Verisimilitude and very naughty lyrics.
Having just finished Greg Rucka's Private Wars (2005; 412 pps.) -- a prose tie-in to his Queen & Country comic book series -- today (Sunday, 6 September), and then gone back to Ted Bell's Tsar (the fifth book in his ongoing Alex Hawke series) crystallizes something that I alluded to in my previous entry: namely, that Rucka's Q&C series is the goods.
Rucka's Q&C series more than delivers in terms of action and thrills, but it's more deeply satisfying in that, by letting the reader see some of the indescribably petty skulduggery behind the scenes in London (and, by word of mouth, Washington) and the physical and psychic toll that covert actions take on his leading protagonist, Tara Chace, Rucka shows in no uncertain terms just how wretched, brutalizing and thankless a job black ops almost always is. Rucka is not content with easy answers, ideological platitudes or simple, vicarious thrills; Private Wars, in particular, while slower to start and broken up by breathing spaces in the middle that, if Rucka was not such an economical writer, could easily be longueurs, has what is probably the most jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, emotionally devastating ending of any Q&C story, and also separates Tara Chace from the bulk of the human race, underscoring the fact that she is a stone-cold, muh-fuggin' killer. I mean. Gah. DAMN.
Going from Private Wars back to Ted Bell's Tsar and his would-be Bond 2.0, Alex Hawke, I needed a decompression chamber; in fairness to Bell, though, he and Rucka shouldn't really be mentioned in the same breath, because coming on the heels of Private Wars, Bell's macho, masturbatory schoolboy horseshit is so laughably vapid, shallow and false that it makes a James Bond movie, any James Bond movie, seem like a Jean-Pierre Melville thriller by comparison. There's certainly nothing wrong with escapist fare per se; it's just that Bell doesn't write it very well. Ian Fleming's worst Bond story is better than Tsar.
*Sigh* Guess I should see about checking out Rucka's Atticus Kodiak series through inter-library loan (Keeper, Finder, Smoker, Shooting at Midnight, Critical Space, Patriot Acts -- the only book that my library actually has -- and Walking Dead), as well as his non-series book, Fistful of Rain.
Oh, yes: Rucka also made mention of what is apparently a drinking song of the cross-country running group called the Hash House Harriers, "Put Your Thighs On My Shoulders" (as well as "the raunchiest version of 'Rawhide' he knew"; p. 32), which is apparently a parody of Paul Anka's "Put Your Head On My Shoulder". There at least a couple of sites that have the lyrics to both songs and plenty of others. Just the thing for the last bonfires of summer. *Coughs*
Rucka's Q&C series more than delivers in terms of action and thrills, but it's more deeply satisfying in that, by letting the reader see some of the indescribably petty skulduggery behind the scenes in London (and, by word of mouth, Washington) and the physical and psychic toll that covert actions take on his leading protagonist, Tara Chace, Rucka shows in no uncertain terms just how wretched, brutalizing and thankless a job black ops almost always is. Rucka is not content with easy answers, ideological platitudes or simple, vicarious thrills; Private Wars, in particular, while slower to start and broken up by breathing spaces in the middle that, if Rucka was not such an economical writer, could easily be longueurs, has what is probably the most jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, emotionally devastating ending of any Q&C story, and also separates Tara Chace from the bulk of the human race, underscoring the fact that she is a stone-cold, muh-fuggin' killer. I mean. Gah. DAMN.
Going from Private Wars back to Ted Bell's Tsar and his would-be Bond 2.0, Alex Hawke, I needed a decompression chamber; in fairness to Bell, though, he and Rucka shouldn't really be mentioned in the same breath, because coming on the heels of Private Wars, Bell's macho, masturbatory schoolboy horseshit is so laughably vapid, shallow and false that it makes a James Bond movie, any James Bond movie, seem like a Jean-Pierre Melville thriller by comparison. There's certainly nothing wrong with escapist fare per se; it's just that Bell doesn't write it very well. Ian Fleming's worst Bond story is better than Tsar.
*Sigh* Guess I should see about checking out Rucka's Atticus Kodiak series through inter-library loan (Keeper, Finder, Smoker, Shooting at Midnight, Critical Space, Patriot Acts -- the only book that my library actually has -- and Walking Dead), as well as his non-series book, Fistful of Rain.
Oh, yes: Rucka also made mention of what is apparently a drinking song of the cross-country running group called the Hash House Harriers, "Put Your Thighs On My Shoulders" (as well as "the raunchiest version of 'Rawhide' he knew"; p. 32), which is apparently a parody of Paul Anka's "Put Your Head On My Shoulder". There at least a couple of sites that have the lyrics to both songs and plenty of others. Just the thing for the last bonfires of summer. *Coughs*