Somebody Dies

Re-Kindling Interest: Dark Side of the Morgue by Raymond Benson (The Rock 'n' Roll Detective's Greatest Hits)

2012-01-25T06:02:00.000-05:00

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

A blonde wearing sunglasses and a big, floppy hat has been killing members of Chicago's prog-rock scene (known locally as "Chicagoprog"), and Zach Garriott (guitarist and vocalist for the seminal bands North Side and Red Skyez, but gone solo since 1980) wants Spike Berenger's help finding the suspect — he's on the list. The trouble is, the main suspect is Sylvia Favero, and she's been dead since 1970.

Dark Side of the Morgue is author Raymond Benson's second Spike Berenger novel. This Kindle edition (called The Rock 'n' Roll Detective's Greatest Hits) contains it and the other two, A Hard Day's Death and On the Threshold of a Death for less than the price of one of the original paperback editions.

P.I. Spike Berenger used to be in a progressive rock band called The Fixers, but they didn't last long (though they still have some devoted fans). Now Berenger and his partner Rudy Bishop run Rockin' Security, a service for the music industry. Berenger also has his private investigator's license because it sometimes helps with business. Suzanne Prescott, a former Goth devotee now into Transcendental Meditation (T.M.) and martial arts, is his investigation partner.

Berenger, a little bored with his current caseload involving Iggy Pop's dogs and Debbie Harry's landlord, decides to take the case, partly because he's friends and former colleagues with many of the participants. Here, Benson's knowledge of the prog-rock industry serves him well (he wrote The Pocket Guide to Jethro Tull and is himself a composer and songwriter).

After a long exposition introducing character relationships and band histories, Benson's feel for the high points brings authenticity to the story and never feels just like some guy trying to write a rock novel. (A Chicagoprog "family tree" at the front of the book is great for reference, and the table of contents is actually a "track listing" of song titles.)

Dark Side of the Morgue is funny, disturbing, and filled with deep knowledge of the music industry and abnormal psychology, all combined to make a really terrific read that I wanted to pick up whenever I had a free moment. It is assembled from P.I./thriller tropes we've seen many times before, but Benson has put them together in a way that feels fresh and original, and results in the reader responding to them as if they were brand new.

My only real complaint is that protagonist Spike Berenger is the least interesting person in the book. But Berenger's transparency allows the supporting characters to truly shine (for example, in how Prescott's T.M. skills actually figure into the plot instead of being just an interesting character quirk). Benson obviously spent a great deal of time developing his musicians' relationships and histories, and the hard work pays off as Dark Side of the Morgue is an engrossing read that is as much for rock fans as it is for fans of conventional P.I. novels.

Re-Kindling Interest: The Words by Douglas Clegg (novella)

2012-01-23T06:05:00.001-05:00

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

The new ebook explosion has been great for the novella. Previously only to be found in limited editions in the small press or in anthologies, this former bastard of the literary world has finally found a form in which it can thrive.

This is not only good for the authors but also for readers who may have missed out on hidden gems like this one (originally published in Four Dark Nights).

Douglas Clegg's The Words is a real stunner. In fewer than a hundred pages, Clegg creates a mythology, ages it, and sets its destiny in motion via two teenage boys, Dash and Mark, and their poorly chosen selections of reading materials.

Once Dash initiates the events, only Mark can stop them, but he can't for the life of him remember the words Dash begged him not to forget. Oh, he can remember the names that started it all, but those foreign-sounding words continue to escape him.

Clegg creates real tension, even during the flashback scenes used to explain the history and lead up to the present. Using the novella form to its utmost, The Words could have been told no other way, and I'm glad to see that it may finally find the audience that missed it the first time around.

Bad Juju: a little something for the weekend

2012-01-21T05:00:00.002-05:00

First off, Bad Juju is available from the Amazon Kindle store this weekend, January 21 and 22, for free! If you were hesitant to try it out, now's the time.
Also, Walt Hicks, the publisher of the original paperback edition, reminisces about Bad Juju in his review of Randy Chandler's latest novel, Daemon of the Dark Wood:
It's hard to believe that almost exactly a decade ago I was searching high and low for that perfect first novel for HellBound Books Publishing. Looking for something original with a fresh voice, but also a real page-turner, I sifted through over a hundred 'first three chapter/synopsis' packages, many quite well-written, most of them starring ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and other auld beasties; the vast majority showcasing hordes of vampires in every conceivable shape, stripe and configuration.

One day, I opened an e-mail, quickly buzzed through the cover note, started the chapters, and ... wait. I think I may have something here. Quickly followed by: How the hell is this NOT published already? I immediately fired off an e-mail request for the complete manuscript. Within a few days' time, I knew I had that elusive first novel for HellBound: Bad Juju by Randy Chandler.
Read the rest of the review over at Hellbound Times.

My Latest Project

2012-01-13T05:15:00.000-05:00

For the last several months, I and my colleague at Acid Grave Press, David T. Wilbanks, have been working steadily on getting a new edition of Randy Chandler's novel Bad Juju ready for publication. And now it's out on Amazon. (Other stores will follow.)

More info at the Acid Grave Press blog.

2011: The Year in Review(s)

2012-01-02T20:32:00.000-05:00

A Girl Called Honey, So Willing, and Sin Hellcat by Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake
Christmas Crime: Damon Runyon, Douglas Lindsay, and Tom Piccirilli
Quarry's Ex by Max Allan Collins
True Detective, True Crime, and The Million-Dollar Wound by Max Allan Collins
Return to Perdition by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty
No One Will Hear You by Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens
The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Volume 3: Encore for Murder by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane
Rio Loco by Robert J. Conley
Fear Me by Tim Curran
Merkabah Rider: The Mensch with No Name by Edward M. Erdelac
The Brave by Nicholas Evans
Street Raised by Pearce Hansen
The Cheaters by Orrie Hitt
Cattle King for a Day by L. Ron Hubbard
Shaken by J.A. Konrath
Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale
The Big Blow by Joe R. Lansdale
Sineater by Elizabeth Massie
Terrible Thrills by C. Dennis Moore
The Quickie by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
The Silent Wall and The Return of Martin Palaver by Peter Rabe
Game of Chance by Frank Roderus writing as Guy Brewer
Black Hills by Dan Simmons
Kiss Her Goodbye by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
Blood Born by Matthew Warner
Dawson Black: Retail Merchant by Harold Whitehead
The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltserman

Christmas Crime: Damon Runyon, Douglas Lindsay, and Tom Piccirilli

2011-12-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

If you're at all like me, when a holiday season rolls around, you like to gear your genre-fiction reading toward material with that theme. Where horror dominates Halloween, the Christmas season seems to focus on crime.

I first came across this seemingly ironic pairing in an anthology entitled Murder for Christmas, which still graces my bookshelf, waiting patiently through the other eleven months for me to pay it due attention each December. This book also has the special honor of having introduced me to Damon Runyon via "Dancing Dan's Christmas," which is not only an excellent example of Runyon's style and sense of humor but also holds up to annual rereading.

"Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a yarn (and Runyon's stories often feel like yarns) of getting one up on the coppers. It's a nice little holiday tale filled with Runyon's wonderful humor, sly references to crimes "not" committed by the narrator, and quite a good deal of the Christmas spirit. When a story contains a drunk in a Santa suit and still has an O. Henry–style happy ending, you know you're in the hands of a skilled writer. Murder for Christmas is out of print, but "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is currently available in the Penguin Classics edition of Guys and Dolls and Other Writings.

From upstart publisher Blasted Heath comes Douglas Lindsay's latest in his series of Barney Thomson, the "renegage barbershop legend," The End of Days, a novella set during December 2009. Carnage seems to follow Thomson wherever he goes, though Thomson directly causes none of it.

In The End of Days, at the same time Britain's Prime Minister hires Barney to do his hair ("He did Blair's hair at the last election. And he did the First Minister in Scotland a while back. He has form. Get him down here") — despite a warning that "death, murder, slaughter, blood, horror, mutilation and genocidal abomination are sure to follow" — someone starts killing off members of Parliament at an alarming rate.

As the PM is more concerned with how his hair looks at each speech he gives — "I want a haircut that transcends hair. That's what Gandhi had. He had a haircut that didn't even need hair. I want something like that, but a haircut that doesn't need hair but has hair anyway" — Thomson becomes his advisor during one of the worst times in Britain's history, culminating in a planned invasion of the United States! This combination of serial killer and political satire makes for great reading.

Where The End of Days ends on Christmas Day, author Tom Piccirilli's "noirella" You'd Better Watch Out begins there, as the narrator watches his father brutally murder his mother on that holiday. (Piccirilli's time working in the horror genre comes in handy here.)

Soon, he begins working for mobster Johnny Booze, who trains the kid to be a torpedo (hitman) of the highest order, while the kid readies himself for the day his father is released. The tension Piccirilli weaves throughout the story is sometimes nearly unbearable, showing how he's one of today's top noir-fiction writers.

Piccirilli uses the Christmas theme well, as nearly every important event occurs on or around that day as the years pass. You'd Better Watch Out is certainly not a feel-good read — though there is a genuine soft spot at its center — and it is perfect for those not looking for some relief from the usual tidings of comfort and joy.

(And after you've read all three of these stories, be sure to add The Thin Man to your annual slate of holiday viewing, even if only for the scene where Nick Charles tests out his new air rifle — on the Christmas tree ornaments.)

Happy holidays!

Creative Spirit by Scott Nicholson now an e-book (revised edition of The Manor)

2011-12-05T22:59:00.000-05:00

Creative Spirit is Scott Nicholson’s revised edition of the 2004 U.S. paperback The Manor. Scott is the Kindle-bestselling author of 12 novels, including The Red Church, Disintegration, Liquid Fear, and Speed Dating with the Dead. Connect with Scott on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter — or via his blog, website, or Amazon page.

Creative Spirit: A paranormal thriller by Scott Nicholson

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost at Korban Manor. She’s compelled to visit the historic estate to face her destiny and the fate of her soul.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to the manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban's form out of wood, he is swept into a destructive frenzy that even Anna can’t pull him from.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

"Scott Nicholson explores the dark legends of the southern end of the Appalachian mountain chain, a nightmare country that ends in Stephen King's yard."-- Sharyn McCrumb, author of The Ballad novels

View or sample Creative Spirit at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Kobo, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads. Look for Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear from Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint.

Re-Kindling Interest: The Big Blow by Joe R. Lansdale (historical novella)

2011-12-05T22:29:00.000-05:00

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

I've long been a fan of author Joe R. Lansdale's work, and I'll be the first to shout his talents from the rooftops. But even I was impressed when I read The Big Blow when it came around in rotation on the Free Stories section of the his website.

This novella just may be a perfect story. Set during the Galveston hurricane of 1900, it offers action, sex, violence, cleansing, redemption, and a small dose of history, peopled with typically Lansdalean characters.

Centering around a boxing match between John McBride and "Lil" Arthur Johnson (later to be called Jack), it's a real action piece, flying past like a roundhouse punch. The characters and setting feel impressively realistic, and the plot is entirely believable.

Having enjoyed it so much the first time, I read The Big Blow again with relish when it was released in the author's collection Mad Dog Summer and Other Stories. It was even better the second time around, and I'm excited to see it available once again as a reasonably priced download. I'm not much for re-reading, but The Big Blow is one that I look forward to revisiting repeatedly.

Fear Me by Tim Curran (horror novella)

2011-11-17T06:20:00.000-05:00

Danny Palmquist is the new fish at Shaddock Valley maximum security prison. He tells his cellmate, Romero, that he's innocent, that Danny's brother committed the murder Danny was convicted of, and that if anyone bothers Danny while he's in stir, his brother will take care of it.

Romero is incredulous at first. But soon, Danny is targeted, and then the attackers die gruesomely, at night, after lockdown. And it can't be Danny because Romero, sleeping on the bottom bunk, knows Danny never left their cell.

But something else did. Something that frightens Romero like nothing ever has before. So much that he couldn't even bear to look at it.

Fear Me is the first Tim Curran book I've read after last year's The Corpse King, and I really must not leave such a gap in the future. Curran really has the chops.

He manages to seamlessly combine a darkly realistic prison setting with Lovecraftian horror, people it with believable and interesting characters, and tell it in short chapters with speedy prose. Even when I knew what was happening, Curran's skill at suspense made sure I wanted to know what would happen next. Fear Me pulled me along with its narrative force and left me satisfied but wanting to read more of this amazing author's work.

Return to Perdition by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty (graphic novel, Road to Perdition sequel)

2011-11-14T06:27:00.000-05:00

With Return to Perdition, author Max Allan Collins and artist Terry Beatty conclude the saga begun by Collins and Richard Piers Rayner with Road to Perdition. It not only brings the story back to the graphic novel (sequels Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise were prose-only novels) but also reunites Collins with Beatty in their first comic collaboration in 15 years. (Though Beatty did the cover to the Ms. Tree novel Deadly Beloved and illustrated the Jack and Maggie Starr novels, including Strip for Murder.)

While previous Perdition graphic-novel "sequels" (collected in Road to Perdition 2: On the Road) essentially expanded on the original storyline involving Michael O'Sullivan and his son, Return to Perdition picks up where Road to Paradise left off, including the illustration of a climactic scene from that book. (If you feel a little lost by not having read those books, do so; they're some of Collins's best and most personal work.)

Return to Perdition follows Michael Satariano, Jr. — spoken of but, if memory serves, never "seen" in Road to Paradise — as he is rescued from a POW camp in Laos and recruited by the Justice Department as an assassin targeted on organized crime. He trains at the FBI academy at Quantico but even more rigorously than the special agents, with a fringe benefit of his assignment being his chance to avenge his family's murder.

It's great to see Collins and Beatty together again in this form. Their classic Ms. Tree comic is terrific and influential, and their skills at their respective arts have only deepened over time. Return to Perdition is a fantastic way to end a series that I've been reading and rereading for years.

Top MFA Programs for Genre Writers (from guest blogger Emily Matthews)

2011-11-08T05:02:00.001-05:00

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming writer Emily Matthews to the pages of Somebody Dies. An MFA applicant herself, she has offered to share some of her knowledge with other genre-fiction writers.

For all the arguments for and against obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, one of the greatest concerns among authors is choosing the right program. This concern goes beyond simply choosing between a program that is geared toward fiction or poetry.

In the past, creative writers who wanted to explore the depths of certain genres such as mystery and thriller novels had every right to be skeptical about the value of MFA programs. There was a prevalent notion that MFA fiction programs shunned genre writing in favor of highbrow literary drama and writing for the performing arts. What’s a genre fiction writer to do when you’re searching for a master's degree program to practice your craft? Don’t give up hope.

While it’s true that masters of literature such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan, as well as acclaimed screenwriters such as Darren Starr and David Benioff, graduated from MFA programs, authors of thrillers and mysteries can definitely find a program geared towards their chosen genre. Authors of mysteries and thrillers who are looking to create suspense will find that there is an MFA program waiting for them.

The MFA program at the University of Southern Maine has an option for popular fiction writing. The school not only welcomes burgeoning writers of mystery and thriller novels, it actually encourages them to market their work.

Science fiction and techno-thriller authors are gladly accepted at the University of Kansas and its esteemed James Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Genre fiction is actually a graduate course for writers attending the North Carolina State University MFA program.

Taking a critical look at the professors teaching at specific MFA schools can shed light on their inclination towards genre writers. At Florida International University, Les Standiford has been at the helm of the creative writing program for decades. He is well known for his crime and suspense novels based in Miami, and he even gave Raymond Carver his first writing gig. Adam Baron, who teaches at the prestigious Kingston University London, is a thriller and crime writer whose work has been serialized for BBC Radio.

Writers of mystery and thriller novels do not have to jump from one workshop to sharpen their skills and become masters of their craft. In terms of cultural standing, the MFA programs above recognize that mysteries and thrillers have an important place in the world's literature. Entering the right MFA program is a great opportunity for authors to become the next Michael Crichton or John Grisham.

Emily Matthews is currently applying to master's degree programs across the U.S., and loves to read about new research into health care, gender issues, and literature. She lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.

Ten Great Western Novels (top 10 best of list)

2011-10-23T21:49:00.000-04:00

My friend and co-editor of Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories, David T. Wilbanks, asked for recommendations of some good Western novels. Here's the list I gave him. They're in no particular order (except the order in which I thought of them).

I was rather pleased with what I came up with, so I thought I'd share it here. There will surely be contention with some of my choices, but I greatly enjoyed them all, and I think they display the genre's breadth of possibilities.

True Grit by Charles Portis
Beyond the Outposts by Max Brand
The Goodnight Trail by Ralph Compton
Shane by Jack Schaeffer
.45-Caliber Firebrand by Peter Brandvold
Rio Largo by David Robbins
Six-Gun Caballero by L. Ron Hubbard
Death Ground by Ed Gorman
The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton
The Big Fifty by Johnny D. Boggs

Another fantastic book, which takes place in the West in the early 1900s (and thus isn't a traditional "Western"), is The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner.

Crime Fiction and Literary Merit: the Debate (from guest blogger Anthony Garcia)

2011-10-08T23:08:00.000-04:00

Does crime fiction have literary merit? The debate over the place of crime fiction has raged for as long as the existence of crime fiction coincided with attempts to define literature or create a literary canon. The debate has recently grown in intensity, with graduate programs in literature often discouraging students to study the genre. Crime fiction is often the center of controversy, with avid readers defending its literary merit. The fact is that this debate speaks more to the prejudices of those criticizing it than to any merits in the fiction itself.

As a genre, crime fiction encompasses a huge number of subgenres. The noir crime stories of Raymond Chandler are examples of crime fiction, as are the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie and the social commentary one can find in John Grisham’s works. In fact, the first question one has to ask is what precisely is “crime fiction”? Crime fiction can in fact cover many story styles from traditional detective fiction to police-centered and character-driven stories.

These subgenres thus make it difficult to pigeonhole crime fiction into any easy form — unlike the Western genre, for example, crime fiction cannot be restricted to a given time or place. Hard-boiled private eyes and grim noir storylines occupy the same “space” as lighthearted legal romps. Thus, trying to apply any single definition to crime fiction is an exercise in futility. This can sometimes lead people to assume that the genre as a whole has little literary merit.

It is also important for this debate to understand what the term “literary merit” means.

Literary merit includes:

A work that is enduring rather than ephemeral. Many best sellers are forgotten a week after their first run — works with literary merit continue to be remembered long after they have been published.
The literary classic has important commentary about, or illumination of the era it is set in. Stories with literary merit are not simply imaginary stories, but works of art that can be examined on a number of levels. For example, Little Women is a classic for the way it uses that family to tell us about the world they lived in.
Literary classics are also written to the highest standards, involving fully realized characters and story-lines. Of course this can be very much a matter of personal choice, which demonstrates one of the problems of trying to define what has enough literary merit to become an enduring classic.

By those standards, the answer is yes, crime fiction can have literary merit. Crime fiction can be both about crime and society. The noir genre of crime fiction was not just about crime, but the cynicism and hypocrisy of society and how it often influenced the less wealthy.

Many crime fiction pieces are not simply stories about crime, but ask questions about race, class, corruption, and honesty in political and legal systems. Crime fiction has the ability to cast a critical light on our modern society.

In addition, the impact of crime fiction can be enduring. The influence of the noir, police thriller, and legal drama subgenres on public attitudes and views is easily equal to any other genre. Crime fiction set in the 1960s continues to be cited in examples of ethnic and racial attitudes from a time of often-violent flux, while modern crime fiction makes enduring statements about the place of greed in our society.

The debate about crime fiction may continue, but that should not decrease the literary merit given fiction of any genre that has the power to impact society. It may be that crime fiction's focus on the seedier side of our culture makes some reluctant to give it the recognition which it deserves, but it still deserves to be discussed and noticed. After all, any view of our society would be sadly incomplete without looking at the parts we are less than proud of, but crime fiction is nonetheless part of our shared heritage, and provides a wide selection of works with undeniable literary merit.

Re-Kindling Interest: True Detective, True Crime, and The Million-Dollar Wound by Max Allan Collins (Nathan Heller series of historical private eye novels)

2011-10-01T21:21:00.002-04:00

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print novels that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Though they've been out of print for most of the last decade, I was happy to learn that Amazon's new mystery imprint, Thomas & Mercer (named for the cross streets where the offices are located) would be reprinting all of author Max Allan Collins's Nathan Heller novels. Now they're available in trade paperback and e-book formats.

Recently, the first book in the series, the Shamus Award–winning True Detective, was promotionally priced at $0.99 and shot to #1 on the Kindle charts. As of this writing, it's still at the reasonable $1.99: an easy impulse buy.

True Detective is a stunning mix of fact and fiction. The setting is 1930s Chicago, and Collins paints the city of that time with a bold brush. Nathan Heller is a city cop who gets roped into a messy situation by his fellow officers. When he ends up killing a man with the same gun Heller's father used to commit suicide, Nathan's own, that's the last straw that leads to Heller's quitting the force, despite the efforts of the higher-ups to get him to reconsider.

But working as the president of your own detective agency (called "A-1" so it will appear first in the telephone directory) is by no means boring — not when your best friend is Eliot Ness and you have connections to Frank Nitti, Al Capone, mayor Anton Cermak, Walter Winchell, George Raft, and a young future actor who goes by the name "Dutch" Reagan. (Gangster John Looney, whom Collins would feature in Road to Perdition fifteen years later, even shows up.)

Collins took five years to research the place and time, and this, combined with his immense storytelling skill, make True Detective an immersive experience. The World's Fair comes alive in his hands, as do the characters, who have never seemed so real (even in The Untouchables) as when they are dealing with the fictional Nathan Heller.

The Nate Heller series continues with True Crime, also the second book in the "Frank Nitti Trilogy." Taking place just months after the events in its predecessor, True Crime centers around the famous killing of gangster John Dillinger in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater. (Manhattan Melodrama was the picture that he, a girlfriend, and the famous "Lady in Red" had just seen.)

Nate has just begun a relationship with renowned feather/bubble dancer, Sally Rand, when a man comes into his office asking Heller to find his wife. How this connects with Dillinger, and how Heller then gets mixed up with Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker and her boys, and J. Edgar Hoover is a narrative of historic proportions.

