“Put yourself into Clea Simon’s hands and prepare yourself for one heck of a journey…” That’s just some of the praise BOLO Books showers on Bad Boy Beat. “[R]eaders will quickly find that the twists and turns of the plot more than satisfy—with a particularly stellar final act that is guaranteed to please even the harshest critic of crime fiction,” critic Kristopher Zgorski writes.
Read the whole stellar review here.
Bad Boy Beat – The BOLO Books Review
by Kristopher | Jun 4, 2024 | Review |
Over time, Clea Simon has proven that she is a writer capable of success across many of the subgenres that fall under the crime fiction umbrella. She has written cozies with cats—both realistic and paranormal—as well as psychological suspense, often with a gritty music-based backdrop. With her latest novel, Bad Boy Beat, Clea Simon may have invented—or at the very least, staked her claim to—a new crime fiction subgenre, Newspaper Noir. Through it all, her fans have noticed that regardless of what style she is tackling, strong female characters dominate in the works of Clea Simon. And that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Bad Boy Beat features Emily Kelton, a journalist working for the Boston Standard newspaper. Relegated to the police beat, Em struggles to stand out in the crowded newsroom. She excels at covering the late-night escapades of various criminals, but she longs for a time when she can cover a bigger story—a blockbuster with which she can make a name for herself. While struggling to get respect from her colleagues and competing with other outlets for the hottest stories, Em discovers that there may be more to a pattern of seemingly typical shootings involving the underground drug network.
Using a series of contacts she has cultivated over a number of years and in various different ways, Emily is able to make connections and uncover truths others are overlooking. The newspaper industry requires employees to work on multiple stories at once and everywhere Em turns fresh links materialize.
Bad Boy Beat shines on two fronts. First and foremost, the character of Emily Kelton is one that readers will immediately bond with. She is tenacious and scrappy, but she is also imperfect. She leaps off the page in fully formed authenticity which makes the reader want to root for her at every obstacle. Because of Clea Simon’s background in journalism, she imbues Em with all the necessary attributes to make her the perfect representative, ushering readers into the complex world of competitive journalism. The level of character depth makes it easy to see how Emily Kelton can carry a series moving forward.
The second star of Bad Boy Beat is Boston itself. This is a town that Clea Simon knows like the back of her hand and that intimate knowledge bursts forth on every page, almost every paragraph. The noir vibe of Bad Boy Beat rests squarely in the heart of the gritty Boston streets. This is an unvarnished look at one of our country’s most fascinating cities. Probably not advisable given the dangerous directions the storyline navigates, but Bad Boy Beat could convincingly be used as a tourists guide to the callous avenues of Boston proper.
Those may be the two most prominent reasons to pick up Bad Boy Beat, but readers will quickly find that the twists and turns of the plot more than satisfy—with a particularly stellar final act that is guaranteed to please even the harshest critic of crime fiction. Put yourself into Clea Simon’s hands and prepare yourself for one heck of a journey—dark, hopeful, and above all, entertaining.
BUY LINKS: Bad Boy Beat by Clea Simon
Disclaimer: A print galley of this title was provided to BOLO Books by the author. No promotion was promised and the above is an unbiased review of the novel.