Review of Driven

If ever there were a book that didn't need a sequel, it's James Sallis's Drive. Short, nasty, self-contained, when Drive ended it seemed final. However, the success of the recent movie, has given Sallis, who has been writing excellent books nobody reads for a long time now, a profile boost, which has prompted a sequel, Driven. Billed on its cover as, "The sequel to Drive, the award winning motion picture," it is unlikely that we would have Driven had it not been for the film.

Billing a book as the sequel to a motion picture isn't really fair to fans of the film (which ended much more ambiguously than it's source material), and it isn't really fair to the author, who wrote a sequel to his novel, not the film. It has the potential to confuse people. For one, Driven, is not really accessible if you have not read Drive. Watching the movie, which departed from the novel in important ways, isn't enough. Fans of the movie might pick up this book and find themselves a little lost and may lose interest. Instead of opening up Sallis to new readers, marketing the book this way might drive them away. So, let me say to fans of the movie who are thinking about picking this book up: Read Drive first.

Now, qualifications out of the way, let me say that Driven is a worthy sequel. The story picks up years after the events of Drive. Driver has settled down in Arizona and gotten married. He runs a successful business renting out vintage cars to movie productions. Then, one day, he and his wife are attacked by hitmen. His wife is killed, and Driver slips back into his old life and discovers that the past isn't as easy to leave behind as he thought.

The story is slick and fast-paced with plenty of action, much like the original, and the conclusion is satisfying in an existential way. Sallis is an excellent writer who uses deceptively simple language to express complex ideas. It's language at it's most pure and a joy to read. You'll pick the book up and won't put it down again until it's over.

The one nit I will pick is with the characterization of Driver. Always emotionally self-contained, Driver spends almost no time mourning his wife. His apparent lack of grief, or more correctly, lack of expression of grief, rings false. Driver slips a little too effortlessly back into his old life, and while I can see where it might have slowed the frantic narrative pace of the novel, it also might have had a bit more emotional resonance. No one is that self-contained.

Bringing Sexy Back: A Double Shot of Ray Banks

I can think of no better way to get this long moribund blog going again than with a double review of one of your favorite authors and mine, Ray Banks. Thanks to Allan Guthrie and his new Blasted Heath e-publishing company, Banks, last heard from finishing his Cal Innes quartet with Beast of Burden, has returned with two books, one old and one new. The first, Dead Money, is a reworking of The Big Blind, his debut novel about depraved double glazing window salesmen who don’t sell many windows, but do manage to get into a helluva lot of trouble. The second, Wolf Tickets, is a tight little shot of noir about two Army buddies who set out to find a woman who ripped one of them off and end up getting more than they bargained for.

Banks is a tight writer, and both of these books are short, sharp and right to the point, and their respective points are quite sharp. Dead Money is a sort of Glengarry Glen Ross without all the boring talking and focus on sales. Instead it focuses on the outside lives of two degenerates; Alan Slater and his even more despicable friend (at least to start with) Les Beale. Despite being a bit hazy on why Slater would hang out with Beale, who is a compulsive gambler, alcoholic and horrible racist, the story is strong. It focuses on Slater trying to juggle his job, his mistress, his loveless marriage, Beale’s problems and a couple of corpses, one human and one not. Considering how terrible our protagonist is, the book is funnier than it has any right to be, and Banks proves his skill with one scene in particular where Slater and Beale are trying to dispose of a corpse. It is both horrifying and hilarious. Not an easy task to pull off.

The story is ultimately one of delusion and unraveling, and Banks keeps it coming, pacing it well, making sure that, as he peels back the layers or Slater’s twisted personality that he never reveals too much too soon. By the time you get to the end, you’ll be laughing along with Slater, but not for the reasons Slater is laughing.

Wolf Tickets finds Banks up to his old narrative tricks, using dueling first person narration to tell a story, and what a story it is. No frills, no bullshit, just straight up action. This is the least reflective work by Banks that I have read, and I think the only thing I haven’t gotten around to yet is his novella California. It’s a deceptively simple story, seemingly straightforward at first, but Banks, ever the skillful storyteller, gradually complicates things, peeling back layers, getting at the truth, until you end up with something totally unexpected.

