Wrecked

Reviews / Votes

Joe Ide is one of the hottest mystery novelists at work... The wonder of love, the cruelty of war, the black world he knows well, the music he loves (Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, George Shearing) - all the beauty and cruelty and craziness he filed away in his mind before he began writing these novels. With Wrecked, Ide confirms that he's among the most original new voices in today's crime fiction -- Patrick Anderson * Washington Post * Wrecked is full of violent action, hairbreadth escapes and poignant life lessons: an unpredictable book written by an author with wizard-like gifts -- Tom Nolan * Wall Street Journal * The hip-hop generation's answer to Sherlock Holmes returns fast and furious in the third installment of Ide's (Righteous, 2017, etc.) celebrated series. . . Ide's penchant for colorful characters, droll banter, and whackadoodle set pieces is aided by a growing command of narrative dynamics. And Isaiah Quintabe remains an engaging, fascinating protagonist . . . There's a harder, darker edge to the violence that gives this ripsnorting follow-up a rueful yet resonant aftertaste, perhaps in anticipation of more unsettling jolts in the hero's future. * Kirkus * With writing so sharp you may cut your fingers on the pages, Joe Ide's latest IQ novel, Wrecked, is outrageous and laugh-out-loud funny, a page-turner with devastating observations about the dangers of state-sanctioned violence and its consequences. The characters are unforgettable, none more so than IQ himself. Like the previous books, IQ's tender intelligence and his tight moral compass are what make this series so stirring... and touching -- Attica Locke, Edgar Award-winning author of Bluebird, Bluebird To describe the series in a single sentence, it embodies a lot of thought-provoking analysis, a good deal of brutality, and more than a smattering of Three Stooges thrown in for balance . . . Of his many talents, Ide's greatest is putting the reader definitively in the moment. The sense of authenticity is what sets him far apart from writers who try mightily to simulate tough guys from the streets. Ide grew up in South Central. He doesn't have to imagine anything. His characters' vernacular, some of it hysterically funny, is unfailingly spot-on -- Fran Wood * Newark Star-Ledger * Joe Ide's IQ novels are an electrifying combination of Holmesian mystery and SoCal grit * Time * Blazing... Ide is still the hottest of recently-emerged crime writers. He has populated Southern California with wildly entertaining characters, from those hinted at offstage to the motormouths whose priceless talk fills his pages -- Janet Maslin * New York Times * Wrecked is full of violent action, hairbreadth escapes and poignant life lessons: an unpredictable book written by an author with wizard-like gifts * Wall Street Journal *