Hard Case Crime Releases All of Michael Crichton's "John Lange" Novels (Reviews of Grave Descend and Zero Cool)

In 2006 and 2008, respectively, Hard Case Crime (during its relationship with Dorchester Publications) rereleased Grave Descend and Zero Cool, two novels written by author Michael Crichton to support him during medical school. Despite their quality, being a medical student, Crichton published them under a pseudonym, "John Lange." (Another pseudonymous Crichton novel written during the same period, A Case of Need by "Jeffery Hudson," even won an Edgar Award.)

Part of the deal was that they be reprinted under the Lange pseudonym, with no Crichton-related publicity involved whatsoever. The information was hardly secret, though, the Internet being how it is. For example, there was a list of Lange novels prominently placed on Crichton's Wikipedia page. And fans of the author had known of the pseudonymous works for quite some time.

Still, the deal was struck, and the two novels saw the light of day, two years apart, for the first time in nearly forty years. Now, after Crichton's passing, and well into Hard Case Crime's new iteration with Titan Publications, all of the John Lange novels are being released with Crichton's name on the cover, and with new paintings commissioned from cover artists Glen Orbik and Gregory Manchess.

I have not read all of the books, but here, slightly edited for length, are the original reviews I wrote back then for Grave Descend and Zero Cool.

"Every story was different, and they were all, to his ears, improbable. But not like the Grave Descend. That was not merely improbable; it was weird. Even the name of the ship was weird." — from Grave Descend

Author John Lange is actually the pseudonym of a massively bestselling author whose name you would instantly recognize if I chose to reveal it. Hard Case Crime, seeing the first reprints of Lange's books since their original publications, would like us to respect his privacy, but as we all know, there are no secrets on the Internet, and his identity is only as far away as a single click.

Coincidentally, John Lange was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Grave Descend. The author actually won the Edgar for another novel he wrote around the same time under a different pseudonym. (He has also won one under his own name, but not for a novel.)

Jim McGregor, a diver by occupation, is hired to investigate the sinking of the Grave Descend, a luxury yacht with an unlikely moniker (it's actually a quote from Samuel Johnson, the source of all the epigraphs in the book), off the coast of Jamaica. The main trouble is that McGregor can't seem to get a straight series of events surrounding the sinking — everyone has a different take on what happened, even where the boat went through customs.

To make things more difficult, the sinking is being kept from the press for 24 hours due to the presence of the boat's single passenger, Monica Grant, who is not only striking beautiful (especially in a bikini) but is also the "good friend" of the boat's married owner, Robert Wayne. McGregor discovers a few other details while involved with this mysterious crew, and begins to piece together a puzzle that's got his name written all over it.

John Lange offers up a straightforward, taut thriller with no frills but more than a little John D. MacDonald in its pedigree. The use of short chapters and sharp dialogue make the relatively complicated plot flow easily and quickly toward its conclusion. A slight but entertaining piece of escapism, Grave Descend is completely engrossing during the reading but doesn't leave much behind in its wake. (See what I did there?) I finished it in just a couple of hours and I don't imagine it took Lange much longer. Fans of MacDonald and Richard Stark could do worse than to take a short cruise aboard the Grave Descend. Just watch out for those hammerheads.

If you do the autopsy, we'll have to kill you.

If you refuse to do the autopsy, we'll have to kill you.

What's a vacationing radiologist to do? Dr. Peter Ross is going to find himself very busy over the next few days, involved with so many people, he'll be lucky to make it in time for the radiologists' convention.

Zero Cool is the second John Lange novel (after Grave Descend) to be revived by Hard Case Crime, but it was published first originally. It is also, I think, the better-written and more entertaining of the two.

John Lange was the pseudonym for an author who later became a huge best-seller under his own name. I'll hint by saying he's an "admirable" sort of fellow (unless that's a reference too dated for modern readers), but a quick Google search will reveal all.

Events in Zero Cool pile on one another in an almost improvisatory fashion, as if Lange were simply taking dictation from a compulsive liar with A.D.D. The seemingly unplanned nature of it, however, meant I was unable to predict much of what happened.

Ross hops from Spain to France and back again, mostly against his will, all the while leaving behind what must be the world's most tolerant (and trusting!) girlfriend, a woman he only met days ago on the beach (portrayed in Gregory Manchess's cover painting by model Meredith Napolitano, who is cleverly shown reading a copy of Grave Descend.)

