Book Review: Worse Angels, by Laird Barron
The third book in the Isaiah Coleridge series.
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2020, 320 pages
Laird Barron got his start with Lovecraft-inspired horror, so while the Isaiah Coleridge series is a hard-boiled noir detective series, you can see Barron's roots manifesting frequently in Coleridge's grimdark existentialist observations, and the way the story constantly flirts with the supernatural without actually bringing out bogies and Cthulhu.
Isaiah Coleridge is an ex-mob enforcer who's gone straight and now works as a PI in upstate New York. A half-Maori killing machine who grew up in Alaska (it's complicated, his backstory was all explained in the first book), he's now getting a little long in the tooth and feeling it. Those old bones don't take a beating like they used to, even if he can still deliver one.
In this third book, the series is also starting to get a bit long in the tooth. It can still deliver a beating, but I can see Coleridge's story starting to get played out. Will he settle down with his darling Meg, or will Barron maybe pull the rug out from under us and have her get offed? Isaiah's buddy Lionel, a wisecracking hick with an unhealthy penchant for ordnance, returns, as does his squeeze, a rich bitch who likes fucking Lionel because it pisses off daddy (okay, maybe she actually likes him a little too).
Isaiah is asked to investigate the untimely death of a young man who supposedly committed suicide by throwing himself down a mineshaft. The guy had some issues, but he did not seem suicidal, and there is a whole lot of sketchiness around the construction site and the town where he died. The guy hiring Isaiah is an ex-cop and current minion of a corrupt U.S. senator who's at the center of a lot of corruption and conspiracy charges. The dead man is his nephew, and he wants to get some peace of mind for his sister before he gets a bullet in the head or a long prison sentence.
Isaiah dutifully goes about stirring up hornets. The senator doesn't want him nosing around. The town's elite (who among other things run some weird cult/social club called the "Mares of Thrace") don't want him nosing around. Lots of people don't want Coleridge nosing around. There are threats, fights, bloody beat-downs, and weird creepy aged sorority chicks cosplaying as Lovecraftian cultists. The boss, in the boss fight, pulls some borderline-supernatural tricks out of his sleeve.
I like Barron's writing, but book three did not have the same gritty, grimdark edge as the first two, and the clever banter and pseudo-poetic narratives actually began to feel kind of like Barron's schtick. I'll read more books in the series — Coleridge is getting a bit banged up but he's probably got a few more years left in him. But this volume felt like Barron had to fill in what was a pretty standard investigative potboiler with some horror-adjacent flavor, and I wish he'd either go ahead and do it — let Coleridge start fighting actual monsters — or go back to what I personally think he does best, which is supernatural horror.
Also by Laird Barron: My reviews of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, The Croning, Occultation, Blood Standard, and Black Mountain.
My complete list of book reviews.
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2020, 320 pages
Ex-mob enforcer-turned-Private Investigator Isaiah Coleridge pits himself against a rich and powerful foe when he digs into a possible murder and a sketchy real-estate deal worth billions.
Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-US senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly on his way to either a jail cell or a grave, depending on who finds him first. In his final days as a free man, he hires Isaiah Coleridge to tie up a loose end: the suspicious death of his nephew four years earlier. At the time police declared it an accident, and Adeyemi isn't sure it wasn't, but one final look may bring his sister peace.
So it is that Coleridge and his investigative partner, Lionel Robard, find themselves in the upper reaches of New York State, in a tiny town that is home to outsized secrets and an unnerving cabal of locals who are protecting them. At the epicenter of it all is the site of a stalled supercollider project, an immense subterranean construction that may have an even deeper, more insidious purpose....
Laird Barron got his start with Lovecraft-inspired horror, so while the Isaiah Coleridge series is a hard-boiled noir detective series, you can see Barron's roots manifesting frequently in Coleridge's grimdark existentialist observations, and the way the story constantly flirts with the supernatural without actually bringing out bogies and Cthulhu.
Isaiah Coleridge is an ex-mob enforcer who's gone straight and now works as a PI in upstate New York. A half-Maori killing machine who grew up in Alaska (it's complicated, his backstory was all explained in the first book), he's now getting a little long in the tooth and feeling it. Those old bones don't take a beating like they used to, even if he can still deliver one.
In this third book, the series is also starting to get a bit long in the tooth. It can still deliver a beating, but I can see Coleridge's story starting to get played out. Will he settle down with his darling Meg, or will Barron maybe pull the rug out from under us and have her get offed? Isaiah's buddy Lionel, a wisecracking hick with an unhealthy penchant for ordnance, returns, as does his squeeze, a rich bitch who likes fucking Lionel because it pisses off daddy (okay, maybe she actually likes him a little too).
Isaiah is asked to investigate the untimely death of a young man who supposedly committed suicide by throwing himself down a mineshaft. The guy had some issues, but he did not seem suicidal, and there is a whole lot of sketchiness around the construction site and the town where he died. The guy hiring Isaiah is an ex-cop and current minion of a corrupt U.S. senator who's at the center of a lot of corruption and conspiracy charges. The dead man is his nephew, and he wants to get some peace of mind for his sister before he gets a bullet in the head or a long prison sentence.
Isaiah dutifully goes about stirring up hornets. The senator doesn't want him nosing around. The town's elite (who among other things run some weird cult/social club called the "Mares of Thrace") don't want him nosing around. Lots of people don't want Coleridge nosing around. There are threats, fights, bloody beat-downs, and weird creepy aged sorority chicks cosplaying as Lovecraftian cultists. The boss, in the boss fight, pulls some borderline-supernatural tricks out of his sleeve.
I like Barron's writing, but book three did not have the same gritty, grimdark edge as the first two, and the clever banter and pseudo-poetic narratives actually began to feel kind of like Barron's schtick. I'll read more books in the series — Coleridge is getting a bit banged up but he's probably got a few more years left in him. But this volume felt like Barron had to fill in what was a pretty standard investigative potboiler with some horror-adjacent flavor, and I wish he'd either go ahead and do it — let Coleridge start fighting actual monsters — or go back to what I personally think he does best, which is supernatural horror.
Also by Laird Barron: My reviews of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, The Croning, Occultation, Blood Standard, and Black Mountain.
My complete list of book reviews.