This week’s recommended reading is Down Solo by Earl Javorsky.
Debbi Mack here, and I’m going to review Down Solo by Earl Javorsky. Now this book, I have to tell you, grabbed me right from the beginning. The reason was the protagonist, Charlie, wakes up in the morgue. He’s dead and, yet, there he is conscious. And he can leave his body and go back to his body, and what happens is the last thing he remembers is getting shot in the head. So he checks it out and yes, there’s a head wound there. And yet he’s conscious, and he can actually move he finds out.
So this sets off a series of events in which essentially Charlie is looking for his killer, and gets involved in all these other things. And the story is masterfully written. It goes into flashbacks, basically as to how he got to the morgue, as well as what happens after he has recovered. Recovered. Let’s say come back from the dead or survive despite being dead? I’m not sure what you would call this state exactly, but what it reminded me of was the movie DOA, where the guy is poisoned and then has to find his his killer, except in this case he’s dead and can somehow move his body around and go in and out of his body, despite the fact that he’s been mortally wounded.That’s the best way of putting it, I guess.
So the story itself is very convoluted in the tradition of hard-boiled mystery and employs a lot of the motifs you’ll see in a hard-boiled mystery—femme fatales, tough guys—it’s just a wild ride of a read and I highly recommend it. Earl Javorsky‘s Down Solo. Fun stuff. Anyway, I think that’s it for this week, and I’ll talk to you later.
