Read It or Run Screaming?

I was reading a book review in the New York Times yesterday. The more I read, the more I wondered, do I want to read this or do I want to run screaming away from any and all bookstores? Janet Maslin reviews Charlie Huston’s latest book called The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.

I’ve not read anything of Huston’s. Apparently, he writes Pulp Noir and Stephen King adores his writing. Maslin calls his new venture into crime novels, “Smoking-hot.” And I have to admit, she makes the book sound enticing, in a weird, off the wall, sort of way. Here’s how she describes the three-sentence opening paragraph of The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death:

The first sentence sounds tough: “I fingered my knife and thought about sticking it in his ear.” The second introduces a note of reason: “But it was plastic and would probably break before it went deep enough to hit his brain.” And the third trumps the threat of violence with a bon mot about a witless adversary: “And beside, even if I jammed it in there, I was uncertain it would do any real damage.”

Okay, now that’s good. But keep reading the article. Here’s a couple of descriptive phrases from the article:

graphic nipple-piercing

With its fine points about how to remove brain residue from walls and rugs and a plot point about suicide by suppository-bomb on a waterbed

But she also says things like:

scorchingly good dialogue and banner-worthy chapter headings

delivers a book that anyone can admire

tart, quick-witted, sharply funny trip, hijacked only by certain conventional plot touches and brushes with sentimentality

Don’t know if I’ll buy the book, but I’ll definitely look at it the next time I’m at a bookstore.