Genre: Noir
Description:
Lionel Kaspar, a hard-drinking gambler, parlays a bit of luck to move
from a dead end clerical job into a slightly higher paying position as a
reporter on a local newspaper. He quickly finds ways to scam his editor into a
pay raise and blackmail his old boss. The minor monetary success is built on
ground more treacherous than Kaspar imagined.
Author:
“Chris Rhatigan is the co-publisher of crime fiction syndicate All Due
Respect Books. He is the author of The
Kind of Friends Who Murder Each Other, Squeeze,
and Race to the Bottom. He lives in
Mussoorie, India.”
Appraisal:
Squeeze captured this reader like the last
hardwood roller coaster on the eastern seaboard. A glance at nostalgia, a coin
for a ticket and before you can “thank you sir” you’re hurtling out over
gray-green breakers that look a lot more ominous than they did from shore. But
no exit or respite until you reach the end.
Rhatigan
writes with dark humor and a feel for characters devoid of redeeming virtues,
great fun for us with twisted psyches or for us seeking escape from
stupefyingly normal psyches.
The hero
Kaspar is a delightful sociopath so involved in working out the next cheap scam
or twenty dollar sports bet that he can’t see where his focus on beer money is
leading him. The people he bruises along the way are similarly low on the
evolutionary scale of human morals. Little harm, little foul until a reporter
from a rival newspaper applies his life-wrecking expertise to Kaspar.
The rival
squeezes too hard and Kaspar lacks the wit to act in any way other than a
cornered rat--he bites.
My only
disappointment was a rather thin plot and an ending more suited to a short
story than a novella. Hints of intrigue or subplots were left unexplored as
Kaspar stumbled his way toward an inexorable and easily anticipated conclusion.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating:
**** Four Stars
Reviewed
by: Sam Waite
Approximate
word count: 25-30,000 words
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