a quiet life working home renovations with a young man named Rory. Rory dreams of being a boxer and is engaging in weekly fights staged at a bar while training for a tough man completion.
Pike learns that his daughter, a hooker and drug addict, has died from an overdose and takes in his granddaughter, a 12 year mouthy girl named Wendy. A corrupt cop from Cincinnati named Derek Kreiger comes to town while trying to lay low during an investigation of an incident that sparked a riot. Derek takes an big interest in Wendy, and Pike sets out to find what the link was between the dirty cop and his dead daughter. Rory joins him and the two men end up dealing with addicts, whores, disgruntled Vietnam vets as well as someone who went to the Michael Vick school of animal care.
I’d never heard of Benjamin Whitmer until I saw him on a panel about sex and violence in crime fiction at Bouchercon in St. Louis last month. He made a lot of interesting points during the discussion and his book sounded interesting so I made a point to pick up a copy and got to chat with him several minutes. I’m very glad I did because otherwise I might not have ever read this.
The story isn’t quite as linear as a summary makes it sound like, and it’s one of those that demands the reader keep up rather than having everything explained to you. At times it reminded me of Winter’s Bone, No Country For Old Men, the TV series Justified and a Steven Soderbergh film starring Terence Stamp called The Limey, but it definitely has its own style with a dark and violent story to tell.
February 11, 2018
Never judge a book by its cover may seem like sage advice, but for the avid reader it’s a rather daunting proposition. With aspirations of exploring as much as the vast ocean of stories as humanly possible, before that little bald doctor cuts my balloon string, there’s no time to waste on potential duds. Pre-Goodreads I wouldn’t have given this book more than a passing glance. I could only surmise from the cover art that the story is probably something along the lines of “Little Hiawatha’s Northern Exposure.” Sorry Benjamin, but no, that’s a hard pass. Lucky for me though, I’ve cultivated a well-read and well-rounded group of friends whose opinions I respect and have come to rely on. So when one of those friends suggested that, “This book comes at you like a redneck with a broken bottle in a roadhouse on a Saturday night after you insulted his favorite NASCAR driver,” I sat up and took notice.
That’s the type of blurb that’ll leave a lasting impression on a fella, dontcha know, and was all I needed to hear to add it to Mount TBR. Thanks, Kemper!
Pike is the story of a reformed criminal who’s thrown a curveball late in life when his estranged daughter, a drug addict and prostitute, turns up dead; leaving him to foster a granddaughter he never knew existed. Unsatisfied with the official cause of death, Pike and his young buddy, Rory, travel to Cincinnati to do a little investigating of their own. Navigating the waters proves a bit tricky though, after a dirty cop, with possible ties to his daughter, sets the city in an uproar over the questionable shooting of a black youth.
As with most stories, there’s a natural compulsion to root for our protagonist. He’s a rough individual, no doubt, but there’s an odd, poetic charisma about him, and he’s trying to do right by his granddaughter—taking her in and seeking justice for her mother. He has all the outward appearance of a stand-up guy, but as the layers of his past are slowly peeled away, the stench of a rotten core begins to waft out. And with it, the scales fall from our eyes and we can finally see him for what he truly is . . . a monster.
This is the same man who abused his wife and abandoned his family; who committed unspeakable crimes in the pursuit of money and drugs; who’s willing to cross any line to get at the truth behind his daughter’s death. This is a clearly a man with a broken moral compass.
But then, if he’s such a scumbag, why does he even care what became of his daughter? Why’d he ever return from Mexico in the first place? “Mexico is freedom. Mexico is washing yourself of all the shit that comes from making it in the North. Mexico is shaking [the sins of your past] in one clean move. And this time he’d be crossing clean. Nothing illegal.
It sounds good. It sounds like the best idea he’s ever had. He gets tight in his chest as if he’s already on the road, already driving all night. Sucking down a Styrofoam cup of coffee, watching the snow melt off and the land empty. Clean highway air, with a hint of his exhaust on it, drifting to him through his cracked window.
Then his eyes water. He thinks of Sarah’s corpse lying alone in the abandoned house. Of the junkies scuttling over her and mauling her and ejaculating into her. His backbone jolts and his eyes twitch. He thumbs his glasses up his nose and he knows he ain’t going anywhere.”
As brutal and vicious as the tale can seem at times, there’s also an underling poetry to the writing which prevents it from becoming too bogged down or fixated on the brutality. The story touches on some familiar themes of home and family, with astute analogies on the human condition and life lessons a plenty—Pike is quite the philosopher. If there’s a nit to pick, it’s that I wish there had been a bit more to the tale, and the ending, in particular that final scene, was peculiar. Nevertheless, I had a blast reading this one, and if you’re a fan of Grit Lit, you probably will too.
That’s the type of blurb that’ll leave a lasting impression on a fella, dontcha know, and was all I needed to hear to add it to Mount TBR. Thanks, Kemper!
Pike is the story of a reformed criminal who’s thrown a curveball late in life when his estranged daughter, a drug addict and prostitute, turns up dead; leaving him to foster a granddaughter he never knew existed. Unsatisfied with the official cause of death, Pike and his young buddy, Rory, travel to Cincinnati to do a little investigating of their own. Navigating the waters proves a bit tricky though, after a dirty cop, with possible ties to his daughter, sets the city in an uproar over the questionable shooting of a black youth.
As with most stories, there’s a natural compulsion to root for our protagonist. He’s a rough individual, no doubt, but there’s an odd, poetic charisma about him, and he’s trying to do right by his granddaughter—taking her in and seeking justice for her mother. He has all the outward appearance of a stand-up guy, but as the layers of his past are slowly peeled away, the stench of a rotten core begins to waft out. And with it, the scales fall from our eyes and we can finally see him for what he truly is . . . a monster.
This is the same man who abused his wife and abandoned his family; who committed unspeakable crimes in the pursuit of money and drugs; who’s willing to cross any line to get at the truth behind his daughter’s death. This is a clearly a man with a broken moral compass.
But then, if he’s such a scumbag, why does he even care what became of his daughter? Why’d he ever return from Mexico in the first place? “Mexico is freedom. Mexico is washing yourself of all the shit that comes from making it in the North. Mexico is shaking [the sins of your past] in one clean move. And this time he’d be crossing clean. Nothing illegal.
It sounds good. It sounds like the best idea he’s ever had. He gets tight in his chest as if he’s already on the road, already driving all night. Sucking down a Styrofoam cup of coffee, watching the snow melt off and the land empty. Clean highway air, with a hint of his exhaust on it, drifting to him through his cracked window.
Then his eyes water. He thinks of Sarah’s corpse lying alone in the abandoned house. Of the junkies scuttling over her and mauling her and ejaculating into her. His backbone jolts and his eyes twitch. He thumbs his glasses up his nose and he knows he ain’t going anywhere.”
As brutal and vicious as the tale can seem at times, there’s also an underling poetry to the writing which prevents it from becoming too bogged down or fixated on the brutality. The story touches on some familiar themes of home and family, with astute analogies on the human condition and life lessons a plenty—Pike is quite the philosopher. If there’s a nit to pick, it’s that I wish there had been a bit more to the tale, and the ending, in particular that final scene, was peculiar. Nevertheless, I had a blast reading this one, and if you’re a fan of Grit Lit, you probably will too.
September 17, 2021
The quiet in the old man is what Pike needs now. To pass it on to Rory. The kid's burning up from the inside and anyone can see it. He comes from a people who had no quiet whatsoever. They were all over the place, running on hostility like an engine runs on gasoline, rolling around their house and taking each other out in series of small hatreds and collisions. The kid does what he can to damp down the noise they've filled him with, their burnings and their suicides, but they ain't made that drug yet.
Pike's been on the run from himself for twenty something years. When he returns to his Kentucky hometown he finds that his estranged daughter has overdosed on heroin, leaving behind a life of being nothing more than a junky whore. She's also left behind a beautiful young daughter who smokes and cusses and is extremely well-read.
Pike figures it's up to him to find the one person responsible for his daughter's lifestyle and death.
And he's going to need help because he's going to have to cross the Ohio River and stalk the filthy backstreets of Cincinnati and face down some awful people. So he takes Rory -an amateur boxer who hero-worships Pike.
...spinning the steering wheel and leaning around a bend in the road, pulling a Miller Lite out of the cooler by his side.
This is how you think on things. One hand easy on the wheel, a beer in your lap, your car taking the mountain curves with quicksilver fluidity. Drinking and driving can be the most important thing in the world. It's the answer for that high lonesome feeling you can't shake any other way, it's the only way out when you've got no way out at all.
Pike is haunted by a life he left behind after leaving Kentucky on the run. He's haunted by the life he left behind before he even left Kentucky. Pike's a tough number. He quotes Melville and ruminates on lives he blames himself for destroying. He's too tough for self-pity but he spends a lot of time thinking on all the bad things he's done.