It's a lot of fun. It's not the best-written book in the world, but its classic pulp adventure–inspired origins shine through brightly, with at least three occurrences of "And then it happened." But the fact that the author added new material for this reprinting makes it just that much more special. The new pieces, a prologue and epilogue that bring the action into the current day, make Zero Cool feel like a new book, even though it's over 40 years old. If you like Grave Descend and Zero Cool, be sure to check out the rest: Odds On, Scratch One, Easy Go (AKA The Last Tomb), The Venom Business, Drug of Choice, and Binary.

One Night Stands and Lost Weekends: Early Stories by Lawrence Block (short stories and novellas)

May you, Dear Reader, like the tomcat who had the affair with the skunk, enjoy these stories as much as you can stand.

—Lawrence Block, from the introduction

In 1999, publisher Crippen & Landru released limited hardcover editions of the early short fiction of author Lawrence Block.  The short-story volume was entitled One Night Stands, and the novella collection was called The Lost Cases of Ed London.

Now, these two volumes have been combined into a single trade paperback with the provocative title One Night Stands and Lost Weekends. The title describes the average time it took to write the short stories and novellas, respectively.

Block begins One Night Stands and Lost Weekends with a self-deprecatingly humorous introduction where he tells why he changed his mind regarding his original decision — set down in the introduction (also included) to the preceding limited collectors' edition — to only release the stories to a limited audience. Basically that, upon reading the stories, no one called "rip off," so why not make a little more money off them?

While these stories obviously aren't to the level of Block's later work (a point he emphasizes in both introductions, practically going so far as to warn the reader away from them), they will still appeal to the author's fans.  His voice is already clear, and the humor and imagination glosses over any imperfections in craft.

Con man Dick Barron runs across an amateur playing "The Badger Game" — badly — and decides to go along with it and turn the tables, though he's a little too arrogant for his own good. Before reading this story, I had not heard of this con, and now references to it seem to keep popping up. Apparently it was a popular plot device during the period. The story is definitely of its time — the narrator speaks of "expensive" thirty-dollar shoes — but Block's skill at character makes this one of special appeal to fans of confidence tales like his The Girl with the Long Green Heart.

"The Bad Night" is a simple and unsurprising standoff between two young killers and their much older potential victim. The use of setting and dialogue goes a long way toward saving this one. "Bargain in Blood," originally published under the "Sheldon Lord" byline, has a simple message: the next time your other half wants you to prove your love, just hope she's not Rita. Block manages to put off the surprise nearly to the end here.

"Bride of Violence" is a very well executed piece of pure crime fiction with a twist that, if hard to condone, is completely the result of the actions of the story. "The Burning Fury" is another one of those stories of people who can't leave well enough alone.  Block's characterization is stunning, giving all the right information and still holding back a surprise.

Characterization is everything in "The Dope," since there's very little in the way of plot.  "A Fire in the Night" is an internal monologue of sorts with a twist that negates several factual statements from the story.  "Frozen Stiff" owes a debt to Roald Dahl, as the irony flows. (A nod to the master is given in the form of a leg of lamb.)  Another Sheldon Lord, "Just Window Shopping," shows remarkable insight into the mind of a voyeur who gets a surprise opportunity.

A quote usually misattributed to Confucius says that if rape is inevitable, just "Lie Back and Enjoy It." But then the tables are turned a little too cutely in this tale from 1958. (Read it online.)  "Look Death in the Eye" is reminiscent of Robert Bloch with its darkly funny and humorously gruesome Tales from the Crypt–style ending.  In "Man of Passion," a photographer on the run picks the wrong town to hide out in.

"Nor Iron Bars a Cage" is one of those tales where you just know there's going to be a twist that the whole story was conceived around, but still Block manages to surprise with his only attempt at science fiction. "Package Deal" concerns town tamer Lou Baron, Joe Milani, Albert Hallander, Mike Ross, Arlington Ohio, and a hit man with his own agenda.

A particular highlight is "Pseudo Identity." It is the tragic tale of a double life that goes awry when the two overlap in an unexpected way.  Block pulls us along a surprising route that ends in a karmic twist.  This is one of his best all around.

"Ride the White Horse" is a very dark tale of how one man's life changes for the better — and then for the worse — when his routine is disrupted. A little naive in its drug knowledge but very astute in drawing the primary relationship.  The overblown ending is the only real detriment.

Even after having so many twists and turns thrown at me, Block still managed to get another one right past me in "The Way to Power," a tale of a mob gunman who finally begins to think for himself.  Lenny Blake (not his real name), the protagonist of "You Can't Lose," offers advice for smart guys who don't like to work but like to stay flush with cash--as long as they're not into luxury.

