Customer Reviews

Nailed

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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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.

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

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? .

I’ve been looking forward to the day a mainstream commercial house would have the good horse sense to sign up Lucy Taylor. Well known in the small horror press, the erotica field, and the anthology market, Lucy Taylor’s collections and novels have all been released in limited or special runs. Nailed is her first, and longest, novelE mystery of sorts, more a novel of dark suspense, and some professional wrestling.

Matt Engtrom is framed for murder. He was sent to prison for manslaughter before, killing the man who was sexually harassing his wife. So this doesn’t look good, from the police’s point of view.

Being a San Diegan, it was neat to see that this novel is set in San Diego, with familiar settings in Chula Vista, Pacific Beach, and Borrego Springs.

There’s a few passages that seem padded, but this is okay. I couldn’t put this book down, and read it in two days. I have always been a Lucy Tayor fan, and I’m more of a fan now.

Get this book. The price is right, and you won’t regret it.