Titan Books

THE NEXT TIME I DIE by JASON STARR

/ Daniel Haeusser / Leave a comment

The Next Time I Die
(Hard Case Crime Series #154)
By Jason Starr
Hard Case Crime (Titan Books) — June 2022
ISBN: 9781789099515 — Paperback — 256 pp.

Hard Case Crime has been on quite a roll with their releases of late, and this new novel by Jason Starr generated all sorts of positive buzz up through its release this past month. All those great reviews are warranted, The Next Time I Die is an imaginative creation of literary depth and irresistible diversion. It’s a novel that should appeal to fans of both crime and speculative fiction genres, while also gratifying readers of contemporary general fiction that don’t normally dip into genre pools.

“I saw you, Steven Blitz”

With these words spoken by an unknown male voice, as stab to the gut, and a fade to black for the protagonist at the close of chapter one, the wild ride of The Next Time I Die truly begins.

Before: Lawyer Steven Blitz is busily working to prepare defense for a high profile serial killer murder trial that should help launch his career to the next level. His agitated wife comes in to interrupt him, demanding a divorce and ordering him to get out of the house. She declares she can no longer stand him, and has never really loved him. She has been having an affair with her best friend and wants him and their stagnant marriage gone from her life.

After trying to talk more with her, Steven reluctantly does leave, gathering his work and making a call to his brother saying he’s headed over and needs to crash at his place. En route there amid a winter night’s storm, Steven swerves at a turn in the road to avoid sliding into a collision, and safely continues on. During a quick stopover at a store to pick up some things, Steven witnesses a man and woman having an argument in the parking lot. When the woman’s safety seems threatened, Steven chooses to step in.

A painful stab to Steven’s stomach, his vision going dim, and that mysterious unknown voice coming from the void, nowhere, somewhere.

Expecting to be dead, Steven instead finds himself regaining consciousness in a hospital. Only he quickly realizes things are not right. The nurses and doctors know nothing of any attack in a parking lot. There is no knife wound. Steven was injured in a car crash, hitting a tree while sliding on an icy, snowy stretch of the highway.

Even more strangely, Steven’s wife is there, rushing to his side, full of concern and affection. And with her is their little daughter, a child Steven has no recognition of, but who is worried about her father. The news on the television makes no mention of the growing coronavirus concerns, or fiascos from the dangerous fool who’s occupying the White House. Instead the anchors seem to be concerned about conflicts in India/Pakistan, and how President Gore will be handling things.

As Steven comes to accept the insanity of what seems to have occurred he tries to figure out how it did and when divergences of timelines from his memory and the reality he now finds himself amid must have started. He also quickly realizes he has to pretend all is fine and he’s not confused, lest they keep him in the hospital over worries of unknown neurological problems – or perhaps side-effects of the cancer Steven has recently been treated for. A cancer Steven has no memory of.

While trying to make sense of the turned about reality he faces, Steven finds some things might be nicer in this new life. He has a devoted and loving wife that he finds a recaptured attraction to. He positively adores his wonderful daughter. And here he is already a big time lawyer – a partner in the firm he had been working for on a lower rung, with a hefty bank account and life style that no longer needs a flashy defense trial of questionable morality.

But also, Steven begins to uncover some darker facts about the new found timeline. In this world, the artist serial killer he had been defending walks free, unsuspected of any crimes. Though, Steven knows better. And much to his shock, Steven finds that in this reality, he was the asshole, cheating on his wife and getting into troubles with repercussions that ignorant (and innocent) Steven must now deal with.

Starr’s crisp writing and the mysterious nature of what the protagonist faces both help propel the reader through The Next Time I Die with exceptional pacing and investment in Steven’s hapless situation and character, simply wanting to do good and find success.

And therein lies the brilliance of Starr’s novel: what makes a person good? The fantastical premise of the novel is not something Starr sets out to explain. Is this jumping multiverses? Are there really multiple versions of him that have swapped? Is the start of the novel all in Steven’s head? Or is the rest? Is someone doing this to Steven? None of the answers to these kinds of questions are what is at heart here.

Whatever its cause, whatever its nature, this ineffable phenomena is a means for Steven to discover the totality of his human moral potential, what he is at the core, or can be. Or looking from the outside perspective of author and reader, an exploration of the character of a character and the degrees to which the ambiguous possibilities and gray areas lie in us all.

From the very start of the novel, Starr paints his protagonist as someone with tremendous sincerity for virtue in himself, a preoccupation with proving his merit to himself and others. Like Linus in the pumpkin patch proclaiming righteousness while also adopting humbleness, Steven trumpets his inherent goodness with dogmatic earnestness, to others and in rationalizations to himself.

