Debt Crusher by Michael Pool

Debt Crusher Reviews

• 
  Kevintipple

  Cam Reynolds has a simple job. Collect the money owed to his boss, Tommy, Jr. He is the son of the legendary and now deceased mob boss, Tom Colcetti. The kid may not value him as much as his father did, but the kid is keeping the family business going and Cam still has a job. Though it is not the job he wants as he feels that he should have moved up by now. Junior has also made some changes that Cam does not approve of and it looks like he won’t be moving upwards anytime soon. At forty two years old he should be doing better than still having to go after guys to collect debts.
  
  It is the job Cam has and he is very good at it. Cam has a reputation for violently collecting monies owed hence his nickname of “Crusher.” He has such a reputation that he rarely has to get physical these days which are a good thing as the years are beginning to take a toll. The latest dead beat who owes is a guy by the name of Gomez. The man owes 10K and tried to run after getting a wakeup call from Cam who happened to be sitting outside the guy’s place when he made the call. After trying to run and being caught, some trunk therapy followed by quiet contemplation of his circumstances should assist Gomez with his motivation to pay up.
  
  Unfortunately, things go wrong and years of loyal service mean nothing. Gomez was connected and Cam got the order to lay off after he had already started trunk therapy. Crusher screwed up and now he is a dead man on the run. At least he thinks he has a sexually willing travel companion in the mysterious woman he met in a Seattle area bar who is willing to help him get out of town in exchange for a fee.
  
  Author Michael Pool quickly pulls the reader into a classic noir style set up where the antihero is on the run because things finally went wrong. One little thing starts the collapsing domino chain and things escalate rapidly in the wrong direction. Unlike his short story collection that I reviewed back in January, New Alleys For Nothing Men: Crime and Noir Stories, where some characters are a bit more introspective, Debt Crusher is pretty much a straightforward violent crime fiction novella. In some of those stories, the violence is chained up and it takes time to be released. In this novella, the violence is a major character and barely under control from the first page. Debt Crusher quickly becomes one violent confrontation after another as Cam does what it takes to not only honor his nickname, but to stay alive. If you prefer animals in your stories, a read clean of graphic language, and the violence to be off the page, this is most definitely not the read for you.
  
  
  Debt Crusher: A Novella
  Michael Pool
  
  http://www.michaelpool.net
  All Due Respect Books (Imprint of Down & Out Books)
  
  http://www.allduerespectbooks.com
  February 2018
  ASIN#: B079R7ZJGN
  eBook (also available in paperback format)
  117 Pages
  $4.99
  
  Copy provide by the author for my use to read and review.
  
  
  Kevin R. Tipple ©2018
  
• 
  Xian Xian

  Debt Crasher, plot wise, reminds me vaguely of a Takeshi Kitano film. It stars a troubled guy, named Cam Reynolds, who gets into a bit of a scramble with a Latino mobster. This causes his life to take a tussle when he accidentally kills the man. So as we all know, being a mobster can have its ups and downs, but 99% of the time it consists of having your life on the edge of a knife, the welder just itching to cut right through you.
  
  "I do what I have to and never an inch more. Been looking out for myself since I was born, pretty much. We're all born victims. It's up to us if we don't want to be one."
  
  It's kind of slow in some part, This novella is one of those quiet types of noirs, where the action slowly creeps in bit by bit and then unleashes it bullets sporadically. But it's a nicely written novella, slow in the right places to portray the boredom and quiet of avoiding danger but secretly craving it with a bit of romance as Reynolds starts to find himself with the women he runs away with. Debt Crasher is enjoyable for the noir junkie, but I will say it won't be much for the noir junkie who likes tons of action? It's quite short, so it's tolerable for me, and sometimes I don't like books with too much fight scenes in it. But I found it pretty good for a person who wants a short fix for the times they want to read book that doesn't require a lengthy relationship with.
• 
  Marietta Miles

  Fast paced. Punchy story with well drawn characters. Good luck finding a place to stop. You'll read to the end. Leaves you wanting more.
• 
  Dave

  Debt Crusher may only be a novelette, but if you are on the lookout for tough guy fiction, you found it. This book is chock full of solid action from start to finish. Cam might be an enforcer and a debt collector, but when a mistake puts him in hot water with the new boss and his new partners, all hell breaks loose and Cam is on the run from the meanest cartel with only a short-skirted, sharp-tongued woman he found in a dive bar to depend on. The story takes place for the most part in Seattle, but this Seattle is not the city of Starbucks and yuppies. It's a dark, unrelenting, mobbed-up town.
  This is solid noir with the main character getting deeper and deeper into crap with nowhere and no one left to turn to.
• 
  Edward

  A good mob story
  
  These days mob stories are to crime fiction what zombie stories are to horror. A well trodden area of the genre that never really changes much. In Debt Crushed author Michael Poole switches it up by setting it in Seattle and then ripping the main character out of the mob he had spent so much time in and putting him on the run.
  
  Poole, who I had never read before and wasn't even on my radar, writes a good short, sharp yarn. His writing is clean and goes for the throat, although the middle got a little dull for me. But ends with a quick blast of action and suspense. Poole is definitely on my radar now.
• 
  Steven

  Kick-ass crime novella that has the feel of those Gold Medal pulps and also has the vibe of Winslow's
  The Winter of Frankie Machine as Crusher is on the run and then getting even. A fun and fast read that only slowed a bit in the middle as some back story bio got dropped. Maybe we get more Crusher in another book? That would be a good thing.
  
  Set in Seattle (although only lightly described with basically names of places) and the mob crews in the novella are modeled on the Colacurcio family who ran the strip clubs in Seattle forever (and you can read about them in
  Seattle Vice: Strippers, Prostitution, Dirty Money, and Crooked Cops in the Emerald City, but that is probably only of interest to people from Seattle. Every big city has crews like that.
• 
  Todd Morr

  An expertly rendered crime tale. Setting the tale in Seattle and then Cripple Creek Colorado gave it a little bit different flavor than most mob revenge stories but it could have used a few more twists and turns and a little less use of well worn tropes. While there is nothing new here, it is still damn entertaining and hard to put down.
• 
  David Flinn

  I love stories that are fast-paced, violent, pulp-styled, gritty as hell, with just enough humor to break the tension every now and then, and this took care of all those preferences for me. After all, sometimes you just really wanna read people getting beaten and shot and mutilated. Good times.
• 
  Rory Costello

  A nice short burst of solid, often exciting action. The hero, Cam, had me pulling for him. Like other readers, though, I couldn't get past the way the character of Loraine was introduced and handled.
• 
  Gary Price

  Good Read
  
  I enjoyed reading this book. I did think there could have been a bit more development of some of the characters. However, it was still worth reading.