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

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.

Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill (Hard Case Crime)

Since September 2009 marks the fifth anniversary of Hard Case Crime, I will be reprinting my reviews of the first 40 books from my old (and now mostly defunct) Craig's Book Club site — 2 for the first 10 days, and 1 a day for the next 20. I hope you enjoy this refresher course in the variety of crime fiction that this fascinating publisher has to offer.

"I kept thinking about how much of my life was accidental. I drank with the Stryker brothers and ended up in Maggie's house.... I could have stopped at the second beer and left Glastonbury, gone on to London and, even now, I would be in Los Angeles in a rented room rather than walking a country lane thinking of Maggie.... But it hadn't happened that way. I would not reflect on those events until it was too late." — from Robbie's Wife

Jack Stone has come from Los Angeles to England to make a new start. To get away from his second failed marriage and possibly write the screenplay that will rejuvenate his career. But he didn't count on falling in love with Maggie Barlow, the wife of a Dorset sheep farmer who offers a laid-back bed-and-breakfast arrangement.

A Hard Case Crime novel by an award-winning poet? Is this another departure on a par with Straight Cut? Well, yes and no. Robbie's Wife is more typical noir than that book (especially in the second half), but author Russell Hill's superb characterizations will appeal to readers of all stripes.

It may be the second Hard Case Crime novel in a row (after Lawrence Block's Lucky at Cards) to feature a newcomer-to-town who takes up with a married woman who is much more than the daily role she plays would lead us to believe, but otherwise Robbie's Wife could not be more different. It is a novel unto its own genre.

I really admired Hill's giving a romantic storyline to characters who are older than the typical genre participants. Jack is sixty, while Maggie is a relative spring chicken at forty. But age really doesn't come into play at all, with Jack still expected to act out the requirements of Hill's surprise-filled plot with the strength and stamina of a much younger man. Love at a certain age is both riskier and more compelling than I had thought possible, but these two make it into quite an attractive proposition (especially during some of the most tastefully erotic sex scenes I've read in some time).

Hill takes his time in offering up the expected noir trappings (essentially an update of familiar James M. Cain territory), but this allows the reader to get swept up in Jack and Maggie's illicit and delicious, heart-lifting and stomach-knotting relationship. Robbie's Wife is a beautiful, painfully tragic portrait of two people who, despite their attempts to the contrary, simply cannot stand to be away from each other. Like Jack states, "She was a magnet and I was nothing more than iron filings on a sheet of paper [darting] toward it, unable to do anything else."

Interspersed among Jack's narrative of real events are pieces of his ongoing screenplay, which uses those real events for inspiration. Hill slips these in at unexpected times, and even uses them to distance us from a particularly harrowing scene as it plays out on the script page. It is a very welcome change of pace in a genre that often depends on the same old setup to get things moving.

Things eventually get moving, all right, and they quickly spiral out of control, but never from Hill's point of view. He guides every part of the novel's evocative (and, in the right places, provocative) plotline with a sure hand to its powerfully shocking conclusion. With its fascinating mix of the familiar and the not new but nearly forgotten, Robbie's Wife made it onto my list of the ten best books of 2007.

Casino Moon by Peter Blauner (Hard Case Crime)

Author Peter Blauner's second novel Casino Moon is a bit of an anomaly in the Hard Case Crime line. Not only does it exceed 320 pages (only two others of the more than 50 novels in the line, The Last Match and Fifty-to-One, have gone that far over the 250-page median), but it is also barely 15 years old, having been first published in 1994 — after Slow Motion Riot won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel but before Blauner's breakout thriller The Intruder became a national bestseller.

But even the author's original intentions seem to make it a perfect choice for reprinting in this way. As Blauner himself wryly states on his website, "[Casino Moon] was meant to be sort of a quick down-and-dirty pulp novel about a young man trying to get away from his mobbed-up family. So naturally, it ended up taking four years and dozens of painstaking rewrites to get it in shape."

Anthony Russo has always known the mob. After his real father, Mike Dillon, was murdered, Vincent Russo raised him as his own. In fact, the only thing stopping Anthony from being "made" is his lack of Sicilian blood — well, that and the fact that Anthony hasn't killed anybody yet, despite Vincent continual attempts to make it easy for him. What Anthony really wants, though, is a chance to make his money legitimately, and funding former champion boxer Elijah Barton's comeback, against current champ Terrence Mulvehill, is the opportunity he's been looking for.

But, like Michael Corleone says in Godfather III, "Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in." (What? You expect me to review a mafia novel and not make a Godfather reference? Even Blauner does it, naming a restaurant "Andolini's" — Andolini was the Corleone family's original surname before Ellis Island officials changed it.)

Anthony finds it difficult to actually do anything on his own. Among other things, Anthony owes people money and wants to support his wife and kids, but his wife's uncle Teddy, the capodecine, always takes half of any money made by his underlings. Other people want their piece of the pie, as well, including his girlfriend Rosemary (who has her own daughter to support).