On the surface it’s about the Irish Farrell looking up his old English buddy Cobb to help him track down his girlfriend Nora, who has run off with a substantial sum of money, a small amount of blow, and, most importantly, Farrell’s favorite jacket. The story is a straightforward one of revenge, but the real fun comes from how the two characters see each other. The chapters alternate perspectives, giving the reader insight into how these two friends really see each other, adding a layer of complexity to what would otherwise be a slight story. As with Dead Money, Banks proves deft at doling out insight in just the right amounts, complicating what he presents to the reader as rather straightforward characters. By the end you’ve been spun 180 degrees with such deftness that you didn’t even notice it. A surprising, violent, and strangely uplifting ode to friendship, Wolf Tickets is not to be missed.

Review of The Dead Women of Juarez

Debut novelist Sam Hawken's novel The Dead Women of Juarez (Serpent's Tail, 2010) is a surprisingly assured and skilled first novel. First novels are often works where you can see the seams, and watch as an writer shows hints of potential. It's a fairly rare that a first novel doesn't seem like a first novel, and Hawken's novel reads like the work of someone who's been turning out novels for a long time.

The Dead Women of Juarez starts out as the story of washed up boxer Kelly Courter, who has retreated south of the border after making some horrible decisions that torpedoed a once promising career. To get by he picks up the occasional unsanctioned fight and helps his best friend Esteban sell weed. He's also involved with Esteban's sister, Paloma, who works for Mujeres sin Voces, a group dedicated to bringing attention to the hundreds of unsolved murders of women in Juarez.

Hawken takes a rather bold turn when, halfway through the story, he has events sideline Kelly, and switches the story's focus to aging Mexican cop Rafael Sevilla, who struggles with the loss of his daughter and granddaughter, who simply went out one day and then vanished, just two more victims of the senseless crime that thrives in Mexico. While he switches characters, Hawken, doesn't switch stories, however, so the transition is smooth, and works well.

Overall, Hawken's prose is strong, the plot is well thought out, and the characters are well drawn. Kelly and Rafael both have affecting and convincing backstories, that make them seem quite human and explains their motivations. The fact that the story is inspired by the real life murders that plague Juarez (more famously the subject of Roberto Bolano's novel 2666), serves to make the novel even stronger.

Review of Johnny Porno

In the Internet age, it's hard to imagine (at least for those of us of a certain age), that viewing pornography was once a collective experience, done in theaters. It's also hard to believe that one reel of celluloid featuring a rather commonplace sex act could cause a legal uproar, and become a cultural touchstone of sorts. But in 1973 that's exactly what happened in 1973 when a young lady who went by the stage name Linda Lovelace starred in a nasty little film called Deep Throat. Directed by a former hairdresser and financed by the mafia, the film became an unlikely success, ended up the subject of an obscenity case, and made the bad guys an obscene amount of money.

Charlie Stella's novel Johnny Porno (Stark House, 2010) is an entertaining snapshot of this particular period in history, chronicling the tough times of an out of work carpenter who has been reduced to ferrying around illicit copies of the film and collecting money for the mob as a way to pay the child support for his only son and keep his harridan of an ex-wife off his back. Porno suffers a little from having a huge cast of characters, which requires Stella to engage in a lot of setup, but once the book hits its stride, it doesn't fail to deliver.

John (who's last name is Albano, not Porno), has a lot to deal with. In addition to his wife, he has to deal with a loser wiseguy who hates him, the cops, his ex-wife's other ex-husband and a strung out ex-cop who wants him dead. All while trying to hold what's left of his life together and making sure the mob gets its money. Stella has a knack for dialogue, and the influence of The Friends of Eddie Coyle is evident. Stella even manages to work the novel into the book. The entire novel lacks glamor, and has the gritty feel of a 70's crime film with dirt under its nails and nicotine stains on its fingers. In a world where pornography has become mainstream, Stella reminds the reader that things weren't always that way, and that smut isn't pretty, and that sometimes there's no way for a good man to avoid getting his hands dirty.

Review of Late Rain

It's safe to lump Lynn Kostoff in with Pinckney Benedict and Madison Smartt Bell, which is to say he is a very talented writer who no one will read because they are too busy telling all their friends on Facebook how funny last night's episode of the hit sitcom "Two Bikini Models and an Adorable Puppy" was. This state of affairs does not fill my heart with hope.

Mere months after New Pulp Press resurrected Kostoff's -blink and you missed it- thriller A Choice of Nightmares, he is back with a new novel, Late Rain (Tyrus Books, 2010). The new novel is set in the low country of South Carolina, and centers around the events set in motion by the avaricious Corrine Tedros, when she conspires to have her father-in-law murdered so as to get her hands on his soft drink fortune and leave behind her sordid past forever.

