Noir – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 DARK TIMES IN THE CITY by Gene Kerrigan /2014/dark-times-in-the-city-by-gene-kerrigan/ Sat, 04 Jan 2014 13:59:57 +0000 /?p=23631 Book Quote:

“I got into trouble a long time ago. I was a kid. Then the other thing happened and I went to prison. I don’t steal, I don’t hurt people – that other stuff, it’s like someone else’s history.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JAN 4, 2014)

I’ve become an avid fan of Gene Kerrigan’s Irish mysteries. They are literate page-turners that are complex in plot with wonderful characterizations. This is the second one that I’ve read and I plan on reading each of them.

In this novel, Danny Callaghan has gotten out of jail seven months ago after serving an eight year term for manslaughter. He beat a man to death with a golf club when he was 24. He is now 32 and trying to live by the letter of the law, working for his bar-owning friend Novak, doing pick-ups and deliveries of people and materials. While he was in jail, his marriage to Hannah ended in divorce and he is alone with little support except for Novak, who is his confidante. While he was in jail, Novak was basically the only person who visited him there.

One evening, Danny is sitting in the Blue Parrot, Novak’s bar, when two gunmen come in. Danny isn’t sure if they are coming in to kill him or someone else. It happens that they are trying to kill a small-time punk named Walter Bennett. The gun doesn’t fire properly and Danny ends up saving Walter’s life. This puts Danny in a very precarious position because Walter is wanted by some big-time gang who feels like he’s been snitching on them to the police. Now Danny is in the middle of things. However, Danny is also worried that they were coming for him because when his trial was going on, the cousin of the man he killed told Danny that he would seek retribution: “Blood for blood.”

The two gunmen, Karl Browse and Robby Nugent are young and bad, looking for people to kill. They have been hired by a mob boss named Lar Mackendrich who controls a portion of Dublin’s territory. This is the first assignment he’s given to these two and he’s not happy with the outcome. He wants it rectified, and soon. He wants to see Walter dead and wants to know why Danny got himself in the middle of things.

Danny lives in a small apartment, so small that you can probably touch the walls on each side by standing in the middle and holding your arms out straight. He misses his ex-wife, Hannah, and many nights he drives by her house and parks nearby just staring at it. It’s not that he wants her back but he misses the warmth and love that he once had.

There is a lot of blood and gore in this book and it is not for the faint of heart. It is remediated a bit by some humor but it is hardcore through and through with a noir bent.

The environs of Dublin, where it takes place, is after the real estate bust, and people are clamoring for work. The economy is up the creek and there is no more easy money to be had. This is a sharp contrast to the way things were before Danny went to jail. Prior to being incarcerated, he had a kitchen cabinet business and was happy working with his hands. He no longer wants to be an entrepreneur. Passing the time picking up people and packages with a car is perfect for him at this time in his life.

Kerrigan can really write. He knows how to get deep into a character’s soul and put him out there with all the accoutrements for the reader. That’s what I like most about this author. I have a feel for each and every one of the characters in the book. There are no red herrings and everyone in the book is there for a meaning and the reader gains a depth of feeling for everyone.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 13 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (October 1, 2013)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Gene Kerrigan
EXTRAS: Europa page on Dark Times in the City
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

]]> THE MAID’S VERSION by Daniel Woodrell /2013/the-maids-version-by-daniel-woodrell/ Sat, 21 Dec 2013 17:45:34 +0000 /?p=23615 Book Quote:

“She frightened me at every dawn the summer I stayed with her. She’d sit on the edge of her bed, long hair down, down to the floor and shaking as she brushed and brushed, shadows ebbing from the room and early light flowing in through both windows. Her hair was as long as her story and she couldn’t walk when her hair was not woven into dense braids and pinned around and atop her head. Otherwise her hair dragged the floor like the train of a medieval gown and she had to gather it into a sheaf and coil it about her forearm several times to walk the floor without stepping on herself. She’d been born a farm girl, then served as a maid for half a century, so she couldn’t sleep past dawn to win a bet…”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 21, 2013)

The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell is a small book but reads like a tome, with such literate and beautiful imagery that I was enthralled. The book centers around the mystery of the explosion at Arbor Dance Hall in 1929. The explosion killed 42 people, many unrecognizable in death with their bodies broken up or burned beyond recognition. Alma Dunahew lost her sister Ruby in the explosion and for years has been trying to discover the answer to what happened. Those years have been hard on her with several of them spent at the Work Farm in West Table, Missouri, due to her psychic breakdown caused by rage and grief. Many of the town’s most wealthy citizens want to put the truth of the explosion to the side and no one has ever been apprehended for the crime. They look at Alma’s ramblings about the explosion as words from a crazy person. The magnitude of the explosion was enormous.

“Just as full darkness fell those happy sounds heard in the surviving house suddenly became a nightmare chorus of pleas, cries of terror, screams as the flames neared crackling and bricks returned tumbling from the heavens and stout beams crushed those souls knocked to the ground. Walls shook and shuddered for a mile around and the boom was heard faintly in the next county south and painfully by everyone in the town limits.”

