Onyx reviews: Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 9/17/2022

Most of the criminals are dead at the end of the 1995 crime film Heat, directed by Michael Mann. That's not a spoiler, per se—the dust jacket copy reveals these facts, along with a helpful guide to which actors played which characters. The book's prologue also orients readers unfamiliar with the movie (or those with short memories) to the way things were left in early September, 1995.

The first chapter picks up immediately after the end of the movie, with the lone survivor, Chris Shiherlis (played by Val Kilmer), who was seriously injured and is now the subject of a manhunt, trying to find his way out of Los Angeles. He would dearly love to get revenge for the death of his brother and other co-conspirators, but LAPD detective Vince Hanna is currently beyond his reach.

The book then flashes back to a caper seven years before the events of the movie in an effort to explain how Chris became the man free of attachments he was in 1995. This story involves a complicated caper in which the band of thieves track a truck transporting drug money to a safe house in Mexico. The gang has been known to abandon a robbery at the first indication "of heat around the corner." However, the potential gain from this heist will set them all up for life, if they can manage it. They'll have to stake out the well-guarded safe house, which is under the protection of Mexican Federales, and figure out if there are any dead zones they can exploit.

Readers already know that many of these characters survive the caper—that's one of the perils of a prequel—but it is still an exhilarating and exciting tale, with the involvement of a number of third parties who become important to members of the gang. Whether these new people will survive is an open question.

In 1995, Chris escapes from Los Angeles, leaving behind his wife and son, and ends up in Paraguay, where he has a gig as a security expert for a Taiwanese crime family operating in the lawless Ciudad del Este, where gambling and trade in knockoff products is brisk and large-scale sales of munitions and encrypted software attract clients from around the globe. Despite his family back in Los Angeles—his contact with them is rare because he's still a most-wanted man—Chris (known in Paraguay as Jeffrey Bergman from Alberta) falls in love with the daughter of the family's patriarch. By all rights, Ana Liu should have been the heir apparent to the Liu enterprise but, as a woman, she stands no chance of inheriting the business. Her brother, Felix is both ineffectual and untrustworthy, setting up a series of dangerous situations for Chris to deal with as he and Ana embark on some criminal enterprises on a massive scale.

Ultimately, the story returns to Los Angeles, adding a twisted psychopath to the mix. Multiple threads from the past collide in a thrilling chase scene on the LA Freeway that would be (perhaps will be) exciting to see on the big screen.

It's hard to think of another case of a sequel first appearing as a novel instead of as a film. At the time of its initial release, Heat wasn't exactly a blockbuster, despite it's all-star cast. Over time, though, it has become acknowledged as a top-notch crime movie and a classic Los Angeles film. Heat 2 could be regarded as a novelization in advance, assuming Mann manages to find actors who can play younger versions of his all-star cast.