Heat 2: A Novel

I was nearing the halfway point of HEAT 2 when an image completely unrelated to what was happening on the page popped into my head: that of a football time in hurry-up, two-minute offense mode, no huddles, quick slants, lots of ball spikes and out-of-bounds throws.Well, I thought, isn’t that HEAT 2? All pulse points, sentence fragments, swish-pan action and designed chaos? And then I thought: Now I understand why football teams don’t play entire games in two-minute-offense mode. For all the payoffs, there’s a lot of risk: lots of turnovers, losing the element of surprise over the defense, and simply asking the quarterback to perform consistently well under unbelievable pressure that no human can withstand. Like a poker player who can’t handle the swings or a race-car driver driving too hard and fast, the outcome is not likely going to be one you can live with.So it was with HEAT 2. All that busy blurriness, all that tensing and coiling and tightening and springing, all that insane red-eyed jut-jawed intensity: that’s a lot to ask a reader to sit still with, let alone sit still with for nearly five hundred pages, which is fair bit longer than the typical mainstream thriller. Too much, I think, even the reader buys into the book’s built-in assumption/conceit, which is that it is the extended story of characters from a beloved film, so beloved that you’ll spend any stretch of time in their company.I think they’re not quite right about that.Make no mistake: HEAT 2 is a good story, and a well-written good story. It is as sleek as it is slick, and every page is princess-cut with pristine professionalism, which is the least you’d expect from a pair of well-regarded old pros like Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner. Its hyperkinetic tone perfectly matches the tone of HEAT, and the dissolute cool metallic blue hue of its prose is a clear mirror to the much-loved dialogue of the movie.A particular high point is the research undertaken by Gardiner; the Paraguay material is especially fascinating, and nearly every page pops with authentic images and facts about guns and gangs and cartels and criminal culture. She dug deeper than most, and made even bit count, and each fizzes like bubbles from expensive champagne in the reader’s brain.But. A few things:1. The characters of HEAT 2 are not the characters from HEAT. In particular, HEAT 2 places weight on Chris Shiherlis that a) is not even close to true to the impulsive, addictive, volatile number-two played by Val Kilmer in the film; and b) the character, an internal void apart from his animal hungers, simply has no plausible arc of development here, nothing but a series of Marvel superhero-antihero shimmerings and twitchings and square-jawed sideswipings and splatterings. As the pages plod on, so does he, and no amount of elevated external stakes can fill the emptiness at the center of an empty and unbelievable character, no matter how pretty or smart or capable he is. (That goes for just about every character here, most of whom show only the slightest flicker of humanity when it comes to avenging or protecting or possessing women, and those kinds of characters make for one of the hackiest tropes in crime fiction: the man who needs dead or tortured women to animate him and redeem him.)2. That prose I mentioned? It’s so hardboiled that there nothing left on the page but evaporated blood and bleached bone, and that doesn’t leave the reader much to chew on. I think the intent, perhaps, is for the prose to cinematically wash over the reader in a series of dopamine surge that leaves them pleasantly pummeled like a deep-tissue massage. But some 120,000 words of that? That’s not a pleasant pummeling, that’s a repeated punch to the face, to the point of numbing and feeling nothing.3. Prose that hardboiled? It operates in such a narrow register (“crews” and “scores” and “merch” and “transpo” hit every few pages like bullet sprays) that when it lands, it lands with the abovementioned punch, which is bracing as an occasional change of pace. But what’s just as assaultive is when it drifts even a little out of its narrow lane and jars you with dead writing the second it touches the rumble strips: occasional flat passages that read like Dick and Jane meet Mack Bolan (“Chris shakes his hand and holds it. And holds it. His grip is cool and relentless, like his gaze. Looking into his vacant blue eyes is like staring into the black ocean at night—you know there are dangerous, cold-blooded things lurking below the surface”) or like Wikipedia entries written by people on the autism spectrum (“The small 5.56 mm round at high velocity had punched into him like a Sidewinder missile, fulfilling its design: large cavitation through body mass, bone turned to shrapnel”).That said, for every line that slapped me awake from the fictive dream, I can name one I especially liked. (“He misses the yellow California morning light, the sunsets, the Washingtonia palms, and the varied street layouts of the small towns recently aggregated into LA. It’s like nobody told Chicagoans there’s a better, newer place to live” is but one example.)Despite all that good stuff, HEAT 2 is just too much, like a seven-hour version of HEAT (and while you may think you’d want to see that, such a version would kill the magic that made the three-hour version the fetish property that is always will be), and somewhere early in the second half, I found myself ceasing to pay attention to it on a line-by-line, twist-by-twist basis and just sort of skimming through to find out who did what to who so I could finish the stupid thing and get on with my life. Like most products of Shane Salerno’s Story Factory, it reads like the quick-and-dirty novelization of a story meant to be a screenplay but somehow sent sideways into a different iteration, like nobody really intended this, even though Mann and Gardiner make clear in interviews that the book was always the thing. I believe it, but I’m not sure their book believes it.

