Eh, this one missed the mark for me. It was trying too hard at times to be quirky and edgy. It might be nice for fans of Dresden or other dark, edgy, ironic type of noir detective novels, but it didn't work for me.

The world building was good, very bleak though. The city slowly succumbing to poverty, vacancy and general hopelessness was the perfect backdrop for this novel. I really enjoyed how Bruno touched on how job losses and lack of new jobs leads to poverty which leads to crime. And that crime can be reduced naturally by giving citizens a new future to look forward too (aka meaningful work to support themselves).

The plot was good but I found the middle bogged down a bit. I loved how Bruno contemplated how vigilantes and superheroes can easily be interchangeable as they both cause untold destruction, death and misery. This was my favorite part of the novel as it makes you question superheroes (I was initially reminded of Marvel movies) where the superheroes can do no wrong.

The characters were the weakest portion of the novel. Reese got super annoying really fast. He was a whinny, alcoholic who was stuck in the past. For five years he hosted a pity-party and refused to leave, and I hate those type of people. It felt like that was his only trait.

The ending of the novel was the best part. Reese had finally grown into three-dimensional character who had taken responsibility for his life and owned up to his mistakes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Aethon Books for this ARC.

First things first: I kindly thank the author for sending me the copy for review. It's clearly a work of passion and long-lasting, maturing love for vigilantes and superheroes; heck, it reads like a love letter to a Batman and Rorschach's hypothetical child.

It's just not a book for me.

I was very close to DNFing the whole affair several times over, from the very first chapters. The protagonist is an immature, vengeful, angry and traumatized teenager locked in the body of a aging, disabled man. And as it's written in the first person perspective, the effort of reading the unending stream of bile and hatred interspersed with violent fantasies and really unimaginative name-calling is really quite exhausting. I imagine this was the author's intent - to show the moral ambiguity of vigilantism, the cost of wilful taking of life, on both sides of law or morality; to show that vigilantes are not that different from the villains with whom they fight, that choosing a side in the conflict is secondary to being in the conflict. In that, Bruno certainly succeeded - maybe even a bit too much, as the overarching concept dominates the story and the admittedly one-dimensional characters. There's very little character development and it is limited only to the epilogue, which at least for me was a case of "too little, too late."

The whole crime scenery, from gangs to crazy killers to pathetic donut-eating cops and corrupt, uncaring elites seems lifted straight - and totally seriously - from Batman comics; in fact, the descriptions of even the most gruesome mutilations have something of an average DC comic book unreality about them. The main character is in fact what I imagine the author considered a more realistic version of Batman, without his fairy-tale wealth and Alfred's patient guidance, broken by his enemy in the past and never fully recovered, embittered and devoted to the easier option of killing rather than apprehending whomever he deems evil. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, addicted to alcohol and wallowing in self-pity, living in the past, feeling no longer needed and angry at everything and everyone, starting with himself. When that past comes back to haunt him and those that he still feels a connection to, he embarks on his last quest, a hissing swan song of the infamous Roach. The story is predictable, filled with gore and unending deprecating remarks directed at everyone and everything - and that particular affectation lost its allure pretty quickly and became tiring.

To be fair, for the first 95% of the book I was going to give it one star and get it over with. But the last pages redeem this bleak rant of a story somewhat, giving it a more nuanced outlook. It's an acquired taste, certainly, but I'm sure that <i>The Roach</i> will find its devoted fans.

I have received a copy of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

The Roach by Rhett C. Bruno is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary. All of the books I have read of Bruno's books have been sci-fi/fantasy but this on is not. I wondered how well I would enjoy it, and I really got into it! Roach is a self made superhero. He had decided to do good and was a one man vigilante. That was until he lost the use of his legs. Now he is a drunk but still cares. The case that cost him his legs comes to haunt him and the few people that he hold dear. The crazy guy gets out and is out for revenge, Roach is one one on his list. Very exciting and quite the page turner! Great world building and well developed characters.

This is a superhero read of sorts. He has no true superpowers but he does have their mentality and seeks to set wrongs, right. but he is more a vigilante then hero. Though some feel he is a hero. We meet The Roach after his prime days. Five years after to be exact. He is now in a wheelchair and often considering suicide. His past has not left him and now is back to haunt him. After being hospitalized in a coma for a month, he finds out someone has stolen his Roach identity and is causing more trouble then good. He needs to save the people the imposter Roach is putting in danger. I could see this being a graphic novel. Is just has that feel. I enjoyed the book and am giving it a 3.5 star review

I received a free digital copy of “ The Roach” through Net Galley to read and review. My thanks to NG and the author.