When the murder is witnessed by a man in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, former homicide detective and current beat cop Ben Decovic, who has, like Tedros, moved to the deep south to try and escape his past. It goes without saying that two characters running away from things they can't escape will eventually run right into each other with tragic results.

Late Rain is very different in tone that Nightmares, which was a truly disorienting novel that throbbed with decadence and menace on every page. Rain is more restrained, and more straightforward, in that there are good and bad characters, and its much easier to get comfortable with since you know who you're pulling for early on. It's much more accessible in that respect, but Kostoff still refuses to tie up the story with a nice comforting bow at the end, turning what could have been a by the numbers crime story with a warm fuzzy ending into something better. Yes, the murder gets solved, but the truly evil characters still run free, and there is no real justice, just the rough approximation of justice which we are all forced to settle for in real life all too often, and the good guy gets only the consolation prize of knowing that he did what he could. Not exactly life affirming, but then, very little in life is.

Review of Killer

Here is my long delayed review of Killer. It's the book I was reading when I had the fire. For some reason, I've been unable to pick it up again until recently.

Dave Zeltserman concludes his "Man out of Prison" trilogy with Killer, a much more subdued take on the story than his previous efforts, Small Crimes and Pariah. Where the first two novels were bloody messes all the way through, Killer is a much subtler affair. Leonard March was a hitman for the Lombard crime family for a long time, but when he finally got caught committing some non-murderous crimes, he managed to cut himself a deal with immunity before confessing to twenty-eight paid killings for crime boss Sal Lombard.

For his deal, March gets fourteen years in prison, and when he walks free, he tells himself he's going to go straight and live a quiet, anonymous life. Of course, it's not easy to live a quiet life when you've got a list of enemies as long as your arm, and March doesn't make it any easier on himself by inviting publicity when he foils a liquor store robbery.

Killer, while an entertaining novel, lacks the punch of Pariah. Pariah was as close to perfect as a novel can get, so comparing the two may be unfair. Still, Killer, feels almost perfunctory when compared to either of his previous studies in evil. March isn't as compelling as either Joe Denton or Kyle Nevin, both of whom were real pieces of work, and the story ends a little abruptly. It feels a bit rushed at the end, which is disappointing because so much of the novel is setup. Zeltserman also picks up a couple of plot threads that never really go anywhere, which isn't like him.

As I said, though, Killer is a letdown only when compared to Zeltserman's previous efforts. As an author, you're in a pretty good shape if the only competition you have is yourself. Taken on its own, Killer is still very good. It's just not great, and not a great introduction to Zeltserman's work. It would be possible for a reader to pick up this novel and wonder what all the fuss has been about. Do yourself a favor and read one of the first two novels in this trilogy before approaching Killer.

Review of Hello Kitty Must Die

Angela Choi's debut novel Hello Kitty Must Die (Tyrus Books, 2010) is a left of center crime story, reminiscent of early Chuck Palanhiuk (You know, the stuff he wrote before Choke, which is the point where he became unreadable). Fiona Yu is a 28-year old corporate attorney. She is intelligent and successful, but still lives at home with her traditional Chinese family, a situation that she finds stifling, to say the least. The book opens with Fiona taking her own virginity with a dildo as a sort of silent rebellion against carrying her family's honor in the form of her hymen. Upon discovering that her hymen is already broken, she seeks out a doctor to reconstruct it so that she can rip it properly. The doctor turns out to be her old friend, Sean, who she hasn't seen since he was sent away to juvie for setting a classmate's hair on fire. Fiona and Sean share a bond borne of mutual alienation, and Sean's behavior hasn't changed much from his school days. Under his influence, Fiona's soon turns her anger outward and begins striking back at those she sees as standing between her and happiness.

The titular Hello Kitty refers to the stereotype of the submissive, quiet Asian woman as personified by the ubiquitous, mouthless Japansese cat, which has found its way onto every product imaginable. Fiona has been ruthlessly pigeonholed her entire life, and it's warped her more than a little. Having to suppress her actual desires and personality in order to play a character has left her angry and bitter. It's easy to see why she wants to lash out, but a little more difficult to see why she doesn't just, say, move to the east coast, where she would be three thousand miles away from all of these crushing expectations, and would likely not have to murder anybody. Fiona's bloodlust makes her less than likeable at times, even if her motives are understandable. The book is more of a black comedy than it is thriller, or typical serial killer novel. Hello Kitty Must Die has its moments, and Tyrus books has done a good job in snagging a title out of left field, breaking away from their usual fare (not that there's anything wrong with their usual fare), and finding a new voice that's worth a listen.

