“Slaughterhouse Blues” by Nick Kolkowski is definitely an in your face book with two character, Bill and Fiona, good-bad guys, not the bad-bad guys that they take on in an all to brief effort to extract a fortune of gold, a sort of revenge reward for another deal gone bad. And that is the tone and background of the story—past bad deals gone wrong, narrow escapes in the here and now, and some improbable poundings that would have had Rocky Balboa throwing in the towel. It’s a good story. I like Fiona, but for the life of me, I can’t see why she schleps around with Bill. It’s a good story, not great, with a more or less single focus after the odd forays in the beginning. One which was background; one that I knew was a trap to begin with. Still, it was written well and would be worth a lukewarm 4 rating if that was the end of the story.

 But…I’m getting more into the story and at 62% of the way through the e-reader, the story just ends. Then comes a lengthy promotional pitch. And then comes the teasers for not one, not two, but three other books. I felt suckered. The whole package is now a deflated 3.