Pike hesitates. It's a question he asks himself no more than four or five hundred times a day. "I've done things here that created a kind of gravity", he says slowly. "Having the right to move away would be like having the right to claim not to have done them in the first place."
This slim novel is filled with a wide range of bottom feeders sucking the life out of even lower forms of humanity. When violence erupts, which it does with considerable frequency, it's absolutely explosive. Heads explode like blood-filled melons from sudden gunfire, hands disappear in a blast of blood, people are beaten to death by a fiend who uses brass knuckles and likes hurting people as he's killing them.
The Third Street bridge covers a half block on either side of the street, sheltering a long swath of oily concrete that's been turned into a shantytown. Hacked pieces of corrugated tin and sheet insulation form lean-tos on the iron girders, and tents pitched out of greasy tarps and broomsticks run right up to the snow drifts. Shambling forms huddle around fire pits pounded out of the cement, smoking, drinking, spitting into the fires.
"This is it." Pike's face is steady but his hands are twitching.
"We could stop here," Rory says. "There's some things maybe it's better not to know."
A thin wisp of snow curls down the snow bank edging the shantytown. "We crossed that line a long time ago," Pike says.
September 27, 2011
PIKE is the kind of book that when you've set it down after reading "The End", you want to grab the next person you see and force them read it. It's dark, but vulnerable. Violent, but human. Entertaining, but personal. This is a book that hopefully people will continue to discover for years to come.
Think of it as a backwoods GET CARTER. Not a revenge story per se, but a story of the driven badass looking for answers. Morals and personal codes are run through the ringer. Violence is doled out in destructive abundance. Yet there is a grounded personal story about the past and choices that can't be ignored.
This is not one of many modern crime novels that wallows in the violence that it depicts. Rather it accepts violence as a part of the world and shows it in all its shapes. Not glorifying it, but reporting it.
Not an extra word, this stream-lined novel has moments of poetry in its description. Whitmer has the ability to say a lot with very little. An author to look out for that deserves a far wider readership.
Think of it as a backwoods GET CARTER. Not a revenge story per se, but a story of the driven badass looking for answers. Morals and personal codes are run through the ringer. Violence is doled out in destructive abundance. Yet there is a grounded personal story about the past and choices that can't be ignored.
This is not one of many modern crime novels that wallows in the violence that it depicts. Rather it accepts violence as a part of the world and shows it in all its shapes. Not glorifying it, but reporting it.
Not an extra word, this stream-lined novel has moments of poetry in its description. Whitmer has the ability to say a lot with very little. An author to look out for that deserves a far wider readership.
April 8, 2024
Whitmer starts each of the 76 short chapters with a pithy quote -- from himself, from the upcoming chapter. I hadn't seen this before, but why not? Whitmer does seem to adore his own voice. My only gripe is that he spends too much time painting the grimy backdrop. Southern Ohio is a cesspool but to quote the main character: "I’ve had enough of junkies to last me a lifetime."
There isn't much to the plot: Badass dad searches the underworld for the killer of his skanky daughter while chain-smoking Pall Malls. My favorite parts were the frequent hard-core fight scenes. Whitmer is good at fisticuffs.
There isn't much to the plot: Badass dad searches the underworld for the killer of his skanky daughter while chain-smoking Pall Malls. My favorite parts were the frequent hard-core fight scenes. Whitmer is good at fisticuffs.
January 23, 2023
Easy 5*
May 30, 2021
Brilliantly written but way more brutal than I like. Recommended if you’ve got a strong stomach and don’t mind it bleak.
September 29, 2015
One the most brutally violent works of literary realism I’ve ever read, certainly on par with Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West but the style here is direct and concrete and inescapable whereas McCarthy’s prose is mannered and convoluted and allows distance between reader and the violence depicted. What does this book feel like? Feels like this: “Pike exits the house feeling like he’s been beat all over with a tire iron, and wouldn’t mind beating something back.” No sentimentality here, and just a sliver of empathy. These are enraged characters who fully embrace their rage and rage, rage against those who put up a fight. “They were all over the place, running on hostility like an engine runs on gasoline.”
Other reviews cover the plot summary so I will skip that. This is a crime novel for sure because the main characters are criminals, but I do not think this is a noir novel, nor even a neo-noir in the sense that those terms are typically used. This is a literary novel in the best sense: We are shown lives being lived, from the inside out, that we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to imagine. Recoil though we might from the violence, we learn these characters and understand them, and that is mighty accomplishment.
Shifting gears - Whitmer’s style really fascinates me. Although the bulk of the prose is direct and concrete, he also has a fetish for similes. Virtually one on every page. So many that I started typing them up as I reread the book and I will share a bunch of them here. Some are cliche: “like a snake shedding its skin” and “Pike’s hand twitches like it has a mind of its own.” Some are confusing or slow to visualize: “the air over the grill thickens and warps like a living amoeba” and “there’s a hint of smoke behind Pike’s eyes as he come out of the house, like the bare beginning of a fire a hundred miles back in a thick Appalachian forest.” Some are compound: “like there’s something caged in his chest, ramming its body against his ribs, like he has to use every muscle in his body to keep it from pawing its way out.” Some are literal: “He’s had bruises like that. They ache like a fresh blow with every breath and they don’t heal for a long time.” Some are profound: “She looks like she’s been seeing one of him all her life.” Most are original and evocative. Here's some to whet your appetite:
“The clerk has a face like a crushed windshield.”
“Rory plugs the big shitkicker straight in the nose, crunching it like a bug run through with a sewing needle.”
“Pike’s eyes skim off of him like a fly off a shit puddle.”
“He passes a gang of boys standing on a corner, their hot black eyes sticking to him like tar.”
“His exhausted brain slips with a chunk he can almost hear, like a car missing a gear.”
“Vollmann’s eyes are like pissholes in a snowbank.”
Other reviews cover the plot summary so I will skip that. This is a crime novel for sure because the main characters are criminals, but I do not think this is a noir novel, nor even a neo-noir in the sense that those terms are typically used. This is a literary novel in the best sense: We are shown lives being lived, from the inside out, that we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to imagine. Recoil though we might from the violence, we learn these characters and understand them, and that is mighty accomplishment.
Shifting gears - Whitmer’s style really fascinates me. Although the bulk of the prose is direct and concrete, he also has a fetish for similes. Virtually one on every page. So many that I started typing them up as I reread the book and I will share a bunch of them here. Some are cliche: “like a snake shedding its skin” and “Pike’s hand twitches like it has a mind of its own.” Some are confusing or slow to visualize: “the air over the grill thickens and warps like a living amoeba” and “there’s a hint of smoke behind Pike’s eyes as he come out of the house, like the bare beginning of a fire a hundred miles back in a thick Appalachian forest.” Some are compound: “like there’s something caged in his chest, ramming its body against his ribs, like he has to use every muscle in his body to keep it from pawing its way out.” Some are literal: “He’s had bruises like that. They ache like a fresh blow with every breath and they don’t heal for a long time.” Some are profound: “She looks like she’s been seeing one of him all her life.” Most are original and evocative. Here's some to whet your appetite:
“The clerk has a face like a crushed windshield.”
“Rory plugs the big shitkicker straight in the nose, crunching it like a bug run through with a sewing needle.”
“Pike’s eyes skim off of him like a fly off a shit puddle.”
“He passes a gang of boys standing on a corner, their hot black eyes sticking to him like tar.”
“His exhausted brain slips with a chunk he can almost hear, like a car missing a gear.”
“Vollmann’s eyes are like pissholes in a snowbank.”
August 20, 2015
Very good neo-noir type story. You can't beat an old grizzled badass as a main character.
January 23, 2015
22 jan 15, thursday morning, 6:20 a.m. e.s.t.
this is the first from whitmer for me. what happened is i saw it on a page top-right readers also enjoyed, a page that had to-do with something i read...so...i scroll through the covers, like this cover, click on it, read a description...i'd already purchased A Single Shot a moment earlier and since i was in a buying mood, i found a used copy of this one. here i am. life is good.
looks like this is...grouped...i guess, with other stories and they're calling it switchblade...ooga booga! noun. yah think? "a different slice of hardboiled fiction..." blah blah blah. someone put their degree to use. verily, hallelujah.
