Nailed [Paperback]

Lucy Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2001

Matt Engstrom has a successful construction business, a son he raises on his own, and a past that's about to come full circle. He's not going to know what hit him...

Nailed opens in a bar, but what happens to protagonist Matt Engstrom, is more like a bar brawl. He's assailed from every point of the compass, and author Lucy Taylor has done a fine job of keeping the reader as off-balance as her hero under siege. A genuinely different, edgy kind of mystery. (Jeremiah Healy, author of Spiral and The Only Good Lawyer

Lucy Taylor's writing is filled with a richness of place and a precise attention to detail. (Cemetery Dance)

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Onyx (July 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451409906
• ISBN-13: 978-0451409904
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,946,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pulp fiction, February 13, 2003

By 

bonsai chicken (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nailed (Paperback)

Matt Engstrom is a single father and the owner of a successful construction business. His girlfriend just left him without explanation, but his life is really turned upside down when a body is found dead in the back of his pickup. Knowing the police wont be of any help, he does some investigating of his own and uncovers secrets about his company that could make things much worse for him should they become known. The expected noir elements are present: a man with a dark past thrown into situations he doesnt understand, a femme fatale whom you never know whether to trust, and an especially complicated plot.

Taylor is known for her often graphic but always excellent short stories of sex and horror. But where the sex in those stories was always integral, it seems included here mostly for shock value. I simply cant imagine real people talking like some of them do in this novel.

NAILED is trashy fun but not nearly up to the quality of her earlier, shorter work. It should appeal to readers of Richard Laymon and similar authors.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that satisfies, July 10, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nailed (Paperback)

Eight years ago Matt Engstrom accidentally killed Harold Petrosky, who was stalking his wife Calla. Matt went to prison for four years. Calla divorced him and was murdered two days after ending her marriage.

Matt, a construction company owner, meets his foreman Barry Bishoff at the Rose Bar. However, Barry who selected the site fails to show up. Matt leaves only to find a dead Barry in the back of his truck. The police suspect Matt killed Barry. When financial fraud surfaces at his company, Matt realizes that the police now have a motive to accompany the opportunity. Barry found out about the money scheme and Matt silenced him using his truck to confuse the investigation as the cops would never believe someone would drive a vehicle containing the person they killed. He begins his own inquiries starting with his missing accountant, but not yet realizing how the unsolved murder of his former wife and his current mess entwine tighter than the DNA helix.

NAILED is an exciting amateur sleuth tale that works because the hero knows only he can save himself as the evidence mounts against him. Matt is an interesting protagonist and his in-laws add eccentricity and much more to a non-stop thriller that leaves the audience NAILED to their seat until Lucy Taylor's book is finished.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, slightly flawed, August 2, 2001

By 

Arthur Gideon (in another dimension) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nailed (Paperback)

A good read indeed. But there's some flaws, the inevitable trappings of a mass market paperback original: obvious padding to make the book thicker, contrived "odd" characters always found in crime thrillers (a la Lynch or Tarrantino). In fact, this book was similar in vein and scope to Michael hemmingson's WILD TURKEY -- both are set in San Diego, there's a murder, there's over-sexed villianesses, and there are Las Vegas scenes. Hemmingson and Taylor are a lot alike, and they've been publsihed in a lot of the same little mags and anthologies so that I am beginning to wonder if one isn't the pen name for the other? .