Review of A Choice of Nightmares

Robert Staples is, to put it bluntly, shit out of luck. A washed up B-movie actor he has landed in the sun blasted landscape of South Florida, where he ekes out a living being a generic "celebrity." As Lynn Kostoff's A Choice of Nightmares (New Pulp Press, 2010), opens he has even put that tenuous living at risk by chucking a barking dog into an alligator pit during a mall opening. His agent gives him a chance to redeem himself through the simple task of delivering an envelope, but Staples screws that up, and quickly finds himself pulled into the world of cocaine smuggling, where he bumps up against decadent, dangerous, and depraved characters. And he finds himself loving it. For a man with few options and fading dreams, the world of cocaine and easy sex offers what he needs: Escape.

Escape, however, is something that's not easy to come by. It's easy to run, but no man can hide, and Staples is eventually forced to confront himself, decide who he is, and see if he can the ultimate luxury: a way out alive.

First published in 1991, A Choice of Nightmares, sank without making many ripples in the publishing pond. New Pulp Press has scooped the other reprint houses by scoring the rights to this one. Although Hard Case usually reprints old novels, Charles Ardai ought to be kicking himself for not putting his imprint on this novel. It's certainly more than good enough for that imprint. Kostoff's story takes off from the first line of the first chapter, and his characters are well drawn. His femme fatale, Denise and his psychotic hitman Barry from Palm Springs, who could easily have been cardboard cutouts, turn out to be unexpectedly deep and very disturbing. Denise, in particular, is an enigma that proves resistant to analysis. In the end, it's the ambiguity that Kostoff maintains throughout the story that makes it such a compelling read. He refuses to give in to the temptation to provide simple answers, making the story all that much more satisfying, at least for readers who eschews easy answers and pat endings.

Review of The Deputy

With The Deputy (Tyrus Books, 2010), Victor Gischler, who has been experiencing a good deal of success by adding "Go-Go" to the titles of various books, returns to his roots. My best guess is that Gischler has been busy aiming for a screenwriting gig involving a gritty reboot of the Inspector Gadget franchise, but I could be wrong. It could be what sophisticated types call "branding."

Regardless, his "Go-Go" novels have been entertaining, but it’s good to see the man get back to basics with a straightforward crime novel. The Deputy is Gischler’s entry in the "corrupt town" subgenre of hardboiled fiction first pioneered by Hammett in Red Harvest, although Gischler’s novel makes a bit more sense than Harvest did plot wise, and his protagonist, part-time deputy Toby Sawyer, sure as hell isn’t the Continental Op. If he were, the book wouldn’t have gotten past the first chapter where Sawyer is called out late at night by the Sheriff of Coyote Crossing, Oklahoma and given the simple task of babysitting the corpse of a local bad boy who got himself murdered. Sawyer screws it up, turning his back and letting someone get away with the body. From there, it’s not long until Sawyer’s forced to go from hopeless screw up to axe wielding tough guy as he tries to survive the night and the desperate locals who are hell bent on keeping their secrets secret.

Gischler’s prose is deceptively simple. The book is short and to the point, and once it picks up momentum, it doesn’t slow down. Gischler’s been at this novel writing thing for a while now, and it shows. This outing is all muscle and no fat. It’s also a little more sober than Gischler’s earlier crime work. He made his bones with gonzo stories like Gun Monkeys and Pistol Poets. As such, it may disappoint fans who are expecting comedy. Sawyer’s life is pretty sad. He’s stuck in a shit town with no future, a loveless marriage, no hope, and a shitload of people who want his head on a stick. Sawyer’s got true grit, though, the one quality that will get a man through, and allow him to conquer a hostile environment and carve out a new life for himself.

Review of Rage

The adjective that comes to mind when considering Sergio Bizzio’s novel Rage, (Bitter Lemon Press, 2009), is Ballardian. That may seem like praise, but it’s hard to say. Ballard’s novels are novels of disconnection and alienation, of men and women who are ciphers even to themselves, drifting through the modern world distanced from any real human connections by technology and the strange, solitary, sanitized nature of modern life. In short, Ballard was preoccupied with the death of community, and the great lengths people will go to to feel something, anything. As such, they are often difficult to read. They're certainly not what Graham Greene would have labeled "entertainments."

