Book Review: The Dark Side of the Road (Ishmael Jones #1, with references to future books) by Simon R. Green

I liked this a lot the first time I read it. It was probably 5/6 years ago. I gave it 5 stars and found it fun and entertaining. It was a supernatural ghost detective mysterious stranger story and it was a quick and engaging distraction from real life.

The second time I read it, right around COVID time when I needed that kind of distraction from reality, I was not a big fan. It felt like The Nightside books, slightly reformatted with a less interesting protagonist and less complex world-building. Admittedly, I loved that series – so I didn’t mind at first. But it didn’t hold my attention enough to drive me toward the next books in the series – especially after I read the sample of the second book and it felt almost identical in style and substance to the first. Derivative is one thing – if you have a formula that works, there’s nothing wrong with using it. But derivative of derivative starts to wear me down…

The third time (some months ago), I listened to it as an audiobook. I saw that the final installment in the series was coming out and after reading my initial read thoughts wanted to revisit it. The series sounded right up my alley, and I could go through the entire thing in one fell swoop now. I was also new(ish) to audiobooks and it seemed like the type of story made for listening. I downloaded it from the library. Eek. It is read in a melodramatic style that felt completely over the top – and while the writing was totally in line with that, it felt overblown and even less engaging than reading words on the page. But I wanted to like this series so much, that I was willing to try the next book. They were all library-available, so I gave it a click figuring if I didn’t enjoy it, it would cost me nothing but some time.

I continued in the audio book vein and am so glad I did! I wound up listening to all 10 books in the series and while there were highs and lows, the overall journey was a delightful romp. They remained full of melodrama and over-the-top characterizations (particularly of side characters), but by the second book I came to realize that was par for the course of the trends in the stories, and it started to work for me. I found it a fun contrivance, like a telenovela full of quivering lips and dramatic face slaps. The steady build of relationships and personality development for the characters, overlaid with the wild storylines of each individual mystery, cohered into a series that I thoroughly enjoyed.

It’s strange how things grow on you and was a great reminder that not some books – and formats – need to be found at the right time to be enjoyed to their utmost…