Mike Monson

This is a story that starts out exploring classic pulp themes of the femme fatale and betrayals by crime partners and one partner's twisted wife. It explores the theme of the bank robber Left with nothing after the double-cross and who is determined to pursue his cheating partner and his faithless wife to the ends of the earth. Monson takes his classic pulp story and tweaks it by settting it in the modern world of ATMs and cellphones and then tweaks it again by filling the story with more sex and violence than many a popular horror story, stretching the limits of debauchery by including massive body counts and dominatrix dungeons, stretching the story to comicbook limits. A crazy immoral ride and not for children.… (más)

Criminal Love etc is brutally good. Don't look here for moonbeams and painted ponies. Monson offers up a full helping of two dozen dark, gritty, often bloody, stories for your reading enjoyment. Some of the stories are, however, flash fiction short. But, they come at you with all the power of a fully-loaded eighteen wheeler barreling down the grapevine just as the brakes fail. They are intense stories filled with leather-clad bikers (including some amateurs), pill poppers, gunfights, beatings, wife abusers, black eyes, flying puppies, sex crazed women, and more. Some of the stories show you never know who the real tough guy is. Others leave you shocked and shaken. Really, really good stuff. Five star stuff from the top shelf. The second half of the book consists of wry, sarcastic blogs about deadend jobs as office clerks, Target team members, and the like. Also, there are interviews with other writers. This part of the book is interesting, but can't hold a candle to the short stories.
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A modern noir story of the first magnitude. Monson gives the reader a trip through the heart of Modesto and, if you are looking for the hot rods and teenagers of American Graffiti, you are not going to recognize the place. It's filled with heroin addicted youth dreaming of becoming porn stars, real estate agents turned into church preachers in debt up to their eyeballs, unemployed losers living with their mothers and guzzling cough syrup till it puts them in Tussinland (as in Robotissin), the mother (Mavis) who is a sex -crazed middle aged man's horny centerfold fantasy, a drug dealing ex wife and her skanky used car salesman boyfriend, and an officer bedazzled by Mavis and unable to think straight. Monson takes this bizarre cast of characters and throws in murder, right wing militias, heroin overdoses, cancer, Internet videos, and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. It's a typical noir story with a guy down on his luck who seems like he's going away for a murder he didn't commit and there's no one who really gives a damn what happens to him. And the stakes keep getting Higher and higher as all the plot twists add up. Pretty much everyone in this is a cheating conniving goon. They all seem to be addicted to something or other. The writing is tight and it's an intense ride to the end of the story. What a terrific read!… (más)