{"id":7855,"date":"2019-04-08T09:02:53","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T13:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7855"},"modified":"2019-04-08T09:03:58","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T13:03:58","slug":"hell-chose-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7855","title":{"rendered":"*****Hell Chose Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Angel Luis Col\u00f3n \u2013 Just when avid crime fiction readers\nmight be tiring of low-life protagonists, seedy surroundings, and grimy situations\nlarded with expletives, along comes a novel that upends expectations. Angel\nLuis Col\u00f3n\u2019s new thriller certainly is filled with reprehensible characters and\nactions, but he has made it so interesting that it rises far above the type. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Dennis Lehane has described noir protagonists\nperfectly: \u201cIn Greek tragedy, they fall from a great height. In noir, they fall\nfrom the curb.\u201d Col\u00f3n\u2019s protagonist, Bryan Walsh, has teetered on the curb for\nsome time. He was raised Irish Catholic in the Bronx, with his grandfather\nMairsial, his mother\u2014\u201can awful, manipulative monster\u201d\u2014and his younger brother\nLiam. Bryan fled these unpromising surroundings at age 18, going straight into\nthe U.S. Marines. In Iraq, he led a mistimed assault on a house that killed a\nchild, and he can\u2019t shake the memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He deserts the Marines, bolting to Ireland, to the only\nfamily member who may be able to protect him, his uncle Sean. Sean Shea is the\nson of one of the original members of the Irish Republican Army, a hard bastard\nwhom Sean seems determined to outdo. Bryan works his way up in Sean\u2019s loose criminal\norganization, learning to make bombs, killing people Sean has fingered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Bryan learns some of Sean\u2019s mates doubt his loyalty\u2014a\nsituation unlikely to promote longevity\u2014again he splits, returning to the U.S.\nillegally a year before 9\/11. Liam has a diabetic stroke that leaves him in\npermanent intensive care\u2014\u201call vegetable,\u201d as Bryan\u2019s boss, a gangster middleman\nnamed Paulie Gigante, so sensitively puts it. The work Bryan does for Paulie is\nmostly as a hitman, killing people Bryan considers losers and nobodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Paulie keeps cutting back on Bryan\u2019s take, and Bryan desperately\nneeds money to pay Liam\u2019s interminable hospital bills. He mistakenly kills the\nson of a big crime boss, who\u2019s determined to get revenge. The hunt for Bryan is\non, and blood in great quantities begins being spilled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several aspects of this story make it a stand-out. First is Col\u00f3n\u2019s wonderful use of language. It\u2019s elegant, evocative, and economical. Most distinctive is the indelible way he describes what\u2019s going on in Bryan\u2019s head. The man is haunted by the ghosts of his victims\u2014dissolving, reassembling, their margins fluid\u2014who follow him in a growing and inescapable train. They repeat the words they uttered just before death, a macabre Greek chorus that oddly enriches the novel\u2019s events. Bryan\u2019s living, breathing companions here in the real world doubt his sanity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the question of whom the protagonist can trust is a hallmark of thriller fiction, in this novel, the layers of deception and betrayal expand geometrically. Though just under 200 pages, this book packs a wallop and is one you will have a hard time forgetting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by SuperHerftigGeneral for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Angel Luis Col\u00f3n \u2013 Just when avid crime fiction readers might be tiring of low-life protagonists, seedy surroundings, and grimy situations larded with expletives, along comes a novel that upends expectations. Angel Luis Col\u00f3n\u2019s new thriller certainly is filled … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****Hell Chose Me - gritty crime thriller written with literary deftness about a hitman haunted by his victims.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,40,126,32],"tags":[1526,1534,331,91],"class_list":["post-7855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-angel-luis-colon","tag-hell-chose-me","tag-ireland","tag-new-york"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/ghost.jpg?fit=286%2C384&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-22H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7855"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7858,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855\/revisions\/7858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}