(2010) pike, benjamin whitmer
begins with a preface that starts:
the kid's left arm angles out of the dirty snow like a stick of broken black kindling. derrick prods the body with the toe of his cowboy boot. not a twitch. he holsters his colt 1911, scanning the alley. the redbrick industrials loom over him, an ancient fire escape peeling away from the building, threatening to pull down the entire degenerating wall.
okee dokee then, as the good doctor said (cincinnati in ohio?, 1986), onward and upward.
time place scene setting
*cincinnati, winter, preface
*nanticonte, a small town, i think ohio...i think, near cincinnati
*an unnamed diner...who eats in a diner w/o knowing what the neon says? nobody i know
*pike's apt, one room in a brick industrial
*courthouse...jack's office/sheriff's office
*derrick's 5th floor apartment
*a place where public events are held...this time with rory boxing another
*a cabin on the outskirts of town, rory's place within walking distance of:
*green frog cafe, place that serves drinks...this is not the diner from the opening chapter. still don't know what the name of that place is
*a parlor...place where pike and rory are knocking out drywall
*over-the-rhine...search engine tells me it is a neighborhood of cincinnati...mulberry street...mcculloch hill cemetery, where pike's daughter sarah is bured, overdosed on heroin
*klauss's place...east side i think, cincinnati...an area called cheviot
*a downtown diner
*the oxbow, on nanticote's main street, and maybe this is the unnamed diner from the earlier chapter? possibly. possibly not
characters major minor peripheral real-famous name-only hypothetical
*the kid
*derrick krieger, is a cop, he is seen in the preface, killing a black that harmed another/others, and he is...suspended as story progresses. he is old enough for a pace-maker, sounds like he has been a cop for some time
*the locals...a few of them...a couple even
*two boys step around the corner
*a wizened woman in a maroon housecoat
*gangbanger
*a mexican man in a blue pin-striped suit...the mob
*dana, a whore, delivers wendy to pike in the diner
*wendy, a dirty black-haired girl of 12-13, in the 7th grade, has a foul mouth, mother dead, pike is her grandfather
*pike, an older man, old enough to be a grandfather to wendy, sounds like he does carpentry work, has rory working with him
*miners heading in for the 1st shift
*iris, waitress at the unnamed diner and i think she was with derrick though she leaves him
*dana's father, a child raper
*sarah
*christ
*alice, sarah's mother, dead of cancer
*rory, pike's sometime helper
*monster...name of the kitten that wendy lugs around inside her jacket
*jesus
*a pack of boys
*a six-year-old girl with her intestines hanging out her backside
*mother of the above...the boyfriend whose package smells bad
*a kid, pot
*olice-skinned girl holding a baby
*three pair...feet, boot noises in the hallway
*two pinch-mouthed women
*derrick's father, also a cop, presumably deceased
*one of their daughters...the pinch-mouthed women...the daughter's mother
*jack,sheriff
*a sister, burned died, a mother set fire housed...dead i think...a father eats a shotgun...this is family of rory
*symbol...character who earns this name for the t-shirt bearing the symbol of an agricultural fraternity...he boxes rory
*his fraternity brothers
*a mop-headed kid in a faded kiss t-shirt, a kind of ring announcer
*cabbie
*a ground down redhead in a skirt
*a boy, a retard, presumably her son
*a waitress
*a skinny black woman with ashy elbows
*bruce springsteen
*dick fleischer...sounds like a cop like derrick...though it sounds like he don't want derrick reinstated...you have to work at understanding what is going on, what is in the past, what each character is wanting
*the niggers...the hookers...a sister raper
*bartender at the green frog cafe, leroy
*a table of long-haired rednecks
*a hard case biker type...hereafter called hard case
*cotton
*rocky marciano
*arnold kaplan...a story from the green frog cafe
*homocide cop, christopher vollmann...found pike's daughter, sarah, overdosed, semen, like the ubiquitous they took turns on her dead body
*waylon jennings
*a gang of boys standing on the corner
*john brown ?
*a prunish black woman, maude, 70+ years old, tells pike where sarahis buried
*anthropologists...white corpses...indian corpses
*the affluent...police rookies...slaves...german immigrants...cops...governors
*klauss...klauss's wife...klauss is a cop, too...i presume, like i said, you have to work at this story to figure out what's what, this whitemer character plays his cards close to his vest, cheap basser
*two fat rednecks, jesse and jessie, described as 600 pounders, names after:
*elvis's stillborn brother
*their mother
after the present tense 3-4-page preface, there is a book 1 followed by a quote says it is from blind harry...and blended horrors stare before her eyes... followed by a chapter 1 and another quote. this guy likes his quoetes: you ain't nearly as big as i expected.
scrolling ahead through the pages, the chapters are short. turn a page. done. next chapter. turn a page. done.
a note on the narration
yes, the present tense time-scheme continues. i like present tense. one rarely sees it in fiction, although two recent reads have used this, story from above A Single Shot and The Silent Wife both excellent stories check them out.
one must work at the story. this whitmer character plays his cards close to his vest or something. like why not give us a name for the diner in the opening chapter? we learn names of other places, green frog cafe...or wait now...no we don't...but we're in a number of cafe/diner-like places. derrick goes see klauss and the reader needs to presume klauss is also a cop. what? the reader doesn't deserve to know that? this is beginning to alienate this reader, this having to work at the narrative. i am not liking that.
a note after reading/glancing through a review or two
okay, so i read through a review or two. i'm not concerned with liking a review or making friends. by the time you die if you have five friends who will loan you a dollar you're doing good. suffice to say what i write about here exists above or below...most likely above as the reviews with friends are listed first unless you manipulate what you want to see listed first. one review says pike and rory are living in a kentucky town. where'd that information come from? the author?
i haven't come across it in the story, as yet...i'm up to chapter 19. there's other information in that review that makes me wonder; where'd the info come from? the author? the publisher? and if so, then why couldn't that information been placed in the story for all readers so they can follow the story? heh! this is starting to torque me off! should i go back and see what other information is there? i mean, i'd like to think i'm a careful reader. i've read, repeatedly, that rory and pike head to cincinnati for information. maybe that's what i need to do...go to w.k.r.p. and see what's her name, loni? okee dokee, then...as the good doctor said, shortly before removing the top of the skull and spooning out some brain to fry...onward...upward.
update as i read, thursday evening
okay...so i'm torqued-off. mentioned chapter 19 last post...okay, sure, so pike and rory (pike will pay rory...hourly?) to go to cincinnati, hunt up information on sarah his daughter...there's something up...presumably, with that derrick cop-guy. the thing is...and the flaw of this story is the logistics of the equation. i wish whitmer told us where in the tarnation this small town is located...a suburb of cincinnati? in kentucky as one reader has it? and how they arrived at that is beyond me at this point...it's not in the story. i search-engined the name to no avail.
and...if that's not enough...in chapter 10, rory is already in freakin cincinnati. so why would they have to make a a case about going there? pike and rory? why? or...that's how i read the start of chapter ten...derrick "wheeling his car around cincinnati"...next paragraph, "he's on nanticote's main street"...and we finally? get the name of the diner in the first chapter, the oxbow...so? i mean the logistics seems screwy and is that my fault? or the writer's? do i read that to mean the first paragraph is indeed cincinnati...we're in derrick's mind...blah blah blah...and then. bing! next paragraph we're in nanticote? is it that or nanticonte? blech!
as if that isn't enough...i'm starting to get a bad vibe about the author. his exuberance for the word redneck. i mean twain wrote about his niggers and we can't even say the word anymore...but twain's people and that time saw nothing wrong with it and like i said, the nigger jim is a fine better portrayal than the whites mishandling hogs. but whitmet does not have that luxury. i think there's a kind of exclusionary principle at work in his philosophy, the same counter-culture i'm-so-much-better-than-anyone-else-so-i'm-going-to-exclude-myself-from-all that isn't any different than the religious that i know that same culture tried to divorce itself from. and honestly, i think his personal politics are not very cleverly disguised beneath the surface of his story. honestly, i'm doing about all i can to finish this one.
i've seen the same shithead philosophy here--deer hunting with jesus...you got your marxist-progressives all hailing that as great when the hatred on display is discouraging. you got stephen king with his bigotry on display in his essay guns. i'm tried of the bullshit. and at some point in our future it will come to blows...again. you get to the point where you say i don't want to talk about it anymore, i've heard and seen it all. blow it out of your ass and get out of my face.
update, i finished it, 23 jan 15, friday morning, 4:58 a.m. e.s.t.
one-star. i did not like it. it is not two-stars it was okay because it was not okay. one, it is too minimalist. there are textual errors and they multiplied by story end...i did not count them but they began to accumulate...maybe six total. not counting the name of the small town. page one of chapter one it is spelled nanticonte...page 42 the first and only page of chapter ten...that had me confused about the logistics of where were geographically located, cincinnati or the small town--i believe we were indeed in the small town, derrick thinking about the larger town...though here, the name of the town is spelled nanticote. which isn't even the name of a real place. if you're going for realism, give it to me, really. later, the textual errors include missing pronouns, missing words, mistakes that were not caught by the editorial process. the mistakes are an insult to any reader. one two even three i can forgive. more than that coupled with the misspelled town name are an insult and not worthy of much review.
