“Heroic is everyman.
You. Me. No talent or skill required. Just a willingness to go toe-to-toe with
the best, take the hits, not let the bastards keep you down. You fall, you get
up, you keep fighting.”
For
a book to be a must read, it needs to have a few things going for it. A good
plot, believable dialogue and perhaps most importantly, have characters a
reader can relate to in some capacity. To me that doesn’t mean a character you
100% agree with or sympathize with, instead I mean a character that in some
manner you ‘get”. Maybe a character who regrets the choices they made that
pushed a former lover away or a character who aches for more time with their
child. Sometimes it is a character who longs to do something in life that
reminds them despite all the poor choices they make thy can find some semblance
of salvation. If you find yourself agreeing with my sentiments, then Joe
Clifford’s new Jay Porter book, Give Up The Dead, is going to end up on your must
read list.
Porter
is a brooding, pessimistic jerk in many instances. He dwells on past mistakes,
not just his own, but the mistakes and injustices he views others have made
against him. He beats himself up over choices he has made and allows these negative
emotions impact the life he lives. An ex-wife and a child he barely sees are
the main baggage he carries, but the guilt over his brothers lost life weigh on
his soul as well. Porter is deeply flawed character, but that is the strength
of this series. He is the typical “everyman”. He fights the fight, even when
the fight is lost from the start. Every reader will connect with him in some
capacity.
Porter
finds himself reluctantly, drawn into a messy divorce of a wealthy couple and
the search for their missing teenage son. Porter is unsure of what the
motivations of many of the people involved in these divorce, but he does know
he wants to help keep the boy safe. The more he digs into the whereabouts of
the son, the deeper he falls into a world he isn’t quite prepared to deal with.
Add in a traumatic brain injury to his father figure, his quiet obsession with
a married woman, and his best friend learning he is slowly killing himself
through drink and you have a story that forces Porter to make hard choices at
every turn.
With
an ending which adds a new layer of guilt to Porter’s psyche, there is sure to
be an addition to the series; good news for Clifford fans such as myself. Clifford
has a knack for being able to dive into Porter’s psyche and show his emotions
and frustrations in an easily relatable manner. I am really digging this
series.
Highly
Recommended.
