 Welcome to Church of the Chair where we love a good game of cat and mouse. I'm your host E and today we're getting our kicks on Route 66. Today I'll be reviewing Three Smile Mile by Chad Lutsky. Up front I need to tell you that I consider Chad Lutsky to be one of my good friends. We talk on a regular basis. I am going to try to be as unbiased as possible, but I am a huge Lutsky fanboy. Even before we started talking I was giving his books five stars. There's just something about the way this dude writes and if you have not read Chad Lutsky you need to unfuck that pronto. Now on to the review, but first the description. Glover Texas has three restaurants, two gas stations, and its very own underground crime syndicate. Other than that the town's about as lively as Roadkill. That's been cake Donaldson's experience anyway. Cake flips burgers at the local diner on Route 66 for the same mouse day in, day out. Life is simple, too simple. So when an attractive older woman shows up with a spontaneous proposition, a sex-filled road trip full of adventure, he bites the hook. Unfortunately for him she leaves out some details, like what's in the trunk of her car and just how bad her husband wants it. Okay so Three Smile Mile follows cake Donaldson, that's C-A-K-E, not Kate, cake Donaldson, Diane, Connie, or Connor, his name's Connor, but he goes by Connie, Sibald, I believe is how you pronounce it, and then a couple of henchmen or partners or mercenaries, whatever you want to call them, and that's Shasta, I almost said Shasta, anyways it doesn't matter what I was gonna say, Shasta and Jones. There's a very diverse eclectic cast in this book and I loved reading about all of them. Where Lutzky shines as always is the character development and the pacing, you really get to know these people and you get to know them lickety split. I only really have one criticism here and it's more of a veiled compliment, I guess would be the right terminology. The book's too damn short and I have this problem with all of Chad's books, I get in there, I fall for the characters and I want to follow them on and on and on in that way and that way alone, he's like Stephen King for me. I fall for his characters, whether they be good, bad, indifferent, I fall for his characters and I want to hang out with them as long as humanly possible, but Chad writes really short books. I could be wrong here, but I think the only book he has over 200 pages is Cannibal Creator, I can't remember how long Skullface Boy is, but Skullface Boy is a perfect example of a longer Chad Lutzky novel that really lets you settle in and get comfortable with the characters and I wanted more of that here. That's not to say the book is bad, that's not to say that it goes nowhere or any of those things, all I'm saying is I want more. So again, yes it's a criticism, but it's also a compliment. Right out the gate, the book speeds just zero to a hundred in nothing, like no seconds. It's insane how quickly this book blows by. It is 160 pages and I read it in about three hours, I believe, and that's taking a break around the hundred page mark to have a back and forth with Chad in an email about certain scenes of the book. I'm giving this one four stars because I did want a little more at the end, but the ending is, it's not bad, it's, I, I, it couldn't, I don't think it could have ended any other way, giving, given the stakes and the characters that were following. One thing I appreciated is that I didn't know what was coming at any point in time and that kind of fed into the, I don't know, I want to call it an issue, but with it being so short, it was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and I couldn't catch my breath between chapters and I'm sure that's what Chad was looking for, that's what he was going for, and he won in that category, but again, I would have liked a little more downtime and maybe a little more chase, but those are the reasons why I didn't give it five stars because simply, I wanted more time with these characters. Did I need more time? No, I didn't, but yeah, I did want it, so am I knocking off points from my own expectations? Yes, so that's completely biased, completely subjective opinion on my, my end. Do I think you guys will like it? I think you'll love it, and again, if you haven't read Chad Lutzky, you need to fix that now. I highly recommend this one, Skull Face Boy, Wallflower, the list goes on of foster homes and flies stirring the sheets. There's so many amazing books out there by this author, and I don't care if I am being biased, but I was a fan before I was a friend of his. That's all the time I have for you today. If you've read this book or any other book by Chad Lutzky, let me know what you thought about it down there in the comments, but until next time, we've been up and down this highway, haven't seen a goddamn thing, except for a chair. I'll hell with a chair, David.