The Perpetrators

by Gary Phillips

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0966347374
• ISBN13: 9780966347371
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Uglytown Productions
• Length: 173 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.8" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Fast, furious and very violent

THE PERPETRATORS is a full-on thrill ride of violence from Tijuana, Mexico to Sacramento, California following the escapades of Lina Guzman, a drug cartel queen and Marley, her bodyguard who is given the title throughout the book as her expeditor.The story starts in a hotel room in Tijuana with Marley in a life or death struggle with a knife-wielding attacker, whom Lina calmly dispatches, shooting the attacker with a silenced pistol. Already by this stage (and I'm talking 1 page, if that) the dialogue is dominated with pure gangster slang taken from the classic hardboiled novels from the 1930s and 40s. One full-on action scene, dominated by all sorts of violence and profanities and you just know it's not going to let up.As Marley and Lina leave Tijuana on their way towards Sacramento we find out that she's a South American drug queen who is off to make a deal with a crooked politician that should see her distribution channels open up and he's her hired bodyguard. Trying to stop her is the man named Samson Twelvetrees who seems to have an endless supply of assassins and weapons at his disposal and so determined is he to stop Lina from making her meeting, he is prepared to throw everything at her.The wild ride is punctuated with hair-raising car chases, motel room ambushes, helicopter dodgems and any number of shoot-outs. Bad guys are cut down with monotonous regularity and the good guys escape by the skinniest skin of their teeth. As you can probably tell, the story is blindingly spare in its narrative, short on intricate plot detail and characterisation and long on outlandish situations involving heavy artillery.Be prepared for incredibly unrealistic dialogue full of every bad gangsta cliché ever uttered. I don't think there was a bad guy dispatched without receiving some sort of verbal send-off by Marley. (Thank goodness he never quite stooped to "Hasta la vista, baby" but I'm sure it must have crossed his mind once or twice).Interspersed throughout the entire book are rough illustrations helping to add to the rough and ready style of the book. The illustrations depict either a map of the scene of the latest skirmish somewhere along the southern California landscape or a scene that takes place there, such as a car screeching to a halt (complete with the word "screech"). While not exactly adding any value to the story, the roughness of the illustrations suggest they were done in a hurry almost as if the illustrator was attempting to keep up with the extreme pace of the story.Now, you can be forgiven for assuming that I didn't enjoy this book, but you'd be dead wrong. As a fan of the old detective classics made famous by Dashiell Hammett, Ross MacDonald, Mickey Spillane and the like, I loved every minute of it. Of course, I treated it as a homage to those classics and the hardboiled genre in general. Just how much of a homage to hardboiled was it? Well, when Marley used a false identity, two of his choices were as Mr Stark and Mr Pelecanos, coinci

The Perpetrators just doesn't STOP!!

Ohmigod! This book is as close to a roller coaster as you can get. It doesn't quit. Marley is one mean mother (shut your mouth) and Phillips abuses his main character through a tortuous ride up from Tijuana to Sacramento with more action packed adventures than any Hollywood blockbuster has served up in many a summer. Buy this book. Read it. Make others buy it. Pass it along. Leave it at bus stops. IT IS THIS SUMMERS MUST READ BOOK!