Review: "The Dark" (Wolf #2) by Dean Breckenridge

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If you visit this webpage and read these posts, then you are probably a fan of the “guns ‘n’ guts” genre. And if you’re a fan of that genre and have not checked out the “Wolf” series of short stories/novellas by pseudonymous author Dean Breckenridge, you have been doing yourself a disservice. Maybe not as great a disservice as masturbating with 40-grit sandpaper, but a disservice nonetheless.

Wolf continues to be one the coolest characters you're apt to find in the modern day hardboiled/action genre. We are now into book #2 of the series and still know next to nothing about Wolf’s past. Part of me hopes Breckenridge fleshes out the backstory in future entries, part of me hopes Wolf forever remains a bullet-blasting enigma. Dressed in black and willing to do whatever it takes to solve whatever problem he has been hired to tackle, Wolf is the kind of man you want on your side when the chips are down, the going gets rough, and the proverbial fecal matter hits the rotary cooling mechanism.

You see, much like the animal for which he is named, Wolf prowls about on the fringes, at home in the shadows, and possesses qualities both noble and savage. He is neither gallant hero nor soulless anti-hero, but rather something in the murky depths 'twixt the two, a trouble-shooter (with the emphasis on the word "shooter") that is both good guy and bad guy. Sure, he'll slap around a woman to get to the bottom of things, but he'll also ache for a teenage girl who suffers cruelty at the hands of evildoers. The bad-ass with a heart of gold? Not exactly, because Wolf's heart is far from golden. But he is a bad-ass with a heart, at least.

The gunplay is not quite as copious as book #1, “Kill Fever," but there’s still enough to satiate carnage connoisseurs, and once again Breckenridge writes lean and mean, with the prose pared down to the raw, bleeding bone. These stories are the perfect Kindle fodder for when you have 30 minutes to spare and crave something quick, gripping, and hard-edged. Bottom line, any hardboiled crime/action fiction fan needs to check out this series. You may just find that Wolf is worth howling about.