Shovel Ready: A Spademan Novel Paperback – October 14, 2014

I will be honest and admit I wasn't overly convinced of this novel right away; as a lover of William Gibson and Warren Ellis, the setting and premise felt a bit too familiar and overall the ground felt a bit well-tread. I knew right away I'd probably not be disappointed because this kind of gritty, noir speculative fiction is deeply in my wheelhouse, but I wasn't sure it was going to live up to the expectations I had been building up for it for months.In the end, I had really been swept up by this book, which manages to be more than the sum of its parts, which is not necessarily a knock on the parts. Adam Sternbergh has an obvious talent for pace and a heavily stylized narrative voice. The plot remains a bit well-worn, a heavy-drinking hitman anti-hero meandering about a dirty-bombed New York City full of shanty camp towns and the rich plugged into yet another flavor of a Matrix-like mass hallucinatory cyberspace bites off big on a strange job that only gets stranger. But Sternbergh is a fine storyteller and more than competently ushers along an engrossing tale. But the real strength here is in the frenetic tempo of the entire story, the way tension is elevated higher and higher and kept taut through the end.The real danger of writing in a familiar genre is too easily falling into tired tropes and half-hearted style, and the book manages to mostly avoid it; the grit and noir are convincing and textured, rubbing the right away and making sure it burns. I really can't commend enough Sternbergh's risky approach to style, rapidly hammering one scene into the next with staccato, almost absurdly lean prose. The culminating effect feels like an action movie or graphic novel, with things getting hot early and never settling into any downtime.I was happy to learn, as I suspected, that this isn't a standalone debut but that at least one more 'Spademan' novel is in the works. I look forward to seeing how these characters and this refreshing approach to pace and structure bear out with more time. The world Sternbergh has created may not be as ultimately unique, but it's an enjoyable nod to its predecessors and well worth spending your time in.

I enjoyed this book immensely. The narrative is very fast, very dark, very gritty. The writing is sharp and economical. The story takes place in a vividly drawn NYC of the future, yet has a noir feel. I suspect readers will either like the clipped, first-person style instantly, as I did, or they will hate it.The book borrows from many other books and movies, but stands on its own. Its like Chinatown, but darker. Its like Neuromancer, but not as high-tech. Its like Inception, but not as convoluted.A couple minor beefs. The early detective story does not work so well. Things seem too easy. Finding a missing person is simply a matter of talking to a couple of random people living in a random camp. Finding a guy based on a witness's account of a tattoo is a simple internet search. The author rationalizes, "there's some amount of dumb luck involved in this undertaking."And a couple of times when characters refer to their own behavior as cliche (ie: "I know its a cliche to be a hard drinker in my profession") it felt to me like an unnecessary apology.Some have called this book cyberpunk. Maybe so. But as sci-fi goes, this book is very short on the science. That was ok by me, but don't expect much in the way of explanation. This book is about mood, not technology.I will be interested to hear how other New Yorkers react to this book, given that NYC is depicted as an utter cesspool. I work in NYC, and while this book depicts a future NYC after some very bad things have happened, it still felt real to me. Maybe that is my midwest roots talking. Some NYers might be bothered by the depiction of their city in this book. Then again, I know many NYers who, for reasons I cannot comprehend, miss the dirt and grime of 70's era Times Square, so maybe this book will make them feel nostalgic.

This is girl with a dragon tattoo taken to a new level of sado-masachism. - - We have a hitman who turns sentimental; weapon of choice: a box-cutter. We have a customer who IS sado: a multi-millionaire TV evangelist who brings his "Crystal Corral" to Madison Square Garden. HIs favorite way to do his daughter's Saturday night bath every week is by water-boarding her in the basement of his mansion. The target is this fiend's daughter; waterboarding her each week isn't good enough to remedy the porn pictures her boyfriend has taken of her. No, she needs to go. But the hitman has his code; no victim can be under age 18. Don't worry; she is 18, just barely. But wait! She's pregnant. Can't kill her without killing the fetus, who of course isn't old enough for him to kill. By the way, her weapon of choice is a bowie knife she carries in her boot (not a shoe bomber, a shoe knifer) and she definitely knows how to use it and has a list of victims already. She is of course on the lam from Daddy-Evangelist. - - Of course the hitman becomes her protector, her avenger, her friend. In the process he must ward off several other aggressors that daddy has also put on her trail. There is blood everywhere - - anyone and any place. Sometimes by the hitman; sometimes by Daddy's men. - - - So far I haven't mentioned the sci-fi. Oh yes, we have Paved in Gold, heaven by tapping yourself to some kind of set-up that comatoses you and sends you "off-body" into virtual never-neverland where you live your dreams. The author explains it, but I can't. Take it on faith. - - - If you are squeamish, don't read this book. But I liked it and I liked Sterbergh's writing style. Breezy, upbeat, with it. It's entertainment. Absolutely nothing worthwhile that I can think of.