two, i suspect there is a system in place here, call it a computer program, something...that enables the fashion police to check a review to keep it from the virginal eyes of the zombies...who are taught not to denigrate the different. ideology. fine. keep your system in place but i'll point to it and point also to the areas where the so-called diversity is not. the aforementioned tomes, the one from the asshole who wrote deer-hunting-with-jesus and the famed stephen king's essay guns. both are given free rein to denigrate those deemed worthy of denigration. you can't voice the n-word in its entirety, but you can debase rural folk with words like redneck, white trash, or as king did, yeehaws...honest gun owners taken to task, as they always are, when some shithead kills innocents. i've had it up to my focking eyeballs with it. try to imagine your surprise when things turn fouled. so what with the fashion police and all, i'm in a foul mood.
three, toward the end, jack the sheriff walks by pike...who is provided with a first name in the description, douglas, though that name does not appear anywhere in the actual text of the story...and jack is blitzed. a chapter or two later, jack is now sober and in her car, telling pike to get out of town.
like i said, too minimalist for me. there is but one track for all involved here, not one moment of grace...for any of them...and this comes off as too bigoted toward the proverbial redneck not to mention others i suspect whitmer's philosphy has no room for. not one moment of grace, as i said, and that i can't abide. i repudiate it. i don't need to know the mountains are being torn down, alas! but i suspect whitmer loses sleep over that, though i doubt, seriously, every one of these characters do so. i think there were, what, 75 chapters?...for this length of story
but this review don't matter a hill of beans in the greater scheme of things and i suspect there also exists a system that permits some to believe their words are actually on display. and that's all the time i want to devote to this one.
this is the first from whitmer for me. what happened is i saw it on a page top-right readers also enjoyed, a page that had to-do with something i read...so...i scroll through the covers, like this cover, click on it, read a description...i'd already purchased A Single Shot a moment earlier and since i was in a buying mood, i found a used copy of this one. here i am. life is good.
looks like this is...grouped...i guess, with other stories and they're calling it switchblade...ooga booga! noun. yah think? "a different slice of hardboiled fiction..." blah blah blah. someone put their degree to use. verily, hallelujah.
(2010) pike, benjamin whitmer
begins with a preface that starts:
the kid's left arm angles out of the dirty snow like a stick of broken black kindling. derrick prods the body with the toe of his cowboy boot. not a twitch. he holsters his colt 1911, scanning the alley. the redbrick industrials loom over him, an ancient fire escape peeling away from the building, threatening to pull down the entire degenerating wall.
okee dokee then, as the good doctor said (cincinnati in ohio?, 1986), onward and upward.
time place scene setting
*cincinnati, winter, preface
*nanticonte, a small town, i think ohio...i think, near cincinnati
*an unnamed diner...who eats in a diner w/o knowing what the neon says? nobody i know
*pike's apt, one room in a brick industrial
*courthouse...jack's office/sheriff's office
*derrick's 5th floor apartment
*a place where public events are held...this time with rory boxing another
*a cabin on the outskirts of town, rory's place within walking distance of:
*green frog cafe, place that serves drinks...this is not the diner from the opening chapter. still don't know what the name of that place is
*a parlor...place where pike and rory are knocking out drywall
*over-the-rhine...search engine tells me it is a neighborhood of cincinnati...mulberry street...mcculloch hill cemetery, where pike's daughter sarah is bured, overdosed on heroin
*klauss's place...east side i think, cincinnati...an area called cheviot
*a downtown diner
*the oxbow, on nanticote's main street, and maybe this is the unnamed diner from the earlier chapter? possibly. possibly not
characters major minor peripheral real-famous name-only hypothetical
*the kid
*derrick krieger, is a cop, he is seen in the preface, killing a black that harmed another/others, and he is...suspended as story progresses. he is old enough for a pace-maker, sounds like he has been a cop for some time
*the locals...a few of them...a couple even
*two boys step around the corner
*a wizened woman in a maroon housecoat
*gangbanger
*a mexican man in a blue pin-striped suit...the mob
*dana, a whore, delivers wendy to pike in the diner
*wendy, a dirty black-haired girl of 12-13, in the 7th grade, has a foul mouth, mother dead, pike is her grandfather
*pike, an older man, old enough to be a grandfather to wendy, sounds like he does carpentry work, has rory working with him
*miners heading in for the 1st shift
*iris, waitress at the unnamed diner and i think she was with derrick though she leaves him
*dana's father, a child raper
*sarah
*christ
*alice, sarah's mother, dead of cancer
*rory, pike's sometime helper
*monster...name of the kitten that wendy lugs around inside her jacket
*jesus
*a pack of boys
*a six-year-old girl with her intestines hanging out her backside
*mother of the above...the boyfriend whose package smells bad
*a kid, pot
*olice-skinned girl holding a baby
*three pair...feet, boot noises in the hallway
*two pinch-mouthed women
*derrick's father, also a cop, presumably deceased
*one of their daughters...the pinch-mouthed women...the daughter's mother
*jack,sheriff
*a sister, burned died, a mother set fire housed...dead i think...a father eats a shotgun...this is family of rory
*symbol...character who earns this name for the t-shirt bearing the symbol of an agricultural fraternity...he boxes rory
*his fraternity brothers
*a mop-headed kid in a faded kiss t-shirt, a kind of ring announcer
*cabbie
*a ground down redhead in a skirt
*a boy, a retard, presumably her son
*a waitress
*a skinny black woman with ashy elbows
*bruce springsteen
*dick fleischer...sounds like a cop like derrick...though it sounds like he don't want derrick reinstated...you have to work at understanding what is going on, what is in the past, what each character is wanting
*the niggers...the hookers...a sister raper
*bartender at the green frog cafe, leroy
*a table of long-haired rednecks
*a hard case biker type...hereafter called hard case
*cotton
*rocky marciano
*arnold kaplan...a story from the green frog cafe
*homocide cop, christopher vollmann...found pike's daughter, sarah, overdosed, semen, like the ubiquitous they took turns on her dead body
*waylon jennings
*a gang of boys standing on the corner
*john brown ?
*a prunish black woman, maude, 70+ years old, tells pike where sarahis buried
*anthropologists...white corpses...indian corpses
*the affluent...police rookies...slaves...german immigrants...cops...governors
*klauss...klauss's wife...klauss is a cop, too...i presume, like i said, you have to work at this story to figure out what's what, this whitemer character plays his cards close to his vest, cheap basser
*two fat rednecks, jesse and jessie, described as 600 pounders, names after:
*elvis's stillborn brother
*their mother
after the present tense 3-4-page preface, there is a book 1 followed by a quote says it is from blind harry...and blended horrors stare before her eyes... followed by a chapter 1 and another quote. this guy likes his quoetes: you ain't nearly as big as i expected.
scrolling ahead through the pages, the chapters are short. turn a page. done. next chapter. turn a page. done.
a note on the narration
yes, the present tense time-scheme continues. i like present tense. one rarely sees it in fiction, although two recent reads have used this, story from above A Single Shot and The Silent Wife both excellent stories check them out.
one must work at the story. this whitmer character plays his cards close to his vest or something. like why not give us a name for the diner in the opening chapter? we learn names of other places, green frog cafe...or wait now...no we don't...but we're in a number of cafe/diner-like places. derrick goes see klauss and the reader needs to presume klauss is also a cop. what? the reader doesn't deserve to know that? this is beginning to alienate this reader, this having to work at the narrative. i am not liking that.
a note after reading/glancing through a review or two
okay, so i read through a review or two. i'm not concerned with liking a review or making friends. by the time you die if you have five friends who will loan you a dollar you're doing good. suffice to say what i write about here exists above or below...most likely above as the reviews with friends are listed first unless you manipulate what you want to see listed first. one review says pike and rory are living in a kentucky town. where'd that information come from? the author?
i haven't come across it in the story, as yet...i'm up to chapter 19. there's other information in that review that makes me wonder; where'd the info come from? the author? the publisher? and if so, then why couldn't that information been placed in the story for all readers so they can follow the story? heh! this is starting to torque me off! should i go back and see what other information is there? i mean, i'd like to think i'm a careful reader. i've read, repeatedly, that rory and pike head to cincinnati for information. maybe that's what i need to do...go to w.k.r.p. and see what's her name, loni? okee dokee, then...as the good doctor said, shortly before removing the top of the skull and spooning out some brain to fry...onward...upward.
