Pre-Order NAUSEA here (available on January 16)
(also reviewed)
Order DEAD TRASH here
Visit Ed Kurtz's brand new website
Some novels are easier to write than others because they've already been written before and all that's left to is swap the protagonists with your own (certain authors will only swap names) and fine tune the specifics. I love these books because they provide me with exactly what I want and I hate them because they prevent me from wanting bigger and better things from the fiction I read. It takes balls to attack narrative tropes the way Ed Kurtz' did with his new novel Nausea because it will inevitably upset some readers from the get-go, but if you're looking for a hit man novel that slaloms around the clichés of the genre like goddamn Alberto Tomba, this is something you should be interested in.
Nick's been a professional hit man. Not the turtleneck-wearing, silenced-pistol wielding kind, but he's good enough to get the job done and not even get suspected on the hits. After blowing a routine hit and turning it into an unnecessarily messy scene, Nick starts getting violently sick after every job and his conscience is starting to get in the way. He's a lonely man who's been living for the thrill of the hunt for a long time. Bothered by the newfound humanity of his marks, Nick has to find a way to suppress the waves of nausea if he wants to carry on with his existence.
I'm against hit men as fictional characters and especially as protagonists of a movie/novel in general because I find them boring and generic: they are lonely, cold professionals who are deliberately trying not to move on with their lives because this way they can keep dreaming about their broken past. Apparently, Ed Kurtz is as tried as I am with this stupid cliché because he turned it on its head and turned it into the life-affirming tale of a man trying to piece himself together and struggling to see a future beyond giving death to unsuspecting people. Nick is not sophisticated and he's not exactly mourning a dead family, he's profoundly broken, yet slowly working his way up and out of the gutter.
Ed Kurtz isn't a stylist, but he's quite ahead of the curve as a storyteller. Nausea requires a little bit of patience as the narrative is delivered as pieces you need to put together and it's going to throw some readers off because it's a novel that need active participation from the reader. I've been reading a shitload of similar novels though about shadowy outlaws struggling with the existential weight of their jobs and I thought Nausea's bold and clever delivery was a breath of fresh air in a subgenre of crime fiction that's been horribly stale for years. Kurtz is such a skilled storyteller he is not bound by genre, really. He's good enough to find the universal edge in any story.
I'll admit hit men are probably more interesting in real life than they are in fiction, but the protagonist of Ed Kurtz' Nausea has the necessary depth and complexity to lure in someone who left their suspension of disbelief at coat check. It was a quite enjoyable cliché-busting novel that tested the boundaries of hit men novels. If you're looking for a novel that'll ease you into 2016 in style, Ed Kurtz' Nausea will require the best out of you, but will also deliver a complex and rewarding story that will broaden the horizons of any genre fiction reader.
I'll admit hit men are probably more interesting in real life than they are in fiction, but the protagonist of Ed Kurtz' Nausea has the necessary depth and complexity to lure in someone who left their suspension of disbelief at coat check. It was a quite enjoyable cliché-busting novel that tested the boundaries of hit men novels. If you're looking for a novel that'll ease you into 2016 in style, Ed Kurtz' Nausea will require the best out of you, but will also deliver a complex and rewarding story that will broaden the horizons of any genre fiction reader.
