The Pistol Poets

I grabbed this book when I was deep in the midst of a crime novel binge. It was a very interesting contrast to the Chandler, LaSalle and Hammett books I'd been reading. The characters hold some twisted motivations and some of the more macabre elements seem to not phase them. It was a terrific change of pace to read a contemporary novel with some obvious influence of great past works that wasn't overburdened with "wink, wink" references. Good book from a great writer. Well worth the time. Noir without being shackled by the demands of the genre. I also liked the academic connection of the school, made for a nice addition to the flavor of the characters.

Loved the Gun Monkeys, this one was harder to stay interested in, it was crazy hectic

Mixing poetry with drugs, sex, and murder would not be the first thing to come to mind if you were thinking about writing crime fiction. And unless you're Victor Gischler, the results of such an abominable coupling would likely be a bad as it sounds. But if Gischler isn't the most talented new crime writer to hit the pages in the last few years, he is certainly the most bizarre. Of his three novels - five stars everyone - "The Pistol Poets" is the most blackly humorous - think a more evil Carl Hiaasen - certainly the most imaginative, and probably the best of the bunch. Harold Jenks is a low-level drug dealer in the East St. Louis slums, a dead-ender with a long prison sentence the best outcome of his miserable life. When he and his partner kill a graduate student in a mugging gone bad, Jenks decides to swap identities, moving to a backwater east-Oklahoma University playing the role of budding poet Sherman Ellis. It is there he crosses paths with the pathetic Jay Morgan, a visiting professor of poetry at the fictitious East Oklahoma University, the cold and rainy redneck paradise providing an unusually whacky setting for Gischler's very own brand of graphic violence and raw sex told with tongue firmly implanted-in-cheek. Morgan is a slacker of summa cum laude caliber, a gypsy professor of poetry with perpetual writer's block, a connoisseur of undergraduate sex and hard alcohol. But a cranky department head and a cantankerous would-be poet are the least of Morgan's worries when a co-ed he was bedding turns up dead in his apartment. Convoluted for sure, but merely the underpinnings of a non-stop rush of manic academia as gory as it is zany. This may have the Fireside Poets doing synchronized rolls in their graves, but it sure is bloody good fun. Get educated - get Gischler.

Victor Gischler's "Gun Monkeys" was my favorite crime novel of 2002, and I'm pleased to report that "Pistol Poets" is even better. The satirical academic novel is a time-honored genre that's hard to pull off any more, but to my knowledge no one has ever tried to cross-breed it with hard-boiled pulp. Gischler succeeds brilliantly and breathes new life into both forms. Pick it up; you won't be sorry.

Victor Gischler's first novel was deserving of its Edgar nomination for BEST FIRST NOVEL. Had it been published by a major publisher rather than an small press, it probably would have won. His second novel is a wonderful page turner full of humor, intriguing characters, violence, and a philosopical thought or two.I won't go into any plot details. I just suggest you read this book.