update as i read, thursday evening
okay...so i'm torqued-off. mentioned chapter 19 last post...okay, sure, so pike and rory (pike will pay rory...hourly?) to go to cincinnati, hunt up information on sarah his daughter...there's something up...presumably, with that derrick cop-guy. the thing is...and the flaw of this story is the logistics of the equation. i wish whitmer told us where in the tarnation this small town is located...a suburb of cincinnati? in kentucky as one reader has it? and how they arrived at that is beyond me at this point...it's not in the story. i search-engined the name to no avail.
and...if that's not enough...in chapter 10, rory is already in freakin cincinnati. so why would they have to make a a case about going there? pike and rory? why? or...that's how i read the start of chapter ten...derrick "wheeling his car around cincinnati"...next paragraph, "he's on nanticote's main street"...and we finally? get the name of the diner in the first chapter, the oxbow...so? i mean the logistics seems screwy and is that my fault? or the writer's? do i read that to mean the first paragraph is indeed cincinnati...we're in derrick's mind...blah blah blah...and then. bing! next paragraph we're in nanticote? is it that or nanticonte? blech!
as if that isn't enough...i'm starting to get a bad vibe about the author. his exuberance for the word redneck. i mean twain wrote about his niggers and we can't even say the word anymore...but twain's people and that time saw nothing wrong with it and like i said, the nigger jim is a fine better portrayal than the whites mishandling hogs. but whitmet does not have that luxury. i think there's a kind of exclusionary principle at work in his philosophy, the same counter-culture i'm-so-much-better-than-anyone-else-so-i'm-going-to-exclude-myself-from-all that isn't any different than the religious that i know that same culture tried to divorce itself from. and honestly, i think his personal politics are not very cleverly disguised beneath the surface of his story. honestly, i'm doing about all i can to finish this one.
i've seen the same shithead philosophy here--deer hunting with jesus...you got your marxist-progressives all hailing that as great when the hatred on display is discouraging. you got stephen king with his bigotry on display in his essay guns. i'm tried of the bullshit. and at some point in our future it will come to blows...again. you get to the point where you say i don't want to talk about it anymore, i've heard and seen it all. blow it out of your ass and get out of my face.
update, i finished it, 23 jan 15, friday morning, 4:58 a.m. e.s.t.
one-star. i did not like it. it is not two-stars it was okay because it was not okay. one, it is too minimalist. there are textual errors and they multiplied by story end...i did not count them but they began to accumulate...maybe six total. not counting the name of the small town. page one of chapter one it is spelled nanticonte...page 42 the first and only page of chapter ten...that had me confused about the logistics of where were geographically located, cincinnati or the small town--i believe we were indeed in the small town, derrick thinking about the larger town...though here, the name of the town is spelled nanticote. which isn't even the name of a real place. if you're going for realism, give it to me, really. later, the textual errors include missing pronouns, missing words, mistakes that were not caught by the editorial process. the mistakes are an insult to any reader. one two even three i can forgive. more than that coupled with the misspelled town name are an insult and not worthy of much review.
two, i suspect there is a system in place here, call it a computer program, something...that enables the fashion police to check a review to keep it from the virginal eyes of the zombies...who are taught not to denigrate the different. ideology. fine. keep your system in place but i'll point to it and point also to the areas where the so-called diversity is not. the aforementioned tomes, the one from the asshole who wrote deer-hunting-with-jesus and the famed stephen king's essay guns. both are given free rein to denigrate those deemed worthy of denigration. you can't voice the n-word in its entirety, but you can debase rural folk with words like redneck, white trash, or as king did, yeehaws...honest gun owners taken to task, as they always are, when some shithead kills innocents. i've had it up to my focking eyeballs with it. try to imagine your surprise when things turn fouled. so what with the fashion police and all, i'm in a foul mood.
three, toward the end, jack the sheriff walks by pike...who is provided with a first name in the description, douglas, though that name does not appear anywhere in the actual text of the story...and jack is blitzed. a chapter or two later, jack is now sober and in her car, telling pike to get out of town.
like i said, too minimalist for me. there is but one track for all involved here, not one moment of grace...for any of them...and this comes off as too bigoted toward the proverbial redneck not to mention others i suspect whitmer's philosphy has no room for. not one moment of grace, as i said, and that i can't abide. i repudiate it. i don't need to know the mountains are being torn down, alas! but i suspect whitmer loses sleep over that, though i doubt, seriously, every one of these characters do so. i think there were, what, 75 chapters?...for this length of story
but this review don't matter a hill of beans in the greater scheme of things and i suspect there also exists a system that permits some to believe their words are actually on display. and that's all the time i want to devote to this one.
May 4, 2017
Never judge a book by its cover they say and that's certainly true in the case of Benjamin Whitmer's debut novel Pike. The cover actually reminds me of a children's novel but nothing could be further from the truth.
Pike is a builder with a violent past, who renovates houses, assisted by his young partner, Rory, who boxes locally but has dreams of bigger and better things. When Pike's granddaughter, to his estranged, drug addicted, prostitute daughter, turns up on his doorstep, Pike and Rory go to Cincinnati to investigate her death and to see what part, if any, dirty cop Derrick, played in it. Their investigation leads them to the lower depths of society where they encounter a succession of lowlifes in the search for some semblance of the truth.
Whitmer's writing is stark but filled with the blackest of humour. The violence is bloody and graphic and the sex is even nastier and could well put off the faint hearted reader. There is not too much too the plot but it is the characterisation that makes the novel for me. The protagonist, Pike, has encountered violence in his murky past but you feel he has left much of it behind but to get to the truth he now has to bring his old self to the fore and this appears to weigh heavily on him. There is also the guilt from his lack of interest in his daughter, however you feel he can make amends and not make the same mistake with his young granddaughter.
An enjoyable but at times a difficult read and I look forward to reading more from Benjamin Whitmer.
Pike is a builder with a violent past, who renovates houses, assisted by his young partner, Rory, who boxes locally but has dreams of bigger and better things. When Pike's granddaughter, to his estranged, drug addicted, prostitute daughter, turns up on his doorstep, Pike and Rory go to Cincinnati to investigate her death and to see what part, if any, dirty cop Derrick, played in it. Their investigation leads them to the lower depths of society where they encounter a succession of lowlifes in the search for some semblance of the truth.
Whitmer's writing is stark but filled with the blackest of humour. The violence is bloody and graphic and the sex is even nastier and could well put off the faint hearted reader. There is not too much too the plot but it is the characterisation that makes the novel for me. The protagonist, Pike, has encountered violence in his murky past but you feel he has left much of it behind but to get to the truth he now has to bring his old self to the fore and this appears to weigh heavily on him. There is also the guilt from his lack of interest in his daughter, however you feel he can make amends and not make the same mistake with his young granddaughter.
An enjoyable but at times a difficult read and I look forward to reading more from Benjamin Whitmer.
May 3, 2015
"THE HOLES THEY DUG THEMSELVES INTO WERE EXACTLY THE SHAPE OF THEIR DREAMS." Loved this book, lyrical and yet still brutally honest, a great read. Will definitely read more of Whitmer's work.
January 1, 2018
Though not quite as good as Cry Father this was still an excellent though dark read. I was impressed by the author's spare style, both the small town Kentucky and Cincinnati settings, and the intriguing characters.
March 7, 2011
Pike, the novel’s eponymous main character, is not a good person. Never was. Be it running drugs and people across the border, beating his wife, going down the rabbit hole of drug and alcohol addiction, or committing murder, Pike’s past is a bleak portrait of a squandered, meaningless life. And he knows it.
While he’s nowhere near at peace with the brutalities he committed as a younger man, with age he’s removed himself from that destructive and criminal lifestyle, finally reaching a point where he can tolerate himself. Mostly. At least he could, until one of the more shameful truths of his past is thrust upon him, quite literally, in the form of a twelve-year-old granddaughter, Wendy, he didn’t even know he had.
Of course that’s not really a surprise considering he hadn’t seen his own daughter in decades, not since his wife, finally fed up with the beatings, ushered him out of the house and their lives via the claw end of a hammer. Turns out his daughter ended up as a heroin addict, turning tricks to support her habit. When the result of her chasing one too many dragons is an overdose, Pike finds himself the only one left to take care of Wendy.
So this is where the book turns around, where Pike bonds with Wendy and is redeemed by doing right by his granddaughter in a way he failed to do with his own daughter, right? Not quite.
There is no redemption in Pike, at least not in the traditional sense. Along with his best friend, Rory, Pike does head to Cincinnati, where his daughter had been living, to find out under exactly what circumstances she died. Not through any sense of nobility, but because he has to know; that’s just who he is. Of course, if he doesn’t like what he finds out he will have to do something about it, because that’s just who he is too. Unfortunately, Pike’s quest for the truth puts him on a collision course with Derrick Krieger, a crooked Cincinnati cop who makes Pike look like a Boy Scout.