True Crime was originally meant to be part of True Detective, but Collins realized that what was supposed to be a novel was slowly turning into an epic, and that cutting the entire Dillinger plot was what was needed. So, when the editor who bought the first asked if Collins had ideas for a sequel, he had an instant answer.

The accuracy of Collins' details and the amount of research done to get the facts right (sources are named in the back) are an example of the dedication Collins has to his craft. That he is able to whip up a plot that uses these facts, but does not rely on them for a crutch, while inserting a fictional character into the midst of the fracas, is nothing short of remarkable.

Collins sends Heller off to war in The Million-Dollar Wound, the third in the series to be nominated for a Shamus Award. (Note: The title refers to a war wound that gets a soldier sent home, but doesn't kill him.)

A little male pride, some misplaced patriotism, and a few drinks too many land Heller, too old for the draft, in the Marine enlistment office in 1942, right alongside best friend and ex-boxer Barney Ross. Far too soon after, they find themselves smack dab in the middle of Guadalcanal Island, surrounded by "Japs" and fighting death in both its projectile and contagious forms.

An especially bad case of malaria finds an amnesiac Heller back in the States with a fuzzy memory but a thriving investigation practice, and a request to testify against Frank Nitti, now in control of the territory left vacant by Al Capone's prison sentence. The story quickly flashes back to 1939. Those used to the linear narratives of the first two novels in the series, and their relative chronological proximity to each other, may be thrown by The Million-Dollar Wound, which takes place nine, then six, then ten years after the events in True Crime.

The Million-Dollar Wound was Max Allan Collins's most complex novel, both emotionally and narratively, up to that point. The weight of the combat experience weighs heavily on Heller's mind throughout the remainder of the novel, especially the bad dreams he has involving a fellow Marine's death by "friendly fire." Did Heller fire the fatal shot? He can't remember. This lends a gravity to this third entry that only enhances the reading, offering a deeper sense of character through Heller's reaction to the truth.

This Frank Nitti trilogy is only the first three novels of this long-running series of "memoirs," which includes the most recent novel, Bye Bye, Baby, wherein Nate Heller investigates the death of Marilyn Monroe. Also upcoming are two collections. Chicago Lightning contains all the Heller short stories produced throughout the last 30 years, previously collected and uncollected. Triple Play contains three Heller novellas written to date: “Dying in the Postwar World,” “Kisses of Death,” and “Strike Zone.”

The Spy Books They Didn't Want You to Read (from guest blogger Dee Mason)

2011-09-29T05:34:00.001-04:00

Today, I'm honored to welcome guest blogger Dee Mason to the pages of Somebody Dies with some insight on a few books that some governments tried to have quashed. It seems quite appropriate since this is the American Library Association's annual observance of Banned Books Week.

The Spy Books They Didn’t Want You to Read

Over the years there haven’t been many better ways to promote your book than by getting it banned. It just seems that anything that a government decides people shouldn’t see suddenly becomes the only thing they want to see. In the case of books, because they contain so much info and have such power to inform, there have been countless cases of their being simply too risky or packed with "sensitive" info.

Spy books are a prime example here; more specifically, the books that have been written by spies that divulge specific information about the world of spying and the upper levels of government. There have been quite a few examples of governments' deeming a spy-related book to be too sensitive or deciding that it gives away too much. Thankfully for you as the reader, a lot of them made their way to the public. So, without further ado, let’s get moving on our examples of spy books they didn’t want you to read.

Spycatcher by Peter Wright (1985)

This book’s full title is Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, and it’s a prime example of what happens when a government tries to ban a book. The autobiography was written by Peter Wright in 1985; he was the Assistant Director of MI5, the British intelligence agency.

The book chronicles Wright’s attempts to track down a Soviet mole within the MI5, and goes into a great amount of detail about what he did and how he did it. He also discusses, in detail, the goings-on at the intelligence agency on a day-to-day basis. Because he was the Assistant Director, he had an unprecedented level of access to the MI5’s infrastructure: something the government quickly decided was a danger.

The book remains banned in Great Britain but has been published in Australia and the USA — giving Brits easy access, if they want it (which, of course, they do).

Operation Dark Heart by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (2010)

Operation Dark Heart is the memoir of U.S Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and gives an incredibly detailed account of his five months spent in Afghanistan. This book is notably more controversial at time of writing because the conflict in the Middle East is still ongoing, meaning the U.S government is always trying to protect its image and the pictures painted of this conflict.

The book was technically published twice: the first was approved with minor changes by the U.S Army and a limited number were made available. Following this, other departments in the U.S government decided that there were certain passages in the book which were too sensitive for general release. They then censored the book even more and re-published it. The problem was that the original had become a collectors' item, and the public had a thirst for the unaltered edition. This led to its being released on multiple websites in its entirety, and prompted an official statement on the matter from the U.S Army.

The Big Breach by Richard Tomlinson (2001)

Richard Tomlinson was an MI6 officer who was put into prison in 1997 for breaking the Official Secrets Act when he provided an Australian publisher the outline of a book he wanted to write. The book, which would eventually become known as The Big Breach, was a detailed account of Tomlinson’s experience within the British secret service, and as such contained a lot of sensitive information.

The fact that he was actually imprisoned for simply providing a synopsis of the content is a testament to how volatile the content was, especially in the late 1990s. During his imprisonment, Tomlinson actually completed the book and eventually published it in Russia. It became a sought after item, especially in the UK, and in the end MI6 allowed the book to be published in England, but withdrew all of Tomlinson’s rights to the profits.

This didn’t stop the book from selling, though. Finally, after so many years of strife, MI6 agreed to release the funds back to him and stated that they "overreacted." To this day, The Big Breach remains one of the most popular "whistleblowing" spy books of all time.

The Cheaters by Orrie Hitt (Stark House Press, paired with Dial "M" for Man)

2011-09-25T22:39:00.000-04:00

The first of the two novels in this "sleaze classics" release from Stark House Press, The Cheaters, is also the one many followers of author Orrie Hitt consider to be his best. (The second novel is Dial "M" for Man, and the book also contains an introduction by Brian Ritt and an afterword and bibliography by Michael Hemmingson.)

Clint and Ann are a couple of kids from adjacent Beaverkill farms who started dating when he was 20 and she was 16. (Their families are apparently close, as Ann's father got one of Clint's sisters pregnant.) Now Ann is pregnant and they had to leave the Catskills due to lack of work, so the couple need money.

On their second day in Wilton, opportunity knocks for Clint in the person of Charlie Fletcher, owner of a dive in The Dells that also operates as a cover of sorts for a group of prostitutes. As he puts it, "I wanted a job tending bar about as much as I wanted three legs in my pants but when you've got ten bucks in your pocket and a girl waiting for you in a rented room you don't argue with anything that comes your way."

Especially when it pays seventy-five dollars a week. But little does Clint know what a monkey wrench this particular bartending job is going to throw into his life, such as it is. Fletcher is looking to get out of the business, and his wife Debbie is looking to get away from Fletcher. Meanwhile, crooked cop Red Brandon lets it all go on as long as he gets his cut... until he takes a particular dislike to Clint because Clint has something he wants.

Given Hitt's reputation as the "Shabby Shakespeare of Sleaze" (as the afterword by Hitt fan and pastiche artist Michael Hemmingson calls him), I was expecting a prurient read of little to no real quality. The pure novelistic skill Hitt displays in The Cheaters was a very pleasant surprise.

Not only does the story move, rarely pausing to let the characters take a breath, but I also actually cared about Clint's success. Even though I didn't exactly like him, I wanted him to do well, just because he seemed to be up against so many obstacles.

Hitt throws so many potential pathways in front of him that the book could have ended in any of a dozen ways, and the one chosen is just as good as any of the others... if not better, given the general tendency toward darkness in the crime genre. I'm excited to have discovered a new author and subgenre to pursue. Once again, a Stark House Press is more than just entertainment; it's an education.

Quarry's Ex by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)

2011-09-20T05:44:00.000-04:00

Her upper lip curled at little. "You know what your problem is, Jack? You don't know whether you want to fuck me or kill me."

"Is there an all-of-the-above?" I asked her.

Before he was a hired killer, the man later known as Quarry — back then, he was Jack — was killing for the Marines in Vietnam. On arriving home a day earlier than expected, he found his wife with another man. Later, he went looking for the guy and killed him, but the District Attorney recognized Jack's war record, and the possibly accidental nature of the death, and decided not to prosecute.

That still left Jack on his own, with no marketable skills except one. Enter the Broker, who saw emerging talent in "Quarry" and hired him for contract killings for years (see The First Quarry), until he betrayed Quarry and had to be gotten rid of. But not before Quarry found the Broker's list and decided to go into business for himself (see Quarry in the Middle).

Now he uses the list to locate the Broker's former employers, follow them around to identify their targets, then offer his own services to the target to eliminate the threat. It's entrepreneurship at its finest: find a need and fill it.

This time, the killer is Nick Varnos, a specialist in "accidental" death, and the intended victim is film director Arthur Stockwell, shooting the sequel to his surprise hit (in the burgeoning home-video market) Hard Wheels. A pretty straightforward job, it seems, until Quarry meets Mrs. Stockwell, who just happens to be the former Mrs. Quarry....

Quarry's Ex feels as if it were written in 2 or 3 fevered sessions. That's how fast it moves. Author Max Allan Collins seems to save his tightest prose for this series, and this is no exception. The character also allows Collins to let loose with some of his darkest, crudest, and funniest one-liners.

And this time, Collins also gets to use his experience writing and directing independent films like Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life to give the novel detailed atmosphere. Posing as Jack Reynolds, unit publicist, Quarry gets unfettered access to the film set, cast, and crew — including full access to some.

Collins sets up the time period with flair, peppering references to the Reagan/Carter election and the growing video industry, as well as dropping the names of current films like The Empire Strikes Back and The Shining. But mostly readers will be glad to see Quarry once again up to his old tricks — this time with an emotional twist — in Quarry's Ex.

As an aside, I want to mention that I noticed something in particular about Quarry for the first time. He takes in a showing of The Long Riders. He spends some time in the john with Elmore Leonard's Valdez Is Coming. And he is just about to watch a Randolph Scott film when he is interrupted. Who knew Quarry liked Westerns?

Re-Kindling Interest: Sineater by Elizabeth Massie

2011-09-13T06:08:00.001-04:00

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print novels that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Author Elizabeth Massie's debut novel is like nothing I've ever read, and yet it is familiar enough to not be too challenging to the average genre reader. Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for first novel, Sineater utilizes the popular Southern gothic style to expound on a little-known legend in a highly imaginative manner.

When residents of the small town of Ellison die, their friends and family place small meals on the chests of the deceased. Joel Barker's father, Avery, then comes out of the woods -- where he has been relegated to live during the day -- and eats the food, symbolically devouring the sins of the deceased and allowing their souls to ascend to heaven.

Legend has it that peering into the eyes of the "sineater" -- even via a photograph -- will cause the looker to view all of the sin that has been eaten, and subsequently either go crazy or simply die from the shock. Therefore, due to their connection with one who is perceived unclean, all of the Barkers are ostracized from the rest of the town, especially by Ellison's resident spiritual mother: Missy Campbell.

But all this is merely background to understand the core story of Sineater: Joel's coming of age. Joel is an outcast trying to fight his way in, while everyone else, including the other members of his family, are doing their best to keep him out. And someone is invested enough in the Barkers' outcast status to begin a regimen of "punishments."

Luckily for Joel, there are a few townspeople who are brave and caring enough to ignore the rules, but when the punishments become personal, Joel's support system crumbles and causes him to take action. Along the way, he gains insight into some previously unanswered questions and learns a lot about his family and himself in the process. (It is a coming-of-age novel, after all.)

At least a hundred pages too long for the story to support, Sineater keeps the reader involved through the use of present tense. Most often utilized for its sense of immediacy, writing in the present tense is difficult to execute successfully. However, Massie pulls off its use in this novel beautifully and invisibly. I was halfway through the book before I even realized it, which just goes to show how well-suited it is to this author and story.

That, in addition to the fact that the climax is a pulse-pounder that could even make me forget that I was riding the commuter train on my way to work, makes sure that all is forgiven and that Sineater comes highly recommended.

Guest Blogger: Kelley Armstrong, author of Spellbound (Savannah Levine/Otherworld series)

2011-09-02T05:33:00.002-04:00

Today I have the honor of once again welcoming author Kelley Armstrong to the pages of Somebody Dies. (Regular readers may remember her interview with author Marjorie M. Liu back in July 2010.) Armstrong's latest book in her Otherworld series is Spell Bound, the second to feature Savannah Levine as narrator.This time, Kelley comes to us to talk about something close to the hearts of all writers: getting published.

Luck, Talent & Timing

Last month I did my annual stint teaching dark-fantasy writing at the University of Toronto. Now I’m in Melbourne, getting ready to speak to aspiring writers at the Romance Writers of Australia conference. And despite the fact that I’m halfway around the globe, there is one question that will remain the same, one question I cannot answer. “Why am I not getting published?”

If it’s a new writer, there’s an easy response: Just give it time. Writing is like any other craft. It takes practice, and you can’t expect success on your first book.

But often the question isn’t coming from new writers. It’s from people who have been practicing—for years, writing book after book, getting feedback, doing everything they can to improve. They win contests. They get positive rejection from agents and editors (yes, there is such a thing as a positive rejection!). They are so close. And yet the offers—of representation or, better yet, publication—elude them. Family and friends, once encouraging and supportive, begin to quietly suggest they take up a new hobby. Their dreams teeter on the cliff, one small nudge from falling and shattering. And all they want is for someone—an agent, an editor, an author—to tell them what they’re doing wrong. Just tell them, and they’ll fix it.

If only it was that easy.

I’ve been there. I’ve teetered on that edge. I’ve raged that my writing is horrible and I’ll never be published and I should just stop trying. I’ve even thrown a manuscript into a fireplace…a grand gesture somewhat weakened by having backups on my computer. So how did I finally get published? Did I practice until I wrote the perfect book that agents and editors just couldn’t refuse? No. I broke in the way most writers do—by keeping at it until I floundered onto the perfect intersection of luck, talent and timing.

For me, talent equals craft. Craft, as I said, is about practice. Write, write, write some more, and eventually it doesn’t suck. My luck came when an instructor offered to recommend my work to an agent who turned out to be a perfect match for it. As for timing, that was also luck—I wrote a book that I thought was unmarketable, and the market just happened to be ready for it, primed by a resurging interest in paranormal fiction.

If asked how I got published, I’ll say, “I just got lucky.” But that’s a lie. I didn’t just happen to sit down and write a book and sell it. I had a lifelong dream, and I gave it everything I had. I wrote as often as I could. I joined writing groups. I took courses. I read voraciously. I experimented with genre and form. And you can bet I wouldn’t have thrown that manuscript in the fire if I didn’t know I had backups. So how did I get published? The same way I’m trying to stay published: perseverance.

If you’re trying to get published, keep trying. Keep writing. And keep trying to get published—it’s the only way you’re going to hit the luck and timing parts of the equation.

If you know someone who’s trying to get published, this blog is for you, too. Support them. Encourage them. Understand that it’s not all about talent. If they’re in for the long haul, be there for them. They’ll need it.

Thanks to Kelley Armstrong for sharing her experience and knowledge. Spell Bound is out now and is available in hardcover and for the Kindle.

The Last Lullaby directed by Jeffrey Goodman (starring Tom Sizemore and Sasha Alexander)

2011-08-17T03:55:00.000-04:00

The Last Lullaby (2009). Screenplay by Max Allan Collins and Peter Biegen, expanding on Collins's Quarry short story "A Matter of Principal."

Fans of Max Allan Collins's Quarry character have been waiting for a movie starring their favorite hired killer since he debuted in the 1970s. It took thirty years, but it's worth it. The Last Lullaby is here, and it's definitely a Quarry film, though the lead character isn't named "Quarry" (Collins wants to retain the rights to the name, so filmmakers can't make "sequels" without his input).

Retired killer Price (Tom Sizemore), on one of a string of sleepless nights, drives to a nearby convenience store and follows two suspicious characters to a kidnapping site, where he rescues the victim ... sort of. Six months later, he's offered $1 million for one last job: kill a librarian with ex-boyfriend troubles. But he gets emotionally involved, which puts them both in danger.

Collins's Quarry short story "A Matter of Principal" (upon which the first part of The Last Lullaby is based) was made into a short film by director Jeffrey Goodman. (This short film is available on the DVD Shades of Noir, available in the Max Allan Collins's Black Box DVD set.) Collins liked the short so much, he allowed Goodman to expand it into a feature, provided Collins was involved in the scripting.

An early draft of Collins's initial script was novelized by the author and published as part of the Hard Case Crime line as The Last Quarry. Readers of that novel will find a similar tone and characters but some significant differences made in turning the story into a mainstream (if independent) film. For example, co-screenwriter Peter Biegen was evidently brought in to punch up the love story. (Collins's novelized version is much tougher.)

What really makes The Last Lullaby work, however, are the lead performances by Sizemore and Sasha Alexander, who plays the librarian. Tom Sizemore's stony countenance betrays selective emotions, letting his eyes do the acting. And Sasha Alexander (Rizzoli & Isles) is an intelligent beauty with her own secrets.

A veteran of mostly television work, Alexander holds her own opposite Sizemore, and one hopes that The Last Lullaby allows her to possibly break out from the small screen. Goodman understands human drama and the complexities of male-female relationships and lets this carry the viewer along as events conspire against the couple.

Sizemore gets to show his tender side as one half of a potential couple of loners who aren't young anymore and really want to impress each other. Both actors bring incredible sexual magnetism. At the same time, it's incredibly sweet to see a romance between two such people treated with realism and delicacy, making The Last Lullaby a surprisingly good option for a date movie, even given its unremittingly dark storyline.

Re-Kindling Interest: A Girl Called Honey, So Willing, and Sin Hellcat by Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake (early pseudonymous novels originally by "Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall" and "Andrew Shaw")

2011-08-08T23:58:00.002-04:00

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print novels that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2010. Reprinted with permission.

Authors Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake met while both working for Harry Shorten at Midwood writing soft-core sex novels. Block was impressed by a line in one of Westlake's novels written as Alan Marshall, then Westlake overheard a conversation Block had with his agent. Later, they introduced themselves and were friends for fifty years, until Westlake's death at the end of 2008.

These three novels are the only ones Block and Westlake ever collaborated on, two under their respective pseudonyms for Midwood, Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall, and one as Andrew Shaw. They discussed the prospect in later years of working together again (specifically a Bernie Rhodenbarr/John Dortmunder crossover), but alas, it never came to pass. Luckily, these books are now available for much cheaper than they could be found on the collectors' market.

A Girl Called Honey centers around the semi-innocent Honour Mercy Bane, whose parents kick her out on her sex-loving kiester, causing her to begin selling her ware in a brothel as "Honey." Richie Parsons is a petty thief in the Army who finds it difficult to keep his favorite hobby under wraps in a closely watched barracks.

Gone AWOL (he knows they can't get him for desertion if he keeps his uniform), he meets Honey and their relationship progresses from business to pleasure — until his fear of capture makes him more a liability than an asset, and another client tries to make his way into Honey's top spot. Then a single event has universally tragic consequences, with an ending easily as shocking as that of Block's later novel Mona (reprinted as Grifter's Game).

In So Willing, Vince is frustrated. He learned early on the skills to get a girl to go all the way, and he's decided to use them to bag his first virgin. But after numerous disappointing surprises, he discovers that you can't really tell a virgin from a more experienced girl. "Her own statements ... were worse than useless" and her actions, reputation, and appearance can also be misleading. So he decides to take a different approach and gets much more than he expected.

Sin Hellcat focuses on Harvey Christopher, husband to the frigid Helen and current paramour to Jodi, a working girl whom Harv went out with in college and who now makes a good living on her back. They "reminisce" for a while, getting reacquainted with each other's outer selves, until a business associate of Jodi's tries to blackmail Harvey, and Harvey responds in an unexpected way, inadvertently making him the ideal candidate for what comes next.

The three novels are all a lot of fun, especially when read with the knowledge that Block and Westlake alternated chapters. Block began A Girl Called Honey, Westlake began So Willing, and Block won't tell who wrote what in Sin Hellcat — since he was quite proud to discover that their styles mesh remarkably even now.

One gets the impression that the authors got a great deal of amusement from taking off on each other's plot twists and especially from getting rid of characters created by the other when they began to annoy. The books are full of little in-references (one character signs a hotel register as "Andrew Shaw") and throwaway jokes (like calling a town Modnoc; read it backwards) that only add to the entertainment. All in all, Block and Westlake have nothing to be ashamed of with these early novels, and their fans will be glad to see them back in print, if only so that they can generate royalty checks once again.

Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale (Hap Collins and Leonard Pine series)

2011-07-24T07:16:00.000-04:00

In this fourth book from Joe R. Lansdale's popular crime-fiction series featuring Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, Bad Chili, we find the two best friends discussing Leonard's latest breakup with his on-again/off-again boyfriend, Raoul (and how Raoul had hooked up with a leather-clad biker) when the pair are attacked by a rabid squirrel.

Hap gets the worse end of the deal: the rabies. Since his insurance won't cover the shots as an outpatient, he finds himself spending eight days in the hospital, where the only good thing that happens is his meeting a cute nurse named Brett.

Leonard doesn't even stop in for a single visit, and when Hap asks a friend to check on him, he finds out that the biker has been killed and that Leonard is the prime suspect. Leonard admits to everything he is accused of — except for the murder itself; he was too busy running for his life from the biker's other biker buddies.

Bad Chili is shelved in the mystery section, which makes some sense given that there's a crime or two to be solved and since Lansdale won an Edgar Award for his novel The Bottoms. (One portion of the pair's investigation concerns a series of secret videos, something Lansdale would revisit 15 years later in Leather Maiden.)

But the main appeal of Bad Chili is not the mystery, which you'll likely forget about until it's brought up, but the characters and their relationships to one another. (Speaking of characters, there's one mean son of a bitch in here like I haven't seen since "The Night They Missed the Horror Show.")

I feel that Joe's novels should be on a special shelf reserved for writers who can portray Southerners accurately but without being hyperbolic or insulting. I know people just like the ones in Bad Chili; I grew up with them, and Lansdale is the only writer I've seen really get them right.

