Country: U.K/U.S/Canada
Genre: Hardboiled/Horror/Urban Fantasy
Pages: 232/393 kb
Synopsis:
Roman Dalton used to be a cop for The City. But shit happened and he resigned to become a private investigator. Classic, isn't it? Well, Roman's problem is that he's a werewolf and the further he goes into The City's underbelly, the more he realizes there isn't anything normal about it. DRUNK ON THE MOON is the chronicles of his adventures amongst the dark and the depraved.
I felt it. Like a thousand needles suddenly thrust into your body. Like electricity, millions of volts, searing across every nerve ending in a white heat of raw energy. Like an insatiable hunger overpowering you - blinding you - overwhelming you in an urgent, mindless, desire to feed.
The easy thing to say about short stories is that they're on the way out. Better yet, that you don't read them. That you've never read them. Publishers don't want them, blah blah blah. That kind of defeatist talk doesn't reach Paul D. Brazill, who is to contemporary underground crime fiction what Dr. Who is to television. An original thinker and a lasting force. DRUNK ON THE MOON is a lot of fun and defies conventional ideas about the short story form. It literally could be the beginning of something new. The lost art of short stories are coming back to the masses, under a whole new concept.
Here's the thing. The haven of genre fiction today is television. Literature is all over YA, Hollywood is rehashing ideas that are decades old when they're not doing stupid action mashups shot in "shaky cam" style and television is airing genre fiction at prime time. BREAKING BAD (noir), THE WIRE (crime), THE SHIELD (noir), LOST (science-fiction), CSI (police procedural) and ONCE UPON A TIME (Urban Fantasy) are amongst the series that tapped into tremendous success since 2000. DRUNK ON THE MOON borrows from the television formula and offer a short, punchy and tremendously fun anthology that will please fans of Raymond Chandler, David Lynch and Japanese anime.
My favorite story was INSATIABLE, by rugged indie veteran B.R Stateham, which also happen to be the longest story in the collection. Stateham's narrative flow and originality impressed the hell out of me. His story is structured in many segments and each segments feed into the other. He has a very good instinct for creating dramatic situations. Perennial favorite of Dead End Follies Richard Godwin also contributed to DRUNK ON THE MOON with a wild and perverted interlude called GETTING HIGH ON DAISY. It's the most "Lynchian" story of the collection and the most disconnected from the lot, but Godwin does things properly. The story could very well be a standalone work and reveals a side of Roman that the other stories don't. GETTING HIGH ON DAISY fleshes out an already interesting character, makes him deeper and scarier in many ways.
Walker leveled his stony cop gaze at me, obviously trying to make me uncomfortable, conveniently forgetting I had employed the same tactic thousands of times over the decades we worked together before my "accident". It he was trying to intimidate me, it wasn't going to stand a snowball's chance in hell of working.
There is no bad story in DRUNK ON THE MOON. No ordinary story either. They all range from good to amazing. I particularly liked the two stories Paul D. Brazill wrote himself and those by Allan Leverone, Julia Madeleine, Frank Duffy and Katherine Tomlinson. It's built in an episodic structure, a bit like CSI or LIE TO ME, so there is room for both continuity and originality, leaving a lot of creative room to the writers. That was maybe the most impressive part of DRUNK ON THE MOON. It was so cohesive. Every writer understood so well who Roman Dalton is and byzantine nightmare Paul D. Brazill created with The City. Each one of them add a layer of meaning and a drop of his/her personal style.
DRUNK ON THE MOON deserves all your attention. It's thoroughly original on a narrative aspect as well as an artistic creation. It captures the chaotic vibe of the golden years of pulp and offers tons of new ideas to its readers. Paul D. Brazill tapped into something special. It's with books like DRUNK ON THE MOON that reading is going back to the masses. The stories are short, it's easy to pick up and read one or two at the time and it's about a freakin' werewolf P.I. It doesn't get much more fun than that.
FOUR STARS
DRUNK ON THE MOON deserves all your attention. It's thoroughly original on a narrative aspect as well as an artistic creation. It captures the chaotic vibe of the golden years of pulp and offers tons of new ideas to its readers. Paul D. Brazill tapped into something special. It's with books like DRUNK ON THE MOON that reading is going back to the masses. The stories are short, it's easy to pick up and read one or two at the time and it's about a freakin' werewolf P.I. It doesn't get much more fun than that.
FOUR STARS