Slaughterhouse Blues (Bill & Fiona) by Nick Kolakowski

I first met Bill and Fiona, the con man and the killer in A Bunch of Heartbroken Saps and was delighted by the fun and fast crime story. The couple is back in this one, living in Havana and on the run for the mob since the events in that book. Via some detours they end up fighting an assassin couple and with a decades old loot.

What makes this one so fun is pretty much the same things as the first one. Bill and Fiona are so much fun and there's such a wonderful sense of humor that goes very right with the fast-paced action.
So don't be fooled by the dark and depressing (though very beautifully written) first chapter. There will be laughs along the way.
Not a mystery novel or the kind of PI stuff I usually review it IS a solid crime novella. Regular readers of my blog know how much I dig a novella.
Icing on the cake is the snarky references to Coldplay, kudos for those!

A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps by Nick Kolakowski

This isn't a novella, it's a Tarantino movie in prose...
Con man Bill, having stolen a lot of money from the mob is being hunted by a professional killer who is just trying to come to terms with the fact his wife left him. When he ends up in a town in  Oklahoma it turns out most of the residents are psychos. What follows is a lot of action, some laughs and some mild Elvis impersonating. If that doesn't indeed sound like a Guy Ritchie or Tarantino movie to you I don't know.
There's many small, cool things in here like a GG Allin reference, an obscure but fantastic Russian gun and some quite endearing prose by hardboiled criminals.
And... It's a novella, a format I love. Great fun, never boring. Not a real PI novel, but hardboiled enough for me to feature over here.