Lansdale's humor is dark and deep-fried. I especially like how he captures the pretend-gay jokes between close guy friends. But there were many times that I laughed out loud at a single turn of phrase; Lansdale's country homilies are familiar yet original and sometimes outrageous.

And he has an inimitable way with a simile... or a metaphor... whichever one starts with "like." Like this one from Bad Chili: It was late April and unseasonably hot, like two rats in caps and sweaters fucking in a wool sock under a sun lamp. (I think it's a simile, but I always forget. I know my "who" from my "whom," though, and a hawk from a handsaw, so don't feel too bad for me.)

For those who prefer audiobooks, reader Phil Gigante does marvelous work with this series. By that I mean that he is invisible as both Hap and Leonard. Gigante seems to understand their needs just from the dialogue. This is more evidence that Lansdale's writing is deceptively skilled: it flows like water, but it's obviously very carefully crafted.

Guest Blogger: Kempton Mooney, author of The Committee

2011-07-20T05:50:00.000-04:00

Today I have the honor of welcoming author Kempton Mooney to the pages of Somebody Dies. Mooney is the author of the recent novel, The Committee, available currently at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

There are apartment buildings in New York that function like small towns. Towns some people live in all their lives while others cannot wait to get out. Developers see opportunity, and so do the criminals.

The Committee is set in such a building. It is claustrophobic and broken and makes its mark on the people who pass through it. The setting, like any, is a reflection of its inhabitants. Its atmosphere shapes them, and its walls narrow their perspective until they cannot see past.

The building itself has a history like any character. It has been burned and flooded, and the old-timers like to sit around and remember the interesting bits: the gambling, the gangs, the fights.

Newcomers like to learn the stories but become impatient once they know them. The newcomers do not need to relive the tales over and over. They want to have other things to do, important problems to solve, a murderer to catch. They want to make their own stories.

The old-timers are different. Some worry, but it is almost so that they have something to do. The newcomers can see this future ahead of them, and their fear sets them against each other. Where they are, they realize, is a place they are not ready to be yet. The building is a destination. It is a place to die.

The crisis for all the characters starts with the building. It is a tool in some's hands, and others must react to it. The building claims the first life. From the beginning it is wielded against its tenants.

But even with warnings of the trouble ahead, no one wants to leave. No one wants to be forced. Each individual wants to make a choice and demonstrate some measure of power. The question to be answered is do they have what it takes to fight for it.

*****Kempton Mooney is the author of The Committee and several non-fiction books on art theft. He lives in New York where he has worked in the publishing industry for the past ten years. For more information, you can visit his website, KemptonMooney.com, for an assortment of stories, essays, audio recordings, and plenty of opinion.

The Committee is a novel of murder, deceit, and greed in New York City.

“A cocktail of noir and classic mystery with a cast that sticks in your head. You'll look over your shoulder for days.” —Des Hammond, Creative Loathing

“A world of palpable mistrust and paranoia, a world of flawed and forgotten souls drawn from the greats. The streets are the ones you have walked down, the people are those you have passed, and Mooney shows you how they live.” —Alex Friedman, editor of Shot in San Francisco

Dawson Black: Retail Merchant by Harold Whitehead

2011-07-13T06:08:00.001-04:00

I have to admit that when I saw the title of this book at Project Gutenberg, I thought it was going to be a parody of some sort, the title playing in my head as read by a deep-voiced radio announcer. But the introduction by author Harold Whitehead quickly put that idea to rest, as it was obvious that this assistant professor of Business Method at the College of Business Administration at Boston University had serious intentions: to illustrate to those who feel that business is not a place for creative endeavor that the opposite is in fact true.

And Whitehead does his job admirably in what is, I believe, his only novel. It is hard to find much information about him online, but he seems to have been best known for his nonfiction writing on business, including a popular, long-running column called "The Business Career of Peter Flint" (a collection of which is advertised in the back pages of Dawson Black: Retail Merchant.

It is the story of a young and ambitious businessman, tired of working as a clerk, who buys a local hardware store, and his varying levels of success as he learns business management the hard way: on the job. Black is a clever fellow full of creative marketing ideas. His direct competitor, Stigler, is not happy about his new competition, however, and is determined to knock the youngster down a few pegs.

Luckily, Black left his previous employer (Barlow, the market leader by a long shot) on good terms, and the kindly gent is free with guidance. And Black has his highly supportive wife, Betty, to comfort and advise him as well.

Whitehead tells an absorbing yarn of drummers, jobbers, and endless opportunities told through the first-person experience of the title character. Dawson Black: Retail Merchant is one of the best books I've read this year, both in its narrative energy and its informative power.

Rio Loco by Robert J. Conley (Barjack series Western)

2011-06-27T05:48:00.000-04:00

When local outlaw Owl Shit Johnson commits his latest murder, he makes the mistake of doing it right in front of the town's marshal, Barjack. Owl Shit is used to being bailed out by his brother, Chugwater, but Barjack can't be bought off. He might be prone to extreme violence and heavy drinking, but the marshal of the town of Asininity upholds the law.

Because of a promise made to their mother to take care of his little brother, Chugwater is determined to break Owl Shit out of Asininity's jail before the county judge arrives to sentence Owl Shit to be hanged. And Barjack is determined that the murderer will be face his punishment. This results in an "irresistible force"/"immovable object" fight of near-epic proportions.

Author Robert J. Conley is a three-time winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and his character Barjack is one of the most entertaining I've encountered. He has his own way of doing things, and his code is not above using dynamite to make a point when the outlaws just don't seem to get it.

Barjack tells the story, and his voice is its primary appeal. But I was never once bored, even though Rio Loco (whose title, strangely, never appears in the text) is mainly an attack-and-defense story all the way through. Chugwater hires cowhands to do his dirty work, and Barjack deputizes a selection of trusted gunmen and -women to defend their post at the jail.

Each must try to outshoot or outwit the other to get his way, and neither is willing to give up his own, to the death. The fact that both are fighting for his own deeply held moral code — Chugwater's promise to his mother, Barjack's upholding of the law — makes it hard to feel that either is completely "wrong."

Conley peoples this mostly traditional Western with interesting characters and balances moments of shocking carnage with others of light humor, so the reader never knows what to expect. This gives Rio Loco a very modern appeal. I liked it so much that I immediately acquired a copy of the preceding volume in the series, Barjack and the Unwelcome Ghost, available in both ebook and mass-market paperback — for a limited time, I'm sure — for around a buck and a quarter.

Blood Born by Matthew Warner (reproductive horror)

2011-06-17T05:37:00.002-04:00

Daniella Connolly was on a date with boyfriend Eric Gensler when he tried to go too far with her. She ran away. Soon after, she was knocked unconscious and brutally raped. Gensler was immediately suspected, especially since his filed-to-a-point canine tooth seemed to be the source of nasty bites on Daniella's neck and shoulder.

Daniella's mother, Dr. Margaret Connolly, is a fertility specialist at the CalPark Fertility Clinic. Her supervisor's work in the experimental wing is so top secret that Margaret's supposedly all-access key card won't let her in.

When Detective Christina Randall gets involved with Daniella's case, she gets a big surprise. Daniella is only the latest woman to have been raped in a series of assaults. These have all resulted in pregnancies that are progressing at over 30 times the normal rate.

In just one week, during which the new mothers emaciate to astonishing proportions, the "baby" is born: a pseudo-primate whose first meal is the meatiest parts of Mommy. After another week, the new addition is fully grown and ready to start its own horrific procreation spree.

(Author Matthew Warner's regular readers may recognize Detective Randall from his first novel, The Organ Donor. And CalPark was featured in his second novel, Eyes Everywhere. I haven't read the former, but the latter is a truly excellent psychological thriller.)

Warner manages something all-too rare in modern horror: he writes about extremes without any trace of his tongue in his cheek. Every horrible event in Blood Born is told completely straight, even the ones that in other hands would be ridiculous. All disbelief is suspended as Warner takes his readers on a ride unlike any they've been on before. His combination of intelligence and confidence lets you know you're in solid hands, so you can just let him do his thing.

This results in a 500-page horror festival that flies by as Warner takes the reader into new territory. I sometimes wanted to stop and look around at all the details -- Warner is especially deft with all the medical information required for the plot to make sense -- but the narrative drive of Blood Born is such that it quickly became clear who was at the wheel, and it wasn't me.

Small press horror novels are numerous, and it can be hard to know which ones are worth your time, but my experience with the work of Matthew Warner -- with Eyes Everywhere and Blood Born in particular -- shows that he he delivers intelligent, visceral, and psychological horror of dependable high quality.

He seems to be always testing himself, not content with delivering another version of his last book. His book of essays, Horror Is Not a 4-Letter Word, displays his knowledge of the genre, inside and out. It sounds like a product endorsement, and I guess it is: Matthew Warner is a brand you can trust.

For more on Blood Born, read Matthew Warner's guest blog here on Somebody Dies.

The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltserman (quiet horror)

2011-06-04T00:19:00.000-04:00

Jack Durkin's family has been taking care of the menace in Lorne Field for three hundred years. Every day, he spends twelve hours extracting the plantlike Aukowies that continuously sprout from the ground. To the untrained eye, they look like simple weeds, but Jack knows that if allowed to grow, they become uncontrollable, ambulatory, and a threat to every living thing on the planet.

For a long time, the caretaker of Lorne Field was given a great deal of respect from the local residents. But this generation seems to have not been told of the importance of the position, because everyone below retirement age thinks Durkin's job is at best "a quaint tradition" and at worst a waste of the $8,000 annual stipend paid for by their taxes.

Durkin's first-born son, Lester, who is contracted to take over the job when he turns 21, is tired of being mocked (and called "Weedpuller") by his friends. And Durkin's wife, Lydia, is tired of barely scraping by on $8,000 a year — which was a lot of money when it was contracted for in 1869 but is half what Lester says he could make at McDonald's.

Lydia wants her husband to quit the ridiculousness and get a real job. And Jack wants to prove to the town that the blood-thirsty beasts he kills for twelve hours a day, six months a year, aren't just weeds.

The premise of The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a highly original one that grabs the reader from the first page. Author Dave Zeltserman also grounds his admittedly fantastic novel with fully human and relatable characters, especially Jack, whom you can't help but sympathize with as he meets persecution from almost everyone.

Belief in the Triffid-like Aukowies isn't necessary to the enjoyment of The Caretaker of Lorne Field, as Zeltserman leaves the truth open to interpretation. The appeal of the novel is in its ease of delivery, its confident voice, and its perfect length: relatively short for a modern novel.

Zeltserman has made quite a name for himself in the crime-fiction genre with his novels Outsourced, Killer, and Pariah among others. He shows an equally skillful hand at quiet horror with The Caretaker of Lorne Field.

Guest Blogger: Matthew Warner, author of Blood Born (horror novel)

2011-05-31T05:58:00.002-04:00

Today I have the honor of welcoming author Matthew Warner to the pages of Somebody Dies. Warner is the author of a short story collection (Death Sentences), two previous novels (The Organ Donor and Eyes Everywhere), and a collection of essays (Horror Is Not a 4-Letter Word).

I am currently halfway through his latest, Blood Born, and it is easily his best work yet, gripping, intelligent, and horrific.

"Where Ideas are Born"

by Matthew Warner

My story ideas are born any damn place possible. I’m not picky about those I raise to adulthood as long as I remain fertile. But you deserve a better explanation than that.

I conceived my most recent story while playing with my toddler son at the local tot lot. As I tried to keep him from picking up trash on his way to the playground’s slides, I noticed this hulking dude with tattoos beside a van. He was smoking a cigarette and watching my boy from behind mirrored sunglasses. Little warning prickles kept walking up my neck until Tattooed Dude turned to his child-snatcher van and hauled out . . .

Yep, you guessed it. A child. Probably his. They entered the playground and proceeded to have a grand old time on the swings.

When my shock wore off, I came home and wrote a short story that contains that scene.

So yeah, I’m a father. My life is Elmo, poopy diapers, and ultra-tight baby hugs around my windpipe. I therefore spend a lot of time thinking about children and parenting and all the stuff that can go horribly wrong. If Owen’s hand ever slips out of mine in a parking lot, I immediately flash to that scene in Pet Sematary where little Gage Creed runs into traffic to be creamed by a tractor trailer.

Is it any wonder, then, that my latest novel, Blood Born, deals with babies? Bad babies, of course. Babies conceived of brutal rapes and who come to term in just one week. Then eat their mothers. And grow to adulthood in just a few days to continue the cycle of rapes themselves.

Blood Born falls into a body of stories I’ve written about parenting. “Cat’s Cradle,” published last year at Horror Drive-In, deals with the consequences of letting your cat sleep next to your pregnant wife’s belly. (If your baby is born without a soul, don’t say I didn’t warn ya, okay?) “Maybe Monitored,” published in January at The Dark Fiction Spotlight, started when I thought I heard strange voices in Owen’s room through the baby monitor.

So that’s Matthew Warner’s Idea-Trolling Suggestion #1. It’s a variation on the old “write about what you know” chestnut: write about what’s occupying your thoughts.

There’s more to it than that, of course. I mixed some marketing considerations into Blood Born’s genesis. Such as, I wanted to reward readers of my previous novels by recycling a couple characters, namely Detective Christina Randall from The Organ Donor and the CalPark corporation from Eyes Everywhere.

I also wanted to write a horror story that appeals to women. That meant strong, female protagonists dealing with a situation that targets women. (And what could be more terrifying to a woman than rape?)

Sprinkled into that was my fascination with the Gaia theory -- the idea of the Earth as an organism -- and the paradigm of how a virus spreads. I learned in high school biology that when a virus invades a cell, it hijacks the cellular machinery to replicate itself, eventually causing the cell to explode and spread copies of the virus far and wide. I wondered how to represent such a thing if we took it up a frame of scale so that humans were the host “cells.” I concluded that a contagion spread by serial rapes and pregnancies was the logical choice.

Blood Born is also a monster story, and like most Americans, I grapple with the existence of our bona fide monsters: the Osama bin Ladens of the world. I learned while living in the Washington, DC, area during and immediately after 9/11 that when the shit hits the fan in the nation’s capital, the federal government doesn’t just respond by cleaning the shit off the fan blades. It stuffs a cork up the ass of every life form within 500 miles, declares a moratorium on farts and other airborne pollutants, and borrows $14 trillion from China to invade places suspected of harboring chemical toilets.

So, when a wave of strange animals starts impregnating every fertile woman in the DC area with creatures whom -- for lack of a better moniker -- the media label the Beltway Bigfoots, you can bet your bowel movements the government’s cure will indeed be worse than the disease, and, oh yeah, the baby will get thrown out with the bath water.

Man, I’m glad to be living in the Shenandoah Valley now. Here, a subway is just a sandwich shop. But I still get stressed out being a father to babies and stories alike.

Take a chance on my novel, will you? If you’re still hesitant, the first chapter and some awesome book trailers can be viewed at BloodBorn.info. And if that still doesn’t convince you, just lay your eyes on that sweet little boy pictured here with his daddy. You want him to eat, don’t you? I thought so.

Re-Kindling Interest: Street Raised by Pearce Hansen

2011-05-20T23:29:00.001-04:00

He pulled the straight shooter from his lips, torturing himself with anticipation as he watched a tiny tendril of crack smoke waver from the mouth end of the pipe. The scent of it excited him more than the sight of a naked woman as he watched the crack smoke dissipate into the air, a little piece of Heaven wasted. — from Street Raised

I believe the current e-book wave's greatest benefit is in how it allows books and authors that were neglected the first time around, another chance to get noticed. And I can't think of a single novel that deserves this second chance more than Pearce Hansen's Street Raised.

Originally released by PointBlank Press in 2006, it got terrific blurbs and subsequently great reviews. But it never seemed to find its audience. Now Hansen has released an expanded and improved version in electronic format. According to the author himself, the new edition of Street Raised is "a third longer than the original, with material based on several years of research to make the feral Bay Area of 1984 come fully alive as a character in and of itself."

What follows is my original review:

Few crime fiction writers have actually lived through the same events they put their characters through. For most, writing noir is an opportunity to experience illegal behaviors from a safe distance, things they would never dare to replicate because they don't have to. Pearce Hansen is the rare breed: he has run the same streets and struggled through the same precarious existence his characters do.  For Hansen, writing is a kind of catharsis: it helps keep the nightmares away.

From the bio included with Street Raised, we learn that Hansen was "functionally homeless at a young age," and that he did a lot of self-educating through reading a variety of books: "he counts Thucydides & Spillane, Dostoevski & H.P. Lovecraft, Dickens & Nietzsche among his dear dead friends."

Street Raised is his debut novel, but it is not the work of a beginner. Hansen has been honing craft in short-fiction circles (including the now-defunct Plots With Guns) for ten years, and it shows. The story of Speedy and the aftermath of his release from Pelican Bay State Prison (far too much happens for me to even attempt a summary) displays a sure hand that knows what a good story requires: relatable characters, detailed settings, a clearly defined arc, and a satisfying ending.

It is in the spaces between, though, where Hansen's experiences and innate knack for storytelling shine through: There is no distancing from these people; we get up close and personal with their ways of life. Street Raised is filled with situations that could only be described by one who has seen them happen up close.  That immediacy translates onto the page, resulting in at least one character who is thoroughly disturbing.

But make no mistake, Street Raised is not a memoir; that doesn't suit Hansen's needs here at all.  He simply brings the rawness, the grit, and the upfront humanity to a genre that has, over time, gotten far too glossy.  Hansen's unflinching (and completely engrossing) take will change how you feel about other crime writers.  Kudos to Hansen for writing what is without a doubt the most affecting crime novel of the year.

Kiss Her Goodbye by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Mike Hammer series)

2011-05-14T23:43:00.000-04:00

Only a telephone call from his best friend, police captain Pat Chambers, could bring Mike Hammer back to New York. There was simply nothing for him there anymore. And his health's not so great, either, after that firefight that ended in the death of Sal Bonetti and left Hammer with numerous pains, in particular a "hot spot" behind his ribs. So, he's been relaxing and recuperating in Florida and not missing the city a bit.

When Pat tells Mike that their pal Inspector Bill Doolan killed himself, Mike is on his way. After the funeral, though, something nags at Hammer, and he begins to have doubts. Sure, Doolan had cancer, and maybe he would want to do away with himself before the disease made his every living moment hell, but it's just not Doolan's style. And yet maybe it could have been his wish, given how he was living his final years as a playboy, to go out in a flash.

But when the corpse of Ginnie Mathes turns up and Dulcie Thorpe is hit-and-run'd right beside Mike, Hammer knows that, as unofficial as he wanted this visit to be, he'll have to break out the .45 and the porkpie and do what he does best. Only this time without his girl Friday, Velda.

Kiss Her Goodbye is the third Mike Hammer novel finished by author Max Allan Collins from documents in the late Mickey Spillane's files. The first two were The Goliath Bone and The Big Bang (with the non-Hammer Dead Street before that).

Collins has really hit his stride with this one. He captures the disco era skillfully, yet assures that it doesn't feel old or out-of-date to modern readers — though that didn't keep a Bowery Boys reference from eliciting a grin. Kiss Her Goodbye also serves up a superlative mystery that kept me guessing, sometimes even more after a question was answered than before, delivering a couple of really great twists.

There are several more unfinished novels and other works remaining in the Spillane archives, but Kiss Her Goodbye is at this writing the last Hammer contracted for. I for one am glad to see Hammer in brand new adventures, and I know many of you are, too. So let's keep him there. What this means is that, if you want to see more, you need to speak up with your almighty dollars. Accolades and passionate discussion are all well and good, but the only way the publisher knows that these books are in demand is if they sell.

Guest Blogger: Don Bendell, author of Strongheart: A Story of the Old West

2011-04-06T22:06:00.001-04:00

Today I have the honor of welcoming author Don Bendell to the pages of Somebody Dies. Bendell wrote 10 popular Westerns in the 1990s (the Colt series), but after the fall-off of Westerns, he switched to military thrillers. A real cowboy, he longed to return to writing Westerns.

He liked the name of his hero in Detachment Delta, Charlie Strongheart, so much that when his editor asked him to return to Westerns, Bendell said the first book would be named Strongheart. The author and his wife own the Strongheart Ranch in southern Colorado and have even registered the Strongheart brand.

Strongheart is centered around the Fremont, Custer, and Saguache Counties in Colorado territory in 1873. The story begins with an action-packed stage holdup on Copper Gulch Road and a promise made to a beautiful grieving widow to get back her stolen antique wedding ring. The promise is made by the tall, handsome Joshua Strongheart, a half-white and half–Sioux Indian Pinkerton agent. There are fights, chases, and shootouts from Canon City and Florence to Hardscrabble and Villa Grove in the southern Colorado Front range area.

The plot involves Strongheart couriering a letter signed by the President from the US War Department to Major General Jefferson Davis, who has captured Captain Jack of the Modoc Tribe. Captain Jack is scheduled to be executed by firing squad. Washington does not want the popular Modoc chief, who embarrassed the army eluding capture, to become a martyr, so the missive clearly directs Davis to assure that the chief and his followers get a public and fair trial.

The story also centers around the fact that Strongheart gave his word to a beautiful widow that he would get her ring back. He lives by the creed that a man is only as good as his word, and the storyline proves it as he hunts down the gang who robbed the stage, man by man, and survives gun battles, ambushes, and even has a run-in with a large grizzly bear.

In the process of all this, Strongheart falls in love with the young widow, but it is an unrequited love, as her husband has only been dead a year. She still feels a loyalty, and the highly principled Strongheart feels honor-bound not to proclaim his growing all-out love for her. Strongheart is full of action and suspense from cover to cover, and you’ll have to read it to see how Josh and the widow come out.

Read on for an excerpt from Strongheart...

The tall warrior grabbed his bag and headed to the nearby stream to bathe, clean off his war paint, and change clothes. The Lakota or Sioux and their allies, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, were meticulous about bathing and keeping clean, and he was amused how so many racist wasicun, or white men, used expressions such as “filthy redksins.” The Lakota actually viewed many whites as being very dirty and unkempt.

