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Everyone's familiar with the concept of a movie being "so bad it's good," but has anyone ever read a book that was so bad it's good? I have, and it's called Philadelphia Street Justice, by Treasure Hernandez.  To be clear, that might not be the title. The title page and the top of every other page inside the book say Philadelphia: Street Justice. The cover, spine and back don't include the colon. And that's not the full extent of the title confusion. The cover has the title written PHILADELPHIA STREET JUSTICE, the spine says PHILADELPHIA Street Justice, the page headers say Philadelphia: Street Justice, and the title page says Philadelphia: Street Justice. Pick your favorite The story is pretty simple. Billie is an assistant district attorney who secretly murders men who she believes were released from jail too early. She does this to get revenge on all criminals, after her father was killed on Christmas Eve when she was a child. Also because it sexually arouses her. What makes the book amazing is that it's written like a children's novel. Big font, short declarative sentences, no long words, everything is explained, no ambiguity or anything fancy like that. Here are examples quote:She came out of her room only a few times over the next two days. Late at night on the second day of her grieving, Billie walked into the kitchen to get some food. There was a newspaper on the kitchen table with a picture of her father on the front page. Billie started reading the accompanying article, She didn't understand a lot of it but she did understand that a bad man had shot her daddy . The article said something about how the bus was driving through a section of town that was run by a man named Kareem, who was a drug dealer. it said the police had asked Kareem questions but he told them something about something called an alibi. Billie wanted to know why the police hadn't found the man who shot her daddy. quote:"What's good?" Stone said as the two men greeted each other by grabbing hands and bro-hugging each other quote:Kevin shook his head as he looked at Billie's perfect body in her charcoal gray Prada pencil skirt with matching suit jacket. She dressed like a true professional but had the body of a video vixen. "You've always got an excuse You need to not work so much. Enjoy yourself every now and then" Nine pages later Billie cuts a man's dick off with gardening shears, shoves the shears into his mouth, and then slits his throat. The book really is a B movie. Treasure Hernandez was trying so hard to write a serious, gritty, sexy novel about a woman juggling her career, her cop boyfriend, and being a serial killer, but failed so wonderfully. Billie somehow is a very important ADA, despite the fact that she completely refuses to do plea deals, and openly despises the justice system for being too lenient. Billie murders people by going to her victim's apartment, saying she would like to have sex with them, then stabbing them and running away, leaving the body to be found later by her cop boyfriend. Billie seduces the big crime boss's right hand man in order to get closer to the boss. During the seduction process, she tells him two lies: her name is Sheila and she is from Pittsburgh. When she later calls him to arrange another meeting, she doesn't realize until after they've started talking that she has forgotten what name she gave and what city she claimed to be from. Billie quits her job at the ADA's office, after doing no work for a week, and then the next day just comes back and is instantly re-hired, without a word said. After Billie kills the big boss, the right hand man attacks her, and her cop boyfriend saves the day and arrest the right hand man. The boyfriend saw her near the scene of the crime minutes after it happened, the right hand man is yelling that he knows she did it and has a witness that saw Billie with the big boss right before the murder. The last scene featuring the cop boyfriend is him sitting at his desk, mulling over these facts, and then deciding it's too complicated, he's not gonna be able to get to the bottom of this, and he moves on to another case. It's an amazing book, I highly encourage you all to read it. You can buy it at Target for $6.19.
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Aug 12, 2015 05:05
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 04:16 |
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