Someone suggested I read an S. Craig Zahler novel, just to see what I thought of it.

So I went and bought Mean Business On North Ganson Street.

There are many good things I could say about this book. First of all, it’s well written. Author Zahler is a very good stylist. He turns out punchy, neo-hardboiled prose, with a razor edge: “The silver luxury car rolled past a street that was blocked off by an overturned pickup truck, which had been torn open like a zebra on the plain.” “The windshield wipers shoved powder across the glass, and through the opening, Bettinger saw Victory. Covered with snow and viewed from a distance, the city resembled a mildewed autopsy.”

Also, the characters are vivid and the plotting propulsive. This is very good writing.

But the reading experience provided? That’s a whole other thing.

Jules Bettinger is a police detective in Arizona. His record is good, but his customer service attitude isn’t, and he gets himself fired. His only option to stay on the job is a transfer to the city of Victory, Missouri, notorious for having the worst crime rate in the country.

When he gets there, he finds his fellow detectives brutal and probably corrupt. He observes clear violations of suspects’ rights. Then he learns more, and discovers why the cops are acting the way they are – in Victory, the situation has gone far beyond law enforcement. It’s now total war. When his own family gets pulled into the violence, Jules takes the gloves off and enters fully into the battle.

And that battle will lead from the better parts of Victory, which are merely blighted, to the worst parts, which are post-apocalyptic.

It’s a descent into Hell.

Reading Mean Business On North Ganson Street was an uncomfortable experience. Shocking, offensive, full of disillusionment. This is Nietzche’s world; the cops are just patrolling it.

I can’t really recommend the book, unless you have a taste for scenarios out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

I also thought the sex scenes were unnecessarily explicit.

I fear I am not going to be a S. Craig Zahler fan.