Sam Hill, Carroll & Graf, 2003, ISBN: 0-7867-1261-9
This review was originally posted to Usenet on rec.arts.mystery on February 13, 2004 (Feb 14, 04:00 UTC).
Top Kiernan is a nice guy, nice to his employees, loyal to his friends. His research company is doing nicely and it makes a great cover for his occasional work for Shaw's Mercantile--a shadowy clearing house for mercenaries, bodyguards and probably worse--which feeds Top's need for "the Buzz" of adrenaline. But things suddenly stop being good when Top's friend-since-childhood, Dee Lane--professional smuggler and all-around mysterious guy--vanishes and seems to have taken 1.5-million dollars in drug money with him. Everyone thinks Top has it and the rats are coming out of the local woodwork to get a piece of it, or a piece of Top, including psychotic Atlanta drug lord Raoul Menes.
A call from Shaw's sounds like a chance to get out of town and feed Top's adrenaline-jones at the same time, but instead of a job, Shaw's cuts Top loose with only a dossier as severance pay. Everyone from the CIA to the local cops is watching Top, and everyone else in and around Athens, Georgia, seems to be conniving for a piece of the money. Pretty soon, someone's dead, someone else is missing and Top is dodging trouble and buzzing like a bee as he tries to find Dee, the money, the killers and the truth about friends and enemies.
There's a great cast of characters in the book, including a gentle ex-enforcer named Benny and Top, himself, who is charming and smart and knows the origin and context of some of the most obscure quotes in the world. Hill also gives a nod to a few fellow-writers, mentioning by name Connelly, Crais, Block and O'Brian and alluding to or quoting others. The story's pace is fun and the plot twisty enough that, even if you see something coming, you don't have much time to catch your breath before it's on top of you and the plot rockets on.
Buzz Monkey is not perfect, however, having flaws common to first-novel and first-of-series books: Difficulty setting the initial pace; an occasional tendency to explain things which really don't need it (ie: I didn't need to be told what "Polymath" means, but the author told me, anyway) or which derail the forward-motion of the plot; obvious editing and revision issues; too much background inserted too roughly; the desire to tell us, rather than show us. This criticism may make it seem that I didn't like the book or thought it poorly written. Not so. This is a lovely book, intelligently written, clever, fun to read, great introduction to what I hope will be a long and delicious series about a cast of characters who are engaging, charming and very human. There's a bit of implied sex, but nothing graphic, a bit of rough language, but nothing extreme, and most of the violence is off-stage and moves past quickly, not dwelt upon with Peckinpahesque detail and Top even has the good taste to be sick about his hand in it. I expect to see Hill's technical issues ironed out in the next book, as they aren't show stoppers, by any means, just annoying fly-buzzings which take the edge off what would otherwise be a well-balanced, well-paced, medium-boiled adventure. A little uneven, right now, but with promise of a great, smooth ride in the future, I look forward to more from Mr. Hill.
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