If you are looking for a fast-paced, hardboiled crime novel that is filled with cover to cover action, you are not going to find anything better than this. It's a mix of Goodfellas with pulp noir elements and features the misadventures of a gun monkey, Charlie Swift, caught in the middle of a battle between two warring factions in Orlando.But what's really incredible about this book is the voice it's told in. It is told in a matter of fact tone that just draws you in.This book has more gunfire a...

Crime Fiction*Nominated for the (crime/mystery) Edgar Award for Best First Novel* (not sure what year, copyright is 2001)Great pulp fiction read. Charlie Swift is very loyal to Stan, the mob boss of Orlando. Stan's getting older and slowing down, which prompts the Miami boss to make some drastic moves to take over Stan's area.Stan and people on his crew start disappearing, leaving Charlie desperate to find Stan and his friends. Charlie has to fight off the Miami boss's thugs, the cops, and the F...

Okay-- I knew when I picked this one up it looked familiar. Sadly -- though I'd read it before it didn't strike a chord in my brain... That's a good thing, because I have a higher opinion of it this time around. Hired Mob muscle. That's all Charlie Swift was good for. He worked in Florida, solving problems for his boss, Stan. Problems were sometimes solved with threats and sometimes with dead bodies. Stan asks Charlie to pay careful attention when he metts with another mob boss. Charlie is sub-c...

I didn't care for this book. The main protagonist was laughably unrealistic and the plot was stale. It might have been somewhat better without the corny romance that turned a gun slingin' story into a cheesy 'love at first sight' tale. I know we just met but i wuv you shmoopy. I've read other noir novels and shorts where the main character is so believable and dark, and the author really nails the macabre. But this book felt like a gunslingers ride through Candy Land.

Here's the first sentence of the book: ""I turned the Chrysler onto the Florida Turnpike with Rollo Kramer's headless body in the trunk, and all the time I'm thinking I should've put some plastic down." That does get your attention. Picture, if you will, Carl Hiaasen, Robert Parker, Raymond Chandler, and Jim Thompson all rolled into one and you have a fair approximation of Victor Gishler's Gun Monkeys. Caught in the middle of a war for control of Orlando's lucrative crime trade, Charlie Swift, e...

A Trifecta of Bullets, Blood, and Sex Charlie Swift is a hit man for the mob, an unrepentant career criminal who views his grisly vocation with detached practicality. As a former Army Ranger, killing is simply what he was trained to do. And killing is what he does, stacking up the corpes across central Florida's seamiest strip malls and strip joints as he tries to extract himself from a rival gang's setup, dodging some less-than-scrupulous G-men while trying to find his gangster boss gone missin...

My first Gischler book. His lead character Charlie Swift is a National Geographic-loving killer, whose girlfriend is a taxidermist. ..:)I believe one has always to start at the beginning. He proves, should anyone have any doubts, that exceptional prose can turn the merely ordinary into an extraordinary winner.Gischler's prose is charged with kinetic energy and it’s darkly funny. Narrated in the first person, Gischler’s writing is contextually real and simply, deliciously, hilarious. From the...

I didn't like the hero, but that doesn't matter. The action and story had me on the edge of my seat. Reminded me of a Tarantino film without the awesome soundtrack. I'm def a new fan of this already celebrated author!

I picked this because I like “hard boiled noir” or “pulp noir,” and I’ve read Gischler’s books before. (I’ll never forget “Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse”—such a fun book.) This is the second one of his that I’ve read set in Florida. The first was set in my birth city. It took me forever to get into this, and I had a hard time keeping all the characters straight....not that that mattered much because (view spoiler)[most of them end up dead! (hide spoiler)] However, that’s on my state of mind or a...

Well, I got the full-time job I wanted at the library. (I'll have my own office . . . with a door; I almost feel like a grownup!) But, oh, the timing is so, so bad. I'll be leaving the children's department right when summer activities are starting, leaving my former boss with my "replacement," who is still checking out books using the book drop check-in screen, and has no clue what the numbers on the spines of the books mean. With all this going on, I've been having trouble concentrating on a b...

Good guy vs bad guys - on steroids.... I loved it!

There's a handful of writers doing this crazy-ass action/crime/dark comedy genre these days, but honestly, no one does it better than Gischler. GUN MONKEYS would be my fourth or fifth read from him and he hasn't let me down yet. The protagonist in this one, Charlie Swift, is an enforcer for Stan, an aging and increasingly dotty old crime boss slowly losing his grip on his criminal empire. When some outsiders move in to take over the rackets, Stan disappears and Charlie finds himself alone (well,...

I was excited for this one, having heard it’s one of the contemporary noir standouts. And the premise is good, if tangled: Charlie Swift is the ace muscle for an aging organized crime boss in Orlando, Florida. Heavies from Miami, the feds, and corrupt feds are all after the operation, and Charlie has to go out on his own to make everything right.The good news is that this is one long adrenaline rush. It’s the hardboiled equivalent of the movie Speed where nothing ever stops. Or, if you prefer, i...

I don't read enough noir. Gischler's GUN MONKEYS is a page-turner. I read the entire book in a day and a half and really enjoyed the thrill ride. Puts the pedal to the metal on page one and doesn't let up. Looking forward to reading more Gischler.

Wow, what a great first novel. Victor has proven himself a worthy successor to Donald Westlake in his Freshman year. This book was pretty damn near perfect and very reminiscent of Westlake's more humorous novels from the 1960s such as Somebody Owes Me Money with a the body count of a Parker novel.In fact, the character of Charlie Swift, owes a lot to the Parker novels. He's like a young Parker, though not quite as smart or experienced. He makes a lot of the kind of dumb mistakes that Parker usua...

It’s too bad Charles Ardai didn’t draft Victor Gischler for a Hard Case Crime series. The Hard Case cover artists would have ensured justice to the packaging for Gun Monkeys. It’s unexpected, too. The Bantam Dell cover looks like royalty-free clip art of a gun with the font for the title looking like it was cut out and riddled with a hole punch. The holes sure don’t look like bullet holes. If you could tell a book by its cover, this one would never have ended up in my hands. In fact, the book wa...

Slickly written, amoral, sentimental, ultraviolent, junk food. You might have a better tolerance for sitting in the head of a mob enforcer on a killing spree, but I lost all interest and suspension of disbelief once the narrator's body count reached 12 in less than a week, including federal agents and other highly experienced gangsters.

"I followed her into the garage, and she picked up the dead guy by the ankles. 'Get the other end, will you.' I gripped him under the shoulders and lifted. 'This is how we met, isn't it?' I grinned. She batted her eyes at me. 'You're so fucking romantic.' 'What are we going to do with this bastard?' 'Get him over to my worktable,' she said. 'I'll cut up some trash bags to put around him. We'll wrap the whole thing in duct tape. You can do ANYTHING with duct tape.' It was then i knew i was in lov...

Excellent book. I really enjoyed the writing style, it keeps you engaged and rolling right along. Never once is boring, like action books can paradoxically often get. The humor is very tasteful.My one complaint is that it's too fast-paced. There's too much stuff going on. It's often hard to keep up with all the events and characters, but if you manage to stay on your toes constantly you should be alright. No drifting off. Thankfully the style pulls you in so much.