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james_desantis 's review for:

The Hard Place by Doug Wagner
3.0

Doug must have watched Baby Driver and Drive before making this.

So we have AJ, main guy who just got out of prison. He's trying to fix up his life and try to live a by the books type of life after a crash put him in jail and his friend dead. In doing so he tries to get a loan from the bank but you know what's going to happen. A bank robbery! Not only do that take AJ and kidnap him to drive for them but somehow the mob boss of the city has his daughter in the bank at the same time so she comes with them too.

Good: It's a pretty unique and interesting art design. Like a cartoony noir adventure. I also thought AJ was a pretty interesting character and I like his relationship with his father and best friend. The story is also pretty solid pacing because it's never boring.

Bad: SUPER predictable. You can tell every twist. I thought showing the flashback of what happen to him in the crash was annoying. It was shown around 7-8 times and it didn't become impactful any of those times. The side characters and villains are one dimensional.

Overall this was a quick run read. For the art alone it's worth checking out. Like Plastic though, Doug doesn't seem to have a lot of emotional impact on his stories. Still, for a entertaining crime stories this could be a lot worse. A 3 out of 5.