One summer in 1965, Alma’s young grandson Alec comes to visit her. It is to him that she spills the story of the dance hall and her theory about what happened that night. Going back and forth in time, the novel gives the reader vignettes about those who were killed in the dance hall explosion along with the story of Ruby, Alma’s sister. Ruby was a great flirt and what was called in those days a loose woman. She would love them and leave them until she found a real love with the banker, Arthur Glencross. Glencross was married and Alma worked as a maid for the Glencross family. She worked very hard to hide Arthur’s affair from his wife Corrine by carefully washing his clothing to get out smells and stains that would serve as evidence of his affair with Ruby. After Ruby’s death, Alma hated Arthur and this was evident in her actions.

Was Arthur responsible for the explosion? Or, could it have been the preacher Isaiah Willard who spoke of death and damnation to those who danced? He believed that “the easiest portals to the soul through which demons might enter was that opened by dancing feet. Evil music, evil feet, salacious sliding and the disgusting embraces dancing excused provided an avenue of damnation that could readily be seen and blockaded” He was heard to say of the Arbor Dance Hall during that summer, “I’ll blow this place to Kingdom soon and drop those sinners into the boiling patch – see how they dance then.” What about the hobos hanging around town? Those passing through with bad intentions? Someone with a grudge against one of the dancers? Who was it? Alma thinks she knows and tells her story to Alec.

Of the forty-two killed in the explosion, only twenty-eight were whole enough so that graves could be made for them. Most of them were not identified. The rest were parts buried in a pit. Alma’s grief was such that she “touched all twenty-eight and kissed them each, kneeling to kiss the fresh black paint between her spread aching fingers, said the same words to accompany every kiss because there was no way to know which box of wood held Ruby, or if she rested in only one, had not been separated into parts by crushing or flames and interred in two or three, so she treated every box as though her sister was inside in parts or whole and cried to the last.”

Woodrell’s style of writing is unique, sounding like I’d imagine the tenor of speech spoken in the Ozarks. At times it’s a difficult book because of the writing style and the subject matter. It is, however, stunning and has left me with a deep and abiding appreciation for this author’s work. I thank him for sharing his talent and vision with readers.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 117 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company (September 3, 2013)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS: Interview  and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

Movies from Books:

]]> COUNTRY HARDBALL by Steve Weddle /2013/country-hardball-by-steve-weddle/ Sat, 21 Dec 2013 16:07:33 +0000 /?p=23574 Book Quote:

“I was locked up for a while. Full of the empty darkness, if that makes sense to you. The sort of nothing that fills up everything. Spent the whole time running down the “what if” crap to fill up my soul. What if I hadn’t dropped then? What if they’d buckled up? What if this and that? You can go crazy with that. And maybe I did. And maybe when I got out and was all of a sudden an adult and alone, yeah, maybe I did some things I shouldn’t have. And maybe those were my fault. But that’s the old me. That’s not who I am now.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (DEC 21, 2013)

First, let me say that this book has excellent writing and stories and provides a true sense of life in the rural area of Columbus County, Arkansas. I’ve decided to give this a top rating despite having some misgivings about that rating because of my occasional confusion while reading the book. However, after thinking about it especially after waiting a week or so to write this review, I’m convinced that the writing is just too good to not warrant the top rating.

The book starts out almost immediately giving the gloomy darkness that will permeate throughout the novel’s stories. The book starts with Champion Tatum and his son still trying to get over the death of Champion’s wife:

Eleanor Tatum had come home from the mill late that Saturday night last June, skipped church the next morning, and walked into the front yard to put a bullet through her temple.
“Never seen a woman do that,” Champion had overheard one of the deputies saying.
“Must have been pretty messed up, do something like that,” a tall man Champion hadn’t seen before said. “Women usually take pills. You know when they cash in.”
“Damned shame,” another deputy said, shaking his head, scratching into this notepad.
They all shook their heads and agreed it was a damned shame.

In the second section of the book, the main character , Roy Allison is introduced and it is in these sections that the book is told in the first person. As you learn, Roy is returning from spending time in juvenile detention and although he now has a job with the county he is not always welcomed when trying to do his job.

“Mr. Greer, my name’s Roy Allsion.” I pulled some papers out of my back pocket.
“I know who you are, shitface.” He raised the barrels of the shotgun to my face. “Everybody knows who you are. You’re the piece of shit who killed his parents.”
That stopped me. I guess I’ll never get used to that. Never get away from it. Which is fine. I did kill my parents.

Roy’s life became difficult after accidentally killing his parents at 16-years-old in a car accident while taking them to the hospital. He’s hoping to improve now upon his return to the area but that’s not being easy.

One of the themes that Roy and others in the book have is around life choices as in this excerpt:

You get far enough down one trail, doesn’t matter much which way you go from there – they’re all the wrong choices. Some days you just do what you learned to do, what you’ve lived your life doing. A body tumbling down a hill, into a ravine.

Roy doesn’t always make the right choices and he continues to struggle with his life as do others in the other stories of county residents. The reader can make his or her own decision about whether the choices are the right ones or if Roy and others really had a choice.

I’m a big baseball fan (in addition to being a crime fiction fan) and this book certainly has a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) baseball theme that is often present through the various stories. Characters will be watching or listening to baseball and some of the characters will know or even play baseball (look for it). You don’t have to be a baseball fan to appreciate how this is being presented but as a baseball fan you will really enjoy the baseball presence and will as a result get more out of this great book.

