{"id":833,"date":"2015-01-05T07:47:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T15:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=833"},"modified":"2015-01-05T07:48:33","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T15:48:33","slug":"review-shooting-starspiderweb-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/05\/review-shooting-starspiderweb-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Shooting Star\/Spiderweb"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shooting<\/a>
\n Shooting Star\/Spiderweb<\/a> by Robert Bloch<\/a>
\n My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes I get a craving for mac n cheese, and I mean, nothing fancy. Just a box, a boil, a stir, and eat it straight out of the pot. Fiction can be like that too. Sometimes I just want to read. A plot, some characters, an ending. Nothing too complicated or meaningful.<\/p>\n

These Hard Case Crimes reprints are starting to fulfill that need. That need for a few hours of reading, that need to actually finish a book. I\u2019m like a lot of you. I start way more books than I finish. If my eyes are too big for my stomach at the buffet, I guess my brain is too big for my pocket watch at the bookstore.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t like the metaphors? Don\u2019t read Hard Case Crime books. Don\u2019t read Robert Bloch\u2019s Shooting Star\/Spiderweb (it’s two novels in one binding). Not that he\u2019s given, as such, to these kinds of metaphors. But cheesy writing? You know how we like to make fun of an over stylize the mannerisms and speech patterns of certain time periods? Talk about cheesy. But I\u2019m pretty sure, at the time of original publication date, Bloch was one-hundred percent sincere.<\/p>\n

But that was then and I read this in the now. Cartoonish characters, implausible scenarios, a plot taking out of Plotto<\/i><\/a>. And imagery that, I\u2019m sure, was supposed to make the reader queasy, nervous, scared: titillated. Nowadays it borders on camp.<\/p>\n

And yet, for all that: an okay box of mac n cheese. I\u2019m not going to say \u201cfun\u201d or \u201cgood,\u201d because, when the pot is empty, resting on my protruding belly in my chair, I can\u2019t say I had fun and I don\u2019t exactly feel good. But the craving\u2019s been satisfied. The book\u2019s done it\u2019s job. That\u2019s always can ever ask of pulp fiction.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shooting Star\/Spiderweb by Robert Bloch My rating: 3 of 5 stars Sometimes I get a craving for mac n cheese, and I mean, nothing fancy. Just a box, a boil, a stir, and eat it straight out of the pot. Fiction can be like that too. Sometimes I just want to read. A plot, some … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: Shooting Star\/Spiderweb”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-dr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}