Customer Reviews

Shards: A Dark Mystery

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

SHARDS by Tom Piccirilli

SHARDS starts out with a writer, Nathaniel Follows, going on a binge after the breakup with his girlfriend. He meets with a mysterious, rich girl Susan Hartford. She invites him to her B-day party the next day and that's when the s*** hits the fan. Something surprising happens at the party and Nathaniel must pick up the shards (get it?) of pieces to solve the puzzle. Along the way we follow Nathaniel trying to get at the bottom of it all and when we all realize what's going on, I was shocked, mad and spellbound. High energy, hilarious dialogue and true motivations behind the characters actions. Highly Recommended.

Shards is simply a great read. Piccirilli writes wonderfully; he doesn't just tell a great story; he fashions that story with so much style and humor that the reader hesitates to skip even a single sentence for fear of missing something. Shards is like a fusion of Fletch and Lethal Weapon; it's tough and smart and fast paced and spiced by some of the wittiest one-liners I have ever encountered. I liked this book so much that, having finished it, I immediately bought everything available by Picirilli, and have yet to find any book which deserves less than a four or five star rating.

SHARDS is an outstanding novel that has an atmosphere like no other book I've ever read. Like its title, the protagonist of SHARDS has been shattered by trauma as a child and rebuilt himself into a hero. The balance between horror, humor, crime, and humanity works to perfection. Definitely check it out!

I'm a fan of all of Tom Piccirilli's novels, but SHARDS is perhaps my favorite. Dark but with plenty of humor, believable characters, and plenty of hardboiled-type mystery. You won't find a better fusion of intensity and wit.

SHARDS starts out with a writer, Nathaniel Follows, going on a binge after the breakup with his girlfriend. He meets with a mysterious, rich girl Susan Hartford. She invites him to her B-day party the next day and that's when the* hits the fan. Something surprising happens at the party and Nathaniel must pick up the shards (get it?) of pieces to solve the puzzle. Along the way we follow Nathaniel trying to get at the bottom of it all and when we all realize what's going on, I was shocked, mad and spellbound. High energy, hilarious dialogue and true motivations behind the characters actions. Highly Recommended.

This book jumps up and grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go. Piccirilli is a success at bringing to light the poetry of horror, and thus makes the pathos of this story all the more powerful. A wonderful merging of horror and mystery

Piccirilli perfectly captures the essence of darkly-wrought characterization when bringing to life the tale of a young man searching backwards through the life of a woman he might have learned to love. We feel the suspense building to an excruciating pitch as we follow along in his footsteps as he hunts for a killer and struggles through his loneliness over a woman stolen from him by ugly circumstances. Easily one of the best of the 'new noir' writers, Piccirilli is brilliant.

Tom Piccirilli has never been one to pull his punches, whether writing in the horror genre or in the mystery field. SHARDS is no exception: the characters are awash in their own humanity, whether noble or savage. Nathaniel Follows, who lives up to his name by following through the twisted wreckage of a woman's life, delves into her past until he finally confronts the forces behind her death. Piccirilli breathes a breath of fresh air into a genre too often full of quaint cozy characters and crime-solving cats.

I debated between giving this book 3 or 4 stars, and finally settled on 4. It's not that it's bad (it's not) it's pretty good, but it's also fairly standard, routine, and pedestrian. There's a million books out there similar to this one, and I suppose my expectations may have been too high.

That may be due to the author, Tom Piccirilli. The book has his distinctive writing style, but little of the ambition he usually shows in his "horror" novels. I'm not always on board with what Piccirilli does, at times his writing style seems like a cover for a fundamental lack of ideas ("Hexes") he's been to the "murder remembered from childhood" trough a few too many times (nearly every one I've read), and his symbolism can be hackneyed (a man who bleeds from stigmata). But when he succeeds, you can forgive the missteps because the end result is an intelligent and satisfying horror read, like "A Lower Deep" or my favorite Piccirilli novel, "The Night Class."

"Shards" is indeed, as touted, a "dark mystery." It's a somewhat standard hard-boiled mystery that is saved from being completely perfunctory by Piccirilli's near-signature flourishes. Nathaniel Follows Jr. is a hard-boiled detective novel author. His father and brother were involved in some seriously unpleasant business years ago that still troubles him. He and his girlfriend break up, and he drives out to the coast to get over his sorrow. He meets a mysterious young woman who enchants him and invites him to her mansion. She is entwining him in a plot he'll be unable to extricate himself from, not realizing it until it's too late...

I don't want to give away anymore than that. If you like Piccirilli in general you should like this book. If you like mysteries you'll like this book. But don't expect to be blown away.

Forget cozy whodunits and nice lady sleuths... SHARDS does just what its title implies: it cuts thru your skin, your flesh, your guilts and your sins, right to the bone. A cautionary tale about the risks of embracing the darkest part of ourselves.