Review: The Very Long, Long Weekend of Tom Iris

The Very Long, Long Weekend of Tom Iris by G.W. Davies

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Book Info: Genre: Suspense Reading Level: Adult

Disclosure: I won a free eBook copy of this book on LibraryThing, which I received in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Tom Iris has no big plans for the July 4th long weekend. But that quickly changes when he runs into his boyhood crush, Cheryl Kerr, the newest recruit for International Lab Group in Blockton, and they plan to meet up. Beginning the long weekend with the usual game of poker, Tom, against his better judgment, smokes and drinks himself into a stupor, only to soon after find himself lost and alone in the industrial area of Blockton. Things take a turn for the worse when he discovers a body; a dead body which turns out to be Cheryl’s ex-husband. Not only that, Cheryl has been injured in a bombing at the ILG building, a bombing seemingly orchestrated by a militant animal rights’ group. When Tom learns that he is the prime suspect in the murder of Cheryl’s ex, Jack Dobbs, he enlists a motley crew of characters—including Mal, a pot-growing barber, and Hepp, a bumbling ex-con and newsstand operator—to find Dobbs’ real murderer, a task which pits him against professional killers and pharmaceutical magnates. As the mystery begins to unravel, Tom finds danger at every turn and learns that nothing is as it seems--and no one is safe. That is until Tom blows the case wide open by doing what he is best at—nothing.

My Thoughts: I hadn’t really planned on reading another book over the weekend, but when I saw this was by the same author as Beast Saves the Brothers and Sisters of the Cosmic I AM, I decided to go ahead and read it, too, even though it was late Sunday night. I didn’t get a chance to actually finish it before my weekly editing started (no thanks to NetFlix’s allure) and had to carry it over, but was able to get back to it by Tuesday morning.

Anyway, this book was hilarious – the bumbling attempts at various things by Tom and his stoned and/or drunk friends were a real hoot. In some ways, the book reminded me of the movie “Half Baked,” although the book is a bit more of a thriller/suspense aspect than that; but it is mighty funny in places. A couple quotes: “Weed, the ready pipe wrench for all your ontological plumbing problems.” Or how about: “It turns out reconnaissance and reminiscence are fundamentally at odds. Like drinking while driving, like sex in a church, or drinking in a church and sex while driving—all doable, but not advisable.”

The main problem I had with the book was the random and frequent lack of punctuation. Sentences all ran together, with the only hint that a new one had begun being the random capitalization of a word. It was frequently a cause for a pause where I would try to figure out whether a sentence was meant as a statement or a question or what. But if you can deal with that, then you should enjoy this book. There is a terrific twist to the end that I absolutely did not see coming; it was really out from left field. Great stuff. Highly recommended.



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