trupti's review against another edition
4.0
Beat has the makings of a typical detective novel in many ways. It has the usual ingredients, the detective of course, a complicated case and a chase with some action thrown in. What is probably different from most detective novels is the protagonist Hayden Glass.
Hayden Glass is a LAPD detective who is currently on a leave or a forced medical leave and is undergoing therapy for sex addiction. One day, after he has been clean for around 2 months he enters a video chat room after surfing a sex site for days. He enters the chat and sees a prostitute called Cora whom he instantly becomes obsessed with. After a few months of relentlessly “meeting” her online, she disappears. He follows her to San Francisco where she told him she lived and tracks her down in a hotel room.
2 heavy-set Russian guys enter the room, beat him up, rape Cora and take her with them. What follows is Hayden’s chase to find Cora. In the process he gets involved with the San Francisco Police department, the FBI and the Russian mafia with their underground sex trade.
I found the premise different and interesting with the writing flowing smoothly as well. There was a little too much Detective Jargon which I found a little difficult to follow as first but got used to later. Besides it just shows how much research and preparation the author has done. The sense of place is also very strong in Beat. I could picture the alleys and the night life of San Fransisco within the pages.
I found Hayden Glass most interesting. He revealed various shades as the novel progressed, becoming a sex addict to a detective, to a man who would risk anything for a girl, to an almost nice person at the end. He was not a black and white caricature detectives are usually portrayed as.
I wish I had read the first book Boulevard though. Beat could be called a stand alone novel but reading the first one would have given me a little more glimpse into Hayden’s life and character since most of the issues he carried with him came from the first book. Beat is not very heavy on action. It’s more of Hayden chasing the girl Cora and then uncovering various things on the way. It was a bit slow for my taste but the end more or less made up for it.
Note: A lot of violence.
Hayden Glass is a LAPD detective who is currently on a leave or a forced medical leave and is undergoing therapy for sex addiction. One day, after he has been clean for around 2 months he enters a video chat room after surfing a sex site for days. He enters the chat and sees a prostitute called Cora whom he instantly becomes obsessed with. After a few months of relentlessly “meeting” her online, she disappears. He follows her to San Francisco where she told him she lived and tracks her down in a hotel room.
2 heavy-set Russian guys enter the room, beat him up, rape Cora and take her with them. What follows is Hayden’s chase to find Cora. In the process he gets involved with the San Francisco Police department, the FBI and the Russian mafia with their underground sex trade.
I found the premise different and interesting with the writing flowing smoothly as well. There was a little too much Detective Jargon which I found a little difficult to follow as first but got used to later. Besides it just shows how much research and preparation the author has done. The sense of place is also very strong in Beat. I could picture the alleys and the night life of San Fransisco within the pages.
I found Hayden Glass most interesting. He revealed various shades as the novel progressed, becoming a sex addict to a detective, to a man who would risk anything for a girl, to an almost nice person at the end. He was not a black and white caricature detectives are usually portrayed as.
I wish I had read the first book Boulevard though. Beat could be called a stand alone novel but reading the first one would have given me a little more glimpse into Hayden’s life and character since most of the issues he carried with him came from the first book. Beat is not very heavy on action. It’s more of Hayden chasing the girl Cora and then uncovering various things on the way. It was a bit slow for my taste but the end more or less made up for it.
Note: A lot of violence.
depreydeprey's review against another edition
4.0
Beat and the first book in this series Boulevard are not easy hangs. They bring us face to face with sex addiction in a way no other book I have encountered has. There is a darkness to this story that seems overwhelming at times but I haven't seen addiction handled this well in a book since Lawrence Block's Eight Million Ways to Die.
williamc's review against another edition
3.0
Stephen Schwartz's pulp novel Beat mixes the surprising nature of its explicit sexual and violent content with an ending that somehow feels too choreographed and too cinematically-minded for the rest of the book. Having creating Hayden Glass, a gritty, believable police detective with a predilection for drugs and a clinical diagnosis of sexual addiction, Schwartz sinks him headfirst into San Francisco's world of sex trafficking -- a business in which the detective has sometimes been a willing participant. All of this is excellent, gritty noir, and feels like an alternate, pulpier angle on [a:Andrew Vachss|36764|Andrew Vachss|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1250519815p2/36764.jpg]'s highly stylized Burke, series. But it's the conclusion that breaks the spell, creating an ending that while satisfying in parts could be replaced with the denouement of any half-baked Hollywood action film. As the Glass series goes forward, here's hoping Schwartz finds a better model to mimic for his original and engrossing cast of characters.
ericwelch's review against another edition
4.0
Second in a series of police procedurals (very loosely defined) after Boulevard, this book can’t truly be called “noir” as there is a semblance of hope at the end, but it’s about as black as one can get.
Hayden Glass, an LAPD Robbery-Homicide detective is a sex addict. After witnessing the abduction of a hooker whom he thought liked him (he learns later what an act it was,) and with whom he thought he was in love (he has difficulty separating love from lust) he follows her abductors to San Francisco where he becomes mired in a morass of crooked cops, really evil Russian mobster/pimps, and the FBI, all of whom have differing motives for getting the girl back. It seems she was a witness to a murder that would implicate a high-ranking police officer. The mobsters want her for blackmail and the Feebs need her to bring down the crooked cops. Hayden feels impelled to save her, although his motives are anything but pure. Toward the end of the novel, one of the Russians makes this clear, “Would you like to know what you are to me, Detective? You’re my demographic. You’re the reason these girls exist. I simply supply the demand. If there weren’t a market for this, I wouldn’t be here. You’re the market. I can’t believe you don’t get that. You’ve got to be the stupidest son of a bitch I’ve ever—”
If you are in any way offended by explicit sex or extreme violence, avoid this book. I’m not, but did find the gory finale excessive if not unbelievable. Still, Schwartz has created a very sympathetic and tormented character. It will be fascinating to watch him develop in what I hope will be a long-running series.
Hayden Glass, an LAPD Robbery-Homicide detective is a sex addict. After witnessing the abduction of a hooker whom he thought liked him (he learns later what an act it was,) and with whom he thought he was in love (he has difficulty separating love from lust) he follows her abductors to San Francisco where he becomes mired in a morass of crooked cops, really evil Russian mobster/pimps, and the FBI, all of whom have differing motives for getting the girl back. It seems she was a witness to a murder that would implicate a high-ranking police officer. The mobsters want her for blackmail and the Feebs need her to bring down the crooked cops. Hayden feels impelled to save her, although his motives are anything but pure. Toward the end of the novel, one of the Russians makes this clear, “Would you like to know what you are to me, Detective? You’re my demographic. You’re the reason these girls exist. I simply supply the demand. If there weren’t a market for this, I wouldn’t be here. You’re the market. I can’t believe you don’t get that. You’ve got to be the stupidest son of a bitch I’ve ever—”
If you are in any way offended by explicit sex or extreme violence, avoid this book. I’m not, but did find the gory finale excessive if not unbelievable. Still, Schwartz has created a very sympathetic and tormented character. It will be fascinating to watch him develop in what I hope will be a long-running series.
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