Thirty minutes later, he returned to the circle of lodges from the stream. Lila Wiya Waste looked at him approaching with a great longing. She wished he was not her first cousin, but wished more he would look at her the way the other braves did. He now was dressed in his normal manner of dress and looked like a totally different person, a white man, with Lakota features.

His long, shiny, black hair was no longer braided but hung down his back in a single ponytail, and it was covered by a black cowboy hat with a wide very flat brim and rounded crown. A very wide, fancy, colorful beaded hat band went around the base of the crown.

He wore a bone hair pipe choker necklace around his sinewy neck and a piece of beaded leather thong hung down a little from the front with a large grizzly bear claw attached to it.

His soft antelope skin shirt did little to hide his bulging muscles, and the small rows of fringe which slanted in from the broad shoulders in a V shape above the large pectoral muscles and stopping at mid-chest, actually served to accentuate the muscular build and narrow waist that looked like a flesh-covered washboard like the wasicun women used.

Levi Strauss had recently patented and started making a brand new type of trousers made of blue denim which whites were calling “Levi’s.” They had brass rivets and Joshua had bought a couple pairs from a merchandiser, who bought them himself for $13.50 for each dozen pairs. They were tight, and they too did little to hide the bulging muscles of his long legs.

Around his hips, Joshua wore his prized possessions, one a gift from his late-step-father and the other a gift from his late father. On the right hip of the engraved brown gunbelt was the fancy holster, with his step-father’s Colt .45 Peacemaker in it. It had miniature marshal’s badges, like his step-father’s own, attached to both of the Mother of Pearl grips and fancy engraving along the barrel. It was a brand new single action model made especially for the army in this year, 1873, and this one was a special order by his step-father’s friend Chris Colt, who was a nephew of inventor Colonel Samuel Colt.

On his left hip was the long beaded and porcupine-quilled and fringed leather knife sheath holding the large Bowie-like knife with the elk antler handle and brass inlays. It was left to him by his father.

He wore long cowboy boots with large-roweled, jingle-bob Mexican spurs with two little bell shaped pieces of steel that hung down on the outside of each from the hubs and clinked on the spur rowels as they spun or while he walked.

Because he had always been trained to keep his weapons clean and knife sharp, Joshua pulled the large knife from the sheath and examined the blade. As usual, it was scalpel-sharp.

Lila Wiya Waste, his cousin, handed him a cup of hot coffee from the large pot he gave her months earlier. He sipped the steaming brew and thought about his childhood quest to learn about his biological father and search for blood relatives.

His biological father, Siostukala, Claw Marks, had disappeared when Joshua was young and was a total mystery to him for many years. His mother would not tell him anything about the man, and Joshua quit asking, because tears would well up in her eyes every time his name was brought up. Joshua figured he must have caused her very painful memories. Asking when family friends were trading with the Sioux, he traveled to Lakota villages every chance he got to locate him.

Finally, at 16, he met his half-brother who grew up with Siostukala . His 13-year-old half-brother named Cate Waste, meaning “Cheerful,” told him how his father died a year earlier.

Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories now only $.99!

2011-04-01T06:30:00.001-04:00

Acid Grave Press must have spring fever because they've reduced the price of Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories, the story anthology I co-edited with David T. Wilbanks, to less than a dollar. Read on...

It's April, and throughout this whole month, Acid Grave Press's hard-rockin' horror and dark-fantasy anthology Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories is being reduced to the insane price of only $.99 from its original rock-bottom deal of $2.99.

So, for all you April fools who haven't yet bought a copy, snatch one now before the price goes back up in May!

This price reduction is primarily effective at Amazon (Kindle format) and Smashwords (other formats), but you may be able to find this lower price at your favorite e-tailer.

If you still need convincing, just check out these great reviews:

"One of the things that make having an e-reader worthwhile." — Dead in the South

"Heavy metal horror heaven." — Ginger Nuts of Horror

"A good variety pack of scary stories ... an easy read, and a satisfying one." — author Patrick D'Orazio

And here's another great review from Martel Sardina at Dark Scribe Magazine.

The Brave by Nicholas Evans (unabridged audio book read by Michael Emerson)

2011-03-25T22:51:00.000-04:00

Nicholas Evans, a British author with a fascination for the American West (he also wrote The Horse Whisperer), returns to his forte with The Brave. It centers on Tommy Bedford, a divorced documentary filmmaker with an estranged son, and Evans leaps back and forth in time as he covers different parts of Tommy's life.

The primary focus is on his childhood, including his time at boarding school, the dotage of his sister Diane — an aspiring, then famous, actress (then convicted murderess) — and her turbulent relationship with TV cowboy Ray Montane.

Montane is the star of Sliprock, and he's watching the coming end of the heyday of the Western — and watching his grip on Diane crumble under the weight of lies.

We also learn about Tommy's courtship of his wife Gina, which leads to marriage and the birth of their son Danny. In the present, Tommy is trying to reconnect with Danny after a long period of estrangement. Danny is an Iraq war veteran, a lance corporal currently under investigation by the Marines. Evans juggles a number of storylines without giving a single one short shrift.

All in all, The Brave is a satisfying, moving listen filled with genuine human drama. It will likely appeal to a wide variety of listeners, from fans of TV Westerns and classic Hollywood, to those who appreciate coming-of-age tales, picaresques, and mainstream literary fiction — old or young, male or female — because its main subject is families, both the ones we're born with and the ones we choose.

This isn't usually the kind of novel I seek out to read, but the Western connection intrigued me enough to begin it, and then I had to see it out to the end. Actor Michael Emerson (Ben Linus on Lost) does a fine job reading The Brave. His voices are sometimes indistinguishable, and his characters' accents seem to come and go, but his gentle narration allows the material to bloom.

The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Volume 3: Encore for Murder by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane

2011-03-11T21:24:00.005-05:00

This third volume of The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is the second to contain a "novel for radio" by Max Allan Collins (after 2010's Audie Award–nominated The Little Death). Collins continues to pore through the files of the late Mickey Spillane for gold nuggets, and this one, Encore for Murder, is expanded from a one-page outline.

Mike Hammer is hired to play bodyguard to ex-flame and former diva Rita Vance. Rita is taking a ride down nostalgia lane in the revival of her biggest success, playing George M. Cohan's wife in Mrs. Doodle Dandy.

But now she's receiving death threats, and she wants Mike and Velda to find out who is sending them. Mike's bodyguarding duties require Velda to do most of the footwork in this case, while he focuses on a more close-up investigation, so to speak. However, as always, things get a lot more complicated than they first appear.

Actor Stacy Keach once again takes the mantle and shows why he is Mike Hammer to many people. His line readings are effortless — all the right notes of righteous anger and sly humor seeming to slide out unbidden. Keach also executive produced this time around and, as he did with the previous outing, composed and performed the very noirish jazz score (with, of course, the exception of the Hammer "theme," Earle Hagen's "Harlem Nocturne") .

The terrific support from the The Little Death is back as well, with Michael Cornelison reprising his powerful turn as Pat Chambers and Franette Leibow serving up another three-dimensional Velda. Sometimes, in the novels, Velda seems a little hard to grasp, but Leibow makes you feel like you know her.

Collins himself also puts in a cameo appearance that just oozes creepiness, but it's in the writing that he really makes it count. Collins offers up some of his best work yet in Encore for Murder. On his blog, Collins noted that Stacy Keach "said I'd provided him with the best Hammer voiceover he'd ever got," and long-time fans along with new initiates will understand why: Collins really understands Hammer.

Max was a fan of Mickey's long before he was a writer, and it is this penetrating insight that gave Spillane the confidence to pass on his legacy. As Spillane reportedly told his wife Jane, "When I'm gone, there's going to be a treasure hunt around here. Take everything you find and give it to Max — he'll know what to do."

And here Collins again uses the audio format to its full potential, creating a fully realized "movie for the mind" that offers more than just simple escapism for two hours. Encore for Murder is yet one more fine addition to the Mike Hammer canon that shows not only was Max Allan Collins a good choice to carry on the legacy of Mickey Spillane, but also that no one could have done it better.

Shaken by J.A. Konrath (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels mystery series)

2011-02-26T14:02:00.001-05:00

Author J.A. Konrath has become quite well known of late as a vocal proponent of self-publishing in the electronic age, having sold multi-thousands of e-books for the Amazon Kindle (among other formats) with what seems like very little effort. His most famous works are his series of novels starring Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels, of which Shaken is the seventh.

Many opinions have been posed of the reasons for his terrific success, but reading this novel has given me the truth: Konrath writes a damned good mainstream thriller. Shaken covers four periods in the life of Daniels, all landmark events presented concurrently in alternating chapters.

This method makes things a little messy at first as each period gels in the mind. But once that happens, it's quite easy and effective to hop back and forth as the suspense builds in different eras.

The present period finds Jack bound and gagged in a self-storage facility as she realizes she's the latest captive of the infamous Mr. K., a serial killer she's been tracking for over 20 years. Konrath skillfully keeps his time periods connected with some overlapping events and keeps the pages turning — literally this time, as Shaken is being released in a print edition by AmazonEncore — with cliffhanger endings.

He combines mystery, horror, suspense, and humor in an engagingly dark carnival ride that can be enjoyed piece by piece or all at once. The ending of Shaken opens the door for the proposed sequel (Stirred, co-authored with Blake Crouch) while tying up all its own loose ends. Sometimes it seems like people become popular from little merit, but Konrath's success is one bandwagon it's safe to jump on.

2011 Audie Award nominations announced

2011-02-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

As a huge fan of audiobooks, we here at Somebody Dies would like to congratulate all the finalists for the 2011 Audie Awards. We'd particularly like to call attention to a couple of nominees that crossed our doorstep this year.

Nominated in the "Original Work" category:

The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Vol. 2: The Little Death, by Max Allan Collins from a story by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, narrated by Stacy Keach and a full cast, Blackstone Audio

And nominated in the "Science Fiction/Fantasy" category:

Feed, by Mira Grant, narrated by Paula Christensen and Jesse Bernstein, Hachette Audio

Best of luck to these two, and a big thanks to the Audio Publishers Association for sponsoring "the only awards program in the United States devoted entirely to honoring spoken word entertainment." It's a medium that is slowly growing in appreciation but that still has a long way to go.

For more information, visit the website of the Audio Publishers Association.

Will you win a copy of Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories?

2011-02-20T23:06:00.000-05:00

As it's Oscar season, it seems like a good time for a contest centered around my favorite Oscar-trivia question. It's my favorite because I thought I was the only person who'd ever been interested in the answer enough to ask the question. But this idea was proven untrue with a little Googling.

Either way, I'm sure some of you already know it, or are savvy enough to look it up. And I'm prepared to reward you for this meager effort with a copy of the e-book–only horror and dark-fantasy anthology Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories. (For more information and reviews, click to visit the Amazon page.)

Here goes:

As you may have realized, when actors cross over into directing, they are more likely to be awarded by the Academy for their directing than for their acting in the same film. Some examples include such Best Director winners as Kevin Costner for Dances with Wolves, Mel Gibson for Braveheart, and Clint Eastwood for both Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.

(On a side note, the same is true for actor/writers. Witness Oscars given to Emma Thompson for Sense and Sensibility, Billy Bob Thornton for Sling Blade, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for Good Will Hunting.)

In fact, only two actor/directors have directed movies that won them Best Actor Oscars. Your job is to name them and the film for which each won.

E-mail your four-part answer to craig [dot] clarke [at] yahoo [dot] com, with the subject line "LAM Oscar Contest," by March 1, 2011, to be considered.

The prizes are as follows:

Anyone who gets all four parts of the answer correct will receive a free copy of Living After Midnight in your e-book format of choice and free copies of Acid Grave Press's next two releases. (The first due out later this year and the second due early next year.)

Anyone who gets at least two parts of the answer correct will receive a free copy of Living After Midnight in your e-book format of choice and a free copy of Acid Grave Press's next release (due out later this year).

Anyone who submits an answer will get a copy of Living After Midnight.

Thanks in advance for playing, and good luck.

No One Will Hear You by Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens (serial killer thriller)

2011-02-13T21:53:00.000-05:00

This second in the new series from authors Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens starts much better than the first, which I wasn't all that impressed with. Nevertheless, I held out hope for the follow-up since other Collins series have only improved as they went along.

No One Will Hear You delivers on that promise with a fantastic opener that delivers thrills and introduces a killer's motives: reality show stardom. He's filming his kills so they'll be broadcast on J.C. Harrow's hit show, Crime Seen. Harrow's family was murdered the night he saved the President from assassination, and he subsequently launched Crime Seen to catch other criminals.

But now that his family's killer has been taken down — with the help of Harrow's hand-picked Killer TV crew — what is left? Even as he helps conquer a money-laundering meth lab, Harrow notes his lack of personal satisfaction — and that his team is not sure they want to go forward into a third season. Meanwhile, they're on the search of a serial killer the cops dubbed "Billy Shears" (a pun on the sharp instruments used to emasculate the male victims) even before the first victim has been identified.

No One Will Hear You is a considerable improvement over its predecessor, You Can't Stop Me, with more of what's expected from a serial-killer novel: the serial killer — either two sharing an M.O. of sharp implements and Rohypnol, or a single, bisexual murderer perpetrating both series of murders.

The truth turns out to be far more interesting in this fascinating new side to Max Allan Collins that will hopefully gain him even more new readers. No One Will Hear You contains instantly memorable chapters from a killer's point of view that are comparable to classic serial-killer novels like Shane Stevens's By Reason of Insanity, Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, and Michael Slade's Headhunter.

Early on, I was able to pause and savor both the style and substance of the book, but as events headed toward the unguessable conclusion, I grabbed every available moment to turn even just one more page in the excitement of the journey. Far exceeding my expectations, Collins and Clemens expand on the potential of their first J.C. Harrow book and produce what may become a classic of the serial-killer genre, continuing plot threads begun in You Can't Stop Me while solidly standing on alone in its cleverness and originality.

Collins has really been showing his range lately, from the light cozy series with his wife as Barbara Allan to finishing the posthumous works of Mickey Spillane in true hardboiled mode to touching on horror with the Harrow books written with longtime collaborator Matthew Clemens.

These co-writers allow Collins to produce even more work than usual, making 2011, the 40th anniversary of his first sale, a bang-up year with no less than 8 new books seeing publication (including the postponed Quarry's Ex). I'm really looking forward to it.

Black Hills by Dan Simmons (unabridged audio book read by Erik Davies and Michael McConnohie)

2011-02-08T22:06:00.001-05:00

Sometimes a book is simply so good that it exceeds my ability to write about it. Everything I write sounds dumb because it's just superlative, superlative, superlative, and it all gets redundant after a while. And often the best books are hard to summarize because so much happens in them that trying to outline it with any semblance of thoroughness is likely to give away surprises.

As you've probably guessed by now, Black Hills is one of those books. Dan Simmons is one of the most interesting authors writing today. You just never know what to expect from him, and his three most recent novels show this most admirably. They display the potentials of historical fiction in a way usually unseen in the work of a single author.

The Terror was pure horror about a stranded ship and the mysterious creature that stalks it, and Drood was a thriller concerning Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. Both were distinctly British.

Then came the last thing I expected: a Western. But Black Hills is really only part Western, with a twist. The opening is instantly engaging. As Paha Sapa, an 11-year-old Lakota whose name means "Black Hills" (a rare event as Lakota are almost never named after sacred locations), "counts coup" on the dying George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876, the ghost of the infamous commander invades the young Sioux.

Almost instantly, his head is soon filled by Custer's remembrances of his sexual dalliances with his beloved wife Libby. Custer's spirit fills Paha Sapa's nights with recitations (in the unfamiliar language of the whites) of all his memories. (If you ever wanted to hear a poetic play-by-play of Custer's dalliances with his wife, this is the book for you.) Paha Sapa will hear Custer's voice in his head for most of the rest of his life.

Black Hills jumps around in Paha Sapa's life, covering his name-change to Billy Slow Horse and Billy Slovak, his courtship with the beautiful Rain, his strife to solely destroy the three faces on Mount Rushmore before the fourth can be placed, his time in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and so many other events that they begin to run together.

Simmons is so interested in giving the listener the full scope of Paha Sapa's life that his writing sometimes gets in the way of his storytelling — much as his need to present all the facts often supersedes the development of his fiction. But in combining the two — in creating a wholly believable world wherein the grounded, the spiritual, and the made-up coexist seamlessly — Simmons produces in Black Hills a shining example of what historical fiction can achieve when approached with verisimilitude.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Terrible Thrills by C. Dennis Moore (horror short stories)

2011-02-03T21:38:00.002-05:00

For more of Friday's Forgotten Books, this week visit Sweet Freedom.

The best thing about electronic publishing is the opportunity for authors to get their out-of-print work available once again to readers in a way that gets royalties flowing in their direction. I am very happy to see that C. Dennis Moore has put his short-story collection Terrible Thrills up on Smashwords for $1.99. Here's the review I wrote back when it came out in 2005....

Author C. Dennis Moore definitely knows his way around a short story. His mastery of the form is especially evident in the two dozen examples comprising his debut collection, Terrible Thrills (as in "...'When worlds collide,' said George Pal to his bride, 'I'm going to give you some....'").

Conciseness is key in Terrible Thrills. Moore has selected only his shortest stores for inclusion: most are around eight pages, with a handful of flash pieces covering only half a page. It is difficult to decide which is more effective.

The flash fiction works like a sucker punch to the eye, but the longer stories — given Moore's economy with words — allow him to drag us through quite a range of terrors. For example, the title story is really two in one, connected by the premise of a Halloween CD with two troublemaking tracks entitled "Murder" and "Mayhem." It feels much longer, but only because so much happens.

Despite this choice of shorter fiction for Terrible Thrills, Moore does offer a glimpse of his facility with longer works. Two presumably unconnected stories, "The Strange Thing that Happened at the SpinCycle Laundry" and "The Salvation of Victor," come together within a third, "The Flesh-Method and Myriad." The ending of the latter makes me eager to read the forthcoming expansion of these stories, Revelations in the Season of the Bitch ("...sashay down the boardwalk, scurry to the ditch....").

As good as this whole collection is, some stories stand out about all the rest. "The Legend of Mr. Cairo" is one. It's not the most original selection in Terrible Thrills, but that's part of its charm. Its familiarity makes it memorable, the way Moore fulfills our expectations, instead of subverting them, and feels comfortable doing it. I like surprises, but in "Cairo"'s case, predictability works best.

A few more highlights include the personification of the seasons is "Winter's Reign." "Luck of the Draw" combines Shirley Jackson, the Grimm Brothers, and M. Night Shyamalan in a creatively derivative tale with a few surprises. "The Son of Man" dramatically illustrates a New Testament prophecy of the Second Coming (Luke 21:27, to be precise): "And they shall see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great power and glory." For three friends (who just happen to share their names with saints), it is doubtful whether their "redemption is near," or they're just in deep trouble of the worst kind.

Bodies that cannot be depended upon are the subjects of "Plaything" and "Parliament of Jim." While neither has a truly satisfactory ending, they were both thrilling reads and I especially enjoyed Moore's use of different fonts to represent different points of view. The aftermath of Mr. Seagle's wife Astrid's death from lung cancer also plays out in two very different ways in "Preparations" and "Astrid Like a Candle" — one darkly humorous, the other disturbingly scary.

But if there is a perfect story in Terrible Thrills, it is "Working for the Fat Man," which takes a universally familiar concept and gives it a hard twist while remaining faithful to the original feeling of the source. It combines the best parts of "unpredictable" and "not surprising," resulting in a feeling of inevitability, an utter "rightness" to all the events. Look for it to be anthologized for years to come.

The one thread that ties all the stories together is Moore's wonderfully skewed imagination. From the first paragraph, I was drawn in. Moore writes with a voice I know, his phrasings feel similar to my own, and this put me instantly at ease. The more he shocked me, the more I wanted to be shocked. I was ready to go wherever he wanted to take me — even to Enlil (and "Bob's Leg" will tell you all you need to know about that place). In short, reading Terrible Thrills is like being tortured by a good friend.

Author Patrick D'Orazio reviews Living After Midnight

2011-02-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

Patrick D'Orazio is the author of two novels (Comes the Dark and Into the Dark), with a third coming to complete his Dark trilogy. He has also written several short stories.

About Living After Midnight, he had to say:

"Each of these stories had their own magic to them, and given the theme, it allowed each other to tinker around and come up with something different at each turn. Demons and devils and angels and mythological creatures abound, along with good old fashion monsters. This is a good variety pack of scary stories for someone looking for just that — a wide assortment of horror with a supernatural bent, which almost all these tales have. I plowed through this book inside of a few hours — it was an easy read, and a satisfying one as well."

Read the rest of the review at his blog.

The Silent Wall / The Return of Marvin Palaver by Peter Rabe (also includes "Hard Case Redhead")

2011-01-31T05:56:00.001-05:00

Though they've previously reprinted ten other novels by author Peter Rabe, this volume is exciting news even for Stark House Press as it contains two works that have never been published in any form: the novel The Silent Wall and the novella The Return of Marvin Palaver. Sandwiched between the two longer works is the ultra-rare short story "Hard Case Redhead," which has not been seen since its original appearance in Mystery Tales Magazine. All of these will be welcome additions to the libraries of Rabe enthusiasts.

Because it was the shortest, I started with "Hard Case Redhead." This story is real shot-in-the-arm fiction, with two robbers kidnapping an accidental tourist on her way across their escape alley. The tension is high, the characters well drawn, and the insight is up to usual Rabe standards — all included in a package a fraction the size of the author's usual offering.

Stark House Press's regular proofreader Rick Ollerman steps up his participation (rating a special thanks from the publisher) with an incisive, though occasionally repetitive, introduction that displays his wide knowledge of the Rabe oeuvre. Ollerman's introduction is an even better advertisement for the other Rabe books in the Stark House library than the list in the back of the book.

The Return of Marvin Palaver is quite a departure for the author, giving the reader a supernatural revenge tale that uses dialect and humor to deliver its punch. "I died at the worst possible moment in life," Marvin tells us, "just when I was coming out even."

Just when he is about to pull a masterful schwindel on his nemesis, Sidney Minsk ("may he live to be a poor man forever"), Palaver drops dead on Minsk's office floor. Unwilling to let that be the period to his life, Palaver comes back down from heaven to manipulate events toward the ultimate revenge. The Return of Marvin Palaver is sure to leave a smile on the reader's face with its perfect plotting and characterization.

