Ken Bruen’s Forgotten Book (from the archives)
Michigan Roll by Tom Kakonis
The great neglected forgotten writer in my opinion is Tom Kakonis.
He
wrote a wondrous series of novels featuring an ex professor who'd
served time and is now eking out a precarious existence in Las Vegas
under the dubious mentorship of a very shady acquaintance.
The
writing is dark dangerous poetry and the violence when it comes, is
sharp and shocking, an air of doomed menace looms over the novels like a
palpable cloud.
Michigan Roll, perhaps the very best in the series,, is a true forgotten classic.
Kakonis abandoned this stunning series and now writes under a different name.
The atmosphere of being damned, of no hope, of no redemption is noir like you rarely read.
The
characterisation is superb and the sheer agony of seeing a decent man
who never caught a break and knows he is screwed is heart wrenching.
6 comments:
I've never tried Kakonis' work. Perhaps I ought to...
I read and admired Kakonis years ago (I think there's an unpublished book - certainly one which never appeared is mentioned somewhere). What's his current nom de guerre?
I should have checked first!
Kakonis died in 2018, but there was another novel, Treasure Chest, which I'm off to look for.
Nothing of his work in my library system for either print or digital.
Sadly libraries seem to banish books like this over time.
This is serendipitous. Just yesterday I found MICHIGAN ROLL in a stack of books I was cataloging, a hardcover edition published by St. Martens. I bought it last year at the book sale. I looked it up, it seemed maybe a bit too hard-boiled for me but I am keeping it and will give it a try. A blogger (who used to blog more often), COL'S CRIMINAL LIBRARY, was very fond of Kakonis's books and recommended this one.
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