This is my 1,000th Goodreads review. A few weeks ago I thought about setting aside a book I thought I'd rate highly, but then I lost track of the count in my usual frenzy of reading and here I am. Considering my 2.75 rating average, it's probably most appropriate that my 1,000th review is a two-star book that I considered stopping when I read the introduction.

I mean, I keep vowing to stop reading graphic novel adaptations of books, movies, TV shows, etc., that I have never read or watched, and yet, at the libraries where I work, I keep compulsively picking up random new graphic novels after a quick glance at their covers. And as I have stated before, checking out a book, in my mind at least, creates a contractual obligation to read it. So I read this, even though the introduction told me that it was the adaptation of a middle book in the Hector Lassiter series of novels, of which I had absolutely no knowledge.

I wonder if the original novels are satirical? I mean, all the action here sort of comes off as the creators playing it straight as a hardboiled crime noir, but the story is so ridiculous they surely couldn't mean it that way, right? And the constant barrage of real-life celebrities like Pancho Villa, Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, and George W. Bush has to be more tongue in cheek than serious, right? Just like that cliched romance thrown in for the protagonist must have more levels than stupid, right? Right?

I don't know.

Based on what I read on the page here, this is about as generic as crime thrillers come. If more was intended, the author shouldn't have left it to me to do the heavy lifting without providing more motivation. Bleh. ( )