The "Lost Weekends" portion contains three novellas featuring Block's first series P.I., Ed London.  The introduction to this volume is similar to the other.  In "The Naked and the Deadly," London meets his client's blackmailer, and on the way to do business the extortionist is mowed down by a Tommy gun.

Ed then fills us in on the backstory: he was hired by a secretive woman, a lawyer is looking for the woman, a cop is looking for the lawyer, and things go from there.  The novella gives London (and Block) the chance to ramble on a bit and impress us with his esoteric knowledge.

In "Stag Party Girl," the title character jumps out of a cake at a bachelor dinner and gets shot for her trouble. She'd been intimate with most of the attendees and was potentially blackmailing one or more.  This is an improvement on "The Naked and the Deadly," with London seeming to take his job more seriously.

Finally, in "Twin Call Girls," Ed gets an urgent call from a frightened woman.  But when he gets to the meeting he finds her dead.  When the girl subsequently turns up alive at his office, it's not hard to figure out what's going on.  (The title gives it away.) This is the darkest of the three, with Block delving into some of the seediest aspects of humanity, but always with enough heart to make it palatable.

Reading these solid detective novelettes, it's easy to see how Block would progress to his later detective series.  And readers hungry for more Ed London can find him in Coward's Kiss.

Readers seeking classic Block should keep searching. But I heartily recommend that readers of Block's Hard Case Crime reprints get a copy of One Night Stands and Lost Weekends.

Re-Kindling Interest: Serpent Girl by Ray Garton (horror novella)

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.

Newly retired from his well-paying job, Steven Benedetti decides to celebrate with a visit to the carnival. There he meets Elise, the Serpent Girl (she dances with snakes), herself newly unemployed due to a fight with her boss/lover. Elise (whose real name is Carmen Mattox) and Benedetti subsequently hit the road together, spending the night in a roadside motel where they share their bodies and their histories — but not their secrets. That comes later; pieces slowly reveal themselves as the couple have a lot of sex and begin to think they're perfect for each other.

Author Ray Garton is probably best known as a writer of horror fiction (The New Neighbor, Live Girls), but Serpent Girl, originally one of his long line of books from Cemetery Dance Publications, seems to display the influence of the hardboiled crime novels and films of the 1940s and '50s: to wit, the beautiful woman whom trouble seems to follow and the world-weary man who is so attracted to her that he doesn't realize what he's gotten into until very late in the game. Steven and Elise fit their roles well, but each has a little secret in store for the other.

This blend of sex, horror, and crime fiction (I like to call it "erotic noirror," but your mileage may vary) plays to Garton's strengths: creative plots and the rare ability to know when to paint with broad strokes and when to be more detailed. Serpent Girl certainly has its flaws (conversations that border on the tedious, two-dimensional characters, and an abrupt ending), but they don't keep this novella from pulling the reader through to the somewhat unexpected conclusion. Its menacing foreshadowing alone would guarantee that, even if Garton didn't have a couple of surprises up his sleeve.

Garton's longtime fans will definitely be satisfied by Serpent Girl, and those concerned that he might be devoting himself to crime fiction entirely can be assuaged by his recent werewolf novel Ravenous (and its sequel, Bestial). Those, however, wanting more of this direction of the author's work should seek out his two books originally published under the pseudonym Arthur Darknell and now out under his own: Loveless and Murder Was My Alibi.

This review is an updated and revised version of the one that originally appeared in The Green Man Review in 2008. Reprinted with permission.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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")

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)

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.

Re-Kindling Interest: Street Raised by Pearce Hansen

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Joyride by Jack Ketchum (includes bonus novella Weed Species)

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2008. Reprinted with permission.

Author Jack Ketchum's specialty is fictionalizing the exploits of real-life criminals, something he has done to great effect in The Lost and Off Season, and especially in the book most consider his masterpiece: The Girl Next Door. The paperback reprint of Joyride (which includes the novella Weed Species) continues this tradition with different but equally disappointing results.

When Wayne — who always wanted to kill someone but never had the guts — sees Carole and Lee murder Carole's stalker ex-husband Howard, he knows these are some people he'd really like to hang out with. So, he kidnaps them and, inspired by their gumption, sets off on his own spree.

If this setup sounds vaguely familiar, Ketchum found inspiration for Joyride in an unlikely source — Emile Zola's classic La Bete Humaine — though the two authors take a different approach. (Other character details were pulled from Ketchum's usual source, the multivolume Bloodletters and Badmen by Jay Robert Nash.)

