Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

Book Overview

Honey---a vivacious, wealthy, seventeen-year-old daughter of a politician---has a penchant for drug dealers, mad-dog bikers, booze, sex, crank, and guns. She's run off with Cobra, the leader of a band of motorcycle-gang outcasts who have dubbed themselves the Outriders since they are too hotheaded and reckless for other rival gangs. But her father, who is running for the U.S. Senate, wants her back before she takes his career down in flames along...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765307863
• ISBN13: 9780765307866
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Hardboiled Fiction

If you like your heroes tough, your femme fatales flawed, and your bad guys really bad, then this book is for you. Klavan's 2nd Weiss/Bishop novel isn't quite as tightly written or plotted as the series debut was, but it's as good as modern noir fiction gets. This book is far superior to Stephen King's recent foray into the genre, and should be at the top of any Spillane, Hammett, or Ross MacDonad fan's list.

Weiss and Bishop make for a pretty good team

This book has a few starts and stops that kind of leaves the reader feeling like they were on a bumper car ride. The writing is very jagged. Klavan has a style that feels like he were narrating the entire novel from the vantage point of a 1940's MGM/Bogart voice over. In my opinion, I think that Klavan heads away from his stronger areas and concentrates too intensely on too many action scenes. The parts of the book that just click and are kind of magical are when Klavan writes beyond Weiss and Bishop and concentrates on the third character in his series... himself. I could have just kept reading and been a very happy camper if Klavan had forgone the rest of the story and focused on the relationship that is touched upon between himself and the girl in the pizza joint. What I have put into this review here are some of the stronger negative points that I encountered. Its a pretty good book. I can think of many protagonist series' that I would rather have another sequal to instead of another Weis/Bishop book, but its not that bad either.

Weiss and Bishop are back

Scott Weiss and Jim Bishop burst into the private investigation spotlight for the first time in the thrilling Dynamite Road . Together they form an unlikely but very effective combination, so effective that they have remained in business long enough to feature in Shotgun Alley, a sequel that picks up where Dynamite Road left off. Andrew Klavan has put an interesting spin on his hardboiled private detective series that just tweaks it a little to give it a refreshing nuance. It's not the investigative work that is carried out although they are very adept at their jobs and the action flows in waves; it isn't Weiss and Bishop's character traits or personalities, although they are very distinctive and well-developed; it's not even the way they operate, although undercover work has featured in both Dynamite Road and Shotgun Alley and is rich in suspense and intrigue. All of these qualities would have drawn me to the series anyway, but the quality that gives the series that little distinctive twist is that it is narrated by Andrew Klavan who is working as a young office clerk in Weiss's firm. Shotgun Alley is the name of a bar frequented almost exclusively by bikers and, in particular, by a group known as The Outriders. Not an official gang, they display no colours on their jackets, they are considered too violent and unstable to be part of the more formalised biker gangs. Scary thought, huh? They've already proven what they're capable of when Jim Bishop moves into their midst in a not-so-subtle way. The raw, tough, sneering persona of the biker outlaw comes easily to Bishop making him the ideal operative for the undercover job he has been assigned. His job in this case is to infiltrate this criminal crew and lure away the leader's girlfriend, Honey. Honey happens to be a rich man's daughter and he doesn't want her shenanigans jeopardising his future political plans. Yep, he's a sentimental, loving rich man. Bishop's operation isn't the only job keeping Weiss in business. The agency is also approached by Professor M.R. Brinks who has been receiving a long series of sexually explicit and harassing emails. She wants Weiss to find out who is sending them, claiming to be outraged and promising all sorts of repercussions. Weiss is not so sure about her real reasons for finding her cyber-stalker but takes the job. It's this job that Weiss gives the young Klavan his big chance to do some real detective work. Klavan confesses that as a fan of Chandler and Hammett he has always dreamt of becoming a private detective like Marlowe or Sam Spade. He idolises Weiss, pointing out that he's everything a hardboiled private detective should be, even down to the bottle of Macallan Whisky in the bottom drawer, and he's eager to impress him. So what is this Scott Weiss like anyway? According to Klavan he's a big ugly man with a paunch, basset hound features, mournful, world weary eyes and a habit of feeling sorry for everyone else. He has an uncanny knack for trac

