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Fruitbasket from Hell (Alex Cheradon Mysteries) |  | Author: Jason Krumbine
Publisher: One Stray Word
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 74906
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B001TDKPJI
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
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Product Description
Action/Adventure/Mystery/Sci-Fi/Comic Fiction
My name’s Alex Cheradon. I’m a private investigator. That means I investigate…private…stuff.
I do NOT slay vampires, battle demons, fight zombies or vanquish evil spirits. In fact, you know what? Let’s just strike a line through the whole supernatural genre and call it a big no-no for me, okay?
Steven Raines (you know, the man who made billions making an operating system that out-Microsoft-ed Microsoft?) hired me to look for his missing daughter. Although, he’s pretty sure she’s dead. But, hey, guy’s offering me a million dollar payday, so I’m not going to argue.
I’m also going to ignore the thing about her being a Satanist, the dead bodies that are piling up around me, and vampires that I find myself in the middle of. And that big thing named Pookie, I’m going to ignore that, too.
Yep. I’m just going to ignore it all. For one million dollars I can totally do that.
Now all I have to do is stay alive long enough to spend the money.
This is Book 1 in the Alex Cheradon Series.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Krumbine is a born again Christian and is happily married to wonderful woman named Donna. They live in Florida where he spends his free time reading and practicing his mad Nintendo Wii skills. Jason is the author of Fruitbasket from Hell, Reflections of the Pink Elephant, Explorers of the Unknown, Heaven’s Superhero, A is for Amnesia, B is for Bullet and Rupert & Me: Tales From Under the Desk. For questions, comments, and just about anything e-mail Jason at onestrayword@gmail.com or just drop him a line at his website, www.jasonkrumbine.com
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| Customer Reviews:
 A fun read November 2, 2004
Chris Spears
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Okay, so, it begins with this mysterious man coming to Alex Cheradon and offering him a million dollars to find his missing daughter. While in the process of doing so everything seemed to turn upside down and inside out for the main character. It's one of those, anything can go wrong and will go wrong-type stories.
The author throws a lot of stuff at the reader, from crazy ex-partners to scottish convenience story clerks(Easily one of the funniest bits in the book). It's got a bit Dean-Koontz-on-crack type feel to the story line. The author tried to tell his story in a very non-linear fashion, which would have worked better in a movie, but in the book caused some moments of confusion, but it didn't detract from the story too much. The overall story line of the book was actually pretty good with some well developed twists in the plot(See, crazy ex-partner and scottish convenience store clerk.). The main character, Alex, is, I'll admit, a little annoying, but shows potential to grow and the story leaves us open for a sequel, which I would definitely read(I hear rumor it's going to be titled something along the lines of A LIFE LESS FRUITY.).
I would say it's a great Halloween read, but, whoops, Halloween passed, so I'll say it's great Christmas read. I definitely recommend this book.
Vampires R Us April 19, 2008
Sandy Lender (Misbehaving in Candlelight)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Poor Alex Cheradon is a private investigator who wants to stop getting cases that involve the paranormal...or at least that involve members of the "other realm" trying to kill him. In "Fruitbasket From Hell," circumstances beyond his control have forced him, his metrosexual assistant/receptionist, and his past girlfriend/Laura-Croft-wannabe bodyguard to take on three cases that involve vampires, satanists, gateways to hell, and an ex-partner who won't die when you throw grenades at him. At the center of it all is the mystery of why Multi-Millionaire Steven Raines has handed Alex a briefcase of sketchy clues, a few threats, and a million dollars to find a daughter who's only been missing a few hours.
Overall, I found Alex to be a likeable and sympathetic character. I enjoyed his stream-of-consciousness narration, but, at times, it became overwhelming. Krumbine's sarcastic tone throughout the novel carried into each character thus became difficult to "stay with" at times. I sometimes found it necessary to set the novel aside to get out of Alex's head. As a testament to Krumbine's story, though, I kept going back to find out how the plot would develop. And, as a testament to Krumbine's ability to use dialogue and character interaction to update the storyline, I never had to re-read sections to remember what had happened. I think one reviewer erroneously referred to this as "non-linear". For an example of an author using a non-linear writing device, pick up John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar," (which I also recommend, by the way). For an example of an author expertly using a recap, pick up Jason Krumbine's "Fruitbasket From Hell."
