Read @ Joe’s

Title: Fixit (2023)     
Author: Joe Ide     
Publisher: Mulholland Books   

Book jacket: The relentless, hard-bitten PI, Isaiah Quintabe, is faced with a nightmarish scenario when the love of his life is kidnapped by a maniacal hitman who bears a grudge against him. 

Joe Says:  Fixit should have been a 90-minute epilogue to a five-season show. Instead? This reads like a twelve-episode beast of a program.

Author Joe Ide has given IQ six books of exploits. Maybe it is time for that final chapter to conclude.

IQ, that is, Isaiah Quintabe, the Sherlock Holmes of East Long Beach, has been through enough trials and tribulations to make the Reichenbach Falls look like a lazy river outing. Yet instead of performing a Dave Grohl-worthy second act, Isaiah doesn’t pick up the guitar to rock out, rather drums a single beat of repetition. This time when Isaiah proclaims that IQ is over, it comes across as relief instead of a threat. 

Leading into Smoke (the previous IQ novel from 2021), IQ had lost his way. Shunning friends and the SoCal way of life, IQ chose to hide up north. He was restless. He was hurt. Then? Because crime fiction, friends, IQ stopped a serial killer and found his groove. Smoke ends with the cliffhanging surprise return of dog-breeding assassin Skip who kidnaps IQ’s lady-love, Grace. 

Fixit – the IQ series latest (last?) – should have been a 90-minute epilogue to a five-season show with Isaiah saving the day and returning a hero, ready for business. Instead? Fixit is a twelve-episode beast of a program that is as long as the day is hot. And one, take note, where IQ plays guest star for easily the first third. Fixit could have been titled Grace: Hostage because that is all you get.

Ide has a wonderful and fun style to his prose. During the course of this series, IQ and the hip-talking, sometimes-partner-sometimes-sidekick Juanell Dodson have become detailed, deep, and enjoyable characters. But the downward spiral of pain (pretty much since Hi Five) churns on in a cycle of repetition that makes the joy of the narrative a chore to read. Even moments of action and excitement, such as the takeover of TK’s junkyard, are washed away with insignificance. 

Ide attempts to lighten the load as Dodson – the fixit of the title – tries to find purpose in his life by transforming his con artist backstory into a neighborhood white hat. However, Dodson’s antics are drowned out by the unrelenting yelling that every character broadcasts. Grace, Skip, ganglord Manzo, and Skip’s mother Jessica, all yell and scream. Constantly. Aggravatingly to the point where the reader becomes pummelled with italics and exclamation points. That, along Skip’s profanity-heavy term of endearment for IQ, wears out its welcome by page nine. Ide’s usually fresh style becomes muddy and, sadly, spoiled.

IQ deserves a victory lap. Instead, before the sun sets behind the PCH, there is a quick moment. Where once open wounds are now scars with stories as Isaiah and Dodson catch a smile. A little of that Kirk/Spock, Holmes/Watson, Dre/Cube familiarity through friendship finally shines through. Fixit needed more of that comradery. 

“Fixit” should have been a command for Ide. 

The ending works as IQ gets to spin a new tune. But sometimes? That classic beat is something you’d prefer to hear.