8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome crime/noir debut., March 16, 2009
This review is from: Mixed Blood: A Thriller (Hardcover)
Mixed blood is just the kind of crime thriller I've been looking for as of late. I was getting more than a little tired of mainstream novelists that feel like they need to live up to the last guy that wrote something in the same genre. Roger Smith doesn't conform to most of the traditional crime trappings. This isn't an episode of CSI or NCIS where every problem is neatly wrapped up and solved when it's all said and done. And I love that. Thank you, Roger Smith. Keep it up and you have a reader for life.
Mixed Blood's South African setting is as oppressive as a midsummer's heatstroke. You can almost feel the wind and smell the foreign sweat spilling through the pages. Also a welcomed difference in popular crime novels. The characters are pretty well drawn and the dialogue is pretty spot-on. The atmosphere is dark and hopeless and there's always a sense of suspense and dread. We're never quite sure who is going to do what. Yes, there are some predictable moments but all in all this is an extremely solid outing. I loved every page of it, honestly.
Pick this up if you want something a bit darker, a bit original and a bit more like what crime/noir should be.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brutal, Violent, Fast-Paced and Very Good, February 13, 2009
This review is from: Mixed Blood: A Thriller (Hardcover)
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Ex-Marine Jack Burn, in debt to some bad guys, is forced to participate in a bank robbery that leaves a man dead and Jack on the run with three million bucks. He's gotta get far away and Cape Town, South Africa is just about as far as you can get. He gets himself a nice place for himself, his pregnant wife and their four-year-old son, but as luck would have it, bad luck in this case, a couple local gang guys pick his place to rob.
Jack isn't a pansy and the robbers wind up dead and now Jack has to get rid of the bodies, however Benny Mongrel, a night watchman has seen what he shouldn't have. However, for his own reasons, he just wants to take his dog and walk away. He wants no part of this. Sadly, life seldom works out the way we want and and it doesn't work out the way anybody wants in this book.
And now Jack is on the run again and there is a very bad Afrikaner fat pig of a cop (think a 1960s big bellied Mississippi sheriff) on his trail and this monster of a man who claims to love the Lord smells some dollars, three million of `em. This guy's name is Rudi Barnard, but he's not the only cop in the story, there's a good guy Zulu cop named Disaster Zondi who has a score to settle with Barnard.
And all of this goes on in with Cape Town as the backdrop. It's been a couple decades since I was last there, but the Cape Town I remember, the European style cafés, the South American style beaches, the ritzy hotels, the nightclubs, there all still there. Cape Town is a place you could spend the rest of your live in and never miss the place you came from. Well, there's the Flats, you maybe wouldn't want to spend your life there, maybe wouldn't even want to go there. And they make up much of the story, this underbelly part of the city that will suck you right into it's squalor. You'll become a resident through these pages and you won't like it.
This is a brutal, very violent and very fast-paced book that moves unrelentingly toward a climax where nobody really wins. There are a lot of bodies here, more than your average thriller and you're going to have to look really, really hard to find your typical good guy, but for all your looking you won't find him, he ain't here, but that's okay, you won't miss him.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A violent, gripping thriller, May 29, 2010
Roger Smith has written a gritty, violent thriller full of deeply-flawed people trapped in bad luck and the violence of Cape Town, South Africa.
Some books slowly weave a tapestry of ideas. Mixed Blood is not one of those books. It's rapid roller coaster with scenes quickly moving through the ups and downs of his cast of characters. The background and flaws of the characters are fired with the staccato of a machine gun into the narrative.
You probably won't like any of the characters. Most of them are bad people. Jack Burn is bad gambler willing to kill. Benny is gang member who places little value on human life. "Gatsby" Barnard is evil cop, ruling the streets with violence.
Even not liking the characters, you do care what happens to them. They are flawed, but incredibly human. Several are either fighting for survival or for a chance at a new life. Will they find redemption or death of both? You will keep turning the pages to find out.
There is lots of death and violence in the book. It's gripping, but not for the faint of heart. If it sounds good, you can read the first chapter of Mixed Blood on line and see if you like it.
Mixed Blood is Roger Smith's debut thriller. I read his second, Wake Up Dead, back in January. The publisher was nice enough to send me this copy.
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