damnableJake Hatcher is locked up in a military prison as the fall guy for a dirty job that had to be done.  No one else could do it, so it fell to him.  He was a Special Forces brand interrogation expert.  That one particular interrogation got wild, he ended up in the clink.  Lucky for him, his superiors feel bad about the entire him taking the blame thing, so he got a light sentence.

A couple of months shy of his release, Hatcher is released on furlough to attend the funeral of his brother, Garrett.  Hatcheris set free, but witha lot of questions dogging his mind, such as:  Since when did he have a brother?  Upon visiting his mother, after not being in contact with her for something like twelve years, she admits his brother was given up for adoption after their dad shipped out to war.  They tried to get him back when his father returned, but to no avail.  They thought his father came back sterile, but up pops little Jake.  She also tells him that his father, long divorced from his mom, is sick and dying in the hospital.

Jake sets out to learn more about his departed older brother, and to investigate the mysterious circumstances of his death.  He was hit by an ambulance while trying to save a gorgeous woman from a crazed homeless man.  No good deed, for sure, goes unpunished.  Jake’s snooping leads him into run-ins with the police, more dead bodies, more drop dead gorgeous femme fatales, a master villain, demons, crazies, secret cults, and sex and sex and sex/I can’t give it away on 7th Avenue!

I’m all for noir, and Damnable‘s mixture of horror and gritty, back alley, noir is likable.  Hank Schwaeble does a good job of combining the two, but he just misses the mark by that much.  He ain’t no James Ellroy when it comes to the tough guy stuff.  This novel has some familiar ground with Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein, and I like Schwaeble better.


Somewhere near the last pages of the book, Hatcher asks the question, “Are we ever going to get around to that point I was asking about?”  That pretty much sums up Damnable.  People spend a lot of time asking silly questions we already know the answers to; for Hatcher to be so, supposedly, smart, he acts kind of stupid at times.  For a good portion of the book I wanted it to get on with the story, I wanted to fast forward.

Schwaeble can write some good action, and some good, gooey, grotesque, horror, but it’s those in-between parts where he lost my interest, where the story seemed to deflate and drag.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for his next one.  Despite its flaws, Damnable shows promise.

3 out of 5
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