Sure to be the big draw in this collection is The Silent Wall. Radio man on a tanker, "Matty" Matheson finds himself once again in Sicily, in Messina near Forza d'Aguil, where he was stationed during the War. With a week to kill before the tanker is repaired, Matty decides to revisit his past and rents a Vespa to go "see how things have turned out — for her."

For some reason he does not understand, the Mafia now don't want him to leave and have sabotaged his exit. And to make things more complicated, the only person offering assistance is an innkeeper, Vinciguerra, who talks in riddles. The only real respite he finds comes in the person of the waitress Sophia, but any reader of noir fiction known you can never really trust the dames.

It's been almost forty years since the world has seen a new Rabe novel, and The Silent Wall was definitely worth the wait. It reads like the culmination of Rabe's career: a hardboiled story that depends more on the interactions of its characters than the machinations of its plot, their conversations holding as much appeal as their actions.

Never before have I found so engrossing a story where basically the same thing happens over and over again (Matty tries to escape and is foiled). The ending of The Silent Wall roughly switches gears, becoming a strange combination of sexy and confounding that nevertheless keeps the pages turning to the finish. Though I read the tales here in a different order than the publisher intended, I think I made the right choice as the quality seemed to get better with each one.

Living After Midnight co-editor David T. Wilbanks interviewed

2011-01-29T23:48:00.000-05:00

Dave gets interviewed by Neal Hock over at Bookhound's Den, and he mentions a little anthology that you may have heard of.

Merkabah Rider: The Mensch with No Name by Edward M. Erdelac (weird Western novella collection)

2011-01-26T22:19:00.000-05:00

This review is going to be pretty lame, but it has nothing to do with the quality of the book being reviewed (if such a word can be used here). It is purely due to my lack of organization. As an old-fashioned sort of fellow, I write out my reviews in longhand on a notepad, taking notes and fashioning opinions in the midst of reading the book.

Unfortunately, however, in the case of Merkabah Rider: The Mensch with No Name by author Edward M. Erdelac, after my review was written — but before I had the opportunity to transcribe it here — I lost it.

I was keeping it inside the book, as usual, and when I went to get the book and bring it to the computer, the paper wasn't there. Couldn't find it anywhere. I looked up and down for days. And, almost worse, when I attempted to recreate what I had written, I was unable.

But The Mensch with No Name deserves a review of some kind because it's quite a good read. If you enjoyed the first book in the series, the fantastic Tales of a High Planes Drifter (which made my Best of 2010 list) — and if you haven't read it, you definitely should before tackling this sequel — then you will enjoy this one.

If you're completely unfamiliar with the concept, read the review of that book for the basics, and transpose those superlatives to this one. With Merkabah Rider: The Mensch with No Name, Erdelac confirms my original impression that he has joined the ranks of Robert E. Howard (whose creation Nameless Cults is referenced, much like his "Kelly the Conjure-Man" inspired a tale in the first collection) and Joe R. Lansdale, two of my favorite authors and the kings of the weird Western. I look eagerly forward to further Rider adventures, and hopefully I'll be a little more careful with my notes next time.

Hard Case Crime discovery

2011-01-19T05:41:00.000-05:00

I was perusing the "stacks" over at Amazon and accidentally came across some interesting information. I looks like the first Hard Case Crime reprints under the new contract with Titan Publishing will be coming out on February 22.

I haven't checked each title individually, but a quick look over at the Amazon listings suggests that at least a dozen, and closer to two dozen, titles will be hitting store shelves once again. So, for those readers who have been waiting to catch up on their collection until the folks involved would actually get royalties for your purchase (and I know this includes quite a few of you), your wait will soon be over.

And it's a good thing that some catching up will be possible now, because the new books in the line — Christa Faust's Choke Hold (the sequel to the almost universally acclaimed Money Shot) and Max Allan Collins's Quarry's Ex (latest in the series that spawned the movie The Last Lullaby) — are still not scheduled to arrive until much later in 2011.

Game of Chance (Diamondback #4) by Frank Roderus writing as Guy Brewer (adult series Western)

2011-01-14T05:38:00.001-05:00

On the run from a rich Texan whose father he killed, Dexter Yancey and his best friend James are on their way to the Indian Nations. Dex is a gambler and con man. James is a former slave.

The duo are so inseparable that they even got the same education, and they both have surprises in their future — James because he's treated like nothing less than a human being, Dex because he's mistaken for a hit man. But the $3,000 fee from the fat man is too appealing to pass up.

Dex will, of course, do what he can to avoid having to actually earn that fee (and still keep it), especially when he meets the beautiful intended victim, widow Wilhelmina Stout.

Game of Chance is longer than the usual adult-series Western at 200 pages, plus it has the writing of author Frank Roderus (Charlie and the Sir) to recommend it. (Roderus wrote the entire short-lived Diamondback series under the house name Guy Brewer.)

The repartee between Dex and James sometimes feels forced, but they have genuine brotherly affection for one another. The main draw for this entry in the series, however, is that it offers up a surprising revelation about the main characters from an unexpected source.

Roderus seems to be striving for a level of character involvement here, and actually using the series format for long-term story development, something I had heretofore not seen in this genre. That, along with the talents of its author, is enough for me to recommend Game of Chance.

Another great review of Living After Midnight

2011-01-12T13:26:00.004-05:00

We've got another great review for Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories, this time from Ginger Nuts of Horror.

He uses the phrase "heavy metal horror heaven," which is pure heaven for this co-editor. And he says "the hit rate is just perfect," and that he found it hard to single out favorites.

He calls Steven L. Shrewsbury's "Black Sabbath" an example of "how zombie stories should be written"; says "Spooky Tooth" by Randy Chandler is "excellent"; and especially lauds Kent Gowran's "Motorhead" as a "hard fast paced balls to the wall story," with a note that Kent's presence on a book's table of contents will guarantee future purchases.

I'm really glad to see that readers are responding to these Hard and Heavy Stories the way my co-editor Dave and I did when we first read them. It is my hope that the book inspires readers to check out more from these terrific authors.

Just as a reminder, Living After Midnight is still available for only $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, Kobo, Sony, and Smashwords.

Living After Midnight reviewed and featured

2011-01-10T21:25:00.002-05:00

The new horror/dark-fantasy anthology I co-edited with David T. Wilbanks, Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories, has received its first review from Dead in the South.

The reviewer strongly recommends it, and says that "It’s one of the things that make having an e-reader worthwhile." He also singles out Kent Gowran's story, "Motorhead," as a "great pulp crime story [with] adrenaline mixed with its ink."

We're also featured over on author Scott Nicholson's Indie Books Blog with a short interview. Be sure to check out more of both sites.

In addition to Amazon, Diesel, and Smashwords, Living After Midnight is also now available on Sony, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

The Quickie by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (unabridged audio book read by Mary Stuart Masterson)

2011-01-07T07:20:00.001-05:00

On her way to give her husband Paul a sexy surprise for lunch, Lauren Stillwell instead see him leaving his office building with a corn-fed blonde on his arm. She follows them to a hotel, and this discovery — and Paul's lying about it when confronted — turns her into a woman bent on evening the score, literally.

It was just supposed to be a quickie, but Lauren's retaliatory assignation ("Paul and I had once had a sweet sex life.... But being with Scott was life-threatening") quickly turns to murder when one of her lovers kills the other as she watches through the window into the dark, rainy night. The killer loads the victim into his car and drives off.

Once Lauren realizes he's not at any of the local hospitals, she checks out a crime scene she overhears on a cop's radio. And that's where authors James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge drop the first major surprise of The Quickie. Many more follow in this novel whose agenda is announced early on: "This is what happens when you cheat. This is what you get." But Patterson and Ledwidge have housed it in a slick thriller that is practically guaranteed to please Patterson's legion of fans.

Actress Mary Stuart Masterson (Fried Green Tomatoes, Benny & Joon) remains invisible throughout her reading of the audiobook of The Quickie, letting the characters, especially narrator Lauren, shine fully. Her portrayals are insightful and completely naturalistic with unexpected emphasis placed (in retrospect) where a real person would put it.

The Quickie is completely absorbing even as it stretches the bounds of plausibility. The final disc is a roller-coaster ride as all questions are answered and all threads tied up neatly, leaving the listener with a smile.

Cattle King for a Day by L. Ron Hubbard (unabridged multi-cast audio book)

2011-01-03T06:55:00.001-05:00

After receiving news of his grandfather's death, Chinook Shannon heads north from Arizona to Bull Butte, Montana, to take over the Slash-S ranch. What he finds is surprising: not only in the property in debt to the tune of $26,000 but it's also been commandeered for gold mining, and a fellow named Brad Kendall doesn't want Chinook to get to the ranch. The bank is about to foreclose, and Chinook has twenty-four hours to set things right or he'll only be Cattle King for a Day.

Author L. Ron Hubbard was a master of the action Western, filling his stories of adventure with plenty of gunplay and vengeance. "Cattle King for a Day" (originally published in All Western Magazine's March 1937 issue) is enhanced by authenticity springing from Hubbard's time living in Montana, complete with details on local mining, banking, etc.

But humor is welcome here as well. One passage in particular from "Cattle King for a Day" brought a smile — where the author describes the stream of epithets and obscenities directed by Kendall toward Sheriff Taggart:

It was all unquotable. It treated Taggart's family tree from its inception, followed through several-score generations, caught up with Taggart's personal appearance, filthy habits, general demeanor, and went on to revite Taggart's posterity.

In addition, the character of Sheriff Taggart offers a sense of nostalgia for fans of the comic quartet Firesign Theater, as the actor who voices Taggart, Phil Proctor, borrows heavily from his portrayal of used-auto salesman Ralph Spoilsport, first heard on the group's classic album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All.

Also on this audio is "Come and Get It" (from the October 15, 1938, issue of Street & Smith's Western Story). Bill Norton arrives at Wolf Junction, Wyoming, as the new owner of the Bar N, met only by the station agent and a prairie dog, apparently the only residents — even "at the early hour of 11" — of this veritable ghost town.

Bill soon discovers there's actually very little waiting for him but a pair of sixguns and an unpleasant surprise: his father was murdered. But how is a tenderfooted Easterner who's never fired a gun supposed to avenge his father? With the help of a clever mind and a clever dog, and a twist ending that leaves the listener with a smile.

These two Western stories of men and their new properties, which hold surprises neither of them is prepared for, make for a good pair of listens that more than fill the two-hour running time of Cattle King for a Day. I find myself more and more on the lookout for these Galaxy Audio productions, as they are sure (with a few exceptions) to provide an engaging and exciting pulp-adventure experience.

Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories, edited by David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke (hard rock and heavy metal inspired anthology of dark fantasy and horror stories)

2010-12-27T21:24:00.006-05:00

I am very proud to say that my first book is now available — a project nearly two years in the making! See more below, beginning with Carrie Gowran's utterly awesome cover art, which perfectly encompasses the anthology's hard-rock and dark-fiction aspects.

Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories
Edited by David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke
—A Hard-Rockin' Horror and Dark-Fantasy Anthology—

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HEAVY MUSIC INSPIRES DARK FICTION?

Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories consists of six horror and dark-fantasy stories inspired by some of the greatest hard-rock and heavy-metal bands in that music’s long and influential history. Each author was invited to submit a short story or novella inspired by the band of his choice.

You're sure to be impressed by the half-dozen diverse tales they came up with. The set list is as follows:

“Spooky Tooth” by Randy Chandler
“Iron Maiden” by Matthew Fryer
“Black Sabbath” by Steven L. Shrewsbury
“Judas Priest” by David T. Wilbanks
“Motorhead” by Kent Gowran
“Slayer” by L.L. Soares

An original lineup indeed. Grab a copy now for only $2.99 because you’ll not want to pass up the chance to read six of the sharpest, savviest, hardest, and heaviest stories published this year.

Reviews:

"One of the things that make having an e-reader worthwhile." — Dead in the South

"Heavy metal horror heaven." — Ginger Nuts of Horror

"A good variety pack of scary stories ... an easy read, and a satisfying one." — Patrick D'Orazio

Now available on:
Amazon
Diesel
Sony
Smashwords.

Favorite Reads of 2010 (Best Books of the Year list)

2010-12-09T22:35:00.001-05:00

Of all the books I read this year, these 15 take the top marks. For more on why I chose these particular books as my favorites of 2010, click on the link to read the original review.

Peter Brandvold writing as Frank Leslie, The Guns of Sapinero
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
J. Lee Butts, Gun Work: The Further Exploits of Hayden Tilden
Jack Clark, Nobody's Angel
Max Allan Collins, Quarry's Ex
Edward M. Erdelac, Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter
Joe Gores, Spade and Archer
Michael Hemmingson, This Other Eden
Robert E. Howard, Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, The Big Bang
Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Shane Stevens, By Reason of Insanity
Donald E. Westlake, Memory
Richard Wright, Native Son
S. Craig Zahler, A Congregation of Jackals

It's been another great year for reading, and I'm very excited about 2011. See you then!

A Joke for the Writers in the Audience

2010-12-01T20:56:00.000-05:00

(as told by Jimmy Pomegranate in John Darnton's novel Black and White and Dead All Over)

So there's an editor and a reporter. And they're trapped in the Sahara. Two weeks they've been staggering along, and now they're dying of thirst under the desert sun, crawling along, sweat pouring down, their skin cracked and sunburned all to hell. They're just about to expire. With their last ounce of strength, they make it to the crest of a sand dune and look over, and what do they see? A beautiful oasis, crystal clear water and palm trees wafting in the soft breezes.

They run down to it. The reporter dives in, and he's happy as the proverbial clam. He's swallowing great bogs of water and splashing around and having a grand old time. Then he looks back, and what's he see? The editor's just standing there on the shore, and what's he doing? He's got his pecker out and he's pissing right into the goddamned water.

The reporter yells out, "Hey, what the hell you doin'?"

And the editor looks up, and he shouts back, "I'm making it better!"

Coming Soon: Peter Rabe's The Silent Wall and The Return of Marvin Palaver (Stark House Press)

2010-11-27T21:53:00.000-05:00

“Hitch was with this great, high-heeled monster of a woman and the only reason I was along, I spoke Italian and Hitch did not. It turned out that the woman was not Italian at all, she was Sicilian, and her glue-voiced accent was so heavy that I understood almost as little as Hitch. Not that it mattered.”

—from The Silent Wall by Peter Rabe

Stark House Press is happy to announce the long-awaited publication of the late, great Peter Rabe’s final manuscripts, The Silent Wall and The Return of Marvin Palaver. Along with a very rare Rabe short story, “Hard Case Redhead,” the books will appear in a single volume this coming January.

The above passage is the opening from The Silent Wall, which Booklist calls “a claustrophobic noir, at times almost unbearably tense.” And it is certainly that. Matty Matheson has the run of an entire town but he is not allowed to leave, held captive by the Mafia for reasons he only thinks he knows.

The Return of Marvin Palaver is a darkly comic, highly complex, short book about a swindle, payback, and the incredible lengths one man will go to get his revenge against the man who ruined him. Rabe never wrote the same book twice, and even with his talent for writing different kinds of crime fiction, the story will leave you breathless with its unique voice and dark sense of humor.

Shortly before his death in 1990, Rabe had sent these manuscripts to friend and author Ed Gorman, who’s had them in his possession until now. We’re ecstatic to be the ones who are finally bringing these books, along with the short story “Hard Case Redhead,” into the world. In “Redhead,” two thieves and their uninvited guest try to wait out the aftermath of a troublesome heist. It’s hard-boiled and noir and shows that Rabe could write just as well at shorter lengths.

*****

We’re also announcing the creation of the Stark House Book Club with a special offer of free shipping on all our books to everyone who signs up now. No minimum to buy, no obligation, just sign up and you’ll receive each new release, hassle-free and with no shipping, as they are published. For a limited time, each new member can order as many backlist titles as they’d like for 15% off list price and again, free shipping. To sign up for the club, e-mail us. And to check out our list of authors and titles, visit our website.

On tap for the near future are a two-in-one volume of vintage sleaze crime novels from the famous (under his real name) Don Elliott, a nice trio from Day Keene, and many other exciting titles. So sign up now, and don’t miss a book!

To receive this newsletter automatically, please send your e-mail address. We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Greg Shepard, publisher
Stark House Press

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers (unabridged audio book read by Bronson Pinchot)

2010-11-21T20:46:00.000-05:00

This review was originally published on SF Site.

John Chandagnac, son of a puppeteer, is still mourning his father's death when he sets out for Jamaica to get back his inheritance from the uncle who stole it. To this end, he charters the Vociferous Carmichael but gets to see another side of sea life when it is attacked by Phillip Davies, privateer and captain of the sloop Jenny.

Chandagnac gets on the wrong side of a pirate captain (by defeating him with sword techniques learned for puppet shows) and is offered the choice to either join them or die. Now christened "Jack Shandy," he discovers that the people he thought were on his side are simply out for themselves (isn't that always the way?) — including one's strange plan for the legendary Fountain of Youth, which has very different powers than usually supposed.

On Stranger Tides, the 1987 novel from author Tim Powers now available in audiobook form, is also the source material for the fourth film in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, gladdening many of Powers' fans since that will undoubtedly bring his work closer to the mass appeal they have long felt he deserved. The option apparently existed long before it was revealed, since the third film in the series most definitely foreshadows this book's Fountain of Youth plot.

For those who have not experienced his work before, Powers is a discovery. On Stranger Tides combines the mundane and the supernatural into a gripping narrative filled with high adventure. It has the potential to please readers of most forms of genre fiction, with plenty of gunfire and swordplay alongside voodoo, zombies, ghost ships, and sorcery, with numerous startling twists that never stretch the bounds of plausibility. There's adventure, revenge, romance, and intrigue all folded together into a cohesive whole as Powers never loses sight of his primary goal of telling a ripping yarn. He maintains a consistent level of tension throughout, along with a great deal of humor, toward a thoroughly satisfying conclusion.

Another discovery made through listening to On Stranger Tides is the highly advanced narrative skill of actor Bronson Pinchot. Pinchot is probably still most widely known for either his seven-year stint as the pseudo-Greek naïf Balki Bartokomous on the situation comedy Perfect Strangers or for his scene-stealing turns as Serge in two Beverly Hills Cop films. But his deft handling of unplaceable accents in those roles does not prepare one for his reading of Powers' work. The sheer number of accents Pinchot tackles is impressive, and his ability to distinguish characters while juggling various dialects within a single conversation is nothing short of astonishing, making the audio rendition a much fuller experience than the text alone could provide.

Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante by Richard Tooker (pulp sci-fi adventure short stories)

2010-11-09T05:44:00.000-05:00

Richard Tooker was obviously meant to tell stories of adventure. Born in 1902, Tooker's father's family were sea captains, soldiers, and adventurers. The storytelling part came from his mother, who knew the author of the classic adventure Alice of Old Vincennes. Tooker published his first story at the age of 15, then after finishing school, worked as an editor and reporter and was enlisted in the Marines. He felt that his life contained parallels with Jack London's Martin Eden and published his first novel, The Day of the Brown Horde, in 1929 (from whose dustjacket the substance of this paragraph comes).

Tooker's skill at writing cracking sci-fi adventure is well evidenced by Black Dog Books' collection of the three longish stories featuring his hero Zenith Rand, as published in three consecutive issues (June, August, and October 1936) of Mystery Adventure Magazine. Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante contains the title inaugural tale plus two others, "Revenge on Scylla" and "Angels of Oorn" (the source of the book's appealing cover illustration).

"Zenith" (whose given name is never revealed) was named by his fellow Terran Spacemen for his "indomitable fighting spirit" in the midst of playing "sky-the-limit stakes in the grim game of stellar conquest and exploration" (zenith, of course, being the sky's own upper limit). Nevertheless, Rand has a weakness, and her name is Sandra Yates.

As we discover in "Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante," the first of the trilogy, Pilotess Yates — a Valkyr Amazon — broke Rand's heart (or perhaps merely bruised his pride) when she chose another over him. It was, in fact, this event that led him to choose the distant post on Camia, moon of Orthos, and subsequently necessitated Yates's arrival just in time to save Rand from the Camian goat-women. O, sweet irony!

In addition to the color art by Norman Saunders found on the Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante's front and back covers (from the very issues in which the first and third stories appeared), Black Dog Books publisher Tom Roberts has also included the black-and-white illustrations (uncredited and unknown) that accompanied the stories' first appearances inside the magazines. In doing this, Roberts has done his best to replicate the original reading experience as closely as possible while offering a cleaner presentation of the text.

"Revenge on Scylla" finds Zenith on the titular "somber sphere ... on the fringe of Altair's Titan gravity" in a search for Sandra among the slime seas. Since the events of their previous outing, Yates and Rand became "mates for life" (something involving having "simply signed the book" — no marriages for these even-steven fiftieth-century Terran couples), much to the chagrin of "Death" Lamson, Rand's supernumerary on this rescue mission to reclaim Yates from the half-snake Scyllans. If that's not enough to deal with, the group will also face betrayal from their own side.

Tooker's prose is not the most accessible. Several sentences required a second or third reading to completely suss out their meaning. But the author definitely understands action, and the writing in Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante improves with each story.

"Angels of Oorn" posits Zenith Rand on the titular moon of Procyon, required to (once again) save Mate Yates from its denizens, highly unsavory despite their epithet ("Zenith snorted derisively ... 'If you Oornites are angels, I'm Mercury's half-brother'"). This story is definitely the most interesting, with the threat coming not only in physical form but also mental, as a directed gaze from the hypnotic, shape-shifting Oornites can kill, and even a mere glance can incapacitate or madden.

This last story engenders an appetite for further adventures, but there are only these three, for whatever reason (there is no background explanatory material included). Nevertheless, Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante offers a chance to read these pioneering spicy pulp sci-fi adventure stories that would otherwise have been lost to the casual enthusiast.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters (unabridged audio book read by Katherine Kellgren)

2010-11-05T05:38:00.000-04:00

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters was the followup to the hugely successful Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, yet you rarely hear about it. This is unfortunate because, as far as I'm concerned, it's the vastly superior product.

