God Is a Bullet (Hardcover)

But this night, when Bob Hightower flashes his lights, there is no reply. Sinking further down into himself, he carries on home. The following day, Gabi's mother and step-father are found slaughtered in their home by unknown killers who have taken Gabi with them.

Bob searches fruitlessly for his daughter until a desperate appeal brings Case Hardin to his door, hoping she can help. Case is an ex-junkie and ex-cult member living in a halfway house in Hollywood. Together, she and Bob set out on a lonely quest; he to regain his child, she to exorcise the demons of her past. They will be swallowed down into the gullet of evil as they come into contact with a vicious Satanic cult known as "The Left-Handed Path" and are sent on a rollercoaster of danger which won't bring redemption and can only end deeper in Hell.

There have been some stunning debut novels in the past few years (e.g. Mo Hayder's Birdman, Carol Goodman's "The Lake of Dead Languages"), all introducing writers who have since raised the tide-mark of the genre that little bit higher. God Is a Bullet surely has to be the best. The writing style is addictive, and shoots into the veins like a drug you cannot get enough of. Boston Teran has a beautifully dark way with words and his use of metaphor raises the device to an art form, often stopping the reader in their tracks to consider the sheer brilliance of the writing and the many meanings and images which the words conjure. The characters and their different plights are hauntingly real. Strangely, there is absolutely no glimmer of hope as there is in some crime novels, and because of that, the outcome of the book is in doubt right until the end. We cannot be certain that Bob Hightower will get his daughter back alive, nor can we know that Case will find the peace she knows she can't. This makes the book horribly compelling and immensely powerful.

The setting of Bullet is quite perfect. The searing heat of the feral Californian wastelands ideally matches the tone and style of the novel. It is barren and lonely, yet strangely attracting. It matches the brutality of the plot itself. The only person who could write a review to fully express the quality of this book is Teran himself. This guy has some serious talent.

The problem with God Is a Bullet has nothing to do with the plot elements, or even the way the plot unfolds. The problem is Boston Teran's terrible writing. The book is written in such a way as to inspire at the best frustration and at worst narcolepsy. The plot is continually rail-roaded by clunky writing, contrived dialogue and characters who are nothing more than cliches from every crummy B-movie screened you can imagine. The only memorable piece of writing in the entire story is a monolgue concerning the spiritual connotations of bullets (uh-huh), that looks like it was crow-barred into the text because the author though readers might need a reference point for the title.

I finished this book - out of spite. Then I gift-wrapped it and two months after buying the damn thing I gave it as a birthday present to someone I really didn't like.