Mesmerizing!

As much as I enjoyed DEAD DOGS, I enjoyed this novella even more. FATHER WAS A RAT KING is a violent blend of crime and suspense that kept me flying through the pages. I'm looking forward to anything Torres releases. Highly recommended!6 s Whiskey LeavinsAuthor 3 books27

Manny Torres’ Father was a Rat King is a tour de force of gritty crime writing. Maybe the most remarkable thing about the book is the way the settings, Baltimore and New York, are rendered in great, grimy, non-code compliant, violent, smelly, bad-end-of-the-socioeconomic-ladder detail. Actually, maybe the most remarkable thing is the protagonist, Soledad. All of the characters are well thought out and round out the color (or black and white shades, or sepia-tone, color isn't really an adjective that attaches easily to this book). But Soledad is a character we root for, in spite of and sometimes because of, her ability to do horrible things. She is smart, upwardly mobile, staying in school, and is also not to be messed with. She is a fleshed out and compelling character. As I read this book I kept thinking, this needs to be a movie. In the author’s notes at the end, Torres says that this was adapted from a screenplay. It all makes sense. I still want to see the movie. I’m going to spend a couple of days trying to cast the parts. Hmmm, who could get Soledad just right? 4 s Douglas LumsdenAuthor 10 books159

I'm sitting in a condo in a small town on the California coast, and, after reading this book, I close my eyes and hear the cacophonous sounds and smell the pungent odors of the worst neighborhoods in New York City. The prose in this book is that good. It draws you into the urban maelstrom that is consuming the life of Soledad, the young protagonist of Father Was a Rat King, and, her, you wonder how you'll ever get out. Soledad is bright and talented, but, thrust at a young age into an overwhelming environment of adult responsibilities, drugs, and violence, she finds herself forced to use her talents to become a ghostly angel of death. Turns out she's very good at it, but she's in danger of losing her sense of self-determination. The conflict in this story is not a young woman vs. the men she works for or is forced to kill, but the struggle between Soledad and the City itself for control of her very soul. And New York City is vast, primal, and powerful.

With his first novel, Dead Dogs, Manny Torres showed us that he could develop unforgettable characters and lead us through the fringes of southern urban society. Father Was a Rat King is as distinct from Dead Dogs as New York is to Atlanta, and Torres proves himself equally adept at rendering the essence of each of these different universes. In the process, Torres proves himself to be an artist when it comes to immersive and nuanced neo-noir. I eagerly await his next work!2 s ABC Group139 4

Uncle B. Productions continues to prove itself with its highly curated roster of crime/noir authors. This is my first foray into Manny Torres, and he came out swingin'.

Father Was a Rat King is set in NYC and explores the relationship between Soledad, her degenerate father, Franco, and the scummy's that surround him. Once college-bound and determined to escape her situation, Soledad is essentially forced into a life she never wanted.

The power of this novella is its pace. Torres' prose is spartan in approach. No unnecessary tropes or literary meandering are found in this book. The author finds a way to embed us in NYC before gentrification is in full swing. And as Soledad's world spirals into one of necessity, Torres flirts with the inevitable change that comes with money, power, what some might call "progress" as neighborhoods die off and become the stomping grounds for $8 jars of mustard and the homogeny of new-money America.

One might say that Father Was a Rat King is a story about a young woman and the broken world she was raised in. But it's also about how family and communities define us. Some things we cannot escape, and Soledad does whatever she has to in order to survive. Aaron SchautAuthor 8 books8

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