Hard Freeze is the second installment in the Joe Kurtz trilogy, and it did not disappoint.

We pick up almost where we left off with Hardcase, which is where I think I slipped up, as it has been 2 years since I read Hardcase so I think a quick refresh would have been useful, but it isn't essential.

It took me a while to get into the story, mainly because it starts with 3 story lines that merges into 2 and then merges into 1. I found this rather difficult to follow to start off with but the way Simmons does this is brilliant and all the pieces start to fit together so perfectly, which really helps the pace of the story.

For me, this really picked up about 1/3 of the way through the novel, the action scenes were fantastic, and the small cast of characters were just enough for me, and all had their part to play. Dan is so good at creating characters that you despise. We saw this in The Terror with the character, Hickey, and also in Endymion with Nemes. In Hard Freeze, we come across Hansen. What I really enjoyed about Hansen is that we got to see things through his eyes, and read his thoughts, excuses and reasons for committing the horrific acts he has carried out is quite disturbing, but also interesting to read.

I also have to mention how great Joe Kurtz is, his personality is cold but witty, and he definitely has about 1 million things going on in his head at any one time to try and plan his next step. A truly brilliant character!

Overall, I do recommend Hard Freeze, and the rest of the Joe Kurtz trilogy. I am not someone who normally reads crime novels, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this novel - probably more so than Hardcase - and I look forward to reading Hard as Nails in the near future.

Добра книжка типично в стила на Дан Симънс. Първата част беше по добра!

So boring- had to quit

What a violent shit stain this book turned out to be. Like a hot splotch on baking concrete. The first book in the series introduced a great hard boiled detective, over the top but mostly believable. This book, the second entry was like reading bad manga. The main "bad" guy is a serial killer pedophile that in the early 2000's is able to just "transfer" in as a Captain of homicide for the Buffalo police department. Utterly idiotic. This character made Hannibal Lector look like a girl scout. Now let's proceed to a pet peeve; author's who no clue about guns and can't take the twelve seconds necessary to google if a Glock model 9 exists (it does not), of a Glock pistol has a safety (in the trigger not on the slide), and most egregiously NO GLOCK ever has had a hammer! The Glock is a striker fired pistol you buffoon, that means it is hammerless. On page 46 a Glock pistol is cocked. On page 139 the bad guy clicks the safety off on his Glock, um no not possible. On page 223 the silly bad guy "thumbs the hammer back on his Glock, truly idiotic. Now I know what you are thinking; "Wow he is being really harsh and nit picky here." Until you realize the cover of the book has a gun ON IT and is about crime and detectives and shit! This book is absolute dog shit. Proceed at your peril. If you find yourself in the wilderness and need a quick wipe after a healthy you can borrow my copy.

This is a better book than its predecessor. Simmons has left some of the Elmore Leonard-isms behind and regained his own voice.

Който го може, го може!

Дан Симънс, подобно на единствения и неповторим, №1 в личната ми класация, Stephen King, е автор - хамелеон; автор, чувстващ се еднакво комфортно в която и да било жанрова територия и чиито книги, независимо дали са фантастика (Хиперион, Кухият човек, Илион, Олимп), хорър (Песента на Кали, Лешояди, Ужас, Лятото на страха, Децата на нощта, Призраци през зимата) или (поне за мен) жанрово неопределени (Петата купа), винаги ми допадат в по-голяма или по-малка степен; автор-ерудит, умело вмъкващ препратки към всевъзможни литературни произведения и най-различни области на познанието, поради което докато го чета почти винаги се ровя в бай гугъл, за да доразчепкам поредната бележка под линия.

Е, получава му се и при кримките, макар тук стилът му да е доста по-изчистен и ония протяжни, сякаш безкрайни изречения от по половин стандартна страница, да не се срещат често.

Замръзване е вторият роман от поредицата Джо Курц, за бивш детектив, излежал дванадесет годишна присъда в Атика и излязъл, без вече да може да практикува официално занаята си. В 220 стр. Джо ще трябва да реши доста ребуси - да избегне ударите на наемни килъри, да залови гнусен сериен убиец, да излезе сух от назряващия конфликт между две мафиотски фамилии, да се справи с алкохолизирания пастрок, поел грижите над щерката на бившата му партньорка...

