OnlineBookClub.org

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Black Kiss Of Death" by Keon Smith.]

The Black Kiss of Death by Keon Smith is a crime thriller about drug dealers and the criminal underworld, Book 1 of The Montega Chronicles. Salideen, a half-black, half-Saudi arms dealer supplies weaponry to Cuban drug lord Diego Elcano. Meanwhile, on the docks of Los Angeles, Charles White and his crew wait for the Russian Mafia to arrive with two kilograms of cocaine they plan to buy. When the deal sours, just as White has planned, he takes Russian mob boss Zelinski home, steals from his personal safe and kills his wife.

Heading to Las Vegas to launder half the money, White happens across Salideen and his beautiful wife Brenda. White sleeps with Brenda while Sal is sleeping off his exhaustion in his hotel room. Sal later puts White in contact with Verningo Castor, a Colombian drug lord, to buy cocaine with the other half of Zelinski's stolen money. White meets Castor's stunning daughter, Pearl, and they later run away together to get married. Unfortunately, Castor has already promised his daughter to Diego Elcano. With Sal and Elcano already close business associates and Sal also working with White, things are about to get interesting...

This book is nicely presented, with some great fonts used for the title page, chapter headings, and leading characters. The writing is of high quality right from the start, with strong sentence construction, decent word choice, and solid description. There is some great punchy writing, such as: "...one of his men opened up on the Russians with an assault rifle and chopped them down like lumber." The dialogue from gang members is excellent, sounding truly authentic all the way through.

The world into which Smith carries his reader is rich with appropriate detail, such as the high-quality clothes worn by the drug dealers and the accessories they carry. This adds extra realism in tandem with the great dialogue, plus the sex and violence inherent in the criminal underworld. There are violent scenes of murder and retribution as you would expect in the seedy world of drug dealers. A lot of sudden deaths come out of nowhere, a real shock, as they no doubt would in the real world.

There is plenty of sex in this book, which makes sense with the amounts of money and drugs involved. The only possible negative is that Smith writes sex scenes - and describes women's bodies - from an extremely male-oriented perspective. For example: "Her robe flew open, exposing her goodies." This and other similar description fits the tone of the story but still seems a little coarse and sexist. However, I applaud the realism and the fact that these depictions suit the gritty "gangster" feel of the rest of the book. For this reason, I feel this book targets a male audience more than a female one.

The errors in this book are minor, such as missing or misplaced punctuation or an occasional misspelled word. I found a few items of description slightly "off", but I feel an editor might reword these as well as proofreading to fix the errors. One example is: "Six stories down, Philip's body went splat like a bag of spaghetti sauce." While I like the simile, the phrase "went splat" is a little cartoonish, and could be replaced with "split" or "exploded". Another is: "Without hesitation two shots were fired, killing them dead." Here, it would be enough to simply say "killing them".

Though it has its faults, I was really impressed by this book's gritty and realistic portrayal of the seedy criminal underworld of the large-scale drug dealer. With an edit, I believe it would be worth 4 stars. At present, I rate The Black Kiss of Death 3 out of 4 stars. It is a powerful crime novel which I would recommend to any crime fan who is undeterred by plenty of sex and violence.

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The Black Kiss Of Death
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Like joshfee77's review? Post a comment saying so!

This is a great review, Josh, and the story is certainly action-packed but way too graphic for my weak stomach!

I like that it has a realistic portrayal of the criminal world of drugs.

The world of crime can be interesting to read about, but it's not really for me. It sounds like this is really well done if that's your genre. The graphic nature of the book has me avoiding this one. I do like the cover and title, though. Thanks!

As usual, a very thorough and informative review. You have highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of this piece of writing admirably, and I look forward to having a closer look. Thanks for the warning about the book being written from a male’s perspective - it doesn’t bother me in the least, but it’s well worth noting.

Thank you for writing a review of this book. I was curious about the story for a while, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it. Now that I am reading your review, it sounds like a fun read. I especially love reading detailed scenes of sex and violence, so I might put this book on my want to read list. Thanks!

Yeah a review that really got me wanting to read more this book hope I feel like one of the character in this book while reading it

There seems to be a lot going on with this book. Makes me wonder if it would be easy to follow along. Thank you for the review!

This sounds like my type of book, great review!

I really enjoyed reading this review! I do crave a book that is consistently gritty and lacks the fluff that ultimately turns it into some romcom.

Caylie_Cat wrote: ↑21 Nov 2018, 00:38 This is a great review, Josh, and the story is certainly action-packed but way too graphic for my weak stomach!

Thanks. Definitely some full-on writing, but I do appreciate a book that pulls no punches.

charmperit wrote: ↑21 Nov 2018, 02:46 I like that it has a realistic portrayal of the criminal world of drugs.

Yeah, I really liked the gritty sense of realism, especially in the portrayal of the characters.

kandscreeley wrote: ↑21 Nov 2018, 09:20 The world of crime can be interesting to read about, but it's not really for me. It sounds like this is really well done if that's your genre. The graphic nature of the book has me avoiding this one. I do like the cover and title, though. Thanks!

It was certainly very graphic, but in this case I think it fit the genre nicely as a sort of pulp crime novel. Thanks for commenting.

sonya01 wrote: ↑21 Nov 2018, 17:42 As usual, a very thorough and informative review. You have highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of this piece of writing admirably, and I look forward to having a closer look. Thanks for the warning about the book being written from a male’s perspective - it doesn’t bother me in the least, but it’s well worth noting.

Thanks, Sonya - much appreciated. The male perspective likely wouldn't be a problem for too many people, but I thought it was worth mentioning, especially relating to sex scenes.

Alicia09 wrote: ↑21 Nov 2018, 20:47 Thank you for writing a review of this book. I was curious about the story for a while, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it. Now that I am reading your review, it sounds like a fun read. I especially love reading detailed scenes of sex and violence, so I might put this book on my want to read list. Thanks!

Thanks Alicia. I'm glad this sounds like a book you would enjoy. I was initially hooked by the great cover and title, but then was pleased to find the writing and story were punchy and realistic.