Dennis Bolen's "Anticipated Results"--the man can write

I recently read Dennis E. Bolen's "Anticipated Results". Dennis's boomer-age characters seem to live in a miasma of booze and cigarette smoke, much as their parents did a generation before them; the difference being that their parents have been labelled the "Greatest Generation". The people in Anticipated Results are boomers who will not be labelled "great". They are the dropouts who never amount to anything, living in the underlayer of society where they try to find traction in careers, in relationships.
 Anticipated Results marks a change in that Bolen's previous books have generally featured serious criminality, one way or the other. As Bolen put it himself in an interview with Sean Cranbury of Books On the Radio, "My characters here are suffering the prosaic, they are enduring the mundane, and are exhibiting the exhaustion of boredom and spiritual stasis. Alcohol, sex, and car-love are the salves they generally resort to, but nary a dishonest thought typically enters their minds."

Dennis Bolen can write. His dialogue is crisp, abrupt, and efficient. Recent reviews in Qull & Quire and the National Post confirm a book worth reading.