Concrete Desert by Jon Talton
My Rating: 3/5 Stars
I admit I like free shit. I also admit I’m not entirely rational in my thought process. For example, I happily hand over my Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime Conference fees and feel like I’ve won the lottery when I receive a bag filled with books. Seriously, this ends up being one of the major highlights of these conferences. So in my continued pursuit of this high, minus the conference fees, I have decided to scour Amazon for the best free short stories and books available. With that being said, let’s get to the review.
The Arizona sun never felt hotter. Blazing, beating, reverberating off my skin, blistering my face, and stripping layers off my forehead. I peeled my cheek from the scorching asphalt, the sweltering concrete bouncing off my feet. The metropolitan monstrosity otherwise known as Phoenix bounding up around me, the sounds of traffic bouncing around me. Adobe and enchiladas surrounded me, and I packed my boxes with a hardened heart.
Atmosphere popped out at me, pounding away at my chest, and it was hard not to be intrigued by a city I had never ventured to. David Mapstone may have reached the front of the unemployment line with his history degree hanging at his side, and a sea filled with regret hanging around his neck, and a case colder than the Canadian border bounding from the confines of his mind.
The cast of characters might have lacked a few mental faculties, and there was so much blow I thought it might snow in the Phoenix sun. There’s a more than good chance I might get shot in a mall, or at the side of the road, and the bad guys might wield flak vests and submachine guns like popcorn and Junior Mints, and the plot might move a bit slowly at times while speeding nearly out-of-control at others. But that’s just a part of the experience in CONCRETE DESERT. It’ll shave more than a few years off your life, and it’ll have you staring up at a starry sky while your eyes roll back in your head from the concussion you just suffered.