Review: Play it Hard

Play it Hard by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Awesome. Brewer totally channels Cornell Woolrich in this paranoia driven narrative. Steve Nolan wakes up from a bender-fueled honeymoon to find a woman claiming to be his wife who isn't the woman he'd just married. No one believes him, though, and the chase is on as Nolan tries to figure out what happened. The prose is Brewer at his propulsive best. Nolan's mind races and we are tethered tight to that paranoia from beginning to end. I wasn't sure how Brewer would wrap this up and have it make sense, but I think he pulled it off. Great also that it ends with an action scene rather than drawing room summary. The "wife" is one of Brewer's better character creations and he lavishes some of his best descriptive writing on her. Sexes it up in this one, too. Recommended.

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