Co-author Ben H. Winters primarily changed the setting to a set of island villages surrounded by murderous maritime monsters of every stripe, and then added the necessary details for color. In addition, the book is a trove of deadpan humor, that dry British wit that doesn't tell you when to laugh and that I enjoy so much. (Hint: most mentions of horrific ocean denizens rate at least a chuckle.) Audiobook reader Katherine Kellgren is especially adept at this style of delivery, leaving the sublime and the ridiculous to fight it out between themselves, while also managing to occasionally wink with her voice.

Though Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is a continuous source of amusement, there is a constant sense of dread from ever-present ocean threats and the many past deaths caused by the sea-borne killers. One occasionally occurs "on screen," as it were. A particular highlight is the struggle of Edward Ferrars and Mrs. Dashwood against a vengeant tuna. Also added is a thread of mystery: What is the significance of the five-pointed star that troubles Elinor with its continued presence in her mind?

I do recommend a basic familiarity with the story of the original Sense and Sensibility — even if only from having seen the Emma Thompson–scripted film adaptation more than once — just so you can appreciate the changes Winters makes to Austen's original story and how well he incorporates them, staying true to the tone, language, and characters while giving them a twist. Examples: Edward Ferrars' lighthouse-keeping ambition; Colonel Brandon's rather squiddy-looking visage; Marianne's rescue from an attacking octopus by the dashing, wet-suit- and diving-helmet-wearing Willoughby; young Margaret's increasing disturbing preoccupation; the secret of Miss Steele; and the reason behind Mr. Palmer's ever-ill mood.

The sheer number of laughs makes Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters a great book to unwind with. I recommend it far and above its inferior predecessor.

Afraid by J.A. Konrath writing as Jack Kilborn (horror)

2010-11-02T05:38:00.002-04:00

This review was originally published in somewhat different form on Page Horrific. Copyright 2010. For the cleaner, tighter — and therefore better — version (approx. 225 words), go there.

Safe Haven, Wisconsin, was not named ironically. It only seems that way since the five strangers came to town: Bernie, Taylor, Santiago, Logan, and Ajax. They only want some information ("Where is Warren?"), but they're eager to torture, mutilate, and murder to get it.

They were trained for this work by the military, in fact. The thing is, they like their work a little too much, and they'll never kill outright when there's still some excruciating pain left to deal out. As their leader states, they're "Hannibal Lecters with Rambo training."

Afraid was the first pure horror novel from author Jack Kilborn (better known as J.A. Konrath for writing the Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels series of mysteries — as well as for making a bundle of money off selling his books electronically).

Konrath has dealt with disturbing subject matter before in the Daniels series, but in Afraid he takes it so far, that writing under the Kilborn pseudonym was necessary to protect unsuspecting buyers from being inadvertently traumatized.

Afraid is a remarkably imaginative collection of disturbing ideas and disturbed villains. The novel begins with the explosion of a helicopter, and it is filled with horrific high points that include the townwide lottery giveaway, Sheriff Ace Streng's bear-trap ordeal, the secret film, and the very concept of Red-ops. (The anticipation of Warren's appearance rivals that of Harry Lime in The Third Man.)

As Kilborn, Konrath shows no remorse with his characters, throwing them up against one thing after another like contestants on some psychotic game show. Afraid is very visual in style, so reading it is somewhat akin to watching a horror movie in your head — one that's actually frightening.

At the same time, Kilborn knows that a good scary story needs some humor to lighten the mood a little bit — and subsequently make it even scarier. He's more than up to the challenge. If you remember way back when "horror" meant "terrifying" and not just "gross," treat yourself and read Afraid.

Download the radio adaptation of Gary A. Braunbeck's "Return to Mariabronn" (from Haunted Legends edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas)

2010-10-28T21:01:00.000-04:00

Gary A. Braunbeck is the author of the short ghost story "Return to Mariabronn," available in the new anthology Haunted Legends, edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas. Braunbeck has spearheaded a audio adaptation of his story, and it is available for download just in time for Halloween.

"Return to Mariabronn" was broadcast on Ohio radio stations and features the voices of the author, Braunbeck himself; his wife, author Lucy A. Snyder; and some students from Ohio State University. To download the mp3, simply visit the Ohio State University Media Manager.

Great Halloween listening!

Horrorween by Al Sarrantonio (Halloween horror, Orangefield series)

2010-10-24T23:17:00.002-04:00

Orangefield is a strange little town. As Detective Bill Grant said in The Baby, a lot of "weird shit" happens around Halloween, mostly involving the participation of Samhain, the lord of the dead, in one way or another. Horrorween is a novel composed of three previous Orangefield stories, tied together with narrative glue to form a surprisingly cohesive read.

The content of Horrorween comes primarily from the short story Hornets, the novella The Pumpkin Boy, and the short novel Orangefield. A children's-horror author, a five-year-old boy, an older girl named Wizard, a Halloween historian, and a pumpkin tender are all connected by visits from Samhain, the lord of the dead. The novel chronicles a series of events that comes to a head on Halloween, when people will die, others will redeem themselves, and Samhain with either succeed or fail.

Sarrantonio combines the horror and innocence of Halloween in a way no one has since Ray Bradbury. Horrorween, unlike the vast majority of modern horror novels, is subtle, not beating the reader senseless with shock after shock but developing a sustained level of tension. When Sarrantonio delivers the final blow, it's almost a relief.

And his horrors are truly shocking events that anyone can relate to -- not based on what Stephen King called "the gross-out." Don't get me wrong: some of my favorite horror authors are gross-out artists, but it's refreshing to encounter horror of the old school that seeks to truly terrify, yet is otherwise basically PG-rated.

Though Sarrantonio has a very accessible style, his storylines manage to be unpredictable and not easily summarized because to describe the action would either be unhelpfully vague or would give something away. And that would be a shame because Horrorween offers such a terrific ride for lovers of Halloween and light horror fiction.

For more Halloween recommendations, check out my 2009 Halloween feature.

Danger in Paradise by A.S. Fleischman (Stark House Press)

2010-10-22T05:04:00.001-04:00

Growing up, I was a fan of author A.S. Fleischman's work, only I didn't know it. At that time, Fleischman was going by his middle name of Sid and mostly made his living writing works for children, including the "Bloodhound Gang" mysteries on the PBS TV show 3-2-1 Contact ("Whenever there's trouble, we're there on the double"). My friend Bryan McCarter and I loved these so much that we formed the "Bloodhound Gang II" and solved mysteries around the neighborhood of our own devising.

As Sid, Fleischman won the Newbery Award for his novel The Whipping Boy. As Albert Sidney Fleischman, he wrote the screenplays for both Blood Alley (from his novel) and Sam Peckinpah's debut feature The Deadly Companions (from his novel Yellowleg). But before he was either of those, Fleischman began his writing career as A.S. Fleischman, author of a couple of thrillers for Gold Medal Books set in the Malay Peninsula and published in the early 1950s.

Danger in Paradise and Malay Woman have not been in print since then. And now they're paired in a new trade-paper edition from Stark House Press.

In Danger in Paradise, oil geologist Jefferson Cape is ready to leave Indonesia after having made some good money and then spent it. But when he stops for a final bottle of arrack, a White Russian girl stops him at the bar. Nicole Balashova wants him to carry something on board for her, and like a sucker, Jeff agrees.

Jeff is chased and misses his boat, and that's only the beginning of this tropical thriller from 1953. Before his life is normal again, he will learn of Nicole's death, get (almost) caught up with maneater Regina Williams, be pursued by a Pith-helmet-wearing, Malacca-cane-carrying skinny threat, and get knocked out a few times.

Danger in Paradise is a blazing read, with Fleischman throwing one thing after another at his hero. The exotic setting (and women) only make the reading that much richer. I'm already looking forward to diving into Malay Woman, based on reviews of that book from James Reasoner and Bill Crider. It sounds even better.

Hard Case Crime signs with Titan Publishing -- also, Gabriel Hunt's future and other news from founder Charles Ardai

2010-10-21T05:35:00.001-04:00

We've got some big news to announce today: After a year's hiatus, Hard Case Crime will be returning to bookstores with new titles in 2011.

As you know, our relationship with Dorchester Publishing (Hard Case Crime's publisher since the line's launch in 2004) came to an end a few months ago when Dorchester announced it was getting out of the business of publishing mass-market paperback books. This left Hard Case Crime without a home. I've spent the past six weeks in meetings with other publishers interested in giving us a new home, and I was gratified to receive offers from five of the firms we met with. They were all firms I respect greatly and would have enjoyed working with, but in the end, one stood out as clearly the best match, and that was UK-based Titan Publishing.

Based in London, Titan is a publisher both of fiction and of gorgeous art books focusing on pop culture such as movie poster art, pin-ups, newspaper comic strips, and Golden Age comic books. They have worked with filmmakers such as J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, and George Lucas. Titan has been around for 30 years, has more than 200 employees, and in addition to publishing books also has a magazine division, a retail division (Titan owns the famous Forbidden Planet bookstore in London, and until recently co-owned the Murder One mystery bookstore with Maxim Jakubowski), and a merchandise division that produces items such as T-shirts, sculptures, and accessories. It's fun to imagine what sorts of cool Hard Case Crime products we might create with them!

But first things first: books.

Titan plans to acquire all existing stock of Hard Case Crime's backlist from Dorchester Publishing and to resume shipping these titles to booksellers immediately. Hard Case Crime will relaunch in September/October 2011 with four new books, including two you've heard about before — Choke Hold by Christa Faust (sequel to her Edgar Award-nominated Money Shot) and Quarry's Ex by Max Allan Collins (the latest in the popular series of hit man novels by the author of Road to Perdition), both of which were in the works at Dorchester but never got published — and two you haven't heard about, never-before-published novels by major writers in the field (MWA Grand Masters, names to be announced shortly).

You'll be hearing more about all four books over the coming months, I promise. In the meantime, if you'd like a little taste of Quarry's Ex and Choke Hold, you can see their cover art and read a sample chapter from each at our Web site.

(Why so long a wait? It has to do with the sales cycle in the book publishing business. Titan's sales force is already selling July/August 2011 titles to stores now; September/October 2011 is the soonest we can get new books out if we want to have enough time for booksellers to consider and order them, and then for Titan to print and ship them, etc.)

We will also still be going ahead with our special hardcover "double" volume with Subterranean Press, featuring two long-lost Lawrence Block novels [69 Barrow Street and Strange Embrace — Ed.] bound back-to-back. More info on that one as soon as we have a firm publication date and cover art to to show you!

In other news, Haven, the SyFy television series inspired by one of our books (The Colorado Kid by Stephen King), just completed its first season and has been renewed for a second. If you haven't seen the show or only caught the first few episodes, I'd encourage you to give it a(nother) try — it got really good by the end of the season (and no, I'm not just saying that because I wrote the penultimate episode and came up with the story for one before that...). It's a little different from what you see in our books, since every story contains elements of the supernatural — but it's still a show about a FBI agent, a cop, and a criminal, and features some awfully hard cases....

Also: Universal Pictures acquired the rights to two other Hard Case Crime books — Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence by my close personal friend Richard Aleas — and has attached a director (Jonathan Levine, The Wackness) and screenwriter (Michael Bacall, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) to the project. No guarantee that a movie will actually get made, of course, but it's a very exciting first step.

What else is new? Well, Hard Case Crime's sister line, The Adventures of Gabriel Hunt, is staying with Dorchester for the time being, and they have plans to reissue all of those books — including the sixth, which never came out in mass-market paperback — in the larger "trade paperback" format (as well as e-book format). If everything goes as planned, those should start coming next year. If you poke around online, you can also find an audiobook edition of one book in the series, Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear, produced by AudioRealms. If there's ever been a genre suited to audiobook adaptation, it's tales of adventure! (If you don't feel like hunting for it — pun intended — here's a link.)

That's all the news this time around. There will be more, probably fairly soon -- you'll certainly be hearing from me well before this time next year, when the new books come out. But in the meantime, I want to thank you for all your patience and your support. It's great to know you're out there, as passionate about our books as ever. I promise: We'll give you some good scratching for your itch just as soon as we can.

New books will be published in paperback (possibly some in hardcover as well!); ebook editions will also be released across multiple platforms. Titan is distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Random House.

We're very excited about working with Titan (indeed, we had offers from five publishers and chose Titan over several that were much larger and better-known) -- they love pulp fiction as much as we do and appreciate that in books like ours the visual dimension is just as important as the storytelling. It's hard to imagine a better home for Hard Case Crime.

Best,
Charles

Official press release:

Hard Case Crime Returns!

Titan Books to Relaunch Acclaimed Pulp Paperback Series

New York, NY; London, UK (October 19, 2010) — Titan Books and series creator Charles Ardai announced today that they are teaming up to relaunch the popular Hard Case Crime series of paperback crime novels. Nominated five times in five years for the Edgar Allan Poe award, the mystery genre’s highest honor, Hard Case Crime has published such luminaries as Stephen King (the book that was the basis for the new TV series Haven), Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Pete Hamill, Max Allan Collins, Madison Smartt Bell and Roger Zelazny, to name just a few. Each book features new cover art in the classic pulp style, including covers painted by Robert McGinnis, the legendary illustrator who painted the original James Bond movie posters.

Hard Case Crime has won praise from dozens of major publications ranging from Time, Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly to Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, and Reader’s Digest, and has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s Fresh Air, and in every major newspaper in America (including repeated coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and USA Today).

First launched in 2004, Hard Case Crime published 66 titles through August 2010, at which time its long-time publisher, Dorchester Publishing, announced it was exiting the mass market paperback publishing business after nearly 40 years. After receiving offers from five other publishers (including two of the largest in the world) to continue the line, Charles Ardai selected UK-based Titan Publishing as Hard Case Crime’s new home.

“Titan has an extraordinary record of creating beautiful, exciting books with exactly the pop culture sensibility that Hard Case Crime exists to celebrate,” said Charles Ardai, founder and editor of Hard Case Crime and an Edgar Award-winning mystery writer himself. “Titan is one of the few publishers that loves pulp fiction as much as we do.”

Titan’s first new Hard Case Crime titles, scheduled to come out in September and October 2011, include Quarry's Ex, a new installment in the popular series of hit man novels by Road to Perdition creator Max Allan Collins; Choke Hold, Christa Faust’s sequel to her Edgar Award-nominated Hard Case Crime novel Money Shot; and two never-before-published novels by major authors in the crime genre (both recipients of the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America).

Additionally, Titan plans to acquire all existing stock of Hard Case Crime’s backlist titles from Dorchester Publishing and resume shipping those titles to stores immediately.

“Hard Case Crime has done a remarkable job in a very short time of building a brand known for outstanding crime fiction and stunning artwork,” said Nick Landau, Publisher of Titan Books and CEO of the Titan Publishing Group. “We are thrilled to partner with Charles and look forward to bringing Hard Case Crime to a wider audience around the world, not only through the novels themselves but also through an innovative merchandise program.”

For more information, call Hard Case Crime on 646-205-2181 or e-mail media@hardcasecrime.com; call Titan (US media) on 914-788-1005 or email ktc2000@aol.com; or call Titan (UK media) on +44 (0)20 7803 1906 or email sophie.calder@titanemail.com.

About Hard Case Crime

Charles Ardai founded Hard Case Crime in 2004 through Winterfall LLC, a privately owned media company responsible for a variety of print, film, and television projects. The series has been nominated for and/or won numerous awards since its inception including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Barry, and the Spinetingler Award. The series’ bestselling title of all time, The Colorado Kid by Stephen King, was the basis for the current SyFy television series Haven, on which Charles Ardai works as a writer and producer. There have also been a number of feature film deals involving Hard Case Crime books, including The Last Lullaby, based on The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins and starring Tom Sizemore as the titular hit man, and more recently Universal Pictures’ purchase of the film rights to Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence by Richard Aleas.

About Titan Publishing Group

Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. The company is based at offices in London, but operates worldwide, with sales and distribution in the US & Canada being handled by Random House. Titan Publishing Group has three divisions: Titan Books, Titan Magazines/Comics and Titan Merchandise. In addition to fiction, including novelizations of films such as Terminator Salvation, original novels based on TV shows such as Primeval and Supernatural and the popular computer game Runescape, and the celebrated Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series of novels launched in 2009, Titan Books also publishes an extensive line of media- and pop culture-related non-fiction, graphic novels, art and music books.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

2010-10-05T21:40:00.000-04:00

Author S.C. Gwynne takes a most interesting approach in his history of the Comanche Indians. He does it by focusing on the events before, during, and after the life of the Comanches' last chief, Quanah Parker, the half-breed son of a white female captive, Cynthia Ann Parker, and another Comanche chief, Peta Nocona.

Empire of the Summer Moon begins with the murder and capture of most of the James W. Parker family, including the taking of 9-year-old Cynthia Ann. (The seemingly endless search of Parker for his family inspired Alan Le May's novel The Searchers and the subsequent film.)

Gwynne uses the book written by Cynthia Ann's sister Rachel (also abducted) as his main source for this material, as very little is known of Cynthia Ann's own time with the tribe until much later, when it was revealed that she had had multiple opportunities to escape and had refused to leave her husband and children.

One portion I found especially engrossing was the chronicle of the Texas Rangers, essentially a group of organized vigilantes. In order to be on equal ground and successfully fend off attacks upon the reluctant "nation" of Texas, the Rangers learned to fight like the Comanches — including their impressive skill at shooting with accuracy from a galloping horse. Gwynne also offers insight into the Comancheros, the half-breed traders who were the only non-Indians the tribe would deal with directly.

Under the guise of telling Quanah Parker's story, Gwynne produces a fairly comprehensive tribal history. Empire of the Summer Moon is one that anyone should read who only thinks of Comanches as the bloodthirsty savages of traditional Western fiction. Gwynne's prose is smooth and unadorned, resulting in a history without pretensions. He lets the story take the spotlight; his tenure with Time Magazine was apparently excellent training for this career move.

I have only reached the halfway point — Gwynne has barely touched upon Quanah himself — yet I feel confident in recommending Empire of the Summer Moon to both those with prior interest in its subject who wish to expand their knowledge, and those wanting an introduction to the topic. Both, I wager, with be well satisfied.

Michael Frayn on Writing Success

2010-10-02T14:59:00.001-04:00

"I don’t think it is a very good idea to write different sorts of things. If I were to give serious practical advice to a young writer about how to succeed I would say, Write the same book, or the same play, over and over again, just very slightly different, so that people get used to it.

"It takes some time, but if you do it often enough, finally people will get the hang of it, and get familiar with it, and they’ll like it. Then you go on producing a consistent product and you’ll have a market for it. Because the consumer of books or plays, including myself, very reasonably wants to know or have some idea in advance what the book or the play is going to be like.

"It is the same as buying breakfast cereal: if you buy a packet of cornflakes, you want to be sure it will contain cornflakes and not muesli. It is very irritating if the packet doesn’t contain what you expected it to contain. Similarly it is a reasonable demand from the theatergoer or novel reader that he should get a constant product, which is identified by the author’s brand name.

"If I could have done this, I would have. But I don’t have much control over what I produce. All I can do is to write the stories that come to me.... If I had been better organized as a writer, I would have gone beyond the stories’ dictates and imposed my own central imprint on everything."

—from a 2003 interview in The Paris Review

Horror scholarship makes paying for school less frightening!

2010-10-01T05:04:00.000-04:00

In honor of the beginning of October, the scariest month of the year, I thought I'd mention an interesting piece of news that was shared with me. Star Costumes has developed and is now offering a $1,000 scholarship to eligible students who are "studying in a field designed to prepare them for work in the horror industry."

This could include anyone from aspiring directors and screenwriters to those looking to work in make-up or set design — even a film critic (criticism being, of course, near and dear to my own heart). All that's required is to fill out the application form and write a 300- to 400-word essay about your inspirations, goals, and accomplishments.

There is no application fee. But the deadline is October 31st, which will be here before you know it. If horror is your field of study, you may be especially busy this month, so for more information (or to get started right away!), just click on the logo to be taken to the appropriate page.

In spite of my cheesy subject line, I think this is a great opportunity Star Costumes is offering. So be sure to let us here at Somebody Dies know if this announcement led to your receiving the scholarship. We'll be cheering you on!

A Congregation of Jackals by S. Craig Zahler (debut Western novel)

2010-09-24T05:44:00.004-04:00

Update: For those who have been waiting, A Congregation of Jackals is now available in an electronic edition, with the trade paperback slated for May 2011.

Author S. Craig Zahler's debut Western novel (he is best known for his film work) opens with a scene that quickly lets readers know what is in store if they continue reading A Congregation of Jackals. In it, a set of swarthy twin outlaws torture a young newlywed couple physically and emotionally just for the fun of it.

Then the story shifts to the main plot: 47-year-old rancher Oswell Danford receives a telegram inviting him to Trailspur for the wedding of one of his old gang, James Lingham, to Beatrice Jeffries, daughter of local sheriff T.W. Jeffries. "All old acquaintances will be in attendance," promises the sender, and this makes Oswell and the other recipients — Dicky Sterling and Oswell's brother Godfrey — very nervous, as it means that the fifth of their Tall Boxer Gang is ready to settle an old score.

A Congregation of Jackals is a mature and thoughtful Western that can stand up alongside anything that Cormac McCarthy or Larry McMurtry have written. At the same time, its unrepentant violence, intensity, and dark worldview could easily appeal to fans of hardboiled crime fiction, as well as current envelope-pushing Western authors like Peter Brandvold, Max McCoy, and J. Lee Butts.

I especially liked Zahler's choice to tell the backstory of Oswell's bank-robbing past through the letters he writes home to his wife during his long journey to Trailspur. Not only is it an improvement over the traditional flashback, but in telling the story through Oswell's own words, it gives the reader a chance to get to know him, and his feelings about his past, before all hell breaks loose.

Because once the wedding starts, the tension is unbreakable, as Oswell, Dicky, and Godfrey guard the church door in preparation for the arrival of Quinlan, their expected but unwanted visitor. Locals and outlanders work together to ensure that nothing will ruin the ceremony. But no one can possibly be prepared for what Quinlan has in store for them and anyone who gets in his way.