In the published description of this book it is described as a “A novel-in-stories in the tradition of Bonnie Jo Campbell, Donald Ray Pollock, Denis Johnson, and Alan Heathcock.” Well, unfortunately, I haven’t read any of those authors, but the book is definitely told in a series of interlocking stories. It was an approach that I enjoyed but at times found a bit confusing. Although reading and keeping notes on an electronic reader has its advantages, in this case, I would have liked being able to flip back and forth through the pages of a real book. For me though, I immediately felt I was reading a style similar to Daniel Woodrell. Again, that’s probably my ignorance in not reading more in today’s “country noir” style then in the more traditional noir style of authors such as David Goodis and Scott Phillips.

This book is the first novel published by Steve Weddle. Steve has had a few of his stories published, but I’ve known him more as a publisher and editor of the Needle books of mostly noir short stories. I actually met Steve in 2010 at Noircon in Philadelphia and after that bought a couple of the Needle books, but I’ve not talked to him since and certainly our brief meeting had no influence on anything I’ve written here. Although I’ve enjoyed the Needle books, here’s hoping Steve spends more time writing novels and hopefully I’ll get to meet him again at Noircon in 2014.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 24 readers
PUBLISHER: Tyrus Books (November 18, 2013)
REVIEWER: Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Steve Weddle
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More “country noir:”

Bibliography:

 

]]> 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami /2011/1q84-by-haruki-murakami/ /2011/1q84-by-haruki-murakami/#comments Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:37:21 +0000 /?p=22307 Book Quote:

“That’s it. 1984 and 1Q84 are fundamentally the same in terms of how they work. If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (DEC 31, 2011)

Haruki Murakami doesn’t lend himself to easy categorization. Though his prose is spare, almost styleless, it’s more supple than muscular, and though his stories are often occupied with mundane domesticities, they’re also often founded in the surreal. It’s no surprise, then, that Murakami’s long-awaited latest, 1Q84, isn’t easy to shelf –it’s at home among either fantasy, thriller or hard-boiled noir – but one thing’s for sure: this book is grotesquely Murakami. That is, quiet domesticity punctuates adventures tenuously connected to reality, and yet for all its faults – and some have argued there are many – this is a book that haunts you long after you’re done, a book that, like a jealous lover, won’t let you move on.

For all its parallel worlds and magical creatures, for all its anonymous sex and ruthless violence, this is a book about love. The lovers in question, Tengo and Aomame, haven’t seen or spoken to each other in almost 20 years. In fact, they may have never spoken at all. Their shared history is limited to a 5th grade incident during which a ten-year-old Aomame reached for Tengo’s hand – and stilled his soul. But for Tengo, a popular athlete and academic star, to befriend Aomame, a religious freak who stands up and shouts a version of the Lord’s Prayer before she eats lunch, would’ve been social suicide. Aomame transfers schools before Tengo acknowledges to himself what she means to him.

Twenty years pass – it’s 1984 – and Tengo, considered a math prodigy, has frittered away his promise: he teaches math at a Tokyo cram school while moonlighting as a novelist. Though he has weekly sex with a married girlfriend, he still wonders about Aomame.

Disowned by her family for breaking with their church, the Society of Witnesses, Aomame is a lone-wolf. She works as a fitness instructor at a swanky Tokyo gym and although she trolls for wild one-night stands, her heart, after all these years, still belongs to Tengo. As it turns out, she moonlights too –as an assassin. Under the auspices of a wealthy and mysterious dowager, Aomame, with a method of her own invention, kills wife-beaters and rapists.

The Tengo-Aomame attachment – their love itself – is absurd, and this absurdity calls into existence a strange alternative world – 1Q84, the world with a question mark – with a second, “moss-green” moon. Ostensibly, Aomame enters this alternate world, like Alice down the rabbit hole, when she escapes a gridlocked Metropolitan expressway by climbing down an emergency stairwell. But it’s Tengo, in ghost-writing the best-seller, Air Chryaslis, or perhaps in writing a novel of his own, that opens that portal. What has brought Tengo into 1Q84 isn’t entirely clear – although his skill as a storyteller is a factor – but, unbeknownst to the other, both are trapped in 1Q84, a world that becomes increasingly perilous.

When Komatsu, Tengo’s editor, suggests Tengo rewrite a manuscript submission, a fantastical, but compelling story, told in substandard prose, Tengo is hesitant. The author, a strange and beautiful 17-year old girl, who goes by the name of Fuka-Eri, insists that her story, a tale about Little People who emerge from the mouth of a goat and weave wombs out of strands of reality, is true. The Little People use these wombs, or air chrysalises, to gestate doubles, or dohtas. The dohtas act like antennas of sorts, receivers for the perceivers of “the voice.” Fuka-Eri has no literary ambitions and gives Tengo permission to rewrite her work.

But when Air Chrysalis is a runaway hit, a powerful and mysterious cult, Sakigake, is angered. Although most people read the book as fantasy, Sakigake maintains that Fuka-Eri, the estranged daughter of their mysterious Leader, has revealed sacred truths not meant for outsiders. It seems they’ll stop at nothing to halt publication, but when their Leader is found dead, Sakigake must devote itself to finding his murderer.