The reader is introduced to Krieger in a scene at the beginning of the book in which he shoots an unarmed black youth in the back, an act that sparks a race riot that causes Krieger to flee the city… and end up in the small Northern Kentucky town where Pike lives. Exactly why and how Pike and Krieger end up on each other’s radar is the crux of the story, and as such is something best left for you to discover on your own. Suffice it to say that nothing good happens when the irresistible force that is Krieger and the immovable object that is Pike finally meet head-on.
Which is rather fitting, as Pike is a book that meets the reader head-on and absolutely gives no quarter. Let’s be perfectly clear about that; Pike is straight-up, unflinching, punch you in the face noir of the pitch-black variety. And it’s definitely not for everyone. The characters are blunt and uncouth. They drink and take drugs, they cheat and lie, they fight (a lot), they cuss (even more), and almost to a person they see no way out of the dead-end lives they’re living. Some readers may find such stark conditions to be off putting, may even think them unrealistically grim.
Yet I’d argue the characters and conditions in Pike are closer to the real world than the fairy tale version of it we’re force-fed by Hollywood in movies and television shows where no one ever seems to worry about keeping a roof over their heads or feeding their kids. The beauty of Pike is its grimness, the refusal of author Benjamin Whitmer to offer up false hope for life-changing redemption for people living in a world where every day is considered a success if you manage to stay alive, get fed, and find a place to sleep with a roof over your head. No, redemption in Pike’s world lies in accepting who you are and being true to it: “You are what you are. The best way to fuck up your life good is to try to be something else.”
Folks, let’s hope Benjamin Whitmer never tries to be anything other than what he is, because Pike is proof positive that what he is is a kick-ass writer with a boatload of talent. More, please.
While he’s nowhere near at peace with the brutalities he committed as a younger man, with age he’s removed himself from that destructive and criminal lifestyle, finally reaching a point where he can tolerate himself. Mostly. At least he could, until one of the more shameful truths of his past is thrust upon him, quite literally, in the form of a twelve-year-old granddaughter, Wendy, he didn’t even know he had.
Of course that’s not really a surprise considering he hadn’t seen his own daughter in decades, not since his wife, finally fed up with the beatings, ushered him out of the house and their lives via the claw end of a hammer. Turns out his daughter ended up as a heroin addict, turning tricks to support her habit. When the result of her chasing one too many dragons is an overdose, Pike finds himself the only one left to take care of Wendy.
So this is where the book turns around, where Pike bonds with Wendy and is redeemed by doing right by his granddaughter in a way he failed to do with his own daughter, right? Not quite.
There is no redemption in Pike, at least not in the traditional sense. Along with his best friend, Rory, Pike does head to Cincinnati, where his daughter had been living, to find out under exactly what circumstances she died. Not through any sense of nobility, but because he has to know; that’s just who he is. Of course, if he doesn’t like what he finds out he will have to do something about it, because that’s just who he is too. Unfortunately, Pike’s quest for the truth puts him on a collision course with Derrick Krieger, a crooked Cincinnati cop who makes Pike look like a Boy Scout.
The reader is introduced to Krieger in a scene at the beginning of the book in which he shoots an unarmed black youth in the back, an act that sparks a race riot that causes Krieger to flee the city… and end up in the small Northern Kentucky town where Pike lives. Exactly why and how Pike and Krieger end up on each other’s radar is the crux of the story, and as such is something best left for you to discover on your own. Suffice it to say that nothing good happens when the irresistible force that is Krieger and the immovable object that is Pike finally meet head-on.
Which is rather fitting, as Pike is a book that meets the reader head-on and absolutely gives no quarter. Let’s be perfectly clear about that; Pike is straight-up, unflinching, punch you in the face noir of the pitch-black variety. And it’s definitely not for everyone. The characters are blunt and uncouth. They drink and take drugs, they cheat and lie, they fight (a lot), they cuss (even more), and almost to a person they see no way out of the dead-end lives they’re living. Some readers may find such stark conditions to be off putting, may even think them unrealistically grim.
Yet I’d argue the characters and conditions in Pike are closer to the real world than the fairy tale version of it we’re force-fed by Hollywood in movies and television shows where no one ever seems to worry about keeping a roof over their heads or feeding their kids. The beauty of Pike is its grimness, the refusal of author Benjamin Whitmer to offer up false hope for life-changing redemption for people living in a world where every day is considered a success if you manage to stay alive, get fed, and find a place to sleep with a roof over your head. No, redemption in Pike’s world lies in accepting who you are and being true to it: “You are what you are. The best way to fuck up your life good is to try to be something else.”
Folks, let’s hope Benjamin Whitmer never tries to be anything other than what he is, because Pike is proof positive that what he is is a kick-ass writer with a boatload of talent. More, please.
October 6, 2017
Très bon roman noir! Une description des décors et des scènes fabuleuse, méticuleuse et soignée! De la violence mais jamais insupportable, très belle découverte de cet auteur.
February 18, 2021
Un noir contemporaneo brutto, sporco e cattivo, di quelli dove sono tutti marci e non si salva nessuno.
Un romanzo non perfetto ma ben scritto, dal ritmo serrato e sicuramente divertente per gli amanti del genere.
Un romanzo non perfetto ma ben scritto, dal ritmo serrato e sicuramente divertente per gli amanti del genere.
August 27, 2024
First off, I don't know how we know Pike's first name is Douglas, because it doesn't say that anywhere in the book, but all right. The synopsis is perhaps understating it by saying Pike is "relentlessly visceral." You finish the book and feel like you've just woken up from a nightmare to find yourself hungover and beat-up. Whitmer doesn't skimp on the taboos, managing to work in graphic violence, drug use, squalid poverty, prostitution, necrophilia, incest, child abuse, and animal cruelty at various points. The Kentucky mountains and inner-city Cincinnati (circa 1985) are depicted with equal brutality: the former with its biker bars and vicious amateur boxing, and the latter with the promised "junkie squats and homeless camps." So if, like me, you like it raw (or burned black), this is a landscape where no one will hear you scream. But I only gave it three stars because ... something was missing. I couldn't connect to any of the characters. Pike is supposed to be sort of a reluctant antihero, but something feels off. He was a monster to his ex-wife and daughter, and then ran off and led a life of crime before returning to the Kentucky coal town he hates and which doesn't like him much either, and now he's suddenly on this guilt-ridden quest to find out what caused the death of the daughter he abandoned if only to find somebody else to blame besides himself. Hard to feel sympathy for him, not that he asks for any. And then there's this rogue cop, Derrick, a pimp and a pusher and a brute, but a one-man goon squad on child molesters--real or imagined. And there's Wendy, the granddaughter unceremoniously dumped in Pike's lap by one of her dead mother's nasty hooker friends. Growing up amid such chaos, yet she's supersmart--at one point we see her reading the complete stories of Poe. She conveniently acquired her love of reading--her only real personality trait besides reflexive hostility--from the kindly old lady next door in their blighted Cincy neighborhood. But you know, Whitmer is a Writer with a capital W, so he has to find a place to show off his book smarts. Same reason he has Pike and Rory going around quoting Hemingway to each other. I hate when self-conscious Writers have their characters make literary allusions that seem miles out of their wheelhouse. It just doesn't work most of the time. For comic relief we get Bogie, a character entirely too cartoonish for the rest of the book. When Bogie says something stupid or stinks up Pike’s truck, the laugh feels forced, like a xylophone solo in a death-metal song. And when Bogie uses Philip Marlowe’s line about earning “twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses,” we’re all supposed to smile knowingly at the tribute to classic hard-boiled detectives. I read The Big Sleep too, so what? I don’t mind the nonstop filth—it’s what drew me to the book in the first place. And Whitmer is great at creating disturbingly vivid scenes. I read the book once, very quickly, several months ago, but can still recall the scene in the diner, where Derrick idly watches a worn-out woman and her mentally disabled son at the next table. But I felt like I was always on the verge of losing the plot, or maybe that there wasn’t much of one at all. In the end, Pike’s whole search for answers seems like a fool’s errand, but a bunch of people get killed along the way before he and Wendy hightail it to Mexico, leaving me with a big question mark.
June 2, 2011
From ISawLightningFall.com
I think the way a person takes his coffee reveals interesting things about him. I know a high-powered derivatives trader who can only stomach Frappuccinos and a retiring artist who daily downs multiple cups black as midnight. Forget the pedigree of the beans or the brewing method: You can gauge an individual's bitterness tolerance by how fast he reaches for sugar and cream. Dark novels seem to function the same way. Place a title that's concerned with grimmer stuff than sunshine and puppies in a reader's hands, and see how far along that person's bookmark moves. Benjamin Whitmer's literary noir Pike is just such a novel.
