Recommended Reading: Gun Monkeys

A few weeks back I asked Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth writer Victor Gischler to recommend one of his novels to me – and he offered up Gun Monkeys, saying ‘people seem to like it’.

Well, yes, I’m sure they do – because it’s a damn good book.

Charlie Swift is a gun monkey; the head gun monkey in Stan’s crew. He kills people for a living, and he’s very good at his job. Life’s pretty good; he’s got a good crew, he enjoys his job, he’s loyal to a fault, his mom cooks a mean meal, his little brother might go back to college,  and he just met a nice taxidermist who seems to be as okay with dead people as she is dead animals.

Unfortunately, Stan’s getting old and maybe losing his edge a little. He’s been muscled out of Orlando by his Miami equivalent, Beggar Johnson, and while he works out what to do, Stan agrees to send Charlie and his monkey cage crew on a hit at a lapdancing club.

Charlie being Charlie, it isn’t much of a problem – until four of the dead guys turn out to be cops,  Charlie’s monkeys disappear and start turning up dead, his brother wants in on the family business, Stan pulls a vanishing act, and Charlie’s left with a couple of accounting ledgers that everybody wants – including Beggar Johnson and the FBI.

Gun Monkeys is a classic, breezy, thriller and as a protagonist, Charlie follows the classic mold. He’s the right mix of tough and cynical, with a dash of humor thrown in for good measure, and Gischler’s easy handle on dialog and character makes this an entertaining and quick read. If there’s any faults in the book, it’s that it follows the set formula a little too closely – but it’s so entertaining while it does that you barely notice, and having an unrepentant killer who just might be a nice guy as the narrator adds a nice twist to it.

Highly recommended!

Gun Monkeys is available on Amazon, and probably at all good bookstores, but I don’t get a commission from them.

Tags: Deadpool, Recommended Reading

This entry was posted on March 16, 2010 at 8:14 am and is filed under Archive, Books-Archived, Comics-Archived. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.