Zahler's choices in A Congregation of Jackals are truly surprising. He seems to give Quinlan a free hand, tending toward the brutal realism of a man who has been stewing over a betrayal for decades and is finally ready to make his retribution fantasies reality. None of the characters is safe; anyone could die at any time, so the suspense is always high.

A Congregation of Jackals is a truly modern Western. Zahler takes all the traditional excitement of a narrative of the Old West and injects it with a 21st-century sensibility, giving it a freshness not often seen. In order to survive, the Western genre needs to appeal to newer, younger readers, and Zahler's cinematic style may be just the thing to draw them in.

Native Son by Richard Wright (unabridged audio book read by Peter Francis James)

2010-09-17T05:47:00.000-04:00

A classic of African American literature -- and indeed of any kind -- author Richard Wright's Native Son is surprisingly accessible to the modern reader, since it is basically a crime novel with literary leanings. Bigger Thomas lives with his mother, sister, and brother in one room on the South Side of Chicago in the 1930s. They are so cramped, they have to turn away while the others dress, causing much embarrassment all around.

Bigger is not ambitious, and he actually seems a bit lazy, but a chance connection gets him a good job chauffeuring for the owner of the Thomases' apartment building, Mr. Dalton. Wright clearly shows the mixture of fear, shame, and anger that Bigger feels toward whites, and it is these conflicting yet combined emotions that cause most of his later trouble.

He is supposed to drive the Daltons' daughter, Mary, to the university his first night on the job, but she has him detour to meet up with her Communist boyfriend, Jan Erlone. The couple were previously the subject of a gossip newsreel viewed by Bigger and a friend earlier that day, a bit of a scandal since Mr. and Mrs. Dalton are most fervently not Red supporters.

Mary and Jan invite Bigger to hang out with them, whereupon they all get a little too drunk. Delivering the girl to her room late that night, Bigger nearly has his way with the barely conscious (but seemingly willing) Mary, but the blind Mrs. Dalton enters the room to check on her daughter. Bigger panics, fearing the worst if he is found in the bedroom of the white girl. He reaches for a pillow....

I don't have to tell you what happens next. And Wright doesn't shy away from any of it. Every aspect is there on the page: the fingernails scratching his hand, the glassy eyes, the realization of what he has done, his decision to cover it up and blame it on the boyfriend, his decision to simply make the body disappear, the planning, the trunk, the hatchet, the furnace ... and that's only part one of Native Son, entitled "Fear."

From there, Wright chronicles seemingly every detail of the aftermath, including Bigger's attempt to frame Jan, nearly successful through his overconfidence in the whites' underestimation of him, until his eventual slip-up in another moment of panic. Part two, "Flight," covers the manhunt as it slowly accelerates into a citywide search, resulting in another murder as Bigger tries to hide out in abandoned buildings during a snowstorm, surrounded by newspaper coverage and passionate discussions of him by both blacks and whites.

Part three, "Fate," shows the inevitable outcome: Bigger's capture, interrogation, and indictment. Wright showcases his fantastic characterization during the trial (easily as good as anything in Anatomy of a Murder) as both sides present intelligent, persuasive arguments in their favor. For this reason alone, aspiring writers should read Native Son to see how balanced presentation of the facts of the case results in gripping reading.

In fact, Native Son is probably one of the best written, plotted, peopled, and constructed novels I have ever read. (Small details presented earlier pay off later on in surprising ways.) It is most definitely one of the most powerful. Wright succeeds in presenting an indelible portrait of a time and place and the attitudes prevalent, while at the same time delivering a suspenseful narrative with a positive ending — though not necessarily a "happy" one.

Actor Peter Francis James lends gravitas to the audiobook of Native Son. His narrative voice is nicely detached, leaving Wright's words to speak for themselves. And James's characterizations are done with subtle changes. My only complaint is that Jan Erlone and lawyer Boris Max sounded very similar, and when the two were in the same room, it was hard to tell them apart, especially since their worldviews are so similar they were often reiterating what the other was saying. But his work superlative throughout, making the audio version a terrific way of introducing oneself to the work of Richard Wright and seeing why his work still resonates with readers seventy years later.

Guest Blogger: Scott Gese: Rope and Wire Short Story Competition

2010-09-10T04:43:00.000-04:00

The Western website, Rope and Wire, has been online for three and a half years now working hard to promote the Western genre through a variety of avenues. The approach seems to be working. Since day one, Rope and Wire has seen steady growth not only in the amount of its high-quality content but also in the number of its loyal followers.

The main idea behind Rope and Wire is to promote the Western genre through new, up and coming, and established Western authors. But the site doesn’t limit itself to just authors. It includes many other Western venues.

Short stories are a great way to introduce new readers to what Western authors actually write about. It gives them a feel for the genre that will hopefully continue to grow and mature, possibly translating into the sale of a few Western novels.

In a constant search for new ways to promote the genre, the Rope and Wire website has begun accepting submissions for their very first Western short-story competition. The competition is open to both novice and established authors. It creates an opportunity for the top five winning authors to have their work promoted by Rope and Wire and helps authors gain some valuable name recognition.

The competition, although somewhat conventional, does have several unconventional aspects to it. The first is that submissions will not be accepted by postal mail. All submissions are by email. While there is the possibility that this will reduce the total number of submissions, Rope and Wire believes in keeping up with the times.

As I’ve often said; “Even though the setting we write about is one hundred and fifty years in our past, we don’t write about it with fountain pens. For the most part, we use keyboards and computers.” So to me, it only makes sense to take a more modern approach for both story submissions and fee payments, which brings up the second unconventional aspect of this competition.

All submission fees are paid electronically through PayPal. This is a virtually instantaneous form of payment. After all, if the story submission is being sent electronically, it only makes sense to send the $15.00 entry fee the same way. No more waiting days for a check to clear before your story can be entered into the competition. I admit there are some who will scoff at this approach. But then I’ve always understood that change does not always come easy, but it does always come.

The third aspect to this competition has to do with the prize money. Most short-story competitions offer a set amount, and usually for only one winner. With the Rope and Wire Western short-story competition, we’ve decided to make prize money available to the top three winners and on a sliding scale. This means that, for each submission, the prize amount for first, second, and third place jumps $5.00, $3.00, and $2.00, respectively. So there is the potential of some rather large prizes.

The remaining $5.00 goes to pay for PayPal fees (yes, they do charge to use their service) and also to help defer the cost of keeping Rope and Wire online. If you’re interested in finding out more about the Rope and Wire Western short-story competition, or the Rope and Wire website in general, just click on the links.

Scott

Trail Drive to Montana (Gunsmith #69) by Gary McCarthy writing as J.R. Roberts

2010-09-02T05:51:00.001-04:00

Regular readers of this repository of reviews will likely know that I am a big fan of The Gunsmith, which is the only long-running adult Western series still primarily written by a single author under a pseudonym, in this case Robert J. Randisi under the moniker J. R. Roberts. However, he has not written all of them. Randisi stated in a 2007 interview with Saddlebums Western Review that his publisher early on wanted more books than he could turn out on his own. Thus, around 30 of the first 100 were contracted from other authors to fulfill the twelve-a-year quota.

Later, I learned from an interview on Western Fiction Review that author Gary McCarthy, who had written a book I had recently enjoyed called The Pony Express War, had been one of those writers. (He reportedly wrote four Gunsmith novels.) As I enjoy cattle-drive novels, I chose McCarthy's first for the series, Trail Drive to Montana, to see if I could detect a difference in styles.

Actually, it was easy. From page one of Trail Drive to Montana, I would at least have known that it was not from the usual author. Randisi has a fast-paced, easy reading style that utilizes punchy dialogue and short, sharp paragraphs. The first paragraph of this book has 20 lines of small text, and there's no real conversation for five pages. This is not a criticism of either style, merely an illustration of how different they are.

McCarthy shows you the whole picture, and this slows things down a bit compared to the norm for this series, but I must admit to the appeal of seeing ex-lawman and professional gunsmith Clint Adams being genuinely articulate instead of simply a man of action. Even the heroine remarks, "You got a fine way with words, Mr. Adams."

She is Mandy Roe, whom Adams discovers after her horse is killed and she is left stranded underneath it. Her father is Bart Roe, the former outlaw pardoned by the governor and now an innovative cattle breeder in his 80s, who still has as fiery a temper as ever. Or, as Clint says, "He's the craziest old son of a bitch I ever saw in my life." (Having a way with words means you sometimes get right to the point.)

The Roes need to drive their herd of special crossbreeds up to Montana, away from the vengeful Moffit clan, seeking revenge for a 25-year-old transgression. The Gunsmith, in no way a cowboy and actually quite proud of the fact, agrees to accompany them on the journey. Unlike typical Texas longhorns, who are known as "rainbow cattle" for the variety of their hues, the Roe herd is exceptionally uniform in size and color, selected for those attributes in the breeding process.

Dr. Thomas Thom, Bart Roe's brother-in-law and an equal partner in the breeding, makes a connection between the longhorns and Americans. As he puts it, "Crossbreeding almost always results in a more vigorous strain of beef. It accounts for much of the American drive and energy. You see, this country is the greatest bunch of crossbred people in the world.... We are not in-bred like many of the old-line European families. We have greater vigor. So does this herd."

McCarthy fills Trail Drive to Montana with the expected level of action (of both types), and an additonal level of description that makes for a richer read than the typical series novel. He is quickly working his way toward an entry on my list of favorite authors, and I look forward to reading more of his work.

Further reading: For another adult Western series novel about a cattle drive, read Longarm on the Goodnight Trail. For more "respectable" novels on the subject, Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series, starting with The Goodnight Trail, is also a winner. And of course, there's the epic of all Westerns, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, which also centers around a trail drive.

Psycho by Robert Bloch (unabridged audio book read by Paul Michael Garcia)

2010-09-01T05:35:00.000-04:00

Nearly everyone knows the story of Psycho, of how a woman named Crane steals $40,000 from her employer and takes off to marry her boyfriend. A rainstorm causes her to make a wrong turn off the main highway, and she stops for the night at the one beacon of light on that deserted stretch, the Bates Motel, run by the unassuming mama's boy Norman Bates.

Bates himself has become an iconic figure, synonymous with the psychotic murderer and more often the source of parody than fear. So, how does one approach the original novel by author Robert Bloch with a fresh eye?

Surprisingly, it is fairly simple: one cannot. If you have seen the classic film as directed by Alfred Hitchcock, you've experienced the story in its tightest form.

Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano delivered a very faithful adaptation, and if that is enough for you, so be it. But if you long for more depth of character, more insight into motive and history, and especially more internal monologue, then Psycho the novel is just the thing for you.

Audiobook reader Paul Michael Garcia delivers a better performance than I thought possible, inhabiting all the characters fully. This allowed me to forget that I was listening to "Psycho" and just immerse myself in Bloch's world one more time — almost, if I tried really hard, as if for the first time.

Sea Fangs by L. Ron Hubbard (unabridged audio book performed by a full cast)

2010-08-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

Bob Sherman, one-time land owner and boat captain, had his dreams taken away by Herbert Marmion, who commandeered Sherman's property for the U.S. government's use. Trying to get to the bottom of things, Sherman hires himself out as a sailor on Marmion's ship, the Bonito. A hurricane then tosses them about, bringing forth the captain's ineptitude and Marmion's daughter Phyllis, a black-haired beauty.

The ship eventually anchors, but on the Island of Death, the headquarters of Venezuelan pirates from whom Sherman just escaped after an 18-month imprisonment. ("It would be just like the sea to bring me back where I least want to return.") It looks like Sherman is destined for recapture, but the Bonito puts up a good defense when attacked, with eight full minutes of shells and bullets making "the air ... alive with lead" on this fantastic audio adaptation of author L. Ron Hubbard's novella Sea Fangs.

Sea Fangs is a relatively early short novel from Hubbard, appearing first in the June 1934 issue of Five Novels Monthly, so it's not as skillfully crafted as works like Six-Gun Caballero and Under the Diehard Brand that were published only four years later.

The cast of Sea Fangs is, as usual for these Galaxy Audio productions, generally first-rate, with Firesign Theatre alumnus Phil Proctor tackling three relatively prominent roles and director Jim Meskimen juggling five other supporting parts. The only real fault in the production lies with the lead actress. The heroine, Phyllis, as written by Hubbard, goes through numerous emotions from devotion to grief to fear, but Kristen Proctor never gives anything more than the same flat line-readings.

Miss Proctor's performance actually detracts from the story instead of adding insight to the character. She is never once believable as the clever, strong-willed woman of action Hubbard imagined. Protagonist Bob Sherman fares considerably better, though this is due more to narrator R.F. Daley's reading of Sherman's thoughts and actions than to Shane Johnson's effort with the dialogue. That said, the audiobook of Sea Fangs is still a fine way to pass two hours, especially if you're commuting and you'd rather be on the high seas than stuck in a sea of traffic.

Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker (unabridged audio book read by Titus Welliver)

2010-08-27T05:12:00.001-04:00

Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have quite a history together. They kept the peace as deputy U.S. marshals in a town called Appaloosa, where Virgil fell in love with a woman named Allie. Then Everett left Appaloosa (for the obvious reason) and settled in Resolution, where he kept the peace in town on a less formal basis for basically the only local businessman. Virgil came along later on (after Allie left him) to visit and help out. Eventually the duo was aided by another pair of gunmen known as Kato and Rose.

Subsequently, the pair moved on to Brimstone, after hearing that Allie's last beau hadn't worked out and she'd gotten herself involved in prostitution. There they worked as deputy sheriffs until they rescued Allie from herself, in addition to helping out a young girl, a selective mute who will only choose to talk to Virgil, much to Allie's chagrin. At the end of Brimstone, the gang is headed back to Appaloosa.

Blue-Eyed Devil, the first novel in the series not to be named after the town in which it is set, begins on their third day back in Appaloosa, when chief of police Amos Callico lets them know in no uncertain terms that he is the one in charge. But he also offers them jobs working for him. When they decline Callico, they know he'll be trouble, and he is because Callico is running a "protection" racket, and those who don't want to pay look to Cole and Hitch for help.

Author Robert B. Parker approached Westerns in the same way he did his other novels: with long strings of dialogue and short chapters. This makes them not only fast reads -- though the laconic delivery of the characters can make them seem longer -- but also highly accessible to readers who may think they don't like Westerns. Actually, Virgil and Everett have a similar friendship as Parker's mystery heroes Spenser and Hawk: Everett is the narrator and main filter for the action, the relatable one, but Virgil, like Hawk, is the more mysterious and therefore more intriguing character.

Virgil Cole's skill with a firearm is legendary, and Parker gives it a mythic spin. Always calm and relaxed, Virgil's draw looks leisurely, but it is always faster than anyone else's. But my favorite aspect of the characters is that Virgil is well-read while Everett is well-educated. (Virgil regularly refers to Everett's time at West Point.) Neither is both, which means they often share knowledge with each other, and consequently with us. From the philosophy of Rousseau to the viability of the Macedonian phalanx in modern warfare, there is a lot to learn in Parker's Westerns in addition to terrific reads.

Blue-Eyed Devil is likely the final Parker Western, and that's too bad because these four novels have been some of my favorite reads of his. They are also some of the most readable modern Westerns available, and when an author of Parker's stature publishes a Western, it gives the genre some much-needed attention. The story as told comes full circle with new beginnings and old familiarities, but I wouldn't mind seeing the series continued by other hands.

The first name that comes to mind is that of Robert J. Randisi. Parker and Randisi share a skill with dialogue that says more than it seems to, and Randisi has also written his fair share of private-eye novels. Also, they both seem to follow the popular Strunk and White dictum to "omit needless words," resulting in the abovementioned brevity of dialogue and chapter. Because of these similarities, I think Randisi would be able to take over the series with little disruption, and I hope the publisher (and the author's estate) will consider this option to continue the Cole and Hitch stories.

Blue-Eyed Devil and the other three books in the series are read on audiobook by Titus Welliver, probably best known to Western fans as "Silas Adams" on the series Deadwood. Welliver has the perfect voice for these intelligent, confident, understated men: he stays out of the way and lets Parker's hardboiled Westerns speak for themselves and shine just like they do in print. Welliver's reading reminds me of that of the prolific Scott Brick's signature dysthymic delivery (see Vendetta), and he should translate well to other genres in the same way Brick does.

Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (unabridged audio books read by Ilyana Kadushin)

2010-08-25T05:40:00.000-04:00

Curiosity gets me every time. I often feel compelled to try to understand the appeal of popular literary and cinematic phenomena. I've read and seen many things I was not actually interested in, just for that reason.

Many of them proved to be major disappointments, such as Forrest Gump, The Da Vinci Code, and The Dark Knight. But some have led me to a long-lasting appreciation of their respective merits, like The Crying Game and the Harry Potter novels.

Despite its apparently huge success, I had never even heard of the Twilight saga until the fourth one, Breaking Dawn, was being published, but with all the unavoidable hype surrounding the release of the film adaptations, I decided I needed to see what the big deal was. I started with the first one, Twilight, read on unabridged audiobook by Ilyana Kadushin (You've Been Warned) — and I was completely drawn in.

In case you don't know, Twilight begins the story of Bella Swan, who leaves her soon-to-be-remarried mother to move in with her father, the chief of police of Forks, Washington. Bella is a clumsy teenager who is inevitably drawn to the pale and mysterious Edward Cullen, one of a "family" of vampires who abstain from human blood. (Their patriarch, Carlisle, is even a doctor devoted to saving lives.)

Author Stephenie Meyer draws the complicated relationship between Bella and Edward with affectionate detail as they navigate the multiple conflicts inherent in a vampire–human romance. And don't think for a moment that Twilight isn't a romance — fans of the brutal variety of bloodsucker should stay away. But I was completely absorbed by Meyer's easy prose and Bella's engaging narration enough to go straight on to the next book.

New Moon begins with the Cullens' moving away from Forks to avoid putting Bella in more danger after a birthday celebration for her goes horribly awry. But Bella can't stand being away from Edward. She gets pretty whiny and mopey here, and I almost stopped listening, but reader Kadushin fully embodies the feeling in the text to the point that I began to feel genuine sympathy for Bella, so I stuck it out.

Bella even begins to do reckless things simply in order to hear Edward's advising voice in her head. This includes buying a couple of motorcycles, something her father would be extremely against. So, she hides them at the home of her childhood friend, Jacob Black. Anyone who has seen the trailer to the New Moon film will know that werewolves are a part of this story, but none show up for ten chapters. So, as with vampire aficionados, lycanthrope lovers may be bored.

In the meantime, Meyer fills the space with the deepening friendship between Bella and the two-years-younger Jacob as he slowly falls in love with her. This will lead to the triangular conflict so often discussed by fans of the series as Bella sees the benefits and drawbacks of each individual, and they both fight to stay uppermost in her mind.

References to Romeo and Juliet abound, both subtle and trite (the first book was reportedly styled upon Pride and Prejudice), and New Moon is generally a weaker offering than Twilight, but it presents information and relationship development that is built upon later in the series, and it is still an absorbing, if not particularly well-written, read.

I only got about four chapters into the third book, Eclipse, before putting it down in favor of other books, but it does attempt to draw me back into its thrall occasionally. Luckily, it's not a complex story, so it is easy to exit and reenter with little loss of comprehension. But at this point, I feel I know enough about the draw of the series through Twilight and New Moon to not have to see it to its conclusion.

At least not right now....

The Corpse King by Tim Curran (#21 in the Cemetery Dance Novella Series)

2010-08-23T04:57:00.000-04:00

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2010. Reprinted with permission.

In a city of filth, the dead are for sale. Samuel Clow and his partner Mickey Kierney are traders in mortality, spending their nights digging up the freshly dead for the benefit of science and their wallets. One night they get lucky and come across a shallow mass grave of cholera victims — 30 in all.

Clow and Kierney are off to cash in at old Dr. Gray's when they see something strange — and for these blokes to call something "strange" is saying a lot. The mythical Corpse King is rising. The lord of the dead, bane of resurrectionists everywhere, has struck again, laughing its hysterical laugh.

The Corpse King is the twenty-first in Cemetery Dance Publications' popular series of limited-edition hardcover novellas. It has ultra-creepy cover art by Alan Clark and intensely disturbing, almost photo-realistic interior illustrations by Keith Minnion.

Author Tim Curran paints the Irish slums of Edinburgh, Scotland, with a muddy brush, "a mud swimming with the filth of ... seepage from backed-up sewers ... emptied privy pails, offal from the slaughteryards ... a seething organic brew of feces, urine, blood ... a ripe and heady breeding ground for contagious disease." (Must be hard to sell real estate with a ringing endorsement like that.)

In fact, there's so much illness that the cemeteries are overflowing. Bodies just pile up — as hidden from sight as possible (or convenient) — while Clow and Kierney take advantage to get funds for their nightly imbibitions.

At first, the pair take a brave tack: they simply refuse to believe in the Corpse King's existence, diving back into their ghastly work. But a thing that eats corpses cuts into the livelihood of enterprising individuals trafficking in the freshly dead. So, the duo take it upon themselves to bait and destroy the culprit, whatever it may be.

This chase takes up a good portion of the plot of The Corpse King — and it is a frightening, suspenseful ride — but the main draw of the novella is the partnership of Clow and Kierney themselves. They've obviously been working together for some time, as they have an easy-going, mildly competitive manner with one another.

Their verbal jousts over who had the worst childhood — Four Yorkshiremen–style — are a highlight. They're wickedly witty and uproariously rude as they engage in a sort of "one-downmanship":

"Me old man used to beat me severely about the ears with his fists and I think he knocked something loose up there, he did."

"Cor, he only used his fists?"

"Unless a fire poker was near, you see."

"Me old man was the same way. Used a barrel stave on me, he did.... The old sod. I used to wake each morning with a stream of his vile piss in me face, except on me birthday when he'd dump the entire chamber pot on me as a gift. It's with great love and respect that I remember me father."

"Aye, enough then, Michael Kierney. If you were to peel an onion beneath me nose I could cry no more."

"You're a kind man, Samuel Clow."

Curran seems to have a quiver full of remarks, retorts, and ripostes layered with humorous hyperbole and gallows humor (literally, during the hanging of a fellow graverobber) that engenders an affection for these companions that grounds the abnormal goings-on in a relatable reality. One begins to care about the filthy buggers, especially when compared to the people around them.

