When knives come out, someone is bound to get cut. The Knives: A Criminal Book revisits the lives' of three of the series characters bringing them much closer to the present age instead of the 70s noir of much of the rest of the series.

The Knives is not three separate tales, as it was focused on a specific neighborhood, it very much stays within the family. The book opens with cartoonist and former illegal id maker Jacob Kurtz off in Hollywood when one of his comic strips gets bought up as a streaming show. While he at first struggles to adjust, he falls into the life, aside from escapes to visit with his elderly aunt who owns a large estate that is sought by many. Life continues and the status quo returns. Back in the city, Angie, a young woman who has lost just about everyone she has ever known, and raised in the bar the Undertow tries to make a life on her own. Our final character, Tracy Lawless is back from war struggling to readjust trying to find a place he can be himself.

All three characters are known to each other and often interact. They're all damaged in various ways, but pull together. And of course there is blood, poor decisions and costly mistakes.

As has been the case of other Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips works, the art is realistic with a dark and gritty feel to it.

Recommended to readers of true crime, well crafted stories or the costs of pursing dreams.

Last week I was only able to review the first 140pp of this, the longest "Criminal" book from this gang. It ended at a great cliffhanging beat, but without the reappearance of a major player in that saga, Tracey Lawless. To some extent his belated arrival both helps the book (with a Lawless man around it's going to have the noirish vengeance and fisticuffs you'd expect) and hinders it (before his arrival this is peopled by guys you might meet on the American street; a Lawless is not a regular Jo, and his stereotypical, genrefied nature therefore kind of takes this further into pulpy fiction).

Before he crops up, what we get is not heavy on the crime activity, for sure. What there is is a story of a guy who had a minor hit crime comic, who gets taken to Hollywood and is supposed to be a cog in the wheel of the TV version – turns out they make him out to be as useful as an umbrella jammed in between the gears. We also get some formative episodes for a young lass who – having been orphaned already – sees the man who replaced both her parents waste away to cancer. She's the criminal as things stand at the halfway mark – but then the stories do what they must, and intertwine, Tracey's bit-part included.

This can be powerful stuff – the simplicity and clarity of the narration once again to the fore, and the fairly likeable characters clearly in a right mess certainly not exclusively of their making. It is of course the four star read the preview led me to expect, and to repeat if you welcome the Lawless presence more than me you'll probably rate this higher. For me, I actually preferred the first two thirds, without him, where the people were commoners such as you and me, and sharing time with them was much more interesting than the rebellious, bruised killer type shtick. That chunk was so much closer to being the 'stand-alone' this is dressed as, for it didn't have to feature as part of this franchise. The news the series is being extended further is not bad news at all, of course, and not being fully dripping in Lawless means this is a great jumping-on point. So I'll definitely be returning, but a part of me will remember this as stopping at said cliffhanger.

Alright, listen up, because it feels fucking GREAT to be back in the Criminal universe! Brubaker and that goddamn genius Sean Phillips have delivered another killer addition to one of the best crime series ever.

This time around, we're thrown into the lives of two fascinating characters. First up is Jacob, a comic artist who heads to Hollywood with dreams of his TV show blowing up, but things predictably go sideways and get real messy. Then we've got Ang, a girl who's been through the wringer and is just trying to pick up the damn pieces.

Maybe it's been too long since I dove into a Criminal book, but that surprise ending seriously kicked this story up a notch for me. The criminal element doesn't even rear its ugly head until maybe the last third, but when it does, it's bloody, messy, and nasty as hell – just the way I like this series. And the ending? Fucking fantastic, tying into a bunch of other characters we know and love.

My only gripes? I felt like it wandered a bit in the middle, and that whole "sleeping with this chick" subplot felt kind of pointless. Not really sure what the hell happened there.

Overall, though, this is a seriously fucking good 4 out of 5. It's a brutal reminder of why this series is so damn good.