Rough Trade

June 27, 2016
Robinson’s rough-and-tumble sequel to 2013’s The Hard Bounce finds William “Boo” Malone and his crew of survivors from St. Gabriel’s Home for Boys—Junior, Ollie, and Twitch—hanging tight as adults and bearing the scars of their upbringing. Boo and Junior are bouncers at the Cellar, a Boston rock and roll club, where skirmishes with unruly patrons are common. A confrontation with employees of IronClad Security leads to a fight with IronClad’s physically formidable boss, Ian Summerfield. As Boo accurately notes, “our whole scene was one big fight club.” Meanwhile, Boo and Junior beat jazz musician Byron Walsh as a favor to coworker Ginny and as a warning for him to leave her alone, but when Byron turns up dead, Junior is fingered for the killing. With help from Twitch and Ollie, Boo works to clear Junior in a gritty tale leavened by some raucous humor.

July 1, 2016
This is from the postmodern wing of contemporary noir. The genre's conventionsshootings, stabbings, chases, betrayals plus a barrel of cynicism and an all-encompassing darknessare as much about themselves as they are about the narrative. Boo Malone and his buddy Junior, bouncers at a second-tier Boston nightclub, muscle their way through an attempt to help a friend of a friend hounded by an ex-lover. They're all hip to the part they're playing and feel free to mock it. Thus Boo will detonate a cluster of f-bombs, then wink, Actually, I'm well aware of my own delusions. A black custodian speaks of protecting his reputation as a Magical Old Negro. Readers who don't mind these metacaperingsand those who enjoy all the mirrorswill also note that Robinson tells a helluva story. The confrontation near the end manages to be both wildly funny and just wild, with a villain who sounds like Hugh Grant. The novel abounds in movie bits, as an aspect of the overall self-consciousness. Boo and Junior contemplate doing a Butch and Sundance. Boo gathers his cronies for a fight by texting them: Avengers assemble. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)