Pigeon-Blood Red by Ed Duncan

Author : Ed Duncan 

Title : Pigeon-Blood Red

Published : 2016

Publisher : Independently published

Pages : 212

Genre : Crime Thriller 

     For underworld enforcer Richard "Rico" Sanders, it seemed like an ordinary job: retrieve his gangster boss's stolen goods, and teach the person responsible, a lesson. But the chase quickly goes sideways and takes Rico from the mean streets of Chicago to sunny Honolulu. There, the hardened hit man finds himself in uncharted territory, when innocent bystanders are accidentally embroiled in a crime. As Rico pursues his new targets, hunter and prey develop an unlikely respect for one another. Soon, he is faced with a momentous decision: follow his orders to kill the very people who have won his admiration, or refuse and endanger the life of the woman he loves?

     Firstly I would like to point out that I was given a free copy of this book in return for an honest review. With that said it was pretty much a no-brainer for me with this series. I have devoured the others with great relish as I have watched Rico bounce from one bad situation to the next. But I suppose in his line of work it is only to be expected.  This is a man who after all does very bad things mostly to people who deserve it. 

     In my first to interactions with this character, he was batting the home filed advantage. His down and dirty Chicago, the streets that he knows like the back of his hands and that more than once he has spilled his and a great many others blood on. This time however he has been whisked off to the sun drench beach of Honolulu Hawaii. Gone are the oppressing darkness and rain of his home town. Can my favorite underworld enforcer still do what he does best in this sun-kissed place some call their Eldorado?  

     Once again Duncan does not skip a beat with his hero. It's funny when you become so invested in a character and series that you kind of feel like you know them. Somehow they have become the long-distance friend you only talk with occasionally. In your own mind, you get a feel for the way they move, how they would handle certain situations.  In Duncan's creation of Rico and the way, he is written these two elements have melded, and never do I think that that is completely out of character for him. 

     I also enjoyed the other characters that he created for Rico to play with. Whilst somewhere new to me others were like old friends come back around to say hi. I must confess this is also in part due to having read these books out of order, but hey hoe you can't win them all. The dialogue in these books is always a pleasure. They remind me of those great gangster films I watched growing up. Everyone has their part to play be it the hard-hitting gangster to the wife who knows just what she wants and how far she is going to get it. They feel whole and like real people, Whilst they may not live in my world it sure is great to spend some time with them. 

     Now for the plot, and once again I was kept on the edge of my seat from the first page to the last. In Duncan's books,  every second count's and he is not about to let us sit on our laurels and get lost in some random filler. For me, these are as good as any big-screen crime thriller you are going to see. I can safely say I would happily go to the cinema to see an adaptation of these books. Pigeon-Blood Red delivers on the thrills and spill of what you would expect from such a book but also allows for the characters to grow and feel out there worlds. These are not mindless paper people, they have just found themselves in a bad situation and all are trying to make it out the other side.       

     As is blatantly obvious this is a series of books I have come to love reading. They give me everything I could want in the genre. They are escapism at it's finest, a way to slip into a world most of us will never experience and come out unharmed. For me, they are a perfect mix of those old Noir classics of the fifties thrown in with that modern  HBO flair.