Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: Joe Leland

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Nothing Lasts Forever (Joe Leland #2) 2Stars

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Title: Nothing Lasts Forever
Series: Joe Leland #2
Author: Roderick Thorp
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 145
Words: 67K

First off, this was the book that the movie Die Hard was based on. And let me say, the movie adaptation is a FAR superior action/adventure/thriller story than this book could ever hope to be.

This was a bitter, bitter book. Leland’s wife is dead, his daughter is working in LA for a big company and has 2 kids and is divorced. She’s sleeping with her boss and they’re both snorting coke like it’s 1980. Which it almost is. The company has made a huge massive deal with the Chilean government and has a vault full of millions in cash. The problem is, the deal is just a cover for the company to smuggle military grade weapons down to the Dictatorship. And some german terrorist group wants to put a stop to it AND steal all the money. So Leland has to fight the badguys all by himself, watch helicopters explode and good cops get killed by bad leadership and then watch as his daughter is dragged to her death by the leader of the terrorists as he falls out of the building from the 40^th story.

Leland is bitter, cynical, disillusioned and spouting off like a Democrat every step of the way while acting like “a good guy with a gun” (which is a myth according to democrats but a real thing in reality). It was very schizophrenic.

And while it was 1/3rd the length of the first book, it was still just as filled with navel gazing bull kaka as the first one. This was a literary novel filled with self-loathing, hatred and despair desperately trying to pretend to be an action thriller. And it flipping failed. If this hadn’t been turned into such a block buster of a movie, nobody would know this book or probably this author. Which might just be for the best. Thorp is (was?) a pretentious wanker and I hope he got a lot of beating from life. Self-pitying assholes who do nothing but whine like him deserve a good beating.

Now I’m off to watch Die Hard to wash the disgusting taste of this disgusting book out of my mind.

★★☆☆☆

From Wikipedia.org

Retired NYPD detective Joe Leland is visiting the 40-story office headquarters of the Klaxon Oil Corporation in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, where his daughter Stephanie Leland Gennaro works.

While he is waiting for his daughter’s Christmas party to end, a group of German Autumn–era terrorists take over the skyscraper. The gang is led by the brutal Anton “Little Tony the Red” Gruber. Joe had known about Gruber through a counter-terrorist conference he had attended years prior. Barefoot, Leland slips away and manages to remain undetected in the gigantic office complex. Armed with only his Browning pistol and in communication with Los Angeles Police sergeant Al Powell and his belligerent supervisor, Dwayne Robinson, Leland fights off the terrorists one by one in an attempt to save the 74 hostages, his daughter, and grandchildren.

Gruber and the terrorists kill Mr. Rivers, the CEO of the Klaxon building, and proceed to steal documents that will publicly expose the Klaxon corporation’s dealings with Chile’s junta. They also intend to deprive Klaxon of the proceeds of the corrupt deal of $6,000,000 in cash by attempting to access a safe. Leland interferes with this plan by stealing explosives and progressively killing terrorists and receiving multiple injuries in the process.

Leland kills most of the terrorists and, despite no help from the police, faces off with the leader of the terrorist group, Anton Gruber, who is holding his daughter hostage. Gruber falls to his death after being shot by Leland, taking Stephanie with him. Blaming Klaxon for the terrorist attack and his daughter’s death, Leland throws the cash out of the window himself. Once Leland is back on the street, the last terrorist, Karl, who was presumed dead earlier, returns and starts a shooting rampage, killing several police officers (including Robinson) and a doctor in the process, before Sgt. Powell finally kills him, allowing Leland to receive medical care.

– The Detective (Book 1)

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

The Detective (Joe Leland #1) 2Stars

Title: The Detective
Series: Joe Leland #1
Author: Roderick Thorp
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 487
Words: 220K

Inner monologueing that, psycho-sexualization this, belly button lint beyond belief. I mean, some of the characters went on for pages and pages blabbing and blabbing and then they’d blab some more. The author would make very odd conversation connections that weren’t obvious to me as a reader and I really struggled to follow the thought processes. At the beginning Joe gets very upset that his wife left him a note asking some questions that they’d gone over the night before. It made zero sense to me why he was upset about it and it’s not explained, that I could see, why he was upset about it. Everything was referred to obliquely instead of head on. This book typifies everything I hate about books from the 60’s and 70’s. Bunch of pretentious, self-absorberd author replacement wankery.

The ONLY reason I read this is because the sequel is the novel on which Die Hard was based and I want to read that book. So when I learned it was the second book about Joe Leland, of course I had to read the first book. What kind of sicko only reads the second book in a duology, amirite? Those people might exist, but I am not one of them. After reading this, I almost wish I was though!

After I read the next book, I’ll never read another thing by Thorp if I can help it. I haven’t even looked up his body of work just so I can avoid it. I don’t care that much about him.

The final nail in the coffin was the ending. They figure out why the husband is dead and it’s a big fat reason and the book ends with the investigation just starting. Feth that! You don’t drag me through almost 500 pages and then just stop. That’s total bull caca in my opinion. So I’m giving this the “trash” tag.

★★☆☆☆

From Wikipedia.com

Joe Leland, a private detective, begins investigating a case for the recently widowed Norma MacIver. Norma requests that Leland find out everything he can about her deceased husband. Norma requests Leland personally because her husband had mentioned knowing him in the past.

It turns out that Leland and Colin MacIver served in the same military unit during World War II, but at different times. Leland interviews Colin’s first wife, Colin’s mother, and the security guards at the track where Colin supposedly killed himself.

Norma introduces Leland to her neighbor and former therapist, Dr. Wendell Roberts. During their conversation, Wendell reveals that he knew Leland’s wife Karen. It is revealed that Wendell was friends with the man with whom Karen Leland had had an affair.

As Leland’s investigation deepens he uncovers evidence of corruption and murder. Eventually, Leland discovers that Colin was connected to a homicide during Leland’s earlier life with the police department as a detective. During the investigation of Teddy Leikman’s death, a confession was obtained from Felix Tesla, Leikman’s roommate. Tesla was subsequently executed by electric chair. It turned out that Colin MacIver was the true murderer. Joe’s partner, Mike Petrakis, managed to decipher Colin’s coded notes and reveal a paper trail of corruption.