Rhett Bruno is , perhaps , best known as a writer of sc-fi . I have read and enjoyed his novels in that genre. But “ The Roach” is a wholly different sort of story, and a very good one. It is an exciting story, one that captured my attention from the first pages, and one with a really different hero.
His name is Reese Roberts, a nobody. His job is a sewer maintenance tech beneath the streets of a decaying city named Iron City. The City, once a auto manufacturing giant, is now a crime ridden wasteland of empty factories, crumbling slum housing and dangerous streets.
ReeseRoberts is also The Roach. At nights he dons a self-constructed armored suit with an gas mask , such as he used while slogging through the stenches below the streets. He adapted it to look vaguely insect- like, and wears it when goes out to fight crime. He looks for violent abusers, thieves and killers who terrorize the streets where even the law fears to go. He gives no mercy, and although the city fathers decry vigilante justice, they take heed of the drop in crime.
But latey, the Roach has not been around. What happened to the crime fighter? The book opens with Reese Roberts in a wheelchair. On his last night of crime fighting, he saw a rapist attacking a young woman, and intervened, knocking the rapist to the pavement. Taking the rapist’s knife and putting it to his neck, he was going to exact his kind of pitiless punishment.
It was then that a rookie cop came by. Misinterpreting the scene, the cop shot The Roach , severing his spine.
That is the beginning of the book. There is a lot to happen in the rest of the story that will keep the reader rapt. The Roach” is quite a novel, with a dark hero who has done dark deeds, and makes no excuses for them.

As the novel unfolds , the reader gets to know everything there is to know about him, which makes the character both understandable and heroic. He is not pathetic, although his bitterness is clear. He has no regrets, except that he can no longer fight crime.
The author unfolds, mostly through inner dialog, what drove Reese to become The Roach, and why he was so merciless to criminals. He despises the rich who exploit the underclass, but has a love/ hate. feeling for those who refuse to fight back against them. Alone and crippled, he wants to be left alone in his dark, bitter despair, rejecting any overtures for help, except for those from the woman he rescued that night that a bullet ruined him. That is the story- can The Roach be redeeemed? Can his rage be diminished and his life changed?
I held back giving the book five stars because I thought that some times the hero was incredibly impervious to pain. Yes, yes, it is hard to kill a Roach, as Reese says more than once. Also, and this is just my response , I was impatient for a bit less exposition as the book raced to its exciting climax. But that is a minor thing usual for me to want to see how it all ends. Oh, the ending? A bit of a twist there, but satisfying and really truthful.
Cautions: violent scenes, hard language and dark psychological drama. No sexual content, but references to body functions- necessary to the plot.


“

The Roach by Rhett C Bruno is an unusually grumpy novel from the point of view of a forcefully retired vigilante. Reese, the very much anti-hero main character reminded me of that Grumpy old man show where what they do the whole time is complaining about human nature, how horrible it all is… and at the same time there is humour in his lines and he can’t help but hope against all odds that he is wrong about people.
Admittedly, he has a terrible life, had a terrible life and has nothing to look forward to. This doesn’t make it easy to look on the bright side of things. The only brightness is Laura, the last woman he saved, keeps coming back to look after him, and the one he got shot in the spine for saving. But being stripped from his vigilante role because he is not physically capable of standing anymore leaves him with nothing. Being a roach was his very identity. Except of course things don’t stay still. And life still has a lot of things it still wants him to sacrifice so as to keep the people around him safe.
This is not the typical superhero book, this isn’t even the typical overcoming difficulties book either, this is something else. I wouldn’t call it fun - just like Sin City is not fun. But if you want some dark humour, some disillusioning and reillusioning (yes I made up that word), this is the book for you.
Reese has attitude, is very grouchy, is un-killable, has dark thoughts swirling in his head all the time, is probably crazy, but he is so full of good intentions at the bottom of it all.

5 Stars: 5/5 Star Rating

Well, this is definitely a different sort of book than I usually read. I was surprised by many things happening in this one! This is a story of a vigilante and a sort of whodunit as well. The Roach, the vigilante gone stale and now paralyzed and living as a hermit and alcoholic, has a copycat. He now seeks to catch the copycat before more innocent people are killed and his name and legend are sullied.

This book does have some strong language in it. The story was quite engaging and definitely kept me on my toes at every turn.

I received a digital ARC of this book from netgalley and Aethon Books. All opinions expressed are my own.

Iron City is looking for a new identity. It was once part of America's industrialized north west but it is now in the rust belt and a dangerous place to live.
Five years ago a bullet in the spine put the Roach in a wheelchair. He was once a vigilante cleaning up the mean streets of Iron City, now he is little more than an urban legend but his arch nemesis still wants him dead.
Weirdness abounds in a stunning evocation of street justice gone wrong. This is an alternative America, set in a hazy 1980s, but all too relevant to a post-Trump superpower brought to it's knees by a pandemic.
Violently haunting. A novel with many layers.

