Red Rain (Luther Ewing Thriller) (ISBN 0670030902)

Something to read if you can't find anything else:
I have to say I was a little disappointed with this book. I had to work very hard to locate a copy (maybe that should have been my first hint) but I was very much looking forward to it for some reason. I had seen some blurb here on AMazon that made me go track it down, but I can't remember what it was now. I think most of the reviews here are on target; in general this book is very formulaic and there is a disappointing lack of character development. Over all nothing within it will make it memorable for me so I gets my "OK" three starts rating. Since it was so formulaic, I found the coyness of the author's pseudonym extremely irritating; understandable but irritating. Mr. Crow is billed as being a prize-winning novelist on the dust cover, and having made that claim I can see why another reviewer has decided that the author is contemptuous of the audience. He is billed as being so capable, yet he delivers a product that is very average. Ergo irritating, but understandable why he doesn't want his own name on it. So this feels like simply another hack writing job someone had to do to make a mortgage payment. I don't sense a true attachment bewteen the author and the characters and the world he has created within these pages. All that being said though, I did read the whole thing, and read the two sequels, mostly because I was having a week where a little gratuitous violence sounded cathartic and I didn't have anything else to hand. So if you want a standard story of tough guys whupping up on other tough guys and don't have any Robicheaux or Repairman Jack novels available then this might fit the bill.

not in Connelly's league:
one gets the sense that the author analysed a bunch of best selling mysteries, and then dashed off one of his own. which he could have pulled off fine if he came across as someone who had actual experience, first hand or close to it, with the material. instead it feels like like he went straight from a university writing program to writing about lives he never came closer to than reading other novelists describe. his details about guns are play army gear geek detail, not something most ex military special ops types would obsess about. lastly, he's always using BRAND NAMES, often multiple times on one page. i assume he's doing it for artistic effect of some kind, not for payola, but if i wanted to get bombarded w brand names i'd watch tv.

Wow. Some of our "resentments" are starting to show.:
Well. I thought it was pretty good. Most reviewers sound like an ex . . . "How dare you?" and "We're supposed to be impressed by THAT!" and along the lines of "if you had any guts you would come out from behind that nom de plume." I like Luther Ewing, don't care that he's half black-half vietnamese, has the usual arrogance for authority that . . . let's see, Joe Pike, Spenser, Robicheaux, Hawk, Lucas Davenport, Frank Corso and Sunny Randall have, likes to have sex (wow; what an anomaly), and knows his guns. The anti siezure drugs have me a little perplexed but, what's your point? I think the guy behind Michael Crow wanted to test his limits. People get irritated that he does that and I suspect it was a little too heavy handed that crap about 'he's really an international author blah blah.' Sounds like one of those 'game show annoncers.' But that's a publishing decision. The guy goes to his publisher and says "I want to do this, will you back me?" and Pub says "yeah but we want to make some dinero on it so we're going to do it this way." That's what went down. Viking didn't want to spend muy bucks on some author's whim. You guys are nuts. So I give it 5 stars. Exciting dialogue. Good plot, and yes, the guy knows his street slang (I think only Pelecanos does it better) and his guns. Interesting character. I've read them all. I got no beef, dog. Larry Scantlebury

Sniper aims at own foot!:
This book is a pretty amazing example of how much harm you can do to yourself with a bad "about the author" blurb. The book itself isn't half bad -- it's not memorable, and it's certainly cliched, but it's solid and it pulls you through easily. It's about a cop who has a secret sniper-in-Yugoslavia past and a headwound that will give him an epileptic seizure if he stops taking medications. It's clearly meant to start a series. The twists and turns are standard, and the writing is a notch above standard. But then, at the end, you come to the "about the author" blurb, which, as you can see from the reviews here, infuriates people. Allow me to quote it in full: "MICHAEL CROW is the pen name of a prize-winning, critically acclaimed novelist whose works have been translated and published in nine languages." Let's leave aside the issue of whether "Michael Crow" can correctly be called THE pen name of someone who also writes under another name. (I notice it's been changed to "pseudonym" on a couple of websites.) A quick web search turns up the fact that the guy self-consciously slumming as "Michael Crow" won a prize I've never heard of and was nominated for the Pulitzer for journalism. Since fan-favorite "John Sandford" actually WON the Pulitzer for journalism under his real name (and has never implied that he's stooping or embarassed by writing the "Prey" series, just that he needed to keep his careers separate until both were established), "Michael Crow" starts looking pretty weak. He sure has an amazing ability to irritate people with an "about the author" blurb, though!

Bloody action, ripped right off a movie screen.:
As per usual, I came into this series after the lead-in novel. I had my first Luther Ewing experience with Crow's second book, The Bite, and I was pretty underwhelmed. Ewing, an ex-special forces/ex-merc sharpshooter who was shipped back to the U.S. after getting half his skull blown apart by a Serb sniper - along with his entire supporting cast of Baltimore Police - well, the characterizations are as derivative as they come, and the uber-hardboiled writing of author Michael Crow (the nome de plume of a - ahem - prize winning, critically acclaimed novelist) is as cheesy as week-old Velveeta. Read it, said, 'Huh'. Been there, done that. Tossed it. Okay, fast-forward a year. Something in The Bite must've struck a nerve, 'cause now I'm bored, desperate with a need to read. Stalking the local mega-used book store like a heroin junkie looking for a street-corner dealer, I see a used hardcover copy of Crow's first Ewing thriller, Red Rain, and I think, 'Huh. The other one wasn't so bad... Was it?' Maybe it wasn't. Red Rain opens with Ewing and his first assignment with the Baltimore Narcotics squad, and his soon-to-be partner, Ice Box (Seriously. Imagine a white, falsetto-voiced version of The Fridge...), as they help bust a pathetic ring of suburban white-boy dope dealers. Ewing's boss, Lt. Dugal, labels Ewing a wild gun ('natch, since Ewing throws down with a non-reg, Israeli made, .50AE Desert Eagle equipped with an Aimpoint attachment), and promptly hooks Ewing up with Ice Box as his senior partner, sort of reverse Lethal Weapon style. The fun begins when more and more drug busts come down, all suburban kids, the drugs getting heavier and heavier, and suddenly all the trails lead back to one of Luther's old merc buddies: a Russian mafioso, ex-Spetsnaz psycho called Vassily who's quickly taking over the Baltimore drug trade. The bodycount builds fast after 'The Big Bust' goes south; Vassily goes after Luthor and his homies. In the end, after Vassily almost drops Luthor's city detective buddy Dog, well - not to give anything away here, but Luthor goes Rambo on Vassily and his cronies, even going so far as to smear on the war-paint during the finale. Okay, yeah, yeah, it's derivative of just about any other thriller out there. But there's something endearing about Luthor and his crew, and until the cheese factor ramps up a notch with the lipstick war-paint at the end, Crow barrels gleefully along, tossing in enough sex and spilling enough blood to satisfy any adolescent teenage boys' hormonally charged action fetish. Just read - don't think, 'cause Red Rain really is as big and bombastic and... well.. dumb as a Shane Black flick. Get past the silliness and into the adrenaline, and you might suddenly find yourself having a blast.