A review by glenmowrer
Wrecked by Joe Ide

2.0

The downward spiral continues. Joe Ide had a brilliant concept and his first effort was stunning. The second saw him pandering to a sort of voyeurism as his readers (almost certainly a dramatically different demographic than the subjects of his work) were titillated with seamy "insights" into the world of yet another gangland culture. How accurate the views were is suspect but they were, at a minimum sensationalized. This efforts ropes in the evils of mercenary military types perfected in their evil by their experiences torturing in the mid-east. Bringing this evil into the poor neighborhoods of East Long Beach took some torturous (pardon) efforts itself. One has to wonder where the multi-cultural society Ide imagines exists. But the premise that blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Anglos and African Africans can co-mingle so easily as these works propose. But the problem the author faces most acutely is the pretense that his lead character is in fact a new Sherlock. In fact, one wonders if this was the writer's intent at all and if it was not thrust on him by the readers who made the jump after the first novel came out. Anyway, trying to expand the idea that our hero observes and deduces critical information from observations others ignore gets pretty torturous as well. On top of this there is an unnecessary, even gratuitous, infatuation with descriptive ultra violence which is off putting. Finally the stories (there are as expected several threads) invariably rise to a critical peak and then are resolved with sudden improbable or impossible interventions. Worse, the remaining enemies continue on seemingly ignoring their alleged obsession with vengeance and violence. I doubt I will quickly pick up IQ 4.