Review: Easy Death

Easy Death by Daniel Boyd

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Easy Death treads familiar ground, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's a lot of life in Boyd's little pulp, and, at its best, it reads like a vintage Parker novel. Heck, at it's worst it's a far sight better than most other crime novels. There's the heist and possible double crosses and shady characters whose motivations are questionable, of course, but the characters that inhabit Easy Death have lives and motivations that never feel contrived or forced. There are backstories, both explicit and implied, that drive their actions and give them a depth not typically associated with pulps. I wouldn't have been half surprised to discover that Boyd had written other novels set in the same world, but, alas, that doesn't seem to have been the case (at least, not yet).

While Boyd is offering up the genre staples, he's having fun with some of them (e.g. no delicate molls or femme fatales here, just a horse-faced ranger built like linebacker). The chronological jumps work well to create tiny cliffhangers. These could have been annoying in less capable hands, but were used sparingly enough that it created the appropriate tension, without feeling like a crutch. The plot, which focuses primarily on an armored car heist, is complimented by several parallel subplots, and Boyd serves up some fun surprises by including the occasional feint to throw off the reader.





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