BAM! ZING! OOF! .... Rhett Bruno has fashioned an entertaining hybrid novel ... part campy, like the 60s TV series BATMAN with a crime-fighting duo ... and part pulp fiction, like the 30s and 40s creations featuring bigger-than-life heroes, pretty girls and despicable villains. This adventure features the anti-hero, vigilante crime fighter,
"The Roach" who without his armored crime fighting costume, is better known as Reese Roberts. His part could easily be played by Adam West. (Batman) While his "sidekick" Isaac who he has taken "under his wing", could be the re-incarnation of Burt Ward (Robin). "The Roach" was the guardian of Gotham City .... oops ... I meant, Iron City.
He did whatever was necessary to strike fear in the low life criminal scum of the city, who prayed on the weak and unfortunates. Sometime his vigilante methods were controversial. It all came crashing down on him when he was shot in the spine while rescuing the beautiful Laura Garrity, the mayor's daughter. He was left paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair ... and gradually he faded into the realm of mythic legend.
After a long hiatus and unexplained absence, the Roach(?) comes to the aid of two potential victims. And, shortly after the two victims are inexplicably brutally murdered. Reese needs to resurrect the "real" Roach. After being paralyzed he has deteriorated into a pathetic and slovenly drunk , who has recently even considered suicide.
Can the Roach be resurrected again to save the city and other damsels in distress?
Bruno weaves a convoluted tale, filled with intrigue, suspense and dollops of humor and pathos. Aided by populating his narrative with multilayered characters with complicated motives he provides an entertaining read.
Tension escalates into multiple unexpected reveals. Thanks to NetGalley and Aethon Books for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review.

This book is about a former local crime fighter/vigilante who dresses as the Roach, but due to circumstances becomes a bitter and sarcastic individual. While some other reviewers enjoyed this book I found it be not close to the level of the author's Titan series. It is dark, depressing and lacks a storyline that makes you want to continue reading rather than putting the book down.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog.

In "The Roach", Rhett Bruno has created a memorable antihero, a former costumed vigilante now paralyzed from the waist down and doing his best to drink his way into an early grave. This is a brutal, dark, and gritty story about a broken man trying to survive in a collapsing city (Iron City is clearly based on Detroit, in some ways that will be obvious to most readers, and others that may be less so) which is every bit as much a character in the story as the people who inhabit it.

I've been a fan of Bruno's writing for a while now, and this stands among his best novel-length works to date. It's a solid 4+ stars. "Enjoy" isn't exactly the right word for this, but I certainly appreciate this tale, and its telling.

Gotta love a good antihero! This one has been crippled by a bullet, his career as fearsome vigilante The Roach finished. Villains once feared him. Kids collected Roach action figures. He had a bullet-proof body suit (minus that one spot, that "Achilles heel" that left him open to the paralyzing bullet), a scary-looking gas mask, and a reputation for being as impossible to kill as a creepy cockroach. Now the world believes The Roach, if he existed at all, is officially dead.

But he's alive in his dirty apartment above a 1980s lair that is as not like the Bat Cave, and his wheelchair is not enhanced or anywhere near being an awesome roach-mobile. Reese is cynical and irritable, pretending not to enjoy the attentions of the woman he saved too late: she was raped, and she chose not to abort her rapist's baby. Now she's an accomplished lawyer and daughter of the Mayor of Iron City, but she makes weekly visits to Reese, her now-paraplegic rescuer.

"He’s a shriveled old drunk, living like a hermit and waiting for his life to end. All that’s left to do is wallow in the mistakes that led him here." and then to come out of hiding and fight crime once again - from a wheelchair this time.

The novel opens with Reese planning to roll himself into the river, but a timely cry for help keeps him going a while longer. This time, he gets no gratitude from the victim of two bullies. Gotta love the description of the chubby sidekick: he "looked like a little Hostess Cupcake ready to get the cream squeezed out of him."

The bullied kid, Isaac, keeps coming back to haunt the old guy in the wheelchair. And Reese (who isn't all that old) finds ways to take advantage without really exploiting the kid. Isaac needs to learn how to handle bullies, and nobody learned that lesson better than Reese, who was raised in a foster home.

Corruption, lies, abuse of power, more lies, betrayals - all the expected thrills of the thriller genre lurk in the shadows, waiting for Reese to expose them. One of the biggest exposes will come at the end, along with a vivid reminder to us all that foster homes, set up to be safe havens for children in peril, all too often imperil the children in the "care" of abusive, sick, evil criminals. If you follow the news, you might have seen that a large number of sex trafficking victims are recruited out of foster care. If you read John L. Monk, you'll get an eyeful of awful stories about kids in foster homes. (And lots of redeeming moments as well.)

The PTSD, the sordid memories, the many life events that haunt Reese, are illustrated here with stunning clarity and high impact. In real life, orphans and victims of child abuse don't become comic book superheroes. Reese may vanquish evil as The Roach, but he pays a real-life price for playing judge and executioner. Reese has a conscience. It may not stop him from doing what he does, but he does feel enough remorse to try rolling himself into a river in chapter one.

Never a dull moment in this novel, and hardly ever a bright moment, either. The ending caught me by surprise. Really? Really?? There must be sequels. If you read for escapism and a place where good triumphs over evil, you might find this book to be more frustrating and heartbreaking than you can handle. If this is not Book One of a series, I'm officially depressed.

But I'm also impressed. Rhett Bruno can spin an antihero you'll hate yourself for liking. Go Reese! GO ROACH!