Originally printed in 1995 in the U.S. (and the U.K., where it was called Road Kill) and rereleased in a limited edition by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2007 with a new afterword from the author, Joyride differs from Ketchum's usual style in that it eschews graphic sex and violence for the most part. Sometimes it hardly seems like a Ketchum novel at all. The suggestion and actions are there, but the loving descriptions of carnage and mayhem are mostly absent. Instead, the author includes his characters' thoughtful inner monologues on the different qualities of their relationships. Sheer suspense regarding how far Wayne will go carries the reader to the end, and even with that, it was a struggle.

Weed Species, however, is extreme to its detriment. A novella spanning about 80 pages in hardcover (the Cemetery Dance limited edition includes a handful of full-page illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne), it starts right off by chronicling Sherry's Christmas gift to her boyfriend Owen: her teenage sister to rape and a camcorder to film it. This opening scene would have put the author firmly among the "extreme horror" crowd if he weren't in fact a founding member. In it, Ketchum clearly portrays the couple as irredeemable. Later events only serve to underline this fact.

Sometimes it seems as if in Weed Species Ketchum is only out to disturb us; he has said he does this by disturbing himself first. The book's theme can be summed up in three words: "cruelty begets cruelty" (an idea underscored by the book's title and illustrations and by the actions of another of Owen's victims; she survives only to hurt another).

This underlying story behind the story would have been served better by a shorter rendering. Ketchum's need to stick to reality (Owen and Sherry are also based on real people) prevents him from giving Weed Species the satisfying punch of an ending it requires to circumvent these flaws. As a result, it feels like purposeless sensationalism, though it contains some of the author's most brutal and visceral prose yet.

Many people have attempted to thread their horror with social commentary, and Ketchum has done it so much better before that it's difficult to recommend this to any but his most hardcore fans. Weed Species and Joyride thus make an interesting pair. Put together, they seems like two parts of a whole, but taken separately, each feels as if it is missing something vital.

The Big Bang by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Mike Hammer)

Mike Hammer went to Florida to recover from a stab wound from one of Junior Evello's boys — Junior is the nephew of Carl Evello from Kiss Me, Deadly — "that had opened my side like somebody wanted to slip in there and hide." On his first day back in Manhattan, he chances across hospital messenger Billy Blue being jumped by drug dealers who think he can get them easy access to the hospital's drug stash, and Hammer quickly dispatches the assailants with his signature brand of street justice.

It looks like Evello might be involved, but Hammer assures Homicide captain (and long-time friend) Pat Chambers that he has no interest in the case. Of course, when somebody tried to kill Mike, he gets interested fast. Now it's on.

The Big Bang is one of the handful of unfinished manuscripts Mickey Spillane entrusted to Max Allan Collins upon his death in 2006. Two others have been published previously: the non-Hammer Dead Street and the "last" Hammer novel chronologically, The Goliath Bone.

In addition to being about one-third complete, The Big Bang was also fully outlined and included the ending, which was one of Spillane's favorites. When the deadline for this book was approaching and it did not look like he could finish it, Spillane took the previously shelved "second" Hammer novel For Whom the Gods Would Destroy (he had written it after I, the Jury but quickly pounded out My Gun Is Quick as a followup instead), updated it with references to more recent cases, and sent that one in. It would be published under the title The Twisted Thing.

Spillane's and Collins's styles mesh well throughout The Big Bang, since Collins expanded Spillane's original one-third out to about one-half and then completed what was missing. Collins has somehow managed to produce a novel that is firmly grounded in the 1960s but does not feel dated. This is not an artifact, but a fully vital modern novel.

Collins stays mostly in the background, preferring to let his friend and mentor shine from beyond. Those who have followed Hammer through numerous adventures will appreciate it most, but The Big Bang can be enjoyed even by those relatively new to the detective.

One definite highlight is the climax, when Hammer unwittingly drops acid and sees his potential final moments with all the clarity of a warped record. ("Shotgun" by Junior Walker and the All-Stars gets a prominent role in the melee.)

But the ending of The Big Bang is just stunning, related to a huge shipment of heroin coming into the city (the "big bang" of the title — sorry physics fans, no beginning-of-the-universe theories discussed in these pages¹). It may in fact be one of the best of the series. Just don't try to skip ahead and read it because you won't understand its significance unless you've read the rest of the book. The whole thing is well orchestrated for maximum impact. It's a keeper and one that will likely go down as one of the more memorable.