While, Rage, is a novel of isolation, similar to say, Concrete Island, where a man is stranded in a secret world on an island in the middle of a highway, it is also shot through with a Marxist critique of a decaying society where the gap between the rich and the poor is so large that the poor can, quite literally, disappear in the huge, empty homes of the doomed rich. It is also a novel of strong emotions, as the title implies, and strong emotions are often lacking in Ballard's work.

Jose Maria, a construction worker, falls in love with Rosa, the beautiful, but poor housekeeper of a rich Argentine family. At first, things are going well, as the two find time to be together, but then Jose Maria kills his foreman in a fit of rage and goes into hiding. He picks, as his hiding spot, the huge home of Rosa employers, where he takes up residence in a room no one uses. In his new role as fugitive and voyeur, Jose Maria spies on his former lover as well as the family for whom she works. He learns their secrets, and witnesses their bad behavior. He uses the home’s second line to sneak secret phone calls to Rosa, but will not tell her his whereabouts.

He does adopt a role as her protector and avenger, however. When one family member rapes her, Jose Maria kills him and tries to make it look like an accident. The family quickly covers it up to prevent disgrace. When Rosa’s new boyfriend knocks her up and refuses to take responsibility, Jose Maria sneaks out of the house and murders him as well. From there, he takes up the improbable role of invisible father, forcing a shady relative to deliver money to Rosa, and sneaking time with the baby once he is born.

Of course, Jose Maria can’t hide from Rosa forever. Their reunion, and the end of the book overall, are somewhat puzzling. Without getting into spoilers, it’s a little difficult to decipher Jose Maria’s fate is supposed to mean. Then again, maybe that’s just another way Bizzio is similar to Ballard.

Review of The Corspe Wore Pasties

Whatever else you can say about burlesque performer Jonny Porkpie's novel, The Corpse Wore Pasties (Hard Case Crime, 2009), it certainly wins the prize for book with the most underwear similes ever. It's all bra straps and g-strings as Porkpie rushes around New York trying to solve a murder in this not quite roman à clef of a novel.

Porkpie is both the detective and the main suspect in the murder of performer Victoria Vice, after handing her what was supposed to be a prop bottle of poison during a performance. The bottle wasn't a prop, and Victoria was a serial thief, ripping off other burlesque performer's acts as a matter of routine, so there is no shortage of suspects.

Porkpie never takes the book, or himself, too seriously, which is good because he makes the debut mystery author mistake of telegraphing the culprit early on in the story to anyone who's paying attention. The novel works better as a ribald comedy than as a murder mystery. Fortunately, Porkpie can be pretty funny, and his sense of showmanship translates pretty well onto the page. He knows how to create and amusing scene and milk it for all its worth.

Best of the Year

I usually avoid best of the year type lists, because I don't read enough to make a serious assessment, but I've looked back at my reviews for 2009, and I've decided that if you don't read the following books you are a loser and suck.


Allan Guthrie's Slammer is the book of the year. At first, I thought Zeltserman had the top spot locked up, but this one wins out on review. It's a real leap forward for Guthrie. As I said in the review, it's "Guthrie's first grown up novel." In terms of Guthrie's writing and storytelling, it's an improvement on a style that was already worthy. If this is a glimpse of things to come, I can't wait.


Speaking of Zeltserman, Pariah, was great. It was pretty much perfect in every respect. You can't ask for more than perfection, can you?


While, Of All the Bloody Cheek, was published a long time ago, and reprinted many years ago, I just got around to reading it this year. I've never read anything quite like this comic hitman novel, and I doubt I ever will. Augutus Mandrell is quite the creation, and it is a pity he has been forgotten. Murder doesn't have to be serious.


Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard is another novel I came to late, but is still a must read. The story of loser and his friendship with a fake Vietnam vet, it's funny and touching and repulsive all at the same time. A cut above.

And last, but not least, The Big Wake Up by Mark Coggins. The pulpy nature of this one combined with a more realistic element really worked for me. I want to read more August Riordan mysteries, so mission accomplished Mr. Coggins.