As it turns out, the Leader is suspected of raping pre-pubescent girls, Fuka-Eri, his daughter, among them. The dowager charges Aomame with dispatching the Leader to “the other side,” but when he demonstrates his supernatural powers, Aomame becomes conflicted and confused. A telepath, the Leader knows Aomame’s intention, but the cost of his great gift is excruciating pain. The Leader welcomes death, and when Aomame hesitates, he bargains with her: his death for Tengo’s life. Unfortunately, killing the Leader will likely mean Aomame’s death too. But, in sacrificing her life for Tengo’s, their connection inexplicably tightens, and the danger Aomame flees inadvertently flings them together.

1Q84 is possible because of faith. It is the belief in love, in something beyond reason, something magical, that creates the metaphysical space for impossibilities to actualize themselves. Born from air chrysalises, dohtas are affectless shadows, without desires or dreams of their own. But we only need look around us, at the “hunched over people carried by force of habit into the new day” to see that it’s all too easy to lose your dreams and desires to the monotony of everyday life, individual passions and secret hopes lost to the roles we play – father, mother, teacher, banker – unaware that if you stop and look up, you might just see two moons. Of course, the real problem, as Tengo and Aomame figure out, is not the revelation of the magical, but how to steal a bit of that wonder up the rabbit hole, to the mundane world of day jobs and traffic jams.

Murakami shirks conventional expectations, refusing to answer the questions he poses and tie his loose ends into pretty little bows. He breaks from craft wisdom – stick to the essentials – with gratuitous descriptions and his characters repeatedly mull over the same plot points. He even challenges Chekov’s famous maxim by introducing a gun that never goes off. But I can’t help but feel that’s the point; life isn’t pared down to essentials, and insofar as our lives have meaning, they’re necessarily narratives, stories just as mundane – and hopefully just as magical, if not as fantastical – as this one.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 514 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf; First Edition edition (October 25, 2011)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Haruki Murakami
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Non-Fiction:

Related:

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]]> /2011/1q84-by-haruki-murakami/feed/ 1 THE CONSUMMATA by Mickey Spillaine and Max Allan Collins /2011/the-consummata-by-mickey-spillaine-and-max-allan-collins/ Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:49:59 +0000 /?p=21536 Book Quote:

“I can always tell if a broad is lying to me. I spent a lot of years honing this bullshit detector.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

In the 1960s, Mickey Spillane began to write The Consummata–a follow-up to The Delta Factor, the novel which introduced super-crook Morgan the Raider. After a series of disappointments with the Delta Factor film, Spillane stopped work on the unfinished The Consummata manuscript. Twenty years ago, he gave the manuscript to long-term friend, collaborator, and creative heir, Max Allan Collins. Since the death of Spillane in 2006, Collins has devoted himself to finishing the many Spillane projects left behind. So far fans have seen a number of publications, including Dead Street, The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang, and Kiss Her Goodbye. Now comes The Consummata–the long awaited sequel to The Delta Factor. The appearance of the sequel is reason enough to celebrate, but the novel’s publication also heralds the autumn return of Hard Case Crime following a short hiatus.

The Consummata finds Morgan the Raider on the run in Miami’s Little Havana and being chased by “federal suits” teamed with “local fuzz” who think he has 40 million dollars in stolen funds. With no place to hide, the chase seems to be coming to its inevitable conclusion, but suddenly Morgan finds himself snatched and hidden from the feds by some of Little Havana’s Cuban community. As Morgan hangs out with the Cubans waiting for the heat to cool down, he learns that the exiles managed to scrape together a fund of $75,000 to assist their relatives back in Cuba. Double agent Jaimie Halaquez wormed his way into the Little Havana exile community, and once he gained their trust, he lifted the dough. Morgan, grateful for the Cubans’ help, agrees to track down Halaquez and get the money back.

Easier said than done….

Halaquez, as it turns out, is “an S&M freak,” and this leads Morgan on the hunt for La Consummata, a legendary dominatrix who is rumored to be “setting up shop in Miami:”

“Sometimes she works alone, by appointment through intermediaries. Other times she has set up a location with other young women trained in the arts of sado-masochism. And, again, clients are by referral only. She has turned up in every major city in America and not a few in Europe. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men in business and government. If she exists.”

“You don’t even know if she exists?”

“She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. A dream. Lovely, a vision in black leather, they say….”

Of course, it’s inevitable that La Consummata and Morgan meet and tangle.

The Consummata is unabashedly pulp, so this is fast-paced action with not a lot of down-time. The story is set in the 60s, so expect the women to be sexy babes and the men (Morgan specifically) to be macho. This is a sequel novel, and for those who didn’t read The Delta Factor, The Consummata plays catch-up for approximately one chapter. Naturally, since the action hits the notorious bordellos of Miami and includes some of its working women, the book includes sex which is told from a male fantasy perspective. Overall, however, the emphasis is on action, reaction, and the recovery of stolen money.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Mickey Spillaine and Max Allan Collins
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

And by both authors together:

Bibliography:

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins:

]]> CHOKE HOLD by Christa Faust /2011/choke-hold-by-christa-faust/ Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:34:38 +0000 /?p=21538 Book Quote:

“Do the things you’ve done in your past add up to the person you are now? Or are you reinvented by the choices you make for the future? I used to think I knew the answer to those questions. Now I’m not so sure.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

Hard Case Crime is back after a short hiatus, and for avid fans, the line-up is impressive: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins (delayed release from a year ago), Getting Off by Lawrence Block, The Consummata by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, and Choke Hold by Christa Faust.

