Once again, Ide brilliantly combines caper-style comedy with real-world violence and more than a dollop of complex human relationships, the kind that too often lead to mess and muddle rather than happily-ever-aftering. If you haven’t discovered this series yet, remedial action is required immediately.
Wrecked is not the best place to jump into this series, but these books are written in sequence, and you skip one at your peril ... The third book in his blazing IQ series, Wreked is less cerebral and more breathless than its predecessors ... There are lots of cinematic chases ... No matter how well such things are described, though, they’ll be more fun to watch than they are to read about ... Wrecked fares much better in its small details.
Ide delights in injecting moments of humor into his tale of crime and violence ... If I had any complaint about Wrecked it was that its abundance of characters and subplots sometimes felt like too much of a good thing. But I came to accept Ide’s excesses as the result of his ambition, his urge to share all that he has seen and felt and known ... With Wrecked, Ide confirms that he’s among the most original new voices in today’s crime fiction.
A delicious, high-powered plot ... Ide delivers a refreshing take on the often clichéd genius detective protagonist ... it’s Ide’s writing that elevates the whole series, with his gritty prose proving to be a perfect fit with the series’ urban setting. While parts of the story are shown ahead of time, reducing some of the suspense, even the readers who do figure out or take a lucky stab at the story’s conclusion will enjoy the journey Ide takes them on, and will no doubt close this one counting down the days until the fourth installment hits bookstores next years ... Ide is one of the best writers to burst onto the mystery scene in a long time
[Ide's] dialogue is clever and advances the narrative, and he knows how to stage an action scene. Some of his locations are a little too obviously camera-ready — a junkyard, a warehouse, the big rave-up at Burning Man — but the people who bought the TV rights surely won’t mind ... The IQ series doesn’t have the depth and sweep of Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins novels — not yet, anyway — but Ide is following Mosley’s lead in using an unlicensed detective in Greater Los Angeles to tell a larger story about who we are and how we live.
Wrecked takes Ide’s unlikely hero into new territory, with foes that test his mettle in ways his previous adversaries could not even fathom, and with a possible love interest that exposes an entirely new facet of IQ’s character.
IQ’s strong deductive talents and lack of business acumen combine to make this third entry in the series his best to date ... However, there are elements to Wrecked that indicate it might be the series finale. I certainly hope that’s not the case. Actually, that’s not a strong enough statement. I would lay down in front of someone’s car if that’s what it took to get more IQ stories ... This is a series that has earned and thus deserves your readership and support. Buy and read Wrecked, then go back and catch up on what you’ve been missing. You’ll thank me, but it's Ide—and the yeoman’s work he does—who deserves the platitudes.
Ide’s penchant for colorful characters, droll banter, and whackadoodle set pieces is aided by a growing command of narrative dynamics. And Isaiah Quintabe remains an engaging, fascinating protagonist, but there are signs here that he’s becoming more an action hero than a puzzle solver. The world has plenty of action heroes—but nowhere near enough street-wise intellects to serve as role models ... There's a harder, darker edge to the violence that gives this rip-snorting follow-up a rueful yet resonant aftertaste, perhaps in anticipation of more unsettling jolts in the hero's future.
Less than successful ... The flash-forward prologue reduces suspense. Fans of Ide’s innovative take on a Sherlockian sleuth will hope for a return to form in the next book.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
