While reading Steve Trotter's self-published ebook RESURRECTED, I kept thinking ''this is as good as many crime novels published by well-known publishing houses''. It takes place in Montréal, a city I know pretty well, that Trotter exploits just enough to give the book a certain personality, without falling into the trap of relying too much on the place and forgetting about the characters. These characters, from Adam Wolf to the twin sisters (Tyler and Terri), from Night Owl to the cast of gang members, are all well-defined, even if sometimes a little bigger than reality, but still, always within believability. There are people like these, somewhere, but fortunately I don't get to meet them in reality. None are to be messed up with, until they get to face each others.
After being witness to a cold-blooded murder in a restaurant, Adam Wolf is threatened so he'll keep his mouth shut. But no one knowing Wolf would try to shut him up, and certainly not try to intimidate him. And he'll make it clear pretty quickly...and with bodily harm. Steve Trotter takes us on an entertaining ride across Montréal, where beautiful streets and sights are not usually witness to much violence. But here, we enter restaurants, apartments, and houses where the echo of firing guns is followed by cries of pain and swearing, and where the walls are sprayed with blood and brain matter. Sometimes though, these same walls also echo lovemaking's grunts and sighs, and maybe some tender words. Because as much as Resurrected is an action-packed crime novel, it is also about falling in love at 60 --or trying to resist the fall while questioning the pros and cons of it, the needs vs the fears of getting into a serious relationship when your past experience answers with all the negative reasoning. Of course, it becomes also a look into the inner fragility of a man getting older and facing his own mortality. As a great plus, Steve Trotter shows talent for great timing with humour, as much in funny situations as within witty dialogue and tongue-in-cheek réparties.
To learn more about Resurrected and about Steve Trotter's decision to self-publish in digital, I've asked him to do a guest post. Here's what he sent me.
Old Guys Rock!
Meet Adam Wolf, 60: An Action
Thriller Hero With A Killer Past!
The
literary fiction universe is bursting at the crotch with action-thriller series
starring young, ripped studs with a hot babe on each arm, an assault weapon in
each hand and grenades for balls. “Hey,” I thought as I drank my Benefiber,
“how about a guy who’s just hit the big six oh-oh? A boomer who retires from a
killer SF and black ops career and resurrects himself as an indie YA author
targeting teen boys (talk about a double challenge). And who, while reluctantly
celebrating his 60th birthday with his girlfriend (Jazz, 49, a
travel writer who loves Wolf just the way he is) witnesses a mob hit, agrees to
testify, has a contract slapped on his head, and goes into hunter mode against
both the mob and their outlaw biker trigger men.”
I
wanted my hero to be resourceful, imaginative, and tech savvy, to have
a clear sense of the divide between true justice and the justice system. I
gave him a big heart, a soft spot for underdogs, a cynical sense
of humor, a healthy sex drive, and a fear of commitment driven by the dread of
putting someone he loves in harm’s way (not the fear of commitment that springs
from the loins of midlife crisis and is fuelled by liberal doses of Viagra). I
also gave him a ’52 Les Paul and a Marshall stack and the talent to play kickass
rock and blues. As for his voice? Well, nobody’s perfect. I named my hero Adam
Wolf because I felt Adam is a metaphor for the inherent purity of man’s spirit,
while Wolf embodies the natural born hunter that dwells within that same man.
Wolf is proficient in several languages. And unlike ex-military badasses like Reacher,
Wolf has a fixed address, a car, a washer & dryer, and a stray tom with the
appetite of a Lab and a microchip between his shoulder blades to work the cat
flap. Wolf also has a widowed mom who lives up the road from him the months she
isn’t toasting sunsets on The Gulf Coast.
Wolf
is a lone wolf, but he is not a loner. He has two brothers-in-arms he works,
jams and kills with. Ex SF and black ops operator Night Owl, 62, is a proud
Mohawk and single dad who runs a security agency with his twin girls, Terri
& Tyler, and plays a vintage Fender Precision bass. Ex JTF2 operator Kit
Katz, 42, is a Jew in a Chinese body with a sense of humor as lame as his name.
He’s also a bitch of a drummer and lives on top of a crematorium cause he loves
the heat.
Life on the Digital Highway… there are several
reasons I decided to take Wolf & Co. for a ride down the digital highway.
For starters, I’m not getting any younger and I grew tired of waiting for
agents to get “enthusiastic enough” about my writing to offer representation. Next,
I was encouraged by the success stories of indie writers like Joe Konrath,
Barry Eisler, and Blake Crouch. Thirdly, I liked the idea of having total
control of my product: cover, content, title, and pricing, and having my titles
on the digital bookshelves for as long as I wanted. I am pleased that RESURRECTED: An Adam Wolf Thriller is generating positive reader and
critical reviews and that sales are steady and growing. With the forthcoming
release of the sequel to RESURRECTED, and a couple of stand-alones in 2013, I
anticipate further growth in readership.
Steve
Trotter
You can visit Steve Trotter on his website and you can buy ''Resurrected'' here ...only $2.99 for a limited time.
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