Sterile Grime

mitchell

Jul 07, 2024

4/5

The title of this review and the score may give the impression to some that I am lukewarm on this book. I am not. This book is the first in a series of 26, and I have already gone online and added the next three to my shopping cart. I love this book.

It's not perfect. It's pretty bog standard, and I can tell that there's a good amount of room to get better, but it's all those old-tired, worn tropes that pulled me to the book in the first place, and it's their portrayal that kept me. Parker is a stoic, strong, competent thief who sometimes reads like a self-insert, but he's also a degenerate sociopath who beats women and gets annoyed at accidentally killing people. It's a classic tale of getting betrayed and getting revenge, but the author is so good at pacing, characterization and world-building that it never feels trite. There are so many little phrases that are going to stick with me for a while, like when he describes a prostitute as an "idealization machine." But what really makes the book good is just how it portrays the filth.

When you're dealing with media like this, there's always going to be some voyeuristic aspect to the portrayal - the setup promises sex and violence. Today, I feel as though due to how media is portrayed and created, so much of that filth has become sterile. When we watch people kill or fuck nowadays, rarely do I find any attempt at intimacy. Rarely does what we see feel like a reflection of an actual interaction. We're all recycling ideas of what things are and never viewing their reality. We're vomiting into each other's mouths over and over again, until there's no real food anymore, just stomach bile. Maybe that's the internet, maybe it's just me. But I found it so refreshing to read an author who was competent enough to accurately reflect our reality, even when it was lurid or disturbing.