Book Review : William E. Wallace - Dead Heat with the Reaper (2015)

Order DEAD HEAT WITH THE REAPER here

I can't imagine what it's like to be named William Wallace after UFC 1 and Braveheart, but it must be difficult. I'm sure it's even more difficult to have any sort of amibition outside of being yelled: "Freeeedoooom" by random people at work. That didn't prevent former crime reporter turned author William E. Wallace to earn his own stripes and give that name of his even more glory than it already had. I gave a shot to his double feature Dead Heat with the Reaper out of curiosity and discovered a weary and moving voice with a poise and a clarity of purpose few authors have. 

So, Dead Heat with the Reaper contains two short novellas: Legacy and The Creep. The first is about a lonely man named Frank Trask who has to decide what to do of his $400,000 in savings after learning the news of his imminent death. The concept of law losing some of its pertinence to him, Frank discovers a new kind of freedom. The other novella is about an ex-soldier named Alan Baldocchi, who has survived an IED blast in Afghanistan that left him looking like a poor man's Freddy Krueger. Adjusting to existence after the war and a major trauma, Alan is looking for new war that would right the wrongs of Afghanistan.

What transpires of Dead Heat with the Reaper is that William E. Wallace loves people and it's what he wants to write about. The notion of plot can be loosely applied to his two novellas, and are heavily filtered through the prism of characters. It's risky and unconventional, but I loved Wallace's execution here. His protagonist are fundamentally good, but have no cause to support. Their "goodness" seems to stem from their loneliness and not from an especially righteous character quirk. Dead Heat with the Reaper is a lot about that loneliness, which William E. Wallace seems to know a thing or two about. That was the thing about this book that caught me off guard, Wallace, sober and elegiac vision of loneliness. 

I had no idea what to expect of Dead Heat with the Reaper, but it's not the classic hardboiled thriller All Due Respect Books got us used to since its inception. William E. Wallace writes literary portraits with a sensibility and a low-key wisdom few others are capable of. I preferred the first novella Legacy because it established a sobriety and a latent melancholy The Creep couldn't quite live up to, but Dead Heat with the Reaper is worth reading in its entirety because of the originality of its angle. No one writes quite like William E. Wallace and I don't know why I ever doubted it. A man with this name belongs to popular folklore.