Apaches

Rating:
Summary: RUN THE APACHES ARE COMING!
Review: This novel is a fun and great beach-reading experience. A band of renegade cops storms the cities cocaine badguys and shakes it all up! A fun and fast-paced read that could, and would, make a great hollywood movie.
If you like crime drama mixed with high octane action, heated up with crazy characters - this ones for you!

Rating:
Summary: Deplorable Writing
Review: First, does the reader need to read narratives of each cop? Whether it's Boomer, Rev. Jim, Mrs. Columbo, or anybody else, the string of stories at the beginning detracts from the pacing of the main story -- the kidnapping and baby killing. While character info is important, massive amounts of it is unneeded. Whose story is Carcaterra telling? How these cops where kicked off the force? Or how these cops brought down a sinister baby killer?

In college level creative writing classes, teachers often assert that too much backstory is a BAD thing.

Second, the whole deal with killing babies is sensational and melodramatic. It stinks of an author's desperation to make his readers hate his villian, and as such, it makes the villian a very flat character. What are HER motivations?

This book is unentertaining pulp.

Rating:
Summary: Sad & Laughable
Review: "Apaches" seemed like a fun basis for a novel, but the execution here just doesn't live up to the promise. Six supercops, all of whom have had to retire due to job-related injuries, form a secret crime-fighting unit in which they aim to take down a hyperbolically sinister (and beautiful!) drug lord (drug lady?)during the early days of the crack epidemic. No cliche is too obvious for Carcaterra as these psychically and physically-scarred cops come back to life now that they can do the thing they were born to do - bring down bad guys. It is hard to take a book like this seriously, and perhaps it would have worked if Carcaterra hadn't taken it seriously himself, but are we supposed to believe these two-dimensional cartoonish characters? And what about the villains, who murder babies to use their hollowed-out bodies as drug mules? Didn't anyone think that life-like dolls would probably be more convincing than actual dead babies?

I also found it troubling how Carcaterra needed to have token members of major police minority groups: an African-American, a Latino, and a woman. I'm all for inclusiveness, but here it felt so tokenish as to border on being offensive. Why only one of each minority? The answer, sadly, is that the reader would not have been able to keep two black or two Latino characters separate since, for Carcaterra, these people are no more than the sum of their ethnicity. I also found it fascinating that the only woman cop has the nickname "Mrs. Columbo," named after the character from the TV show. In other words, Carcaterra can only imagine a woman as a cop so long as she is emulating a man. Sad, narrow-minded stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Heartwrenching, but a great book.
Review: Boomer, Dead-Eye, Rev.Jim, Geronimo, Mrs.Columbo, Pins, all were cops, the best of the best. Until they were forced out before they were ready. Because of wounds they couldn't heal. When a young girl is kidnapped, her kidnapper makes a big mistake, he brings these cops back on the street. And when something even more sinister is uncovered, these cops know they have to fight back. But playing but their own rules.