Bryce Allen’s The Spartak Trigger

If you’ve ever met Shane Bishop, chances are someone out there wants to get rid of you.  Bishop isn’t a killer or hit man per se, he’s more of a professional set-up artist.  If a company wants you out the door, he might plant drugs on you, frame you for breach of contract or any number of illegal activities, then call the cops and off to jail you go.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00.

However, when Shane himself is the victim of a set-up, he’s blackmailed into doing the dirty work of a powerful corporation.  Can Shane succeed in his mission and save his own ass in the process or will years of bad karma finally catch up with him?

I can’t say I’ve ever read a book where the lead character overrules and badmouths the narrator.  The style chosen by author Bryce Allen was completely alien to me and while it was jarring at first, I believe it worked – especially where Shane was completely unlikeable throughout, a bold choice to make when you’re asking your reader to stick with this guy for nearly two hundred pages.  In fact, there were occasions where Bishop almost seemed too offensive, like Allen was turning up Shane’s personality to eleven in an attempt to piss off just about everybody who picks up this book.  However, despite more than a few suspect and off colour remarks, there were still moments where I found myself laughing out loud.

The Spartak Trigger is an interesting experiment and something I’d recommend if you can handle hanging out with a misogynistic, racist jerk who speaks like a YouTube commentator for a few hours.  Allen seems like a fun writer who isn’t afraid to take chances and I’m interested to see what he’s got planned next.