Choke Hold is novelist and former peep show girl Faust’s second title for Hard Case Crime, and it’s a sequel to Money Shot. Faust is Hard Case Crime’s first female novelist, and if you think that means a tender, sensitive look at crime, then think again. Faust’s protagonist is tough former porn star, Angel Dare, a woman who feels more comfortable giving a blowjob than extending a sympathy hug. In Money Shot, Angel, owner of an adult modeling agency came out of retirement for one last gig. Big mistake. The job is a set-up by some particularly nasty gangsters who are hunting for a briefcase full of cash. Angel, who’s raped, beaten and stuffed in the trunk of a car, finds herself on the wrong side of a prostitution ring.

Choke Hold (and the title’s meaning becomes clear as the story plays out) finds Angel living under an assumed name as a waitress in Arizona. She was part of the Witness Protection program for 19 months and attending mandatory therapy with a shrink named Lindsay:

“She was always making these unequivocal statements about ‘women in my situation’ that had nothing to do with how I actually felt. She also insisted that I was in denial about my ‘abuse’ in the adult film industry. I could never talk to her about the things that were really on my mind. About the fact I didn’t feel like a poor violated victim at all. I felt like some kind of war veteran. Like I’d been forced to turn off something important inside me to become the killer I needed to be and I didn’t have any idea how to turn it back on again. To become an ordinary citizen again, if such a thing were possible. So instead I spent most of our time during the sessions with her by telling the raunchiest, kinkiest stories about my ‘abuse.’ I think she secretly got off on it. Poor Lindsay just needed a decent orgasm.”

Angel’s boring life under the Witness Protection program comes to an abrupt end when she realizes that her cover’s been blown. With her emergency ever-packed, go-bag, “two shitty fake IDs” and a few grand in cash, Angel ran. She’s in Arizona, waitressing, and providing after-hours entertainment for her boss trying to work off the expenses of a forged passport when her past catches up to her in an explosively violent way. Thick Vic, crankster and washed-up porn star, unexpectedly walks into Angel’s diner and death’s along for the ride. From this moment until the novel’s conclusion, it’s non-stop action with Angel on the run from pissed off Mexican gangsters involved in illegal boxing matches and cocaine smuggling. And she’s also on the run from her old nemesis, brutal Croatian gangster, Vukasin.

Choke Hold moves the action from Arizona to the illegal boxing matches held in Mexico, to a Las Vegas porn convention with live-streaming action. Throughout the chase, Angel picks up two protectors, Thick Vic’s cocky son, Cody and Hank “The Hammer”–a legendary boxer who’s sunk to teaching in a tacky local gym, fighting illegal matches, and practicing a little loan enforcement on the side. It’s through Angel’s relationship with Hank that this pulp novel shows its depth beyond the action. Angel never sees herself as a victim, but here’s she’s used and abused more than once in an industry in which no one rides for free. Hank’s industry takes a similar approach. He’s boxed his way into physical damage and suffers permanent migraines and short term memory loss. There’s a sad connection between Angel and Hank–a connection of two people who use their bodies to get by.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 23 readers
PUBLISHER: Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Christa Faust
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

And:

Bibliography:

Angel Dare books:

With Poppy Z. Brite:

]]> THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES by Jussi Adler-Olsen /2011/the-keeper-of-lost-causes-by-jussi-adler-olsen/ Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:09:15 +0000 /?p=20790 Book Quote:

“Have you thought about the question? Why we’re keeping you in a cage like an animal? Why you have to be put through all of this? Have you come up with a solution, Merete, or do we need to punish you again? What’s it going to be? A birthday present or a punishment?”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (SEP 10, 2011)

Danish Detective Carl Morck is a walking tormented shell of his former self. Recently returned to work, he is living with post-traumatic stress disorder following an incident that ended with the shooting death of one of his colleagues and a shot that paralyzed his friend, Detective Hardy. Morck was also injured by a shot to the head. So far the perpetrators have not been found and Morck lives with survivor’s guilt. He is difficult to get along with, often late to work, and no longer has his heart in his work.

To deal with his attitude, his supervisor, Superintendent Jacobsen, assigns Carl to head Department Q, a newly funded police department, and he stations it in the basement so that Carl is out of eyesight from his colleagues who are sick of his negativity and attitude. Department Q has been funded by parliament in order to solve dead cases, especially those that involve persons of interest or famous victims. Carl’s idea of a perfect work-day is to lounge around with his feet on his desk, napping or watching television. “In his end of the basement there were no people, there was no daylight, air, or anything else that might distinguish the place from the Gulag Archipelago. Nothing was more natural than to compare his domain with the fourth circle of hell.”

It’s not long until Carl realizes that Department Q has been funded to the tune of five million kroner. The money is all being channeled to the homicide division and hardly any of it is going to Department Q. Carl approaches Jacobsen and requests his own car and an assistant, letting him know that he is wise to the side-channeling of his funding. He gets what he wants.

As the book opens in 2007, we find out that Merete Lynggaard, a once promising Danish politician, has been kidnapped and held in captivity since 2002. She has no idea why she has been kidnapped. She only knows that she is in an empty concrete cell with two buckets given to her each day – one for her waste products and the other with barely edible food. Each year, on her birthday, the atmospheric pressure in her chamber is cranked up two notches. This will happen every year until she is able to answer her captors’ question: “Why are you here?” Of course, Merete has no idea.