A dystopian city, with an ever widening chasm between the rich and the poor. What better landscape for a killer for hire? Give him a name, pay his fee, wind him up, release. But here’s the thing; being a contract killer doesn’t mean you are a bad person. Or do you disagree?I loved everything about this book. Spare writing, a killer going about his job, a city that has had all its parades cancelled. The times that Spademan lives in may be bleak by most standards, but they are not bereft of opportunities for a man with his particular skill set. Supply and demand. Some things remain constant. I found everything I was after here and nothing that I didn’t care for.

Spademan used to be a garbage collector in New York City. But all that changed when a dirty bomb tore through Times Square, ripping the core out of the city, emptying it of the living and filling it with the dead, among them Spademan's wife. The poorest with nowhere to go live in the streets that others risk only with a geiger counter in their hands. A few of the wealthy have stayed behind in almost empty luxury apartment blocks, withdrawn into the limnosphere, a virtual reality, safe in their beds, dreaming, fed by drips, cared for by nurses, surely the largest group of any people who choose to stay and make a living in this wreck of a city. Spademan has stayed, too. He still picks up the trash but now it is human. Spademan is a hitman and he will calmly kill any man or woman above the age of 18 - he doesn't discriminate, anyone could be his. All it takes is just one phonecall.On this particular day, Spademan receives instructions to kill the runaway daughter of an evangelist. The death caller is none other than the girl's own father. On the chase, Spademan pays a visit to the girl's uncle with whom, he learns, she had sought sanctuary but he, reluctantly woken from his virtual reality dreams, had turned her over to two other demons, also set on her trail. As Spademan uncovers the true depravity of this girl's family, the killer learns that the Times Square dirty bomb might not have destroyed his humanity entirely after all. Leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, Spademan takes on a new mission of his own.Shovel Ready is an unusual book. Short, snappy and sharp, just like its first person narration by Spademan, the novel presents a quirky mix of crime-noir and science fiction. The sentences are brief, there are no quotation marks, the pages whip through the fingers. Spademan's mood is dark and as we see more of the damage suffered by New York City and its inhabitants it's not hard to see why.For me, my favourite part of the novel was this vivid visualisation of a near-future New York City, destroyed by bombs and now haunted by the poor, the desperate, the evil or the sleeping rich. Future technology, especially that which creates the limnosphere, clashes with the misery on the streets and, because we learn so little about how life is going on outside the city, it feels as if we are trapped on an island, cut off from the world. But despite this isolation there is a strong sense that the planet is in trouble.The crime element of the novel is bloody and shocking. The corruption of the limnosphere, the evil of the evangelists and the sheer nastiness of some towards their own relatives is brutal. Spademan is relentless and this does risk him turning into a completely unsympathetic character but, for me, he is saved from this by his memories of the dirty bomb, memories which move more frequently through the novel as it continues. I can't say that I ever really liked Spademan, and the style did take a little getting used to, but I was fascinated by the world he lives in and the people he moves among.Shovel Ready is a fast, urgent read with its vivid worldbuilding matched by an intriguing and unusual central figure. Spademan will return in January in Near Enemy and I'm intrigued to discover what lies in store for him and for us.

Welcome to the inner landscape of Mac the Knife. Or rather Spademan the box-cutter. Sternbergh is to be congratulated on this pioneering first novel. Future noir science fiction is a bit of an understatement. Like discovering a firework that has found its way into your imagination and you know it will never stops fizzing and sparkling until the bitter end.First person narration helps to create immediacy of content. So does the pared down writing. Did I say “pared down”? Change that to cut to the bone. The narrator is a hardboiled hit man who wants to know nothing personal about the hit. Just keep to the bare essentials. Who do you want dead? Don’t bother to tell me the why and wherefore. “Think of me as a bullet”. Male or female, just dandy. But there is one exception – no kids. Takes a different kind of psycho.There are reasons, as one gradually gets to know our narrator, why he has chosen this particular life style. But no cringing conscience. No expectation of mitigation. Our narrator doesn’t give a damn what you think of him. “Don’t get me wrong. I went to Sunday school for ten minutes as a kid. Didn’t take. Not the important stuff anyway. The core beliefs. Right, wrong, etcetera.”If there is a second player here it is the setting – a sardonically dystopic vision of a future New York after a dirty bomb hit. Vicious, bloody, but leavened with dead-pan humour sharp as a raptor’s claw.

Wonderfully written noirish tale of a dystopian future where the new drug of choice is jacking your brain into a computer and living out your days in a fantasy world. I can see the appeal... I loved this story. Spademan is an excellent character reminiscent of Sam Spade, cool, detached and deadly. Can't wait to read more with him.

OK sort of post-apocalyptic cirme fiction, but I don't feel compelled to read more from this series.