Pike's daughter is dead, no surprise given that she was a heroin-addled whore. Anyone could've seen it coming. What does surprise Pike is how much he cares. See, he barely knew the girl, having skipped out on her mother after a short, rocky marriage marred by sharp words and sharper blows. He barely knew himself in those days. Fueled by cocaine and free-floating rage, he skipped from job to job, enforcing and dealing, smuggling illegals across the Texas border. It took a job gone bad, very bad, to make him see what a mess he'd made of the lives of everyone who'd crossed his path. So he now wants to set things right however he can, even -- no, especially -- in the matter of his deceased daughter. But a search for the responsible party will lead Pike to Derrick Kreiger, a cop dirtier than the Cincinnati streets he works, a cop who has sparked one of the worst race riots in the city's history by slaying a young black man in public.
Despite having just penned that previous paragraph, I'm looking at it a bit askance now. Sure, it's a fair summary, but it doesn't adequately capture the feel of Pike. Whitmer's more interested in examining characters' down-and-out settings and spinning striking similes than in action, which reminds me of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone. But when the plot kicks into gear about halfway through, so does the violence. And, goodness, what violence it is. It's a lot closer to Allan Guthrie or Chuck Palahniuk's Turkish-strength prose than the non-fat, soy-latte mysteries of Patricia Cornwell. Whitmer often pulls away from gritty detail, yet not all the time. Descriptions of a grievous abdominal wound and an amazingly brutal execution with brass knuckles almost made me put down the book. Pike is moving in some places, elegantly written in others. In the end, though, it's a truly bitter draught.
I think the way a person takes his coffee reveals interesting things about him. I know a high-powered derivatives trader who can only stomach Frappuccinos and a retiring artist who daily downs multiple cups black as midnight. Forget the pedigree of the beans or the brewing method: You can gauge an individual's bitterness tolerance by how fast he reaches for sugar and cream. Dark novels seem to function the same way. Place a title that's concerned with grimmer stuff than sunshine and puppies in a reader's hands, and see how far along that person's bookmark moves. Benjamin Whitmer's literary noir Pike is just such a novel.
Pike's daughter is dead, no surprise given that she was a heroin-addled whore. Anyone could've seen it coming. What does surprise Pike is how much he cares. See, he barely knew the girl, having skipped out on her mother after a short, rocky marriage marred by sharp words and sharper blows. He barely knew himself in those days. Fueled by cocaine and free-floating rage, he skipped from job to job, enforcing and dealing, smuggling illegals across the Texas border. It took a job gone bad, very bad, to make him see what a mess he'd made of the lives of everyone who'd crossed his path. So he now wants to set things right however he can, even -- no, especially -- in the matter of his deceased daughter. But a search for the responsible party will lead Pike to Derrick Kreiger, a cop dirtier than the Cincinnati streets he works, a cop who has sparked one of the worst race riots in the city's history by slaying a young black man in public.
Despite having just penned that previous paragraph, I'm looking at it a bit askance now. Sure, it's a fair summary, but it doesn't adequately capture the feel of Pike. Whitmer's more interested in examining characters' down-and-out settings and spinning striking similes than in action, which reminds me of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone. But when the plot kicks into gear about halfway through, so does the violence. And, goodness, what violence it is. It's a lot closer to Allan Guthrie or Chuck Palahniuk's Turkish-strength prose than the non-fat, soy-latte mysteries of Patricia Cornwell. Whitmer often pulls away from gritty detail, yet not all the time. Descriptions of a grievous abdominal wound and an amazingly brutal execution with brass knuckles almost made me put down the book. Pike is moving in some places, elegantly written in others. In the end, though, it's a truly bitter draught.
January 7, 2011
I’m not a drink the Kool-Aid type of guy, but sometimes you can’t ignore the buzz that falls off the lips of friends and colleagues. This past holiday season one book made a very loud buzz and so I imbibed.
And it was good.
Benjamin Whitmer‘s PIKE is a barn burner. Once you crack open the book you won’t stop until the bitter end. PIKE is a hard book, wrapped in shards of reality the casual reader may object. This book won’t find itself on any Cozy List anytime soon.
The book’s protagonist, if he can be called that, Pike, is an irredeemable man who spent a hard violent life on the wrong side of the law. Pike has regrets, as do we all, but they only manifest when he is presented with his grand daughter, Wendy, and told his daughter who he barely knew was dead.
The death of a bad man’s daughter is usually where the story turns to one of redemption, but this is Pike and Pike knows what side of the Angels he stands. No, Pike is fueled by needing to know the whys and wherefores. A vengeful path that will ride him headlong into the book’s antagonist, if he can be called that.
Pike isn’t the first character we are introduced to in the book, Derrick Kreiger, a bent Cincinnati cop, is unveiled as the catalyst that starts a race riot after he shoots an unarmed black kid. A violent start to a violent unpredictable book.
On this path, Pike is joined by Rory a bar room brawler from West Virginia with dreams boxing professionally. Addicted to painkillers and holding an easy lit fuse, Rory represents a younger Pike, one that Pike doesn’t want to see become that man he is.
While Pike is the center note of the book, it becomes clear that this book isn’t about good versus bad, protagonist versus antagonist. PIKE is about the characters’ points of view and the paths those points of view take. Ultimately colliding the book’s cast violently together.
Is Pike redeemable by the end? Would you like some Kool-Aid?
And it was good.
Benjamin Whitmer‘s PIKE is a barn burner. Once you crack open the book you won’t stop until the bitter end. PIKE is a hard book, wrapped in shards of reality the casual reader may object. This book won’t find itself on any Cozy List anytime soon.
The book’s protagonist, if he can be called that, Pike, is an irredeemable man who spent a hard violent life on the wrong side of the law. Pike has regrets, as do we all, but they only manifest when he is presented with his grand daughter, Wendy, and told his daughter who he barely knew was dead.
The death of a bad man’s daughter is usually where the story turns to one of redemption, but this is Pike and Pike knows what side of the Angels he stands. No, Pike is fueled by needing to know the whys and wherefores. A vengeful path that will ride him headlong into the book’s antagonist, if he can be called that.
Pike isn’t the first character we are introduced to in the book, Derrick Kreiger, a bent Cincinnati cop, is unveiled as the catalyst that starts a race riot after he shoots an unarmed black kid. A violent start to a violent unpredictable book.
On this path, Pike is joined by Rory a bar room brawler from West Virginia with dreams boxing professionally. Addicted to painkillers and holding an easy lit fuse, Rory represents a younger Pike, one that Pike doesn’t want to see become that man he is.
While Pike is the center note of the book, it becomes clear that this book isn’t about good versus bad, protagonist versus antagonist. PIKE is about the characters’ points of view and the paths those points of view take. Ultimately colliding the book’s cast violently together.
Is Pike redeemable by the end? Would you like some Kool-Aid?
May 1, 2017
I really wanted to read something that satisfied my taste for dark, depressing, and captivating literature. Pike hit the spot on all three fronts. I have no complaints about the book at all. The story is written in short 1-3 page chapters that flow nicely. The dialog is pretty stripped down but these are the type of folk we are dealing with here, those that only say what they mean. Whitmer's pensive prose and desolate descriptions of Cincinnati and other parts of rural Ohio give the book a melancholic vibe that is unsettling yet comfortable.
Pike is a great character. When we meet Pike, he has just been informed that his estranged daughter is dead and he has a granddaughter named Wendy that has nowhere else to go. Pike has a violent and mysterious history that you learn more about as the book moves along. Pike is a complicated man and his desire to reconcile his history with his current situation is what makes the story move. Pike's daughter's body was discovered by a crooked killer cop named Derrick, who gets Pike's attention when he starts harassing Wendy. Pike decides to get to the bottom of everything for himself and the safety of his granddaughter.
I read Whitmer's more recent release Cry Father when it first came out and really enjoyed it which is why I picked up Pike. I liked both, but Pike is my favorite of the two books. I will definitely be checking out Whitmer's future work as well. If you like stripped-down noir that is equal parts family drama and vicious pop a cap in your ass violent then Pike if your book. Also, recommended to fans of Donald Ray Pollock or William Gay.
Pike is a great character. When we meet Pike, he has just been informed that his estranged daughter is dead and he has a granddaughter named Wendy that has nowhere else to go. Pike has a violent and mysterious history that you learn more about as the book moves along. Pike is a complicated man and his desire to reconcile his history with his current situation is what makes the story move. Pike's daughter's body was discovered by a crooked killer cop named Derrick, who gets Pike's attention when he starts harassing Wendy. Pike decides to get to the bottom of everything for himself and the safety of his granddaughter.
I read Whitmer's more recent release Cry Father when it first came out and really enjoyed it which is why I picked up Pike. I liked both, but Pike is my favorite of the two books. I will definitely be checking out Whitmer's future work as well. If you like stripped-down noir that is equal parts family drama and vicious pop a cap in your ass violent then Pike if your book. Also, recommended to fans of Donald Ray Pollock or William Gay.
