You Have Killed Me, the new book from myself and Joëlle Jones, is finally on sale this week. I kept all the pre-release hype in one thread, so if you want to dig through that, just go here. So, if you want to dig through Denny and Len derailing it to read interviews and advance reviews, you can.
Genres: Crime, Mystery, Suspense
Help Rating: T
Pages: 192
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-932664-88-1
Diamond Code: MAR09 4379
Book Description
Things just can't get any worse for Antonio Mercer. A private eye by trade, a dame from his past has re-surfaced in his life as a client along with all of the emotional baggage he thought he'd left behind forever. Of course, this unusual client doesn't have just any case - her family is mixed up with seriously dangerous people and the body count is just starting to pile up!
The link contains a 31-page preview.
You can also get a wallpaper of the cover:
Publisher's Weeklyreviewed the book this morning, and here is what they had to say:
Quote:
You Have Killed Me Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones. Oni (Diamond, dist.) , $19.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-932664-88-1
1930s-era gumshoe Antonio Mercer finds himself screwed over from all angles when he accepts a missing persons case in which the disappeared dame is his ex-lover. Hired by her equally hot sister, Mercer faces down a number of tough guys, running the gamut from cops, both honest and bent, to gamblers, mob bosses and even short-tempered and knife-wielding musicians, while following the gal's trail, but nothing is ever as it seems. Building to a stark and bizarre conclusion, the team of Rich (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Food Chain) and Jones (Fables) have clearly learned from the noir genre, both filmic and pulp based, and have crafted a riveting successor. Tense and intriguing from start to finish, this is a solid piece of detective fiction coupled with a wholly appropriate and stark visual style that evokes the bygone days of Sam Spade and Mike Hammer. (July)
I've been looking forward to this! At first I thought it seemed like really alien territory for you, but the more I've thought about it, the more I see how it fits, and I'm pretty excited.
It felt like alien territory for me, too, but it's been a real gamechanger for me. It's really showed me the way toward the next phase of my style, while also making me feel comfortable trying new things.
Ha, just saw your Supercat avatar for the first time. That's hilarious.
By the way, I am in the middle of a week of guest blogging at Robot 6. You can see what I've written about so far and keep tabs on the final four days here: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/author/jrich/
It's all tangentially related to You Have Killed Me, but I am trying not to make it all hype all the time. I want to provide actual content.
I just finished this. Great little book all around.
First of all, the packaging is perfect. The hardcover looks and feels great, the size works really well, the cover illustrations are beautiful, and the whole thing does a wonderful job of establishing the mood.
Storywise, you play well with the traditional tropes of the hardboiled detective genre. All the pieces are there: the hero who must walk down these mean streets but who is not mean himself (to paraphrase Chandler), the femme fatale, the combative police chief, etc. And I think it was a good choice to stick with a fairly conventional plot, since as Chandler also wrote somewhere, it's the character of the detective himself that matters, and this gives the reader a chance to focus on him rather than trying to work out some overcomplicated tangle of plot-threads. When you think back to The Big Sleep, you don't think about who killed Miles Archer, you think about Marlowe's voice and what he went through. And Mercer is a very compelling character. He has the Jamie Rich "wounded in love" thing going for him, but there's more to him than that. Marlowe is most often at a distance from his cases, even if he occasionally allows himself to care, but Mercer personally knows almost everyone involved. In fact, more than Marlowe, the sleuth Mercer reminded me of most is Horne Fisher, from G. K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Knew Too Much." Fisher is a member of the upper class who "knows too much" about the seamy side of what the upper class can get up to, and this insider knowledge usually helps him to solve his mysteries. But in any case, comparisons aside, what made the story work were all of the moments that showed us what had made Mercer the way he is: his interactions with Julie's parents, the Green case (a little nod to Chinatown?), and most of all his memory of Julie (I liked that Memory was one of the villains in this piece). His boat ride with her was probably my favorite moment. (Side note: "All men have secrets" is a simple enough line, but the book title being the name of a Morrissey song makes me wonder if this line was inspired by the opening of "What Difference Does It Make?")
The art was wonderful as well. I'm not an artist and don't have the critical vocabulary to express myself very well on the subject, but the characters in particular were very expressive in terms of body language, facial expressions, etc. The layouts were generally beautiful and easy-flowing, and potentially tricky sections like the one that opens Chapter 3, where the narrative boxes and art are each working in parallel on different aspects of the story flowed very smoothly. I liked the use of photography, blurring in of some images, a lot of the mirror stuff (the steam thing, or early on when we see someone's shadow against a wall with just a piece of their hat in the mirror). The final scene in the dark was wonderfully tense, and I really like the stark image of Jenny.
Minor criticisms, as much reflective of me as a reader as of the book:
I kept forgetting that Jenny is redheaded, though I don't know how that could have been made any clearer in a black and white comic. But "white" hair just triggered "blonde" in my mind's eye.
Page 81, the bouncer's jacket changes from solid, to striped, then back to solid. I don't know why I fixated on this, but it made me pause.
I also paused at the panel where Mercer is entering Memory's house. The "klik" sound effect seemed as if it were coming from the flashlight, and I wasn't sure what the flashlight was. Probably the only moment in the entire thing though when I had to stop and try to figure out what was happening in the art.
The dialogue was generally great, but I felt there were a few moments when you didn't trust your audience enough. The very beginning, for instance, when Jenny says "I'd hoped I left a better impression on you than that" and Mercer responds with "Impression? You mean like a bootheel in the mud?" I think it would have been sharper not to repeat "impression" for the reader, just "Like a bootheel in the mud," even if it might take a moment longer to click.
My biggest problem, though, probably comes from context more than anything else. I doubt I would have even noticed if I hadn't just read Asterios Polyp, but... the word balloons didn't sit right with me. Their circularity just seemed too perfect and artificial in this emotionally real story of flawed human beings.
All these are minor complaints, though, and overall I loved this book. I will be recommending it to friends and I look forward to reading it again.
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