The action moves like a pile-driver, the same way Cliff wishes he could. It's a story as blunt as the blade that cut through baby Cliff's manhood. It's a story you might want to forget, but you can't. And neither can the author, who has sequels planned and half chewed-over. Coleman has a vision with Omens, and doesn't stray from the path in delivering it. He has a personal history of involving himself in crimes; not as any type of investigator, but as an observer. It shows in the details of many of the crime scenes, where he remembers to look at it from all angles as the scene plays, roughly, before our eyes.
The writing isn't as slick as the blood that flows across the pages. It doesn't always run smoothly, and chokes the reader every so often. When one of the Safford police officers, 32 years old, laughs, "raising a leg to slap the knee comically", the foot comes back down with a flat thud. It’s not a natural act, and in a book full of unnatural acts, it still stands out. In fact, unless your tale is set in Elizabethan times or you're aiming for the absurd and the ridiculous, that particular gesture should be banned from literature.
Humor, in the asides to Rilek, driving an ice cream truck or hungry catfish waiting while a girl fights for her life, seems to be intentional. They point out the deadly serious exaggeration of the Rilek character. It’s forced laughter, but I think it’s the author’s mercy coming through, taking his hand off your head so you can come up for breath and look around at the real world again.
Coleman interjects himself into the book with an author’s note for a series of chapters about Rilek’s childhood and background. Where a catchy title such as “Rilek Retrospective” would have worked better, Coleman’s explanation, like analyzing the anatomy of a joke, took me out of the story abruptly and it still seems unnecessary. Those chapters also would have worked just as well as the beginning of the book to draw people into the downward spiral of Rilek’s life.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
2 - Jim W. Coleman
Nice work, Temple! Good, fair review. Sorry about that part where he slapped his knee in hilarity. I'll try to do better by avoiding those cliches in the future.
In writing this book, I wanted to craft a story that the author himself (me!) would be afraid of. I succeeded - this book still gives me the willies. What could frighten even the most manly of men? The fear of emasculation. This book will touch you in places and it ways that you don't want to be touched...