The Vaccinator

The Vaccinator by Michael Marshall Smith After a chequered and violent career, Eddie Kruger now lives in the Florida Keys. It’s a nice, quiet, peaceful life. Apart from the kidnappings. And the aliens.

This book's protagonist is one of those insecure men who needs to be seen as tough and cool despite never actually doing anything to demonstrate toughness nor actually being cool, except in a really juvenile, performative way that might fool a child or teenager but adults will see right through. He's the guy who lets you know that he could definitely beat you in a fight and you just nod politely because you don't want him to sulk like the little baby that he is.

Is this intentional? I don't think so. I think he actually is supposed to be tough and cool, but we basically just have his word for it. Or the narrator's word. Whether that's supposed to be him or not is unclear because the book is written very oddly. It's third-person omniscient, but feels like it should be first-person. We learn things the protagonist doesn't, but we seem to get his perspective on them anyway.

The first half of the book seems like it might be going somewhere, and it was short enough that I was willing to give it the chance, but it completely falls apart in the second half and the finale is an absolute nothing moment where an ambiguously threatening villain is revealed out of nowhere and then defeated by some other characters who also appear out of nowhere. Technically they had appeared once before, but are suddenly revealed at the end to be other than they seemed. I think that's supposed to be a joke, but it reads like a child using their dolls to tell a story where suddenly Barbie was a T-Rex all along and she eats everyone the end. "OK, book's over now. There was no point to anything."