Konrath Crafts a More Thrilling Thriller

Shot of Tequila by J. A. Konrath, Kindle Edition

The product description for the Kindle edition of J. A. Konrath's Shot of Tequila promises a slight departure from Konrath's usual style. I'm not sure I've read enough of his work to offer a general opinion, but Shot of Tequila's tone is certainly a bit darker than that of Whiskey Sour. Konrath's trademark humor makes the transition, though slightly subdued, as befitting the overall mood. I tend to prefer crime novels that focus on the wrong side of the law, so it's no major surprise that I preferred Tequila to Whiskey.

My only real complaint perhaps relates back to the book's unusual path to publication, and that is that one more pass by a proofreader may have been beneficial. Within a single fight scene and over the course of only a few pages, the same combatant is twice said to have been "energized" by events of the fight. Detective Daniel reads a suspect's police record, which states that he is 5'6" in height, but later tells another character the suspect is 5'5". A character is said to have "settled for a five Demerol injections[.]" Presumably most of these errors and issues would have been "caught" during during the traditional publishing process. That they slipped into an ebook by a traditionally-published professional author may be indicative of a weakness of the format itself, though without the format it seems unlikely we'd have ever gotten the book, even in this slightly imperfect version.

Konrath has crafted a real winner here, and I hope that its new life as an ebook prompts further visits with organized crime elements in the "Jack Daniels Universe."