At least one more of these Spillane/Collins collaborations (Kiss Her Goodbye) is already scheduled to be published. There are at least three more substantial manuscripts that could be completed: Complex 90 (a sequel to The Girl Hunters), Lady Go Die!, and King of the Weeds. However, whether these see their way into print depends, like all things in publishing, on how well these sell, so support them however you can (preferably with your wallet) and help Spillane's legacy continue well into the future.

---

¹Try What's Next?: Dispatches from the Future of Science for that — specifically Sean Carroll's "Our Place in an Unnatural Universe."

Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella (Stark House Press)

John Albano is behind on his child support. To that end, he needs to make quick money, and his car-driving job isn't cutting it. Luckily, he's come into a job running bootleg copies of the newly banned porn film Deep Throat (labeled as "Peter Rabit," misspelling and all) between Brooklyn and Long Island, collecting the receipts from the head-counters at the box office (five dollars for each patron), and giving the proceeds to the mob guys who "bought" the movie (actually, forced the film's writer/director Gerard Damiano out of their partnership).

For this, he is paid fifty dollars a day — and these are 1973 dollars. The guy who did it before him got the nickname Tommy Porno, but he was caught stealing and turned up dead with his hands cut off. So now they call Albano Johnny Porno, and he doesn't like it.

Meanwhile, John's ex-wife Nancy's first ex-husband Louis — whom she cheated on John with, and is cheating on her third husband with, too (are you keeping up?) — has hatched a plan to rob John of the mob's money when John comes to make his weekly child support payment to Nancy, with her help.

Louis owes four thousand dollars to his shylock and his bookie. He keeps looking for his next score but can't cut his nickel bags any more than he already does, or they'll start smelling like an Italian dinner. But Louis is a full-time con artist and philanderer loaded with ideas for whatever can make him an easy buck.

At the same time, Albano is also being pursued by police. Captain Billy Hastings, forced to retire when he took a swing at Albano and got knocked out for his trouble, is bent on revenge. And a duo is trying to clean the porn off the streets by investigating John's boss, Eddie Vento. Author Charlie Stella keeps all these subplots up in the air simultaneously without ever dropping a single ball.

Stella was raised in Brooklyn and spent 18 years making money wherever he could (legally or otherwise, much like his protagonist), so he knows the crowd he writes about. He wrote his first novel, Eddie's World, to impress his current wife, and he has steadily grown a following for his intelligent and astute books about criminals, receiving starred reviews from Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

Inspired by a viewing of the documentary Inside Deep Throat — Stella and his wife looked at each other and said "Next book" — Johnny Porno, Stella's seventh novel, is a terrific crime epic from this woefully underknown author. It is loaded with a cast of quirky losers, layabouts, and louts, with the one shining star being John himself. It's the got the kind and number of characters that director Robert Altman liked to juggle, and I like to think it could have been his 1973 crime film if he hadn't decided to reimagine Philip Marlowe with The Long Goodbye.

Based on my experience with Johnny Porno — I haven't read his other books but plan to remedy that soon (Charlie Opera is $2.00 on Smashwords) — I must say that Charlie Stella is one of the best writers the crime genre currently has to offer. He's a natural wordsmith, putting down the way people really talk in a way that still reads smoothly — not an easy task. The fact that Stark House Press, who previously focused on reprinting "lost" pulp novels, chose Stella as their first original author — after author Ed Gorman recommended him upon reading the manuscript — says a lot about his peers' respect for him.

Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark (Hard Case Crime)

It's another self-publishing success story — 14 years after the fact. Author Jack Clark was nominated for the Shamus Award for his 2002 professional debut Westerfield's Chain. But back in 1996, he was still a beginning writer making ends meet by driving a cab in Chicago.

Following the old advice of "write what you know," Clark set his first novel Nobody's Angel in and around the Chicago taxicab community. Then, with apparently a good head for cross-merchandising as well as a talent for fiction, he printed up 500 copies and sold them for five dollars each to his fares.

When Clark first sent Nobody's Angel to Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime for a possible reprint, Ardai had low expectations due to its self-published history. But it far exceeded his expectations, and now it's available again, for only three dollars more than the first edition.

Someone is killing cabbies and hookers. Though his fares assume he must be, Eddie Miles isn't all that worried about it. But Eddie doesn't worry about much, content to prowl the streets of Chicago in his hack, and even "go south" (to the rougher sections of the city) if it pays. The murders affect Eddie personally when a friend of his is one of the victims (Eddie was the last to see him alive), and again when his headlights discover a teenage prostitute left to die in an alley trash pile. Her name is Relita, and Eddie becomes her reluctant "angel," going to visit her at the hospital since her doctor says she only lights up when he comes. But, like the title says, Eddie is Nobody's Angel, not even his own.

