IQ (book 1)
The Libby San Antonio Public Library app has an option to read a book on Kindle. It does give me scrolling but also means the behemoth Amazon has my reading history, and detailed stats, “4 minutes to finish this book.” So I’m not sure whose algorithm kept putting this title in my “look at this stack,” but I suspect, not unwelcome, collusion between the two.
Gentle chidding aside, with a grateful nod to the great Steve Martin, I wasn’t born a poor, black child. Cursory net search reveals the author isn’t black, either, but as a Japanese American (words on his site), I’m sure he faced a similar prejudice.
One of the first settings, a palatial rap residence, reminded me of a scene — a setting — in one of the Rule of Ten books.
But with an edge.
“If Snoop knew how much weed he was smoking he’d organize an intervention.” Page 114.
I think it was Walter Mosley, or maybe just Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. Echos and reverberations. Echoes with an updated sense of noir.
Lots of exposition. Maybe lots of exposition, but the narrative itself rips right along, and the clues are all there, laid out in proper fashion.
Good? I don’t know, I wasn’t familiar with the author before this first book. Any good? About halfway through the novel, I popped out of the reader and over to the digital library and checked out Book 2 in the series. Finished the first one, checked it back in, and I was prepped to dive into the next.
Looking forward to see where this takes us.