Excellent Follow-Up to a Very Strong Debut

Over the weekend, I read Andrew Klavan's second Weiss and Bishop novel, _Shotgun Alley_, and really enjoyed it, though in retrospect, the book is chock-full of cliches: the tough guy hero who infiltrates a biker gang and proves himself to be just as virile as the rest and a femme fatale right out of film noir. But Klavan writes with such power and assuredness, that the whole thing comes to vivid life and it moves. Jim Bishop is charged with bringing back the daughter of a rich man who is planning a senate run. In an act of rebellion, she's joined a biker gang made up of misfits and castoffs too crazy to be accepted in the traditional gangs (there's even a "Mad Dog"; at one point, a character says "What does a biker have to do to earn the nickname Mad Dog?"). They're the Outriders and they're not above killing a few innocent bystanders who might get in the way of their smash-and- grab thefts. Back at the office, Weiss has been hired by a feminist professor to track down the person responsible for a string of sexually-harassing emails. The only problem is she's been receiving them for over nine months--it turns out she's fallen in love with the sender and wants help tracking him down. The process of finding out who the sender is allows Weiss some time to reflect on his own unrequited love for his fantasy woman from the previous novel. He knows that there's an unstoppable killer out there, just waiting to follow him should he try to find this woman, but he's not sure if that should stop him from trying. There's a great scene where the unnamed "I" narrator (if we believe the book's foreword, this is Klavan himself, though it's hard to believe these books are really based on real events as the narrator assures us) meets a woman who seems to be his perfect match and they have a wonderful conversation which ends with her giving him her phone number and eliciting a promise for him to call. Very soon after, he drifts into an all-consuming sexual relationship with Weiss' female operative Sissy, and forgets all about Emma McNair, his perfect woman. Very sad, really. We learn more about the backstory of the relationship between Bishop and Weiss and how they started working together. It all builds to a raid on a warehouse during a dark and stormy night, with police and FBI agents, tipped off by Bishop, waiting to capture the gang. I really had a great time with this book and it was literally a page-turner that wouldn't let me go. There were several times that I was about to put the book aside and do something else, but I read just one more sentence and that was enough to draw me into the next chapter and then the next. I liked _Dynamite Road_ a lot, but _Shotgun Alley_ is even better. Hopefully, this series will continue for some time.

Insight and action

It figures that when Edgar-winner Klavan embarked on a series it would be eccentric, action-packed, and darkly humorous. This second Scott Weiss and Jim Bishop case bears out that assessment as the private eye firm takes on two separate cases. Romantic, lugubrious, ex-cop Weiss quickly punches holes in a feminist professor's furious search for an emailing sexual harasser. And adrenaline-junky, ex-criminal Jim Bishop meets his match in the rich-girl-turned-biker's moll he's been hired to seduce away from the aptly named Cobra. Bishop's action-evil-and-danger-driven case is the more exciting, naturally, being charged from minute to minute with sex and violence, daredevil riding, diabolical one-upmanship and sheer viciousness for the fun of it. But Weiss is such an endearing character with his towering intellect and his genteel illusions, that the harassment case becomes more than just comic relief between the searing biker scenes. Honey's wealthy, senate-aspiring father wants her home before she ruins his career along with her life. But it may already be too late. Honey was the driver in a robbery gone bad, and while she likes the thrill of danger, jail is not really on her agenda. Bishop, a hungry ladies' man himself, finds himself alarmingly obsessed with Honey. Cobra, however, a deliberately amoral intellect with a penchant for lectures, will reliably kill them both at any hint of defection. Even with father-figure Weiss reigning him in and working the system, Bishop takes us on a heart-stopping ride, with Klavan, in the guise of his younger self, interpolating himself along the way. Unusual, visceral and larger-than-life, this will keep you up all night and haunt your dreams.