Nobody's Angel is a little thin on plot, but it's definitely noir through and through. The main thing that keeps the pages turning is Eddie himself. He's intensely likable, even with his flaws, and it's a treat to watch his day to day existence as a cabbie. Clark makes every passenger an individual. Whether they're flirting with Miles, pranking him, or asking too many questions, they're all equally memorable, and Clark's confident style flows easily across the page.

I don't want to get into this too deeply, at the risk of revealing too much — spoiler warning? — but Eddie's likability actually fooled me. I thought he was something that he isn't. This made the ending seem ultra dark and somewhat disappointing, since I had invested so much in his decisions up to that point.

In retrospect, however, Clark is entirely true to his character. My surprise was due to my own wishes and expectations. Consequently, Nobody's Angel was a powerful read in addition to a well-written one, and it still has me thinking about it. I'm not sure yet how I feel about it, but I know that its effect on me alone qualifies it as a great achievement.

Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns by Paul Green (reference/analysis)

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

Traditional Westerns offer some of the best reading around, but an enthusiast also appreciates a blending of genres now and then. Westerns with crime-fiction tropes are fairly easy to find; that's just your average historical mystery with a different setting — and what Western doesn't include some sort of crime? But what about tales of the Old West that have horrific or supernatural elements? For that, you have to go to the "Weird Western."

But once you have decided to pursue more of this relatively obscure subgenre, where do you find more? Apart from coming across one accidentally, or finding the rare like-minded individuals to offer recommendations, it is hard to know where to look. Luckily, author Paul Green has solved that problem for the time being with his Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns.

From the beginning, it is clear that Green has an affection for his work. In the preface, he states that the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns "covers the history of [the genre, dating] back over 150 years." But he also warns that the reader will not find only classics within, that the quality "ranges from top-class and innovative to repetitive and formulaic," and that he has not left out works that "might be considered in bad taste or offensive. The weird by definition attracts the weird."

Green has compiled hundreds of titles and authors of (and characters from) Weird Western stories, novels, movies, TV shows, comics, video games, and more. He covers the gamut from the only slightly weird to the truly odd, from early dime novels to current role-playing games, dividing them all into six basic categories: the Weird Western (with horror and fantasy elements), the Weird Menace Western (supernatural events with a rational explanation), the Space Western ("cowboy with a ray gun" — probably the most popular with the mainstream, it includes such favorites as Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter series, Star Wars, Firefly, and the recent Avatar), the Science Fiction Western (future technology, aliens, or post-apocalyptic themes — Green includes a very thorough rundown of The Wild, Wild West), the Steampunk Western (incorporating Victorian technology), and the inevitable Weird Western Romance (which is fairly self-explanatory; it seems like every genre has its "romance" offshoot).

Most surprising to this reader, all ages are represented, from the Indian in the Cupboard books and Four Feather Falls TV series for children, to the Djustine comic books for adults — a combination of the Marquis de Sade and the spaghetti Western that details the "sexually graphic adventures of the large-breasted female gunslinger and her fight with the supernatural including zombies, vampires, and Diabla, daughter of Satan." (I can hear the keyboards tapping into search engines already. That's one sure thing about Weird Western enthusiasts: the more outlandish it is, the better we like it.)

Given Green's experience as a comics artist (Marvel UK, DC Egmont, Golden Books USA) and a TV historian (A History of Television's The Virginian, 1962–1971), it's not surprising that the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns focuses more on visual media than on more traditional stories and novels — though it could simply be a case of "weirdness" being more acceptable in visual form. Green even makes sure to include Western-centered episodes of otherwise non-Western TV shows, like Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Highlander, and Star Trek: The Next Generation (you've got to love that holodeck!).

It is very easy to get lost in the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns, so make sure to set aside a good deal of time when you pick it up to "just look something up." There are plenty of discoveries awaiting, and some old favorites to revisit. I'm sure some favorites have been inevitably omitted (the one I noticed was Steve Vernon's zombie buffalo novella Long Horn, Big Shaggy), but even Green is aware of this. As a supplement, he has created a weblog, called Weird Westerns, where he posts news and reviews of more recent titles. Jump on the robotic-horse-drawn stagecoach and ride into the world of the Weird Western.