His wife’s emotional antagonism that sets off the novel is not his fault, and he’s big enough to respect it’s not really hers either. She’s simply off her meds, not speaking or thinking rationally. This is something they can work out – even if she is having an affair – because he’s willing to work things out with her, after all. Defending a serial killer with a pleas of insanity, though he knows in his heart him guilty of heinous acts and deep seeded psychological problems is okay, because the man will still be kept off the streets and be offered help, and it’ll give Steven a chance to do more and better work in defending other clients who really are innocent.

Upon the discovery of things prior Steven has done in the new timeline reality he awakens in, Steven sets out to do all he can to make better decisions than his predecessor. Cut off affairs and stop doing things that a ‘good guy’ would do. However, he wasn’t responsible for those things previous Steven did, so there shouldn’t be any negative consequences for him in this new life. He’s good and will do better.

Starr weaves a brilliant story here drawing parallels between Steven’s personality and that of the serial killer, showing what people might be capable of, lies that might be told to oneself, versions of oneself that might be created to keep an image in one’s mind to live with. As more falls apart for Steven in this new found life, is that okay still? After all, there may be an infinite multiverse of Stevens and decisions out there. If things come apart here, there’s always another version to try better at the next time I die.

The Next Time I Die is a chilling novel for what it shows through its protagonist and from the fact that Starr is offering no answers here as readers consider personal choices and possibilities of a lifetime spent inherently trying to be good, but also knowing selfish deviations from that have occurred aplenty. It’s a brutal, honest portrayal of human nature, though without going full on into nihilism. Though not a new theme to literature or other artistic forms, Starr’s approach to it here is freshly conceived and captivating.

Next up from Hard Case Crime arrives in September: The Hot Beat by Robert Silverberg. Look for a review of that up here just prior to its release.

BIRDS OF PARADISE by Oliver K. Langmead

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Birds of Paradise
By Oliver K. Langmead
Titan Books — March 2021
ISBN: 9781789094817 — Paperback — 298 pp.

I’m not typically one to get awestruck by a cover, but even I had to stare impressed with the design on Oliver K. Langmead’s Birds of Paradise for a good while before cracking the book open to begin reading. It’s the work of graphic designer Julia Lloyd, and I want to be sure and give credit for such fantastic, evocative work.

Langmead’s novel takes an interesting premise and runs with it in inventive ways that create a hybrid sort of genre novel, equal parts dark fantasy and heist crime noir, with a dash of John Wick thrown in. The official blurb of the novel dubs it American Gods meets The Chronicles of Narnia. While I can see the Gaiman American Gods vibe going here, the latter comparison makes absolutely no sense to me. A Biblical story lies within the inspiration, but it is not working the Creation story in any of the ways that any established religion does, whether using the Hebraic version or another.

Instead, Langmead takes the concept of a created perfection in the Garden of Eden, and considers the characters who populated it prior to the Fall. There is Adam and Eve, of course. But, also all of the other created species that populate its land, air, and waters. In particular, all the animals that Adam had a role in naming, intelligences that while not quite human ‘in the image of God’ still have a relatable consciousness.

If these were all created in a perfection, immortal before sin and death entered the world, what might have occurred after the Fall? What if the mortality and the loss of perfection only affected all that came afterward. What if all those archetypes remained immortal, but their perfection became lost and fragmented to all the corners of the Earth? In other words, Langmead spins his own mythological take on the outcome of the Creation story.

Set during the present day, Birds of Paradise follows Adam as he struggles to keep up his existence roaming the Earth and not giving in to despair to end his immortality to meet the fate that all of his children that have come to populate the planet can enjoy. Only one thing keeps Adam driven to continue on, the potential of recovering Eden, finding the fragmented creatures and pieces of its ruins.

Stories of rumors and pieces being discovered start to reach Adam’s ears, and his former animal friends like Owl, or Raven, or Pig start to reunite, coming out from their lives among the human population they’ve learned to integrate into, hidden for centuries. Adam begins to imagine that if he can recapture, and recreate Eden, then maybe the paradise that he has so long been exiled from could finally return. Full of despair and yearning for Eve, the woman he exchanged hearts with, but has since lost sets him on a personal quest for redemption and reclaimed worth.

However, a group of powerful and rich individuals have also set their eyes on amassing the scattered fragments of Edenic perfection, and are willing to destroy anyone that gets in their way, even the archetypical animals who still persist across Earth with deep personal connection to their former home. When these individuals of desire and greed kill another piece of Adam’s cherished past, it sets the First Man on a path of violence, not just to recapture Eden, but to enact bloody revenge.

