I received an audible copy of this book from the narrator (R. C. Bray) in exchange for an honest review.

The Old Turk's Load by Gregory Gibson is a throwback to the dark days of noir, the kind of books that used to be called pulp fiction, with wisecracking lingo, indelible characters, and plenty of action stuffed between lurid covers.

The plot about a drug shipment gone wrong is wild and implausible, just like in the classics, and serves mainly as a framework for Gibson's hardboiled imagery and striking insights into the social climate of the 1960s, when The Old Turk's Load takes place. It all works.

The Old Turk's Load is a guilty pleasure, the kind of book we can lose ourselves in for a few hours, savoring Gibson's crackling, fast-paced prose like lobsters crawling on a carcass on the bottom of the ocean (which is one of his similes!). Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, and Travis McGee would have recognized Gibson's anti-hero, Walkaway Kelly, as a kindred spirit: a man with a code of his own. He rates a sequel!

The audio was great, too. R. C. Bray has the right raspiness to his voice for a book as "pulpy" as this one, and the characters were easily recognizable. I especially like his take on the mailman, who, because of cancer, had a tracheotomy and was left without a true voice. I'll be looking for more books narrated by Mr. Bray, too. ( )