'Muzzle Blast' (The Sharpshooter #6) – Bruno Rossi (Leisure Fiction)

I know it sounds really obvious but I've only recently found that the best way to head off a reading slump is to pick up something completely different, to my normal fare, and give that a go instead. To that end, I've got a small pile of books that are set to one side, just for that very purpose; an emergency TBR pile if you will ;o) I hit a little slump just recently, work is going ok but it has got on top of me a bit, so knew that it was time to read something a little different. Bruno Rossi's 'Headcrusher' was a surprisingly fun read, last year, so I thought I'd revisit the 'uber-violent' world of Johnny Rock and his ongoing mission to kill 'Mafia Bastards', see what happened next (or 'happened before', turns out that I'm reading these books out of order...) 'Muzzle Blast' was, well... a bit of a disappointment actually.

The Sharpshooter headed for Cape Cod looking for trouble. He found almost more than he could handle. A brutal Mafia capo held the entire Cape in his claws and he was raking in the millions from drugs, gambling, and prostitution. The local police were powerless to stop him. 

Rock had to use every trick in the book to topple this entrenched  and virtually omnipotent origination. But the Sharpshooter had sworn a blood oath to avenge his murdered parents and nothing, not even the entire Massachusetts Mafia could stop his bloody onslaught.

Sometimes, a book is so obviously geared towards a particular audience that you have to ask yourself whether it's actually fair to expect anything else from it. I've only read two 'Sharpshooter' books now but it's really clear what they are (pulp crime) and what they're setting out to do (get you back for the next book by being all sexy and violent and stuff). 'Muzzle Blast' is another honest read in that respect as it's not setting out to be anything other than what it is and is quite happy to shoot its way to a conclusion, just like 'Headcrusher'. Is it fair then to expect anything else from it? Well actually, yes.

I don't know if I was just really tired when I read 'Muzzle Blast' but a lot of the movements, that Rock made, didn't make any sense. Lots of driving down a street then doubling back down another street for no real reason other than an occasional fight to keep things interesting.As the book went on, I couldn't help but wonder how much of this was 'padding' as what Rock actually needed to do didn't take a lot of time at all. It read like a really clumsy attempt to spice up the plot with a little extra mayhem; except that the two elements didn't really connect at all. If you're reading for the action etc, this is the last thing that you want.

And what was it with all the Chinese characters being shifty and not quite to be trusted? I mean, I get it; this is a crime novel and criminal characters are meant to come across like that. Here though, it's like they come across as shifty etc because they're Chinese, not because they're criminals, and that's not clever at all. There's no need for it, even from a pulp crime novel written in the seventies.

All of this is a shame because when things do kick off, 'Muzzle Blast' does exactly what it's meant to (captivate and titillate in equal measure) and does it pretty well. The rest of the book doesn't match up to these brief moments though and that's not good for a book that's only a hundred and forty seven pages long. A book that short really needs to be on its game and 'Muzzle Blast' just isn't.