Review of Flight to Darkness

Gil Brewer’s mini-revival (is the prefix even appropriate anymore?) continues with the republication of his 1952 Fawcett novel Flight to Darkness (New Pulp Press, 2009). The book represents the new publisher’s first foray into reprints, and it seems like a worthwhile effort. Brewer’s work usually follows a fairly straightforward formula: A desperate guy meets a bad girl and proceeds to make questionable decisions until bad things happen, and it’s too late to fix them. It’s easy to accuse Brewer of being repetitive, and it’s true, he was, but his books have a certain desperation about them which makes them seem more immediate than the countless other mass market paperbacks of the era that depended on the same basic plot. Brewer’s effortless conjuring of desperate heroes is because his own life was so full of desperation.

Still, he had his faults. His books often seem rushed, probably because he was under duress to crank something out to get paid and because back in those days no one wanted a hundred thousand word manuscript. The fact that he was an alcoholic probably didn't help.

Flight to Darkness aspires to be more than the average Brewer novel, and it sometimes succeeds, but it still suffers from its ending. Darkness is the story of Korean War vet Eric Garth, who has acted heroically in battle, saving an injured man while under heavy fire. The incident took its toll on Garth, though, and he suffers from what would now be called post traumatic stress disorder.

Eric, a sculptor, is constantly haunted by the thought that he murdered his estranged half-brother Frank with a sculpting mallet. As the novel opens, Garth is being released to return to Florida with his fiancee Leda, a nurse he met while hospitalized, to claim his half of the family business from his half-brother Frank. The happy couple's trip is derailed in Alabama when Garth is accused of a hit and run. Garth has no memory of the incident, and when his brother shows up, local law enforcement is only too happy to institutionalize Garth indefinitely.

When he finally escapes, he finds out the charges were dropped long ago, so he sets out for Florida, where he discovers that Leda has married Frank, who has conspired to screw him out of the family business. Matters are further complicated by Eric's old flame, Leda's professed desire for him, and the not insignificant fact that Frank soon turns up dead, his head bashed in with a mallet.

The desperation that pervades Brewer's stories works especially well in this novel, since the protagonist is not merely broke (as is often the case in Brewer novels), but of questionable sanity. It is a little difficult to dismiss some of Eric's actions late in the novel, however. After a good, if a little long setup, Brewer has his hero ignore about ten million red flags as the novel rolls toward its inevitable conclusion, and the conclusion is way too convenient. Flight to Darkness is missing the final part of Brewer's formula. At the end, everything turns out all right, which is just way too pat to be satisfying, especially considering the fact that Eric Garth spends ninety-nine percent of the novel doing his thinking below the waist. As is often the case, it seems like Brewer knew the necessary word count was close, so he just put a bow on it. A little more effort would have served this story well. The book has a rather well done pulp climax, but a little denouement would have fleshed it out just enough to make it have the resonance it should have had. It would have pushed this book from a good example of classic paperback fiction to an excellent one.

Review of The Big Wake Up

Private-eye novels usually either go one of two ways; gritty, dirt-under-the-nails realism, or more comic, pulpy fare. One can make that Mickey Spillane mixed the two types of stories, but, it’s not at all clear Spillane knew when he was being comical, and either way, the results of his efforts may be the best argument one can think of for not trying to mix the two types of stories. However, Mark Coggins’ latest August Riordan novel, The Big Wake Up (Bleak House, 2009) successfully mixes plot elements that would fit more comfortably between the battered pages of a comic or pulp magazine with the modern hard boiled PI story. The result is a fast paced, entertaining read.

The plot of The Big Wake Up is ridiculous. It involves rival factions from Argentina searching for the embalmed corpse of Evita Peron, which was, through a series of rather unbelievable occurrences, supposedly spirited away to the San Francisco Bay area and interred under a false name. Apparently, whoever possesses Evita’s corpse will wield unlimited power over the easily impressed proles of Argentina or something. Needless to say, August Riordan is brought in by one of the factions to find the corpse, under false pretenses, of course. He quickly realizes something is up when he is trying to get his client’s daughter in bed, and a gang of thugs burst into his apartment, led by a woman named Isis, who commands an army of identical looking black men and has a fetish for embalming people alive.

So, yes, The Big Wake Up, is ridiculous, but it’s a well done sort of ridiculous. Coggins is pretty skilled at taking the reader for a ride, and the book zips along like a Maserati down the Pacific Coast Highway. Despite the over-the-top nature of the tale, Coggins still keeps it grounded. Actions have consequences. People die, and Riordan doesn’t make it out emotionally unscathed. No doubt because the book is part of a series, Coggins makes an effort at verisimilitude and blends it well with the overall story. The result is a book that is satisfying on more than one level.