March 31, 2022
Le mois Roman noir du challenge Gallmeister est l'occasion de découvrir Pike, seul roman de Benjamin Whitmer que je n'avais pas lu. Autant le dire tout de suite, ce n'est pas mon préféré, mais c'est le premier roman de l'auteur, et on y trouve déjà ce qui fait sa force : des personnages marqués par un passé qui leur colle à la peau mais essaient de se construire un quotidien meilleur, et d'avoir parfois des rêves d'avenir ; des valeurs fortes, comme l'amitié à toute épreuve, ici celle de Pike et de Rory ; la misère sociale où règnent les drogues, la prostitution, la violence ; une ambiance poisseuse où même la neige est noire ; des scènes très visuelles à la dimension cinématographique ; une écriture poétique et tranchante à la fois.Pike vivote dans une petite ville des Appalaches, exerçant de petits boulots avec son pote Rory, dont le rêve est de devenir boxeur professionnel. Tous deux sont hantés par les fantômes de leurs passés respectifs. Un beau jour, Pike apprend que sa fille est morte d'une overdose, et se voit confier Wendy, petite-fille dont il ignorait l'existence. Malheureusement, Wendy semble attirer fortement l'attention de Derrick, un flic pourri jusqu'à la moelle...L'alternance des courts chapitres donne beaucoup de rythme à cette histoire habilement construite, qui nous tient fortement en haleine. Suspense garanti et naissance d'une oeuvre !
October 12, 2019
Benjamin Whitmer est définitivement un auteur de romans très noirs. Tout comme celle d’Évasion, l’intrigue de Pike n’a aucune once d’espoir, aucune once de moralité non plus, et l’auteur nous plonge dans une Amérique violente et suffocante dont on ne peut pas ressortir indemne. C’est du pur polar, sans pathos ni lumière, qui nous plonge du début à la fin dans une ambiance poisseuse de sang, d’alcool, de drogue et de misère. Vous êtes prévenus, n’y cherchez pas un nouveau souffle pour vous redonner foi en l’humanité. Les personnages eux-mêmes sont assez détestables au point que [...]
Pour lire la suite de cette critique, rendez-vous sur yuyine.be !
Pour lire la suite de cette critique, rendez-vous sur yuyine.be !
February 7, 2011
This one blew me away from the opening.
I know it seems like a lot of 5 star books here, but this deserves no less and I'm avoiding posting books I wasn't sure of.
I know it seems like a lot of 5 star books here, but this deserves no less and I'm avoiding posting books I wasn't sure of.
May 4, 2011
Easily one of my favorites of the year. Probably some years to come, too.
Full review here: http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2011/0...
Full review here: http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2011/0...
June 23, 2015
brutal, well-written...I'm exhausted from the read
December 17, 2016
Beautifully simple and gorgeously violent.
January 26, 2019
I'm not sure what I was expecting to get from this exactly, but I do know it didn't deliver. It definitely didn't have anything to do with the subject matter, seeing as Hubert Selby Jr is one of my favorite authors along with (almost) anyone else that writes about the darker side of life.
That part's ok, so long as they do it in an authentic manner and don't pull their punches, or worse yet, miss the mark altogether. What the fuck good does pulling your punches do if you can't hit the mark?
The difference between someone like Selby Jr, or Pahlaniuk, or William S. Burroughs before them, and Mr. Whitmore here is they give the impression they know what it is they're writing about.
For example, Burrough's wrote "Junky", a powerful book which openly talked about his struggles as a result of being being a heroin addict openly and the things he would have to go through to either get more, or to avoid being arrested for being a drug addict at a time when to even speak of such things was taboo, let alone publishing an entire written composition with all of that in it.
Selby Jr and Pahlaniuk write about the seedier side of society with such force and such graphic description it lends the work an authenticity which can only leave one with the impression they either have seriously twisted senses of humor, or there's some very real darkness lurking there just beneath the surface.
Whitmore on the other hand, not so much. "Pike" reads like a child trick-or-treating at an adult costume party, way out of his league walking around aimlessly pumpkin bucket in hand standing out like a sore thumb surrounded by your typical assortment of slutty witches, slutty nurses and the like.
Anything reads with more authenticity than this cheap Mickey Spillane knockoff did. A blind man could have come closer to hitting his target than what I just witnessed.
It's not just that the interactions seemed superficial, or awkward, it's that the plot was complete rubbish. The book made so many jumps from point to point and amongst different characters in the story without ever adequately connecting the dots and adding sufficient depth to any of the characters in the process, leaving me with a heaping feeling of who gives a shit what happens to any of them.
Not even to the titular character whose backstory for example was never really explained aside from brief allusions and revelations as to having spent time in Mexico working for a drug dealer and blah blah blah, he really has no depth at all. He could take a long walk off a short pier and the story, somehow, would still manage to go on, even more disjointed and more of a monstrosity than it already presently is.
The same thing goes for the Antagonist or anyone else for that matter; Pike's daughter, Rory, the kid, the cat (see I don't even know their fricken names), the list goes on, not one of them got developed beyond a superficial level. I'm not sure there was a character in this entire book capable of really moving the plot along during some of the slower points, and that's assuming there even was a plot, which I am still not entirely convinced of.
For example, that whole scenario Krieger found himself in for having killed that kid, didn't seem like it really did much for the plot, it was just this isolated thing that happened that kept being referenced back to or alluding to in passing, but having nothing to do with the overall climax of the story. Another example is never expanding on several characters storyline at all, or enough. This included Krieger and his need to kill pedophiles, or his strange arrangement with the prostitutes and the babies, or Rory and the fire, and Pike and just about everything, tons of missed opportunities to make this not suck hard the way it currently does.
I'm pretty certain I lost brain cells subjecting myself to this torture. I believe I got the book for free, or close to it, and I still came out on the losing end of that transaction.
That part's ok, so long as they do it in an authentic manner and don't pull their punches, or worse yet, miss the mark altogether. What the fuck good does pulling your punches do if you can't hit the mark?
The difference between someone like Selby Jr, or Pahlaniuk, or William S. Burroughs before them, and Mr. Whitmore here is they give the impression they know what it is they're writing about.
For example, Burrough's wrote "Junky", a powerful book which openly talked about his struggles as a result of being being a heroin addict openly and the things he would have to go through to either get more, or to avoid being arrested for being a drug addict at a time when to even speak of such things was taboo, let alone publishing an entire written composition with all of that in it.
Selby Jr and Pahlaniuk write about the seedier side of society with such force and such graphic description it lends the work an authenticity which can only leave one with the impression they either have seriously twisted senses of humor, or there's some very real darkness lurking there just beneath the surface.
Whitmore on the other hand, not so much. "Pike" reads like a child trick-or-treating at an adult costume party, way out of his league walking around aimlessly pumpkin bucket in hand standing out like a sore thumb surrounded by your typical assortment of slutty witches, slutty nurses and the like.
Anything reads with more authenticity than this cheap Mickey Spillane knockoff did. A blind man could have come closer to hitting his target than what I just witnessed.
It's not just that the interactions seemed superficial, or awkward, it's that the plot was complete rubbish. The book made so many jumps from point to point and amongst different characters in the story without ever adequately connecting the dots and adding sufficient depth to any of the characters in the process, leaving me with a heaping feeling of who gives a shit what happens to any of them.
Not even to the titular character whose backstory for example was never really explained aside from brief allusions and revelations as to having spent time in Mexico working for a drug dealer and blah blah blah, he really has no depth at all. He could take a long walk off a short pier and the story, somehow, would still manage to go on, even more disjointed and more of a monstrosity than it already presently is.
The same thing goes for the Antagonist or anyone else for that matter; Pike's daughter, Rory, the kid, the cat (see I don't even know their fricken names), the list goes on, not one of them got developed beyond a superficial level. I'm not sure there was a character in this entire book capable of really moving the plot along during some of the slower points, and that's assuming there even was a plot, which I am still not entirely convinced of.
For example, that whole scenario Krieger found himself in for having killed that kid, didn't seem like it really did much for the plot, it was just this isolated thing that happened that kept being referenced back to or alluding to in passing, but having nothing to do with the overall climax of the story. Another example is never expanding on several characters storyline at all, or enough. This included Krieger and his need to kill pedophiles, or his strange arrangement with the prostitutes and the babies, or Rory and the fire, and Pike and just about everything, tons of missed opportunities to make this not suck hard the way it currently does.
I'm pretty certain I lost brain cells subjecting myself to this torture. I believe I got the book for free, or close to it, and I still came out on the losing end of that transaction.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews