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Being an adult is all about downsizing your dreams. It suits me, really, since I've always been the contemplative ones, the guys who needs time to compute what's happening to him. It's why I like slow things: movies that stretch out, novels that take their sweet time to reveal themselves. JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS, Todd Morr's latest novel is an experiment in pacing that is both exhilarating and difficult to follow. It's an absolute scorcher, you'll have a difficult time prying yourself off it, but it's also quite out of control. I liked it. I would've loved it if was the middle of a longer, more elaborate novel. I'll tell you one thing, though, it's one of the most manic, fast paced novels I've ever read in my life. If it's your thing, you owe it to yourself to read JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS.
I wouldn't know how to resume JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS in one paragraph, because it's deceptively simple. At least, it looks pretty simple because it's one, big, 200 pages long chase/shootout, but there are a lot of moving parts. Janet is a stripper living comfortably off her blackmail ring profits until the day her carefully constructed scheme is destroyed and bad man start coming for her. Then, all hell breaks loose and Janet will stop at nothing to put some distance between her and the people looking to put her six feet underground and yet it's the kind of thing that doesn't stop until at least one of the two involved parties are dead. JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS then ratchets the tension until you feel like you're going to fall off a cliff if you don't keep reading.
Don't get me wrong, Todd Morr can write. His prose is lean and clear, and generous with dialogue, which makes it candy for the reader. It's just that JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS takes a reckless bet on being one of the fastest paced crime novels in the market and past a certain point, it was just too much for me. Once I got a hold of what was going on (people were trying to kill Janet), I never really figured out her deeper motivations or the origins of such a deadly grudge between her and the merry band of thugs on her trail. I mean, it's a choice to bank on the plot to override a certain amount of things and Todd Morr reveals a certain amount of things through Janet's relationship with Felix, an unlucky, yet resourceful bystander who gets caught in the crossfire. There was just too much invested in the chase, for me. The characters don't have a strong enough voice to carry the inherent backstory through the ongoing events.
JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS does a lot of things well, but there are things it doesn't do at all. It really feels like an experiment on how much you can pack in a crazy, over the top plot without giving the reader any form of visceral conflict between character. Everything happening is motivated by Janet's past business decisions. Now, I'm notoriously critical of action scenes in literature because they often are difficult to keep up with. Since JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS is mostly built of action scenes, I shouldn't be surprised to have struggled with the who's who and the what's what. I liked the lean, uptempo prose, but I struggled with the scorching pace. I would've loved JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS to pump the brakes a little an anchor itself a little deeper into its lead characters. Some of your will love the uncompromising nature of this novel, though. If you love breakneck speed literature, this is some kind of ultimate experiment.
JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS does a lot of things well, but there are things it doesn't do at all. It really feels like an experiment on how much you can pack in a crazy, over the top plot without giving the reader any form of visceral conflict between character. Everything happening is motivated by Janet's past business decisions. Now, I'm notoriously critical of action scenes in literature because they often are difficult to keep up with. Since JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS is mostly built of action scenes, I shouldn't be surprised to have struggled with the who's who and the what's what. I liked the lean, uptempo prose, but I struggled with the scorching pace. I would've loved JESUS SAVES, SATAN INVESTS to pump the brakes a little an anchor itself a little deeper into its lead characters. Some of your will love the uncompromising nature of this novel, though. If you love breakneck speed literature, this is some kind of ultimate experiment.