There is a case file for Merete on Carl’s desk and the theory is that she jumped or was pushed overboard on a ferry while on vacation with her brother Uffe. However, no body was ever found and no reason for her to commit suicide was ever ascertained. Uffe, who was disabled in a car crash that killed their parents, is very close with Merete and she cares for him with a deep and abiding love. She is also a rising star in her political party.

Meanwhile, Carl is assigned an assistant named Assad. He is a man of many abilities, strange though they may be. He makes strong coffee, drives like a maniac, can take a lock apart in a second, knows people who can decipher encrypted words and numbers and is a mystery to Carl. He is Syrian and ostensibly is hired to clean Department Q and keep it neat. Carl makes the mistake of giving Assad a book on police procedure – Handbook for Crime Technicians. Assad reads the book and then gets antsy for Carl to start working on cases. He prompts Carl to start working on the Merete Lynggaard case and together they get a start on it.

Carl tries to find out more about Assad but he keeps his past close to his chest, alluding to difficult and bad times. He keeps a prayer rug in his office and kneels to pray to Allah during the day. He also plays Arabic CD’s and has only a passing knowledge of spoken Danish. He gradually becomes Carl’s partner, leaving his cleaning duties in the background.

The novel is noir, filled with great characterizations and action, and also comedic at times. Carl’s wife, Vigga, from whom he is separated, has gotten Carl to help subsidize a gallery that she is starting with one of her many young lovers. Carl is also raising Vigga’s son from another relationship. Vigga doesn’t believe in getting another divorce so Carl is stuck with her. Vigga has the uncanny act of calling Carl’s cell phone at the most inopportune times. Carl also has a boarder who pays him rent and is like a housewife to him. His name is Morton and he collects play animals and is a great cook.

Carl suffers from physical symptoms of his Post-traumatic stress disorder including chest pains, anxiety and panic attacks. He is attracted to his department’s psychologist and sees her for treatment. However, he spends most of the time trying to pick her up and she’s wise to him, telling him to come back when he can be honest with her.

This is a book filled with great writing, telling a page-turning story. I could not put it down. It has everything I’ve come to expect from the very best Scandinavian writers – an angst-driven hero, dark situations that confound the mind, characterizations that are stunning, and action-packed scenes. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen is definitely one of the ten best books I’ve read this year and certainly the best Scandinavian mystery I’ve read, bar none. It is excellently translated by Lisa Hartford.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 381 readers
PUBLISHER: Dutton Adult (August 23, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Jussi Adler-Olsen
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Q series:

 

]]> THE BAYOU TRILOGY by Daniel Woodrell /2011/the-bayou-trilogy-by-daniel-woodrell/ Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:05:35 +0000 /?p=17621 Book Quote:

“I don’t want friends, you silly shit. Friends—hah! Friends are the ones shoot you twice in the back of the head. Friends snitch you out for the long stretches. Up the joint, you see a guy doin’ life you can figure he had one too many friends.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (APR 27, 2011)

Winter’s Bone was one of the best crime films I saw in 2010. I discovered that it was based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell, and I was surprised that I’d never heard that name before. But I’m apparently not the only one, and the success of Winter’s Bone is guaranteed to bring this author new readers. Woodrell is best known as a writer of Ozark Noir, but the Bayou Trilogy is, as the title suggests, set in a different geographical region. The trilogy is composed of three novels from Woodrell’s early writing career: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing and The Ones You Do. The protagonist of the trilogy is Cajun cop Rene Shade. Shade hails from the fictional Louisiana city of San Bruno: “a city of many neighborhoods, Frogtown and Pan Fry being the largest and most fabled, and great numbing stretches of anonymous, bland, and nearly affluent subdivisions.” These neighborhoods are sharply divided along ethnic lines with the French hanging out in Frogtown and the blacks sticking to Pan Fry. There’s also Hawthorne Hills–the wealthy impenetrable suburb of the powerful elite.

Former boxer now detective Rene Shade has French-Irish roots. His older brother Tip runs the Frogtown Catfish bar while younger brother, District Attorney Francois is trying hard to disguise his working class roots. Rene’s mother, Ma Blanqui rules a run-down pool hall, and Rene lives in a room above the family business. To add even more flavour to the local geography, a swamp, the Marias du Croche–full of water moccasins with plenty of attitude, lies on the outskirts of town. Rene’s father, John X, returns to Frogtown for the third novel in the series.

In the fast-paced, explosive action-packed tale Under The Bright Lights, a local city councilman is murdered and Rene Shade is pressured by his “superiors” to conclude that the crime was a simple burglary gone wrong, but it’s not long before all hell breaks loose with a range war between Frogtown and Pan Fry. A hired hit man with dreams of becoming a professional musician is just the tool of other ambitious, greedy men in a matter of contracts and corrupt local politics gone wrong.