Something else I enjoyed was Krumbine's "play" with sentence structure and references to pop culture in description. For instance, when Alex interrogates a priest, he describes him this way: "Father Pital was a tall, wiry man with a small ring of white hair around his head, kind of like Captain Picard, only Pital's head didn't fill out as much. Which I thought was odd, considering how so many priests think so highly of themselves." When Alex approaches a house where a den of vampires is hiding, he subtly suggests it's not going to be a great experience: "There was a small garden off to the side that looked like God himself had taken offense to its existence."
For readers who can't get past the number of typos and missing words in the third edition (the one I read), this novel will be difficult. Such technicalities pull me out of a story, and that's a shame, because Krumbine has such an intriguing story. But if what you're after is a good, fun, tongue-in-cheek, bloody, shoot-em-up, paranormal mystery, Jason Krumbine delivers all that and more in this book. The tone is light and fast-forward-fun with a surprising body count. It's truly bizarre to get to the end and realize how much blood and gore you've waded through because you've been laughing at so many points along the way...
And as an afterthought, I'm surprised by the pricetag on some of the copies here at Amazon. I picked my softcover up from the author at a festival for $15. Shop wisely.
From Sandy Lender, "Some days, I just want the dragon to win."
 I give this a 1 only because there isn't anything lower. May 12, 2005
Kur
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
As a favor to Jordan Krumbine (the author's brother), I recently tried to read 'Fruitbasket from Hell'. And let me emphasize "tried." I sat down, opened the book, put the crappy, Photoshop-reject, book jacket aside because it kept getting in the way (seeing that it wasn't really a book jacket, but just an inkjet print-up that a 5 year old child could have made and done a better job at to boot), and started reading. About three pages in I realized that there was a reason Jordan bet me five dollars I couldn't finish it. This is possibly the worst book I have ever read. Even though I kept on fighting to finish the book, I only got to page 78. I stopped, flipped to the back of the book & realized that this chaotic writing style kept going for 300+ pages! Now I know books are supposed to be descriptive, but this one is filled with description that is not only way too long, but also very, very bad. Take the first chapter. The chapter goes like this: One sentence for action, two pages for description, one small paragraph for action, three more pages of description... and so on in that fashion. He spends five pages describing the way some old lady is dressed and how he's obsessed with it, instead of just getting to the freaking point. Not to mention all the grammatical errors through out this book. The over use of (parenthesis) and the inability to use spell check leads me to quote Strong Bad from Homestarrunner.com: "I thinks it's been entirely too long since you consulted your MLA handbook." ( http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail128.html ) There are even times when actual words go missing. For example, when the Alex Cheradon is talking to Mr. Raines (a vampire who can apparently go out during the day), Alex says: "I can't your case." I had to reread that at least twice to make sure my eyes weren't playing a trick on me. To be fair, I really did give this book a shot. As I said, I got to page 78, which is farther than most people I know who've tried reading it. That's at least 25 chapters into the book. That's right, 25. There are chapters in this book that last no longer than a paragraph! What's probably worse than the book is that the author felt he had to go to different web-sites to write reviews for his book disguised as other people, but obviously written by him because of the forementioned gramatical errors which are also present in the reviews. It's even sadder (yet really funny) that he got caught and that somebody called him on doing these reviews on one of the very sites he did them on. ( http://messageboard.cinescape.com/cinescape/ubbthreads//showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB118&Number=169665&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1 ) My advice to Jason Krumbine is: take a creative writing class. A few creative writting classes to be safe, because the talent is obviously there, it just needs a lot of spit & polish to get it to shine through all the grime.
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