The Neon Owl, Book 1 by Chad Lutzke

 I probably review Chad Lutzke's books more than any other writer, so I'll skip the introduction. He's good. In fact, I think he may actually be the best "indie" horror writer working today. He is certainly one of the best novella writers. Ok, I lied. There's your introduction.

The Neon Owl is a departure of sorts for Chad. It's both a change in genre (to murder mystery), and tone (plenty of humor in this one). What hasn't changed is his ability to create living and breathing characters with minimal keystrokes. This is important, and is essentially the hallmark of a Lutzke novel: characters worth caring about, and plots with no added words. If this is what you want from your reading experience, then Chad is one of the very few suppliers. 

From a technical standpoint, the murder mystery aspect of the story is fairly simple, which isn't a bad thing, but I did expect a little more intrigue. Also, my yardstick for modern murder mysteries is Cage of Night by Ed Gorman, so most books of this type fall short of that. I do recommend this book, as I do for every Lutzke novel. I love that he is pushing his own boundaries and proving that he can excel at multiple genres. 

Grade: B

Review by Jason Cavallaro

Twitter: @pinheadspawn