Customer Reviews

Phineas Poe: Kiss Me Judas, Penny Dreadful, Hell's Half Acre

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Phineas Poe omnibus collects all three Baer novels to date in one large and lovely tome.

Kiss Me Judas affirmed my love of psychotic women.

Penny Dreadful left me wanting for real life urban games and a potion for something harder than alcohol. (And affirmed my love of distubred goth girls.)

Hell's Half Acre wrapped things up in chaos and left me on a desolate highway wishing it wasn't a dead end. (And made me rethink my love of psychotic women...)

All in all, the collected tales of Phineas Poe offered here is a steal at the price, be it on sale or not. You'll want to revisit this madman time and time again. Buy it. Love it.

Welcome to the Velvet.

There are some authors who, when you read them, can crush your confidence in your own writing. They are so perfectly in control of their craft, their prose so utterly devastating in its perfect beauty, that you put down the book and say, "Well, crap. I'll never be THAT good." Will Christopher Baer is one such author.

That his prose is not only beautiful, but can also be dark, witty, and down right violent, only heightens the pleasure for me.

There are sentences in this collection that will make a fellow writer stop to catch their breath. It's the equivalent of going to MoMA and standing in front of a masterpiece.

I await Godspeed with the utmost of anticipation.

Phineas Poe keeps losing things. His kidney. His wife. His way. But, not his hope. In a downward spiral of language and plotting that combines the senses and rhythym of Thomas Cook, James Crumley, and Jack Kerouac, Poe confirms that love is the bottom line in a final sentence that several years after I first read it still has the power to force open a bottle of scotch and drive me to this entry.

I haven't read the rest. The rest will follow. Like Phineas, I know better than to count on more than what is in front of me. What is here is enough to comprehend.

I found all three books fun to read, intellectually fascinating, and a bit addictive. A must read for any noir fan, and an intrigue for any reader. Unusual storyline, characters, and plot twists. Will Baer has a unique writing style that adds to the flavor of the novels. Excellent service on the part of Amazon, aswell.

this book was gritty, daring, benevolent and just plain great. Will Christopher Baer is now one of my favorite authors. his pace is excellent and it keeps you entertained. i cannot praise this book enough

So Phineas is an ex-cop turned junkie because someone took his liver. Weird plot, weird stories. The collection is of all 3 Phineas Poe novels by Will Christopher Baer. While I personally am not into the somewhat graphic sex scenes, they make things a little more interesting at times. If you're into crime, sex, drugs, and having your kidney cut out, along with going into a strange world of sex and overall oddities, check this out. It's a good read through and through.

I realize that I've been reading "Kiss Me, Judas" and its sequels for about a decade now. The first copy of the first book is now held together solely by tape, which seems fitting. I would advise anyone who comes across this collection to buy it.

The books to me are Phineas Poe's submissive exploration of other folks' pleasures. I don't mean sex. There is enough of that, but it's hardly inspiring - after organ theft, object rape, and blood-borne disease, one could walk away from the trilogy a little suspicious of the entire endeavor. Rather, we are exposed to a variety of alternative indulgences.

One of the major themes as I read it, in fact, is that it's safer to sublimate the sexual impulse. Self-destructive Phineas seems safest at the end of a gun, scalpel, fist or boot, or muling drugs, or drinking whatever's put in front of him. He's never in more peril than with a woman. (I note that the books are as misogynistic as Jude is representative; i.e. not at all.)

I'm not sure why I like the books so much. You never forget your first, I suppose, and I hadn't read anything from the genre. Never mind that I still haven't read anything like it.

Phineas Poe is the most disturbing and unforgettable anti-hero I've ever loved. Without ever doing any of the drugs or even half of the screwed up s**t this guy get himself into, he will still be the underdog you root for. The character will mess EVERYTHING up but do one tiny, miserable act of kindness or humanity to make you love him again. Baer almost seems to delight in torturing Poe but every wrong done to (and by) him is made up for in the end (maybe). Phineas Poe is a noir "Rocky," stoic, flawed, seemingly unstoppable. There may be predictable points in the plot, but they are told masterfully. By the end of the first novel "Kiss Me, Judas," I was enamored with Baer's writing style. I bought this trilogy on a recommendation b/c from a Chuck Palahniuk buy... Amazon got it right here!

Don't buy this book if you're faint hearted, if you don't have time to read it as soon as possible. Don't read it if you're susceptible to taking on character traits from your favorite books and are afraid of alienating all the people around you. For Christ's sake, don't read it if you like happy books.

If you are ready to enter the tragic and twisted world of Will Christopher Baer, taking the journey of Phineas Poe as the author allows you to feel all of his pain, which is considerable. You'll feel strung out and starved, discontent and uncaring, you'll want to taste the pale, bite tongues, have your kidney removed and chase the velvet.

Happy hunting

When you buy "Phineas Poe" you are buying the full set of f Poe books written by Will Christopher Baer, and for the affordable price of 19 bucks, this is a good enough price for a good chunk of modern noir literature.

This is like no noir I've read before, though. To be shockingly sincere, the three stories contained in this volume, at their core, are pretty simplistic and other than the first book ("Kiss my, Judas") they really don't seem to go anywhere. This is not a bad thing, by any means, but fast passed action readers are better off away from this one brick.

"Kiss me, Judas" opens with ex-cop and suspected wife killer turned junkie, Phineas Poe, fresh out of a mental institution and enjoying himself some drinks in a bar. The very first paragraph sets the tone not only of this book, but the whole trilogy, and they carry the same cold, sharp as a scalpel, feel of William Gibson's opening words in "Neuromancer". The plot begins as a revenge story but then it gives an unexpected turn and before you know it you are reading a story with a whole different intent and a twisted take on a familiar genre.

"Penny Dreadful", although the second book in the trilogy, is not exactly a sequel. You could easily skip it out and go to the next book, but I wouldn't recommend that. Personally, I think this is the weakest of the three books, although I have a friend who is a James Joyce fan and is madly in love with this book for obvious reasons. It is also the weirdest one and Phineas Poe finds himself surrounded by a troupe of grade A freaks who had played a little bit too much Dungeons and Dragons while at the S&M club.

"Hell's Half Acre", is the true sequel to the first book. The book starts with a strong kick, but by the middle of it the story suffers the same fate as previous book, it just doesn't seem to go anywhere and it is not until the last hundred pages when the story finally picks up to give a nice enough closure to the trilogy.

Despite my constant mentions of the stories "not going anywhere", I can't recommend this book enough. Christopher Baer is a writer to look for, and you should definitely buy this book if you are looking for a well written piece of modern literature.