Muscle for the Wing begins with a “protected” poker game being blown wide open (literally) by a violent gang known as the Wing. These ex-cons, led by a muscle-bound brute, Emil Jadick have moved into town with the intention of taking what they want and to hell with the consequences. Here’s the Wing’s first hit:

“Despite the low hum of air-conditioning, the victims sweated gushingly and shook with concern, for, not only were they being shorn of their gambling money, but history was staggering and order decaying before their eyes. The swinging side of St. Bruno night world had been run as smoothly and nearly as openly as a pizza franchise for most of a decade and now these tourists from the wrong side of the road somewhere else were demonstrating the folly of such complacence. Auguste Beaurain, the wizened little genius of regional adoration, had run the upriver dagos, the downriver riffraff, the homegrown Carpenter brothers, and the out-of-state Dixie Mafia from this town and all its profitable games in such an efficient manner that no one had truly believed he would ever again be tested this side of the pearly gates.

But here and now these strangers, too ignorant of local folklore to know how much danger they were in, were taking the test and deciding on their own grades.”

St. Bruno operates with its own customs and laws, and the reason the city doesn’t blow apart from crime and corruption is it’s controlled from the top down. So the rich white folks in Hawthorne Hills call the shots and occasionally throw a bone to a chosen few in Frogtown or Pan Fry. Everybody plays by the rules–more-or-less–although we see the sort of catastrophe that develops when someone gets greedy (Under the Bright Lights). In Muscle for the Wing, outsiders think the local muscle is soft, lazy and fat enough to be taken without much of a fight. It’s Shade’s job to stop The Wing from taking over.

The Ones You Do sees the return of Rene Shade’s father, former pool shark John X. Dumped by his young second wife who’s split with all the cash, John X returns to his roots with a pissed-off killer Lunch Pumphrey in hot pursuit.

The Bayou Trilogy is extremely violent, fast paced and the closest thing I’ve read to a pulp flick pasted onto 470 pages. There are no middle-of-road characters here. The busty, trampy babes slide into cut-offs three sizes too small, tote weapons, flip hash and are meaner than pole cats. As for the men–there’s a range of stupid, and others who are cunning, vicious or just plain evil. Woodrell can wrap up character in a nutshell. Here’s Mayor Crawford after hours in Under the Bright Lights:

He was in slacks and a polo shirt with a cherry half-robe loosely belted. Fit and silver-haired, he looked like the aging stud of a prime-time soap.

Woodrell’s Bayou world is not a place for outsiders–the author makes that clear. Only those born and bred in view of the swamp can understand the arcane rules and Cajun St Bruno philosophy of righteous violence and vengeance.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 29 readers
PUBLISHER: Mulholland Books (April 28, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
EXTRAS:
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Also by Daniel Woodrell:

Bibliography:

*The Bayou Trilogy (2011)

Movies from Books:

]]> WHAT YOU SEE IN THE DARK by Manuel Munoz /2011/what-you-see-in-the-dark-by-manuel-munoz/ Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:48:02 +0000 /?p=17042 Book Quote:

“You’ll understand one day, her mother had said at the bus station. When you find a man of your own, you’ll know why you’ll run toward him.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 28, 2011)

What do you see in the dark? Well, that partly depends on your perspective. In Munoz’s stylistic mise-en-scène novel, the second-person point of view frames the watchful eye and disguises the wary teller. Reading this story is like peering through Hitchcock’s lens—the camera as observer’s tool and observer as camera–with light and shadow and space concentrated and dispersed frame by frame, sentence by sentence.

Munoz applied the famous director’s noir techniques to create a story about murder, madness, and longing amid the desire and antipathy of a working-class California town. Lives intersect, scenes juxtapose, and shades of gray color the landscape of the novel. Scenes of tenderness dovetail with acts of menace, plaintive music integrates with the rattling of chains, dark interiors annex the stark white heat of day.

In the hushed and dusty working-class town of Bakersfield, California, in the late 1950’s, the locals jealously watch the fresh and guarded romance of Dan and Teresa. Dan is the rugged bartender/guitarist and sexy son of Arlene, a bitter waitress at the downtown café and the abandoned wife of a motel owner out on the changing Highway 99. Teresa, a shoe saleswoman and aspiring singer, is the willowy Mexican-American daughter of a mother who left her to chase dreams of love in Texas. The narrow-minded prejudices of the town encroach upon the open bud of romance, and the ill-fated romance takes an ineluctable bloody turn. We know from the start that that someone dies, but it is the why and how and where that sustains the tension of the story.

At the height of Dan and Teresa’s love story, the glitter and fantasy of Hollywood comes to Bakersfield as the crew arrives to shoot select scenes of the iconic movie we know today as PSYCHO. The unnamed Actress and Director reveal themselves implicitly through details of the unnamed film-in-progress. It was evident when they scouted exterior shots for the motel, and during the illustrious shower scene. The interior monologues of the Actress and the frame by frame shoot of that most renowned scene in movie history is worth the price of admission alone. It felt as if Munoz had been standing next to Hitchcock. The author’s interpretation of historical data are transposed with polished clarity into film as words, and the searing silences that Hitchcock is so famous for lands on the page in the spaces between passages.

There are superbly captured details and Hitchcockian motifs that add subtlety to the story and incite the reader’s suspense, such as stairwells, keys, mothers, blondes, confined spaces, as well as loss of identity and optical symbols. The plate glass window of the café serves up a film frame metaphor (and the lens of a camera). Moral ambiguity, mirrors, bars and grills, and kisses, and of course—the MacGuffin, are all woven in with care and control.