Review of Bad Karma

Bad Karma (Five Star, 2009), Dave Zeltserman’s follow up to Bad Thoughts, finds the author trying to take a path less traveled in PI novels, as well as produce work that might be less off putting to the casual reader than his man-out-of prison novels, Small Crimes and Pariah, and the yet-to be-published Killer. Zeltserman will probably make his mark on the world of hard boiled fiction with the man-out-of-prison works. Small Crimes was excellent, and Pariah, while it will never replace Catcher in the Rye on high school freshman English reading lists, will stand the test of time.

One cannot, however, fault a working writer for trying to find a commercial outlet, which is what Zeltserman is trying to do with his Bill Shannon novels, by mixing your standard hard-boiled ex-cop PI with a dash of the supernatural. It’s not full on Twilight, with vampires and werewolves, but there is a healthy dose of new-age phenomenon, like lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences. It is refreshing to see a PI character turning to meditation instead of the bottle after a traumatic experience, but readers’ mileage may vary depending on their tolerance for hippy-dippy talk (not to mention discussion of the relative merits of the Red Sox versus the Yankees).

Still, while Bad Karma is not as good as Zeltserman’s non-series work, there is still a solid PI story at its center. Shannon has relocated to Denver and reconciled with Susan, his ex-wife, when he is hired to investigate the brutal beating death of a couple college students. He also agrees to help a desperate mother try to rescue her daughter from a local cult. True to form, both cases dovetail in the end, and Shannon ends up uncovering a larger conspiracy, and when it comes to problem solving Shannon isn’t exactly a pacifist, his penchant for meditation notwithstanding, so there’s plenty here for fans of the genre.

Rembember Pariah?

Dave Zeltserman's excellent novel Pariah, which I wrote about back in May out of an abundance of enthusiasm, is out this month, so I'm linking to my review again. You really ought not to miss reading this book. Bruce Grossman over at Bookgasm agrees. I think you're going to see a lot of positive reviews for this book.

Zeltserman has a second novel coming out soon, Bad Karma, which is a sequel to Bad Thoughts. My review of that one should be posted soon, so stay tuned.

Review of Killing Mum

Allan Guthrie is the latest author to pen a novella for Five Leaves Press's Crime Express series. Killing Mum brings Guthrie back to some of his characters from Savage Night. Specifically, it puts death broker Carlos Morales in a tough spot. He's in the business of arranging to have people killed, so it's no surprise when he gets an envelope full of cash and a name. What is a surprise is the name is his mother's. Carlos can't figure why someone would want his mother dead. The only person he knows who hates his mother is his wife, and she's also the only person he knows who knows his mother is his mother. So, naturally he's suspicious. He sets up a little test, but things don't go as planned.

Killing Mum is quick and dirty read. It's probably about an hour's investment all told. It's remarkable for it's thematic similarity to Guthrie's latest novel Slammer. Characters in both novels have the the same sort of reaction to traumatic experiences. Guthrie spends quite a bit of time mining familial strife in his novels, so there's nothing here that will surprise anyone familiar with his work. It would be interesting to know, however, if this work was a dry run for Slammer, or Guthrie is revisiting a theme here. Killing Mum is rather tame by Guthrie standards, and it didn't quite pack the punch of Ray Banks' Crime Express entry Gun, but it's a solid effort nevertheless. It may serve as a good entry point for those who haven't read Guthrie's work yet. If you like this, then the novels may be for you.

And yes, the Kindle edition artwork I found on Amazon has a squirrel. I'm just as puzzled as you.

Review of Hard Feelings

You can divide Jason Starr's novels pretty easily into his early work and his later, more commercial work. His earlier novels are noir stories of doomed characters who are painfully oblivious to their own inevitable destruction, while his more recent work has been more slick and commercial, even if he hasn't quite been able to bring himself to write a happy ending yet. Fake I.D. (Hard Case Crime, 2009) is Starr's third novel, coming between Nothing Personal, and the award winning Hard Feelings, the novel that put Starr on the map. It definitely belongs to Starr's early period.

Fake I.D., which has never appeared in the U.S. before, has a lot in common with Hard Feelings, but it's not quite as accomplished. Tommy Russo is a bartender who wants to be an actor and has a gambling problem. When he is approached by an acquaintance about joining a syndicate to purchase a race horse, he jumps at the chance. Only, Tommy doesn't have the ten thousand dollars needed for the buy in. To get it, he will betray everyone who trusts him.