As a result, The Corpse King is more than just a horror tale. It's also a tragic portrait of friendship. When Curran began leading the story toward its inevitable end, I just held on because I knew I was in the hands of a master.

Guest Blogger: James Mowery: EBooks in Today's Online Market

2010-08-17T04:56:00.000-04:00

James Mowery is a computer geek who writes about technology and related topics. To read more blog posts by him, go to led tv.

Books are generally considered “old media”: they are not very current, don’t update very easily, and are generally an antique way to transfer and store knowledge. However, technology is infiltrating the book market, just like everything else, and is changing the way we read books. The idea of storing large amounts of text digitally is not particularly new or innovative, but storing and reading whole books digitally is a recently new trend.

The development of eBook readers is what has really allowed this. Digital book readers, which have special screens that don’t cause eye strain, are the recent innovation that has allowed for eBooks to really become popular and penetrate the market. Amazon has reported that it sells more eBooks than hardcover books, which is a huge indicator of just how big the eBook market is.

Most eBook readers use a special eInk screen which is black and white and doesn’t refresh very fast. This limits the display on those devices to traditional text-only books. However, newer devices like the iPad have full-color displays that have the potential to allow for other types of content.

Right now, most eBooks are books that are published primarily in print form and simply copied into eBook form. As eBook readers become more popular, it may be possible to design eBooks specifically with the device in mind.

New features could include embedded photos or videos that accompany the text, or even how-to guides or applications that could help you do something else on your reader. Social media integration seems almost inevitable in the future of eBooks. The digitization of books provides a promising feature filled with new technology.

This article copyright © 2010 James Mowery.

The Tilting House by Tom Llewellyn

2010-08-09T05:31:00.000-04:00

When the real estate agent shows the Peshik family Tilton House, she is honest about the flaws: the floors tilt at a three-degree angle, and they were designed that way; the walls and floors are covered in script and drawings of a scientific and artistic nature. But the wood is gorgeous, and the price is certainly right — especially when the agent (desperately, it seems) shaves $20,000 off the asking price — so, they take it.

Then weird things start happening, and not just the kleptomaniacal leanings of the mumbling neighbor known only as Purple Door Man. I mean, weird things like the brutal murder of a Rattus rattus, resulting in the victim's father (Mr. Daga by name) getting so peeved he gives Mr. Peshik a talking-to then sells off his rare coin collection (the rat's, that is) so he can buy the house next door and relocate his remaining family.

Oh, and let's not forget the pair of undertakers who go around town, delivering their business cards, one at a time, to the person who'll die tomorrow. Author Tom Llewellyn's debut novel, The Tilting House, continues in this mostly episodic fashion, telling various stories presented as the events of the day, with the next day (or thereabouts) bringing on the next story. This not only makes it easy to find a stopping place if you need to put the book down for a spell, but it also makes the strangeness a little easier to take instead of all at one.

The Tilting House is geared toward readers in the 9-12 age group, but this much older reader found himself swept up in the linearly presented vignettes. There's a little of everything here: suspense, humor, adventure, horror, mystery, and a lot of heart. Llewellyn's story is imaginative and just weird enough to keep the reader interested, but it is also grounded in the realities (such as they are) of a family trying to get used to a new house.

What does Grandpa's leg share with their dining-room set? Why does the dimmer switch bring reporters around? What are the "deadly" consequences of the mysterious "grow powder" found inside the box in the attic? Who was the mysterious F.T. Tilton, and why did he write all over his house? The answers to these and other questions reside in The Tilting House. The result is a sort of House of Leaves for the grammar-school set. One thing is for sure: you'll never see moss the same way again.

The Trouble with Tramps: An Orrie Hitt Homage by Michael Hemmingson (Black Mask Books)

2010-08-02T05:36:00.001-04:00

"You wanna know what the trouble with tramps is?" he said to me.

"Sure," I said. A good bartender always listens.

"A tramp is always a tramp. They try to fool you, they may even fool themselves. They think they've changed and maybe they want to, they say it's all behind in the past, but deen down, down their rotten cores, they're still tramps. They are born tramps and will die tramps."

Upon finishing author Michael Hemmingson's recent story collection This Other Eden, I was very interested in other works by him. But after reading such serious stuff, I was surprised to come across a romp like The Trouble with Tramps -- a pastiche of the work of author Orrie Hitt, the "Shakespeare of sleaze" who made a career of chronicling the foibles of ne'er-do-wells in his paperback originals of the 1950s and '60s.

Hemmingson is a bit of a Hitt scholar. He runs the blog Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books, where he has made a study of this kind of feverish writing over the past year, focusing primarily on the work of Orrie Hitt and the early years of Robert Silverberg. So, the man knows his stuff.

The Trouble with Tramps is the story of Jack Card — resident of Hittsville ("Just a stone's toss from Port Jervis") — and how he juggles his relationships with three women: his lush tramp wife Kay, his pregnant underage tramp girlfriend Lucy, and his new tramp lover Eve, who wants Jack to kill her important-businessman husband, while trying to write pulp stories in whatever free time he has.

Jack's two-hour lunch with Eve has cost him his job, which brings his problems into sharp focus. "It was the spring of 1957 and I had $52.50 to my name, with a frigid wife to support, a teenage lover to keep, and I was falling for a married woman who spent more money in a day than I did in a month."

To go into much more of the plot would ruin the fun of the reading, and The Trouble with Tramps is indeed a great deal of fun. It reads like it was written in one long burst of inspiration, but the prose is so sharp and pointed that there must have been a great deal of craft involved.

Hemmingson's skill with dialogue and character shines through, and the "sleaze" aspect is deftly handled. It's sexy without being silly and racy without resorting to raunch. Even the ending, obviously meant to shock, is done as tastefully as possible.

Plus, there's the fact that The Trouble with Tramps is so obviously a labor of love. Since most authors copy their favorite writer at some point, that Hemmingson's has been published for us to read is special indeed. I know it's made me curious for more of the work of both Hitt and Hemmingson. So, in that way, it's a good read and a terrific promotional piece.

Nitpicker's Note: For those who care about such things — and I know many people do not — this book could have really used another set of eyes to look it over. There are at least a dozen typos that are blatantly obvious — and one missing S from the beginning of "He lay down on top of me" changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

Now, I'm not saying it's anything on the scale of the story of Jose Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon, where an inserted "not" effectively changes history. But, as one who instantly notices such details — that's how I became a copyeditor in the first place — it tended to take me out of the story somewhat, and The Trouble with Tramps deserves better.

Guest Bloggers: Kelley Armstrong (author of Waking the Witch) and Marjorie M. Liu (author of A Wild Light) interview each other about dead mothers in their fiction

2010-07-27T05:26:00.002-04:00

Today I have the honor of welcoming authors Kelley Armstrong and Marjorie M. Liu to the pages of Somebody Dies. Authors of over a dozen novels each, Armstrong's most recent is Waking the Witch, the latest in her "Women of the Otherworld" series, and Liu's newest is A Wild Light, the third of her "Hunter Kiss" books.

In this exclusive exchange, Kelley Armstrong and Marjorie M. Liu discuss maternal murder, appropriate since both of their main characters have mothers who were murdered. In Armstrong’s series, Savannah Levine has dealt with that over the course of the series, but it, of course, still looms large in her character. The same holds true for Maxine Hunter, the main character in Liu’s novels.

Here the authors discuss more about how having murdered mothers have affected the main characters of their novels. Both Waking the Witch and A Wild Light are on shelves (virtual and otherwise) today.

Kelley Armstrong: When we met Savannah in the second Otherworld book (Stolen) she was twelve and her mother, Eve, had just died. Eve had been targeted by a group kidnapping powerful supernaturals. When they came for her, Savannah was at home playing sick. She's always felt, then, that if she hadn't been skipping school, her mother wouldn't have needed to protect her and could have fought off her kidnappers or escaped.

When Eve is killed trying to escape the compound, Savannah knows she was her main reason for escaping (otherwise, Eve would have waited it out). That's a lot of guilt to put on a twelve-year-old.

I always knew that when I gave Savannah her own story, she'd need to deal with that guilt. In Waking the Witch, then, I mirrored her tragedy with a similar one. She goes to a small town to investigate three murders and immediately bumps into the preadolescent daughter of a victim, who is investigating her mother's death. That takes what would have been "just a case" for Savannah and turns it into something very personal.

Marjorie M. Liu: Oh, man. I could probably write a whole book about the archetype of orphans in fiction. In Maxine's case, her mother was her entire world, the only human person she could count on as both friend, protector, and confidant. So when she was murdered — in front of Maxine, no less — it totally ripped her heart out.

It set her adrift, made her a child of the world (for lack of a better term), belonging to no one and no place except herself. Without another person to ground her, she was outside the world, observing it from a distance that was influenced by both her upbringing and broken heart.

So that's her mental state when the series begins. Which isn't to say that Maxine is moping around being depressed. She's out fighting the bad guys, doing what needs to be done. Telling herself to be strong because others need her.

But she needs people, too, and I always knew that her story would be more about her emotional and spiritual journey than the physical war between herself and the demons. That wasn't a random decision on my part. As readers will discover in A Wild Light, Maxine is power. And it's the strength of her heart — the goodness of her heart — that will determine whether the people of Earth live or die or become enslaved.

Many thanks to both authors for agreeing to interview each other for Somebody Dies. Don't forget to pick up copies of Waking the Witch and A Wild Light from your favorite bookstore.

Deadman's Road by Joe R. Lansdale (Reverend Jedidiah Mercer collection)

2010-07-12T05:40:00.003-04:00

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2010. Reprinted with permission.

This collection from "champion mojo storyteller" Joe R. Lansdale gathers all his stories to date featuring his cult-favorite character Reverend Jedidiah Mercer, including the complete novel featuring his debut appearance, Dead in the West. This limited edition hardcover from Subterranean Press also offers evocative cover art from Timothy Truman and over 20 interior illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne.

Dead in the West was, to my knowledge, the first zombie Western. Lansdale wrote it back in 1986 as a tribute to the kind of entertainment he grew up enjoying, like EC Comics and cross-genre B-movies like Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (both real movies, I assure you).

Reverend Jedidiah Mercer is a man of God ... sort of. He hasn't exactly been following the straight and narrow path lately, spending a good portion of his collection on whiskey. But arriving in Mud Creek changes things a bit. After an unmistakable sign from above, in addition to some soul searching of his own, the Reverend decides to get back on the right track the next Saturday, when he'll be hosting a tent revival -- if he can resist the temptations coming his way.

But what's a man supposed to do when that's the week the dead start rising from their graves? Kick some undead hind-tail, that's what! Dead in the West takes no time in getting started: the first death occurs on the fourth page. From there on, we are treated to a thorough character study combined with a thrill ride. Why the dead chose this week to resurrect themselves, and what kind of unsavory temptations may get in the way of the Reverend's redemption, are just two of the questions answered in this exciting short novel with more than its fair share of cowboys smashing brains.

This cross of horror and Western does justice to both. And yet, Dead in the West remains purely a Lansdalean effort, with the same level of horror, humor, and down-home realism that has made him so popular among other writers as well as his rabid cult of fans (in particular, his ability to frighten and amuse simultaneously while delivering folksy homilies).

Also included in Deadman's Road are two stories, the titular "Deadman's Road" and "The Gentlemen's Hotel," previously collected in The Shadows, Kith & Kin), the previously uncollected "The Crawling Sky" (from the terrific anthology Son of Retro Pulp Tales), and a brand-new short, "The Dark Down There."

"Deadman's Road" has Reverend Mercer confronting a ghoul, and "The Gentleman's Hotel" involves werewolves. "The Crawling Sky" concerns a caged lunatic, a house with "haints," a magic book, and a man-eating Shmoo. "The Dark Down There" finds the Reverend meeting up with an obese woman named Flower and a mine that is loaded with silver and populated by kobolds (goblins). Jedidiah and Flower form a partnership since fear is unlikely to overtake both of them at the same time, and go up to the mine to see what they can see. The story ends on a high point, an unexpected result in these stories.

Mercer is a wholly original character with his own set of rules. He's not always nice, but he doesn't put up with nonsense (threaten to kill him and he'll not wait for you to follow through before acting in self-defense), and he often makes a lot of sense. These stories are some of the best work the weird Western genre has to offer, and it's good to see them all collected in a single volume with Deadman's Road.

I Can See You by Karen Rose (unabridged audio book read by Elisabeth S. Rodgers)

2010-07-09T05:47:00.000-04:00

I tested the romantic suspense waters previously with Catherine Coulter's The Maze, so when author Karen Rose's novel crossed my path, I wasn't immediately repelled in the way I would once have been. And the plot of I Can See You , involving the dangers of online predation, was very intriguing -- so much so that I entered into this 16-disc behemoth with little trepidation, despite the fact that I had just finished one nearly as long, Andrew Davidson's terrific genre-blender The Gargoyle.

Eve Wilson returns in Rose's tenth thriller. Scarred by a horrific assault in Don't Tell, Eve was also featured in Nothing to Fear. Now she's pulling her life together, bartending and studying for her M.A. in Counseling, just in time to get involved in a murder mystery.

"The hooker had awakened ... thinking she was being strangled. Then, she really was. He did love it when fantasy met reality with such perfection."

A killer with 30 years of experience at his chosen craft -- and 30 years of trophies (the victims' shoes) and a well-used lime pit to show for it -- is targeting users of an online role-playing game called Shadowland: a Second Life-like game where users pretend to be other selves.

And the list of victims of this series of half a dozen murders staged to look like suicides, with their eyes glued open, closely matches the list of participants in Eve's master's thesis experiment: studying the effects of online role-playing on real-world self-esteem. Now she must break the confidentiality of her subjects to save their lives.

Enter Minneapolis/St. Paul's famed "Hat Squad" (they wear fedoras to "dress the part" as detectives), headed by Noah Webster, coming down off a local magazine's feature article that focused on Webster's partner, handsome lothario Phelps, due to his Paul Newman looks. (Webster looks more like a film noir thug.) Never mind the fact that Webster must continually take up Phelps's slack.

Like The Maze, the weakest portions of I Can See You are those devoted to the expected romance — though these lovebirds are so sickeningly adolescent and self-defeating in the beginning that it's a wonder they get out of bed in the morning, let alone know how to pursue a mature relationship. Eve's trauma and Webster's recovering alcoholism are such obvious parts of their personalities that it seems they could agree to simply meet each other on equally flawed terms.

But Rose keeps the suspense high in I Can See You — the bulk of the story takes place during a single week — and audiobook reader Elisabeth S. Rodgers enhances the text with her immersion into the characters. Most of Rose's books tie together in some fashion due to her repeating of characters, so readers who like this one will undoubtedly want to seek out more of the author's work.

Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales by Seabury Quinn, edited by Gene Christie (Black Dog Books)

2010-07-07T05:53:00.000-04:00

Author Seabury Quinn is probably best known to modern readers for his series of short stories featuring occult detective Jules de Grandin, as well as for his marked influence on the works of fellow author Robert E. Howard. But Quinn's career spanned sixty years: from 1917, the year "The Law of Movies" (a nonfiction article included as an appendix to this collection) saw print, to 1977, when his novel Alien Flesh was published, with at least 150 other works in the intervening years.

Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales, edited and with an introduction and bibliography by Gene Christie and published by Black Dog Books, collects Quinn's earliest known fiction along with other rarities, including the aforementioned "Law of the Movies." It is a humorous and insightful look at the way legal matters are presented on film that is just as applicable today as it was in 1917, even though its examples consist entirely of obscure silent films (none of which appear to be available on video).

The title story, "Demons of the Night," is just the kind of derivative tale — familiar but with a twist — that many an author has used as his entry to published genre fiction, and it is wholly entertaining if taken in that spirit. (The ending especially is that of an oft-told campfire story.)

"Was She Mad?" is reminiscent of classic Poe with genuine horror contained in it. Though many authors have tackled the "possessed artifact" tale, Quinn's "The Stone Image" manages to be surprisingly effective at chilling the spine, even though its tropes are all too familiar.

"Painted Gold" is one of a few surprises found by editor Gene Christie in his searches. Neither it or "Romance Unawares" have been reprinted since their publication in Young's Magazine in 1919 and 1920, respectively. In the former, Lt. Rathburn Thomas has little appreciation for the feminine form until the continuous company of men in the service puts him on the prowl. Quinn warns us with his trademark erudite humor: "When a perfectly nice young man begins to act in this way, there is danter ahead, particularly for him; for it is from such that the victims of the Strange Woman are recruited."

But despite this protest, "Painted Gold" is an unexpectedly sweet romantic tale of a fellow who meets a beautiful woman but is put off by her rouge and lipstick, since that was only worn by the cheap girls back home. "Romance Unawares" is another truly sweet story of two life-long friends whom the whole town expect to be married and who find out (of course) that they really cannot do without each other. These stories show a different side of Seabury Quinn than the other early tales in Demons of the Night, but it's one I wouldn't mind seeing more of.

"The Cloth of Madness" is most famous for its appearance in Weird Tales, but it was actually first printed in Young's, too. It's a classic tale of the cuckold getting revenge in one of the most original ways I've read. The fiction of Demons of the Night closes with two of Quinn's Major Sturdevant stories, "Ravished Shrines" and "Out of the Land of Egypt" — neither of which impressed me, though Loomis is an engaging narrator — and two from his Professor Forrester series, "In the Fog" and "The Black Widow."

It is in the Professor Forrester tales, especially "In the Fog," that I found the most direct antecedent to the style of Robert E. Howard, both in the constant action and in the varied, poetic vocabulary. "In the Fog" finds Forrester locking himself inadvertently into a "house of mysteries" that is like a trip to the Orient, and that will require all of his myriad (and mildly implausible though wildly entertaining) talents to escape alive.

I especially admired how Quinn uses the house to allow the reader to experience a globe-trotting adventure without his hero's having to leave Washington. "In the Fog" is the first of the series that appeared in Read Detective Tales throughout 1927 and 1928, and explains the origin of the woman who would later be his ward. "The Black Widow" is equally engaging, though more a mystery than an adventure.

Editor and compiler Christie brings Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales to a satisfying conclusion by offering the reader the breadth of Quinn's published work with an extensive bibliography — as full as is currently known, anyway. Given the organic nature of the discovery process, Christie considers the bibliography a work in progress and gives contact information in the introductory paragraph, welcoming any new information the reader can offer.

Guest Blogger: Paul Levine, author of the Jake Lassiter and Solomon vs. Lord series

2010-07-06T05:41:00.000-04:00

Today, I have the honor of welcoming author Paul Levine to the pages of Somebody Dies. He has written over a dozen novels, primarily in the legal-thriller genre, including the popular Jake Lassiter and Solomon vs. Lord series. His latest venture is the 20th-anniversary edition of his first novel, To Speak for the Dead, now available for the Amazon Kindle.

Levine tells about the experience — and what's special about this new edition:

JAKE LASSITER IS BACK: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION NOW AN E-BOOK

“When is Jake Lassiter coming back?”

I get the question at bookstores and Bouchercon, at Thrillerfest and Sleuthfest, at Left Coast Crime, and even my dentist’s office. I might be promoting one of the Solomon vs. Lord books, or Illegal, but the questions always come back to this: “Where the heck is Jake?”

I wrote seven Lassiter novels between 1990 and 1997. Since then, I’ve written two stand-alone thrillers, a four-book series, and a bunch of episodes for two CBS-TV dramas. But what everyone wants to talk about is that linebacker-turned-lawyer, a tough guy with a tender heart.

“Jake’s not in jail, is he?”

I don’t think so, but given his conduct in court, maybe he should be.

Truth is, Jake Lassiter lives!

In Fall 2011, Lassiter will be out in hardcover from Bantam as Jake searches for a missing woman from his past and becomes entangled in the intertwined worlds of politics and porn. But wait, there’s more:

Jake Lassiter is back in print now!

Or rather, in bytes.

Online.

Just a click away.

I’m talking about e-books. You can start reading the 20th Anniversary edition of To Speak for the Dead in about 90 seconds. An international bestseller, the first Lassiter novel was named one of the best mysteries of the year by the Los Angeles Times and became an NBC World Premiere Movie.

For a limited time, e-book sellers are offering To Speak for the Dead at the astonishing price of $2.99. Right, less than your double mocha latte, which by the way, Jake Lassiter would never drink. (That price may surprise the collector who e-mailed recently that he paid $325.00 for a signed first edition of To Speak for the Dead. Wow. I have a couple cartons in the garage if he wants more).

Now, here’s the best part: all author royalties — 100 percent — will go to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports cancer research and treatment at Hershey Children’s Hospital. It’s a cause dear to my heart.

The facility, part of Penn State’s College of Medicine, is one of the premier institutions of its kind. Thanks to the Fund, children whose families lack the financial wherewithal receive top-notch medical care.

There’s even more news about Jake. The second book of the Lassiter series, Night Vision, is also available as an e-book, as is 9 Scorpions, a stand-alone legal thriller set at the Supreme Court.

In the next several months, all seven Lassiter books will be on Amazon Kindle and the other e-bookselling platforms. So, even if you’re new to the series, there’s time to catch up before the new one hits the stores next year. If you’ve already read the books in the dead-trees format, try them again on your e-reader or right on your desktop or laptop. Here’s a quick look at what’s available now.

To Speak for the Dead — Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, Jake begins to suspect that his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. A sexy widow, a robbed grave, and another murder follow. “Move over Scott Turow. To Speak for the Dead is courtroom drama at its very best.” —Larry King, USA Today

Night Vision — Jake is appointed a special prosecutor when a serial killer begins stalking women on a sexually oriented Internet chat site. Enlisting a brilliant woman psychiatrist, Jake wades into a maze of lies and corruption to uncover the murderer. “Sparkles with wit and subtlety.” —Toronto Star

9 Scorpions — Sam Truitt, the newest and youngest justice on the Supreme Court, hires a brilliant and stunning female law clerk, unaware she has a personal stake in a huge case before the court. It’s a story of passion and violence, justice and revenge, in and out of court. “A relentlessly entertaining summer read.” —New York Daily News

For more info and to purchase, please visit http://www.paul-levine.com/content/jake-lassiter.asp.