{"id":19638,"date":"2024-05-23T19:48:22","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T23:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19638"},"modified":"2024-05-23T19:48:22","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T23:48:22","slug":"dark-ride-by-lou-berney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19638","title":{"rendered":"‘Dark Ride,’ by Lou Berney"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My city is a midsized metropolitan area in the middle of the middle of the United States. It\u2019s flat and sprawling and a lot like a lot of other places, with no distinguishing characteristics geographic or otherwise. If my city was a suspect in a crime, the eyewitnesses would have a tough time describing it. You could probably say the same thing about me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Think of The Big Lebowski.<\/em><\/strong> But imagine it, not as a dark parody, but as a full-on, dead-serious 21st<\/sup> Century Noir <\/em>novel. That\u2019s more or less the ambience of Lou Berney\u2019s Dark Ride<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve reviewed a couple Lou Berney novels before, and I liked them very much. I haven\u2019t read one in a while now because the publisher prices them high, but I got a deal on Dark Ride<\/em>. And it\u2019s very, very good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardy \u201cHardly\u201d Reed is a classic slacker. Long, shaggy hair, tee-shirts, board shorts, flip-flops. He holds a minimum wage job as a \u201cfrightener\u201d at a horror-themed amusement park, and the rest of his time is spent playing video games and getting stoned with his slacker friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until one particular day, when he\u2019s at the Department of Motor Vehicles, getting an extension on a parking ticket. He notices a pair of small children sitting on a bench outside of an office. He\u2019s puzzled by how quiet they are. They don\u2019t laugh, they don\u2019t play, they don\u2019t talk. They just sit staring, like commuters on a bus. He approaches them to say hello, and then notices small, perfectly circular marks on their bodies. Someone has burned these children with cigarettes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something comes over Hardly then that he\u2019s never experienced before. He discovers he cares. He tries to get help from a DMV worker, then from Child Protective Services. Nobody seems greatly concerned. The bureaucracy is snowed under with work. Hardly decides that if nobody else will help, he will. He can\u2019t afford to hire a private detective, so he\u2019ll learn to investigate on his own. Usually in his life, he\u2019s given up on any task that seemed difficult or dangerous. But he can\u2019t let go of this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will Hardly, just this once in his life, be good enough?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read Dark Ride<\/em> almost in one sitting. It proved to be a grimmer story than I expected, but that only pulled me in. This is an excellent and original thriller. I recommend it. Cautions for language, sex, and drug use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My city is a midsized metropolitan area in the middle of the middle of the United States. It\u2019s flat and sprawling and a lot like a lot of other places, with no distinguishing characteristics geographic or otherwise. If my city was a suspect in a crime, the eyewitnesses would have a tough time describing it. … Continue reading ‘Dark Ride,’ by Lou Berney<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5207,1712],"class_list":["post-19638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-dark-ride","tag-lou-berney"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19639,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638\/revisions\/19639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}