Russo, unlike Richie Segal in Hard Feelings, does not garner any sympathy from the reader. In Hard Feelings, Segal's downward spiral is precipitated by a face to face encounter with an old acquaintence who molested him. Russo, on the other hand, is narcissistic to a frightening extent without any mitigating factors. He is so repellant that he may make some readers uncomfortable, which is not a criticism, so much as it is a recognition of the fact that Starr is really very good at getting inside the heads of abberant individuals. It's not too difficult to see why this novel would have made U.S. publishers squirm.

Review of Hogdoggin'

Anthony Neil Smith’s last book, Yellow Medicine, never quite came together, with its mix of half-assed terrorists who, for some godforsaken reason, wanted to control the meth trade in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, rockabilly music, and bad cop and southern transplant Billy LaFitte, it seemed like Smith had thrown a bunch of disparate ingredients in a blender, hit puree and ended up with a bit of a mess. His latest novel, Hogdoggin’ (Bleak House, 2009) brings back many of the characters from Yellow Medicine,but improves upon the first novel in every respect.

Hogdoggin' is the novel Yellow Medicine could have been if Smith hadn't decided to go with terrorists over bikers. Hogdoggin' finds LaFitte acting as sergeant-at-arms for a biker gang run by a man named Steel God. He's trying to stay of the radar, but FBI agent Franklin Rome, humiliated by the beating LaFitte handed out at the end of Yellow Medicine, is putting the squeeze on LaFitte's mentally unstable wife in an effort to flush him out of hiding. Rome's actions work, to an extent, and LaFitte takes off on a turquioise chopper to ride to the rescue of a woman who wants nothing to do with him. While Yellow Medicine was told in first person from LaFitte's point-of-view, Smith decided to go with third person for Hogdoggin', which gives him the opportunity to get inside the head of Rome, as well as LaFitte and other characters. The choice works well, and the characters are more fully realized than they seemed in Yellow Medicine. It's nice to see what makes these characters tick, even if they all are, on some level, monsters. Smith writes monsters pretty well.

The Billy LaFitte saga shares a lot in common with Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson novels, where a garden variety loser gradually turns into a dangerous man, except LaFitte is a dangerous man who is becoming more dangerous, and it's harder to feel sympathy for him than it is for Thompson, although it is possible to feel some empathy for poor Billy because every time he tries to be nice, at least in relative terms, it tends to blow up in his face. The only time things ever seem to go his way is when he gets really nasty. Of course, seeing bad people do nasty things to each other is part of the fun, even if you can't quite bring yourself to pull for any of them.

Review of The Disassembled Man

After reading The Disassembled Man (New Pulp Press, 2009), I was pretty sure the author, Nate Flexer was a pseudonym. (Nate Flexer is a pseudonym for John Basoff, proprietor of New Pulp Press. My instincts were right See comments). His author’s bio identifies him as a high school English teacher, and I’m pretty sure The Disassembled Man isn’t the type of book your typical school board member would take to bed with them. Flexer doesn’t appear to be a pseudonym, however, so maybe he teaches at a private school or has tenure or is married to the school board chairman or something because this is the sort of book that would make your average local politician go crazy.

Frankie Avicious has a pretty lousy life. He has a job slitting cows' throats at a slaughterhouse. He's in love with a stripper. His wife is fat, and her dad is rich, but he won't kick loose with any money. He's also a raging alcoholic who pukes more than a supermodel (there is more vomiting in this book than in any other book ever written). When Frankie receives a visit from a mysterious old acquaintance, he decides to get his life together. Instead of enrolling in community college, however, Frankie decides to kill his father-in-law for the inheritance. From there, it's off to the races, as the body count mounts, and Frankie's tenuous grip on reality becomes even more tenuous.

The Disassembled Man is a little rough around the edges, but it's a first novel, so roughness around the edges is to be expected. Flexer's main character is a little bit of a mystery, though. For a character with a bad (and I mean bad) background who has no education or interest in self-improvement, he's remarkably articulate. The fact that he's deeply, deeply crazy and has trouble keeping in touch with reality doesn't help either. It's entirely debatable, in my mind, if the last third of the book happens anywhere outside Frankie's head.

The Disassembled Man is remarkable for its ugliness. It's hard to think of a book with a character as despicable as Frankie Avicious. It turns out he has valid reasons for being as twisted as he is, but his unapologetic homicidal mania may be difficult for some to stomach. This Jim Thompson on mescaline story is not for the faint of heart.