My primary criticism is that the narrative is dry and cerebral. I was academically stimulated by the author’s style and complexity of techniques, but occasionally it felt studied and detached. The muted coolness kept me at a distance; I wasn’t emotionally engaged, but I was intellectually absorbed. The frequent jump-cuts were its strength, but also its drawback.

So what do you see in the dark? The eyes, said Hitchcock, the eyes said it all.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 17 readers
PUBLISHER: Algonquin Books (March 29, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Manuel Muñoz
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More Psycho:

Bibliography:

]]> DOPE THIEF by Dennis Tafoya /2011/dope-thief-by-dennis-tafoya/ Sat, 26 Mar 2011 19:34:36 +0000 /?p=16998 Book Quote:

“He and Manny had been robbing dealers for about a year. Had been in the life for a long time before that, of course. Stole cars, broke into houses. They had met in Juvie, a place called Lima, out in Delaware County. Taking off dealers wasn’t something you could do if you didn’t know who was who, what to look for. You had to score dope to know dope dealers, or know people who did. Where to go, what to watch for. Manny had been in rehab and knew people who were out copping every day.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (MAR 26, 2011)

Dennis Tafoya’s first novel, Dope Thief, published in 2009 is an excellent novel and more emotional  of a book than I thought it would or could be. Ray, a young man of 30 who has spent time in “Juvie” and prison for much of his life, has found a way to get some money with his friend Manny by stealing from independent drug dealers. These mostly small-time dealers are unlikely to seek help from the police or the mob in getting back their money or drugs. Ray and Manny even have the DEA jackets to scare the dealers into submitting to them. This seems like a good deal for Ray and Manny until they find much more money and drugs than they expected from some hick drug dealers working out of a farm in northern Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  Unfortunately, these drug dealers were associated with dealers in Connecticut that were moving into the area that are not too happy about the theft. These men use quick and violent methods to try to get their money and drugs back. This leads to some scary situations for Ray and Manny as they try to avoid these very dangerous and violent men and seek the help of Philadelphia area drug dealers who may not want the Connecticut competition.

This book is told in the third person perspective of Ray that makes it almost seem like a first person novel. Through this perspective, often through flashbacks, we learn of Ray’s guilt over the death of his high school girlfriend Marletta who died in a car accident while Ray is driving. Even though Ray was not at fault, he did not fight his conviction and imprisonment when the girl’s grief-stricken state trooper father framed him. Ray’s inner struggles are the best part of this book especially when he later meets Michelle in a Doylestown book store and struggles with finding the strength to become a better person and develop a meaningful relationship with her.

Ray also struggles in his relationship with his now dying father Bart but is fortunate and definitely appreciates the love and support he has received from Bart’s live in girlfriend Theresa. Theresa, who Ray sometimes calls “Ma” stays to raise Ray after his father is sent to the prison in Chester. Theresa’s positive influence on Ray becomes more evident as Ray struggles with his personal decisions about his future.

Dope Thief is one of the best first novels I have ever read and possibly the best, rivaling my favorites by Michael Connelly (The Black Echo), Steve Hamilton (A Cold Day in Paradise) and William Kent Krueger (Iron Lake). I was surprised to find that Dope Thief missed being nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, or Barry awards for best novel or best first novel in 2010. Dennis was nominated in 2010 by Spinetingler Magazine in the New Voice novel category but lost to The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville.

As I was reading Dope Thief, I was reminded of George Pelecanos’ The Way Home, another excellent book I had read several weeks prior. In both books, a young man struggles to find his way toward a better life, free of crime and drugs. However, Ray of Dope Thief grows up in a much more difficult home with a mother who gives up on him and a father who spends most of the time in jail, while Chris Flynn of The Way Home grows up in a fairly normal middle class home with parents that try to help him to succeed.

Since I’m from the Philadelphia area I was more impressed about the negative aspects of the area that fortunately I have not had to experience. I’ve driven by the prison in Chester where Ray’s father is incarcerated without giving it much thought other than being surprised at how nice it actually looks from the outside (except for the barbed wire…) However, I never had to visit anyone there or had to go visit my own or anyone’s child in a reform school that is just a few miles away. I’ve been very fortunate with my family but Dennis Tafoya in writing The Dope Thief made me realize it even more. Of course, the Delaware County portion of the Philadelphia area (where I have lived all of my life) has many great places and not just the prison, reform schools and drug dealers depicted in this book. Maybe I need to talk to Dennis about these nice parts the next time I see him. They are not so interesting though to a crime novelist I guess. Dennis does portray his own Bucks County much more favorably and I certainly enjoyed reading about the various parts of that area.

I became interested in Dennis Tafoya after seeing him at Noircon in Philadelphia in November, 2010 and then even more so after reading his story, “Above the Imperial” in Philadelphia Noir. I enjoyed the story and actually edited out a discussion of the story in the review to keep it from getting too long. I was certainly expecting to enjoy the book and expected to read about crime, death and the ugly parts of Philadelphia but did not expect the book to be as well written and deep as it is. I’m glad I still have The Wolves of Fairmont Park (2010) to read, and hopefully many more future books.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 16 readers
PUBLISHER: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (April 28, 2009)
REVIEWER: Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dennis Tafoya
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Philadelphia Noir

The Way Home by George Pelecanos

Bibliography:

Found in these collections:

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