As a fan of the original film who has seen it dozens of times over the years, "Heat 2" did not disappoint. The voices of the original characters practically leap from the page, and with a plot as precise as a Swiss watch, "Heat 2" is a ticking time bomb of a page-turner that will pump your adrenaline, tug at your heartstrings, and leave you wondering if you should quit your day job and become an insomniac detective or a career criminal.The original film was perhaps such a success because it humanistically blurred the line between good and bad, right and wrong. It brought two polarizing figures head-to-head in such a way that you didn't know who you were rooting harder for. The same themes are explored here in far more detail, backstory, and aftermath than the film, as well as introducing a veritable tapestry of new, fleshed-out characters that could practically spawn side franchises of their own.Mann intended the book to read almost like a screenplay, and it flows as one should. His cinematic eye is wholly present throughout, conjuring Dante Spinotti's brilliant, gritty cinematography, and Mann & Gardiner expertly paint with both speed and detail.I can't say how enjoyable the book would be if you're not at least somewhat familiar with the film. But for true "Heat" fans, discovering "Heat 2" is like peeling back the cover of a long-stashed 70s Trans Am - or maybe a mid-90s Crown Vic - that's sat in the shadows of a quiet, nondescript garage for the past 25+ years, waiting for someone to sit behind the wheel again and feel what it's like to go down memory lane - and then, find what might lay ahead.

I thoroughly enjoyed the structure of the novel and how an array of stories spanning various phases of time and space are ultimately woven together, notwithstanding a thoroughly necessary suspension of disbelief from the reader. It’s fiction, after all, and Michael Mann has proved himself a worthy spinner of its tales. We are allowed to understand a bit more about what drives and defines Neil McCauley and to a lesser extent Vincent Hanna, in McCauley’s case through the lens of the beautifully crafted character of Elisa, Neil’s pre-film Mexican girlfriend who gives him hope, heart, and soul in his rigorous, purposeful and yet ultimately nihilistic pursuits. The author also fully develops the character of Chris Shiherlis in ways both relatable, given what we have seen from him in the movie, and astonishing given their ambition and descriptive and narrative prowess. If you are at all a fan of Heat, give this excellent literary prequel and sequel a shot! You won’t be let down.

This book is like 4 or 5 novellas that effectively jump back and forth in time but connect only tenuously. The first section which takes place in Chicago in 1988 involves Neil a master thief, Hanna a tough step over the line cop and Wardell a sadomasochistic criminal and murderer is as exciting as anything I’ve read in a while. Hanna is pursuing Wardell as Neil and his crew of professionals are planning an intricate robbery reminiscent of some of the Parker novels. The next section takes place in Paraguay in 1995 and if the authors had torn this out of the book, the book would’ve been that much better. Next we are in Mexico 1988 where Neil and his crew are plotting to rip off a cartel while Wardell is looking to rip off Neil’s crew. Some genuine nail biting suspense here Then the last section where a great story involving Wardell looking to kill a young girl who might drop a dime on him adn Hanna looking to protect the girl is almost ruined by the story of Chris and Ana and a ridiculous cyber deal which had its origin in Paraguay. The last few pages are a total muddle and I don’t know or care what actually happened. They read like they were written Don a deadline by someone sitting on the subway who had to finish before the next stop. For me the great parts outnumbered the mediocre ones

I think I've just gotten too old for stuff like this.It's well-plotted, good characterization, masses of sub-plots/side-plots, extremely dramatic.But, for me, far far too graphic--and I think unnecessarily so. I didn't need all the blood and guts and gory details and monstrous cruelty inflicted by the core villain. And the book kind of lost track of his "career" throughout the years--he was a monster at the first, and still a monster at the end, but much lesser so. How did that happen? That would have been the only redeeming feature, for me, in including the hideousness of his actions.Some real heroes here. Some medium-of-the-road characters. Some (very few) just sketches, really.If it hadn't been for the first graphically described assault, I would have been glad to have read the book. But I'm old enough now to have seen more than enough horror and viciousness and vileness in the world that I really don't want to read about it--unless I'm going to learn something new. That's my acid test.I'm finding lately that there's a distinct difference between American pot-boilers, mysteries, whatever, and the ones from Britain. There can be violence in the British ones, but no-one's standing there bathing their hands and detailing it.IMO.

This book is just as good as the original movie.While this wouldn’t work as a sequel for a host of reasons, it plays like an incredible film in the reader’s mind.Take this from someone who considers Heat one of the greatest action/thriller films of all time.

Outside of an actual film sequel, which is seemingly impossible given the amount of time, this is the next best thing. Story maintains the same theme and pace as the movie, while giving depth to the characters we know without ruining it. New characters and settings are introduced, not all that seem to fit in perfectly, but the original LA was as much of a character as any, and this takes place in the general US, along with South America.Overall, I couldn’t put it down, was an easy enough read that only complemented the film masterpiece

I was super excited for this book as I am a massive fan of Heat the movie. I was a little disappointed in the opening chapters as it really leaned heavy on the movie; repeating key lines that became kind of uncreative and derivative. The book was overly descriptive and a little tough to read for that reason - came across more as a cinematic manuscript then a novel. Having said all that - the story was quite good and the characters were well done. I do think that this book would make an excellent movie if they choose to do so. 3 stars from me. Was hoping for more.

Great Prequel Sequel. Interesting read so far