Hot Off the Presses scours the internet for newly published debut books from unknown authors, and saves everyone else the trouble of actually reading books to find out if they’re good or not. New posts every Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday? This is meant for entertainment purposes only, not serious consumer advice. And there will be spoilers.

Ever since I saw Super I’ve never really been able to get invested in a traditional superhero story. What’s the worst thing about superheroes? Cheesy outfits? Police collusion? Zack Snyder? Vigilant by Will Bowron, book one of the Hudson Saga, suggests that the worst thing about superheroes is what they inspire in the rest of us.

Taylor (played in my mind by a Cronenburg amalgamation of every actor who has ever played Peter Parker) is a journalist who gets the scoop of a lifetime: a televised interview with the enigmatic Hudson. In this newsroom the part of Sassy Gay Bestie who has nothing in their life other than helping the protagonist on their emotional journey is filled by the station manager. But it’s OK, because Jake brings up some good points, like “Don’t do it” and “Seriously, though, are you sure you want to do this?” I’m being too hard on Jake. He’s alright. Unlike Alice, who is dead as shit. That’s Taylor’s formerly alive ex-wife, whom he has only recently stopped mourning. This is all connected in some way that Bowron chooses not to tell us just yet. This story has more teasing and front loading than one of those creepypastas called “I went into that one forest with Steve and you’ll never guess why I wish I hadn’t.” Taylor is determined to do the interview, and travels across the river and out of West Ham to the Hudson mansion. No, not that West Ham. They live in a place called West Ham, and it’s a fictional city in America. Don’t ask me why. On his way out of the city, he comes across a homeless person whom he treats with about as much dignity as an ugly horsefly. The guy asks for the time, and Taylor assumes he’s after his watch. It’s gratuitous and comes out of nowhere, and I couldn’t make up my mind if this was Bowron showing us that Taylor is actually the villain, like when Johnny Depp throws a lizard friend out of a flying stagecoach, or if the author thinks this is how normal people interact with the homeless. Seriously, Taylor calls the man a “whino.” That’s not Bowron telling us about Taylor’s bad spelling or something.

Then we cut to the next chapter, and I was sold (see? Front loading is easy!). The next chapter follows Sam, the homeless man who asked for the time (played in my mind by Aaron Paul). Sam’s life on the streets is tough, sketched out in brief but vivid detail. We get running tallies of his daily anxieties around food, shelter, and his fraught relationships with other people living on the streets. Oh, and the vigilantes. Apparently West Ham has gangs of thugs- again, not THAT West Ham- who roam the streets looking for alleged criminals to beat up. Sam needs a jacket to survive the coming winter, so he heads to the Salvation Army. The latte-quaffing, collar-popping middle class employees refuse to help him get his hands on a jacket he can’t afford in a scene that is both cartoonish and effective. Eventually Sam breaks the impasse by breaking a guy’s face and high tailing it with the jacket. Only once he gets to safety does he realize that he left his bag when he ran off. Out of the frying pan, into a larger, hotter frying pan. There’s nowhere to run from the vigilantes who have largely taken over day to day policing in the city, but maybe Violet will help him, or at least shield him from Davey. Seriously, every chapter ends with one of these transitions.

And they work pretty well. The suspense never becomes too obnoxious because the pace is quick and the characters are interesting enough to make you actually want to know who Davey is. Teases usually get resolved in a chapter or two with a satisfying reveal, which basically makes this book a unicorn. I only covered the first two chapters, because for once I don’t want to spoil too much; some of the early twists are pretty snappy. We get other perspective characters, too, from horny Jessica to hoary Hudson, and they all work reasonably well. I go back and forth on Bowron’s presentation of some of the characters. We really get to feel for Sam. But his humble background is partly shown to us by the fact that he can’t spell, which is very cringe (Lord knows I’ve seen some awkward representations of homelessness and classism on this blog). He acts like a selfish jerk, above and beyond anything that would be strictly required by his situation, but never to the point that he becomes unrelatable. Taylor and Sam take turns being unsympathetic, and I am surprisingly here for it. I guess it works especially well for tragic people like me; I am my own frog and scorpion, trying to cross a river. I also went back and forth on what I thought Bowron was trying to say. It’s never clear what the characters are saying as an allegory for everything that’s wrong with the world, and what they are saying as a mouthpiece for the author. I guess that’s a good thing? What is happening? Is this… literature? Is this what literature is supposed to feel like? What the hell is this poindexter doing on my blog? Somebody bonk an orc and bring the world back into balance, please.

This is one of those rare situations where I recommend a book without hesitation or reservation. In places Vigilant is a bog-standard crime thriller, but it’s well-crafted and just unusual enough to peek above the crowd. It’s five dollars on Kindle. Reviews might be a little spotty this summer, as I will be traveling around the United States. Thanks to my Protestant upbringing, part of my brain will always see vacation as just unemployment that you have to pay for, so no doubt I will be miserable the whole time, and tell you all about it when I return.

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My favorite creepypasta is called “I like big butts and now I wish I hadn’t.”

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