Langmead writes Birds of Paradise in rich, poignant prose, a beauty that contrasts sharply against the raw, violent brutality of many of its action sequences and the brooding weariness of its protagonist’s soul. This is a dark novel, even pessimistic, where the drive to fight on comes with the near total realization that Eden can’t be recreated, that Adam is doomed to failure, and his soul mate Eve cannot return. Adam’s a man who lives in an eternity of memory, knowing that the perfect good times he once enjoyed are gone. But, the only thing that can keep him going on is that shred of hope that maybe, just maybe he can build some sort of simulacrum of that perfection to at least pretend and experience some bits of joy anew.

And moreso, even if he can’t go back home to the perfect Eden, he is certainly not going to sit by and watch others create a bastardized version of it for their own selfish amusement as they rule over rest of his children. Or let them kill his only remaining friends in the process of their hubris, falling to the same sin as he and Eve.

Langmead’s plot is a very compelling one, and he effectively delves without reserve into the dark emotions of humanity. Personally, I found it all too dark and depressive, the revenge too cold blooded. I felt as though Adam was just as reprehensible and vile as the antagonists of the novel. I just got a better sense of the intense trauma that got Adam to this point of weary despair, destroyed. But I’m not sure I enjoyed reading it, or if I wanted to particularly dwell amid it. However, for those who that strikes better, Langmead does deal in that darkness with aplomb.

The element I enjoyed most in Birds of Paradise included the various animal personalities from Eden who join Adam along the way to various degrees. Langmead makes these characters rich and vibrant, across a spectrum of personality traits that cleverly mimic their animal origins. The concept of these human-like magical Edenic progenitors of the creatures that now inhabit the Earth with us is an interesting one. And there are intersting parallels here in terms of Adam’s place within the context of these other characters – his responsibility to them and the concepts of humankind’s stewardship of Creation, to live as part of the ecosystem with conscious responsibility. Something we’ve failed at. It’s thus interesting that this is perhaps the one thing that Adam recaptures here from Eden, a sense of communion and connection, a reunion.

The other element I appreciated in the novel were the the protagonist – antagonist conflict and the heists of Edenic fragments that fuel it. Strip away the brutality and what we’re left with here is a very brutal noir story, with all its aura of dark pessimism. Langmead kept me engaged in Adam’s melancholic journey because of this plot conflict, with the exuberance of the novel’s villains.

As I think about it more, I usually go for noir that is brutally dark, so why was I a bit more off put by it here in Birds of Paradise? For one, Adam felt a bit too unredeemable for my tastes, I probably would react similarly if he were a corrupt and degenerate PI, for instance. But also it’s the religious aspects of the novel here, the idea that Adam is trying to recreate the ideal of God by doing things that are even more rebellious and counter to Christian concepts, at least. This is my own perspective butting in here, though. Langmead makes it clear that this is not a Biblical reality, God is pretty much absent from things here, certainly the Christian concept. But, it’s harder for me to make that separation and form that disbelief amid a fictional world. I could do it with Norse gods, or with Greek ‘mythology.’ Not so easily with what’s closer and more ingrained.

Birds of Paradise succeeds very well at doing what the novel sets out to do, and for fans of this type of fantasy genre there is a lot of wonderment within its framework to appreciate, enjoy, and ponder.

The Wrong Quarry, by Max Allan Collins

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17797436The Wrong Quarry, by Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime #114 (Quarry Book 11)
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
ISBN: 1781162662
221 pages, paperback
Published January 2014
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

I’ve read a few of the Quarry novels featured in the Hard Case Crime series and they are always a hard-boiled pleasure. Rich pulp at its finest, Quarry is a captivating antihero despite his predictable qualities of a good conscious down deep, a pride in his work, and that weakness for women. Coupling his wit with sleazy, sinister characters up to no good, you have all the ingredients for a good noir.

Compared to other books in the series what is enjoyably unique about this one is just how far off course the character of Quarry is driven by being fooled into losing sight of who the bad guys are, and the truth behind the situation in which he find himself. Knowing that our protagonist assassin is on the trail of the ‘wrong quarry’ ruins the surprise of the existence of this final twist in the novel, however the interesting aspect for the reader switches from being about the existence of the twist to more about how Quarry is being fooled.

Overall another great entry into the Hard Case Crime series, a novel that takes retro pulp trashiness and delivers a pure little guilty pleasure for fans of the genre.

Five Stars out of Five