Brilliance

By

Marcus Sakey

The second Tuesday of every month my best friend and I would rush to Continental Comics after school to wrap our grubby mitts on the new mags filled with super powered heroes and their feats of daring do saving the world one demented mastermind at a time. If you told me back then that the Avengers and X-Men would become two of the biggest money making film franchises and superhero culture transformed from geeky, pimple faced backroom bully escapism to mainstream acceptance and even coolness, I would have scoffed in disbelief.

Yet here I am all growds up with a wife and kids of my very own. Watching my boys become fans of these spectacular characters out in the open with no fear of being stuffed into a locker or head swirlied in the locker room toilet. Comic book heroes are everywhere in pop culture. Of course they’ve been popular for decades, but looked down as childish and unsophisticated. Get caught with a comic book and be prepared to get your head noogied by the entire Varsity football team. Not so in these more modern accepting times. No longer the campy SMACK, WHAM, POW of the original Batman series, these stories have depth and impact far beyond what my father used to dismiss as immature and “not valid reading material.”

While on a visit to the local library, I scanned through the titles on the New Release shelf as I am known to do. Bold and eye grabbing, the titular word hooked me at first glance. I slid the book from between it’s counterparts and read the back cover description:

“In Wyoming, a little girl reads people’s darkest secrets by the way they fold their arms. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They’re called “brilliants,” and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in—and betray his own kind.”

I don’t know why, but I didn’t quite get that this was about mutants. No laser shooting eyes or wings sprouting from shoulder blades, no weather manipulation or control over every piece of metal. These powers are much more subtle and believable. Forget the spandex and played out secret code names, these characters are you and me. (Just throw in some bonus talents we only dreamed we could have in real life!)

Cooper is your average ex-husband, father and cop. Only he’s not. He can read where your punch will land before it’s thrown and make sure he isn’t there when the fist arrives. He knows where you’ll shoot by watching how you move and the bullets will only find empty air. Not a bad talent to have if you’re tracking down the world’s most wanted terrorist and his extremely deadly henchmen.

Erik Epstein is good with numbers. So good in fact that he topples the stock exchanges of the entire world. Over night he is a billionaire. He purchases enough land from the government to create his own country. A country for “Brilliants” and “Twists”. People us normal humans are afraid of. We are afraid of them because of the chief terrorist John Smith. The ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to take the world away from typical, not advanced humans.

Spectacularly believable characters placed in high energy, dire situations with world altering consequences from every slit second decision. Heart racing action pulling against taught suspenseful strings with all the twists and turns of data streams floating through the air in bright fluorescent colors. Unable to put it down, my family could tell by my wide unblinking eyes not to interrupt me until I took a breath. Equal parts thriller and sci-fi futurism, Brilliance throws a tremendously written net unwilling to release you until long after the final word of the last page.

When I found out that a sequel is coming in a few months and possibly more after that, the tension released in my chest and I felt the pure joy of my childhood visits to that comic book shop with my friend. A new book is coming and this time I don’t need to wait for my mom to drive me to Van Nuys! I just have to ask my wife. 

I’m not interested in reading books by slightly less known authors simply for obscurities sake. I read a lot of bestsellers too. Stephen King, Dan Brown, Dean Koontz and many other NYT A-listers line my shelves right along side. I don’t think there’s much point in covering ground that you can easily find reviews and publicity about in national publications and countless other blogs. My literary, musical and tastes in film honestly lean more in the direction of the independent voices and those are the artists I’ll spend most of Dancing About Architecture talking about. Not to say some of them won’t be distributed by major outlets. Today’s subject has been releasing books for decades and has achieved widespread recognition and acclaim. I am coming to learn how well deserved it is. Though he might not be instantly recognizable to many, his talent looms as great as most of the best known and more familiar household names…

"The Deceased”

“Every Shallow Cut”

“The Last Kind Words”



Tom Piccirilli



A little late to the party, I only recently discovered an author who is now one of my new favorites. Tom Piccirilli is what you might refer to as a modern literary stud. He’s won the International Thriller Award twice, was a finalist for the 2009 Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allen Poe Award, a final nominee for the Fantasy Award, and not only did he receive the Bram Stoker Award, he won it four times! Oh, yeah. One of those times was the first given in the category of Best Poetry Collection. You could say he knows his way around using these word thingys.