Ясно е, че в този кратък обем нещата няма как да не са на тъгъдък, но пък лично аз се забавлявах на макс. Уместно е обаче да се запознаете с Куфарът (вече достъпен за свободно четене в Моята библиотека), защото препратките към първия роман не бяха една и две...

"Suffer fools. Then make them suffer."
- Dan Simmons, Hard Freeze



Harder

Book 2 of 3 in Dan Simmons, hard-boiled, Joe Kurtz novels. I just finished Hardcase and returned for some fast narrative, wit, and violence. Dan Simmons, like Steven King, is hard to just pin down into one genre. Obviously, he is best known for his Hyperion novels and his horror novels, but if you look close one big organizing theme of all his books is literature. His Hyperion Cantos allude to Keat's great poems. Other novels are influenced by Dickens, the War Poets, Homer, Dante, etc. He likes his literature. So, even when Joe Kurtz is existentially beating the hell out of a bad dude, he is only a couple breaths away from throwing out a Nabokov reference. In that way, these novels sorta pay tribute to John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels. Neither MacDonald nor Simmons are Raymond Chandler, but they still surf, imho, one wave higher than Jack Reacher. I'm not sure, I haven't read enough Lee Child or Dan Simmons.

It gets pretty silly in this one for a few reasons. For one, Dan Simmons seems perfectly content and even driven to include serial killers in the mix of these books. Why that is is a question I am not clear about. We begin with Joe Kurtz being approached by an older concert violinist who tells him that he wants Joe to find his daughter’s killer, a former friend who had been posing as a psychiatrist and neighbor. The man lured the daughter to the woods where he brutalized her and killed her, then called her father to say what he had done and that he was returning home to kill his own wife and child. The man calls the police, but when they arrive the house is burnt to the ground with three bodies inside. The violinist didn’t believe he was dead, and recently thinks he saw the man in the airport, his face radically changed.

Joe also has to contend with his own situation, fending off continued hits on his life from the local mob he harrassed in book one. A new daughter of the old don has returned from Italy and she seems to be behind the new hits. It turns out she kind of is, but it’s really her brother and Joe has gotten involved in a mafia power struggle. He also maybe sorta is thinking about hooking up with her like he did her sister, but this one seems crazier and more violent.

And wouldn’t you know it, the two storylines merge together eventually in some truly silly ways.

This was a decent hard-boiled mystery story. It is very action driven. There are no clear good guys and bad guys just action everywhere. Joe Kurtz is blunt and gets the job done with a ton of collateral damage. I didn't like any of the characters, but the story definitely kept my attention from start to finish.

Dan Simmons writes hardboiled again with this second book in the Joe Kurtz series. I love these kind of books. Fast reads that put a hook through your brain early on and then drag you through the entire book, making you stay up reading way past your bedtime.

Nothing really much to say about this book. Kurtz is a private eye who spends 11 years in prison after throwing his ex-partner’s killer out a window. He kills lots of dudes in this book too as he deals with the local mafia (who put a price on his head) while searching for a serial child rapist/killer.

I dug it.

Man, do I love good ex-cons with guns.

High action crime fiction about an ex-PI Joe Kurtz, who generally fights the good fight while not worrying his head over collateral damage. There is very little effort spent on making the bad guys sympathetic, and the only true good guys play in the periphery.

Lacks the suspense of Elmore Leonard. Simmons and Leonard use the same formula - stupid thugs and tough street smarts from the little guy.

What kept this book from more stars were two things. First, the bad guy Hansen was a born-again Christian, a sociopath, and a genius. I think Simmons could have picked maybe two of these things, or even one, and made a compelling killer but all three in one character was jarring. He is bothered by cussing but blowing someone's brains out and raping little girls is OK? What? Most real killers who believed God directed their evil actions would go after, say, prostitutes. Hansen doesn't work as a believable bad guy. Second, I lost count of the number of times I, the silly reader, was reminding of how smart Hansen was. Please, do not assume the reader lacks brain cells; assume they are paying attention; assume that even if they miss the part where Hansen was discovered to have above average intelligence when he was a kid, the reader will say, wow, this guy thinks of everything and has elegant escape plans and is bizarrely admirable; hey, he must be pretty smart! Almost every section about Hansen mentioned his intelligence. Yep, got it. Joe Kurtz was better written - he remains a bit of a mystery, and this is to his credit.