I knew nothing of Piccirilli’s achievements when I first became aware of his name. A few mentions in chat groups where people discussed their favorite horror or thriller books. His name came up often enough that I figured I should take a look and see what all the hub bub was about. Little did I know that not only does the man have more than a few awards on his shelf, the guy has a bibliography to rival the Stephen Kings and James Pattersons of the world. Nearly fifty books come up when you look for him on Amazon! With so many to chose from, I had no idea where to begin.

As luck would have it, my son loves frequenting one particular thrift store that carries the old VHS cassettes he loves so much. Next to the movies stand shelf after wonderful shelf of glorious books. Children’s books, cook books, history books, theater books, science fiction books, romance books and (much to my dark side’s chittering glee) horror books! I scrolled my greedy limited budget fingertips along the spines when suddenly, a name appeared in white on black that I did not expect to see. Tom Piccirilli. I immediately snatched the book, read the back cover blurb and put it on the very top of my son’s pile of Willy Wonka and A Bug’s Life tapes.



“Laughter and early spring winds breezed past his ear as the words fled across his hands, running like blood.”

-from “The Deceased” by Tom Piccirilli



After dinner that evening, I sat on the couch and opened the cover. I fell into the surreal and brutal universe of “The Deceased” only rising for a gasp of air and the occasional “Huh?” as I responded monosyllabic-ally to my family’s attempts at gaining my attention. Thus began a treacherous journey into the deep and vital imagination of Mr. Piccirilli. I finished “The Deceased” the next day. A whirlwind of ghosts, axe murders, incest, lake monsters, forest magic all drawn out in nightmarish haze. An atypical ghost story throwing daggers of scares often as discomforting as they are primal.



“I was three days into my life as a homeless loser drifter when they broke my nose and dropped me on the street in front of a nameless pawn shop. I hit like two hundred pounds of failed dreams.”

-from “Every Shallow Cut” by Tom Piccirilli



With the final page turned, I needed more. Piccirilli went fishing and dangled the hook right in front of me. Over the next few days I not only devoured one more of his books, I consumed two. First came the unflinchingly merciless tale of a man’s decent into hopelessness called “Every Shallow Cut”. A swift jab to the solar plexus, I succumbed to the powerful blow of this entire book in one night. Not remotely intended for the faint hearted. An already depressed man falls further into despair until nothing remains but a search for the end. His life falling apart around him, he painfully realizes how quickly and easily you can lose everything. Then... he buys a gun. I would describe the events further, but to do so would be to give away all that will squeeze your knuckles white while gripping the small paperback.



“He had less than two weeks to go before they strapped him down and injected poison into his heart. I knew Collie would be divided about it, the way he was divided about everything. A part of him would look forward to stepping off the big ledge. He’d been looking over it his whole life in one way or another.”

-from “The Last Kind Words” by Tom Piccrilli



The next round in the .357 Piccirilli chamber was a true masterpiece of modern noir called “The Last Kind Words”. This is the first in what will apparently be a series of books about Terrier Rand. Terrier is from a family of thieves who unhappily is summoned home to visit his brother on death row for murder. Vividly cast with brilliant portraits of scratched Polaroid family members each naturally named after a breed of dogs. Dialog bites and growls from the pages. Personalities so unique and often loving, I found myself rooting for them despite their unlawful and sometimes downright nasty intentions.

I have the Terrier Rand sequel “The Last Whisper In The Dark” on top of my wish list, so hopefully I’ll be able to dive into that one soon. For now, all I can say is go find some books by Tom Piccirilli and read them! With so many available in nearly every genre you can think of, there is bound to be something you will really enjoy. For me, I am very happy to know that it will be quite a while before I run out of Mr. Piccirilli’s words.