As he is floundering, Anthony gets a view of the other side from Mulvehill's promoter Frank Diamond, who manages to get a portion of every fee possible through having his son be the manager, renting his own space out for training, and other entirely legal (though not necessarily ethical) means. Sitting in Diamond's $5,000-a-night suite, Anthony notices, "a gold jacuzzi over by the window ... and a bar stocked with 150-year-old bottles of wine. Still, five thousand a night seemed a little steep.... But it must be worth it, I figured, just to know that the guy downstairs only had 75-year-old wine." He soon realizes, "Growing up around wiseguys was the best preparation I could have had for the fight game."

Casino Moon is unnecessarily melodramatic at times (does Teddy really need to have a son who killed himself, a mentally retarded daughter, a wife addicted to downers, an eating disorder, and prostate cancer all in one book?), especially with the constant parent–child issues present and an ending seemingly designed to make men cry. Also, Blauner jumps from first person for Anthony's story to third person for everyone else, making it a little confusing in the beginning until I got used to the style.

But despite these complaints, Blauner kept the pages turning, if sometimes filling them with a little too much detail. His characters are richly drawn, and I can still see their faces clearly in my mind. I really felt Anthony's tension at all the hands pulling him in different directions — and his struggles between his wife and his mistress make a strong case for fidelity. (One lesson: don't piss off a woman with no dignity left to lose.) Casino Moon is by no means a perfect novel, but Blauner tries hard and succeeds for the most part, particularly in making the mafia human.

Nitpicker's Note: One statement near the end of chapter 10, referring to a little girl's "toothless four-year-old smile," took me right out of the story. A one-year-old has most of her teeth already, and they don't generally start to fall out until around age 6. Probably Blauner simply wasn't a parent yet when he wrote Casino Moon, but this kind of fact is easy to research: just look at somebody else's kids. This also makes the attempts at parental characterization — "I've got two of my own. I'd kill for them" — ring false.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (literary fiction)

I hesitate to slap a derisive label like "chick lit" on anything, but author Sara Gruen's third novel is a prime example of the worst kind of "women's fiction"; Water for Elephants was obviously written by a woman solely for other women, with no attempt to be realistic from the male point of view. Instead it perpetuates the romantic ideals set forth by Harlequin and its ilk — heights that no three-dimensional male can ever reach. (No wonder it was a word-of-mouth bestseller.)

This is shown most strikingly through Gruen's protagonist, Jacob Jankowski. He does not talk, think, or act like any (straight) man I have ever met. The purpose he serves, it seems, is to stand in for a lot of women's idea of what a man should be. When a man looks at another man and calls him "unshaven" with the implication that what he really means is "unclean," you know you're nowhere near reality. This type of man lives only in fiction.

Gruen even makes Jacob a virgin (though old enough to have a degree from veterinary school) so that when he and the female lead finally make it to the bed (which is inevitable in this world), it more closely match the unspoken wishes of her audience.

(Now, understand, men's fiction is no better from the woman's point of view, with the hero more often than not bedding the female lead, who then conveniently dies so he can have access to a series of new women without guilt for the expense of a succession of prostitutes. I'm not saying it's any better, but at least it's marketed to men and not a general audience.)

Gruen relies so much on stereotypes from romance novels (or even just their covers) and "chick flicks" that none of the characters in Water for Elephants ever feels like a real human being but simply an archetype playing its part in her story. The writing flows nicely, and the story is somewhat interesting if you don't mind melodrama.

Also, Gruen manages to humanize people who have previously been seen as freaks, but this was all for nought when I never believed that the narrator was telling me the truth about his gender. I actually kept waiting for that to be a "twist" in the story, and in fact was disappointed when it never came.

Plus, if a man were really telling the story, he would undoubtedly have recognized the sophomoric unintentional hilarity in the following passage: Teams of men are ... raising enormous poles.... I pass a group of ten throwing their combined weight against a single rope as a man off to the side chants, "Pull it, shake it, break it! Again—pull it, shake it, break it! Now downstake it!" [p. 34].

(Yeah, that's what she said!)

Leather Maiden by Joe R. Lansdale (country noir)

Cason Statler is an Iraqi War vet returned home to Camp Rapture, Texas. Before his time in the service — he signed up for Afghanistan after 9/11 but was shipped to Iraq, go figure! — Cason was a Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist, so the local paper is happy to hire the "local boy made good" as a columnist.

Cason is wondering if there'll be anything to write about in such a slow town when he comes across the notes left by his predecessor (best known for her weekly survey of local garden insects) regarding the unsolved disappearance of teenager Caroline Allison.

Meanwhile, Cason struggles with the return to his hometown, among other things: living at home with his parents again in the wake of his more successful brother; a drinking problem that may or may not be out of hand; and being dumped by the girlfriend whose presence helped see him through the war.

When Cason's brother Jimmy's reputation is threatened by blackmailers, this pair of Statler brothers have to work together as a sort of private detective/vigilante team, and Cason learns that his brother has weaknesses too. Including one that connects him to the Allison girl.

Nearing the end of his third decade as a horror and crime fiction author, Joe R. Lansdale (winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for The Bottoms, and more Bram Stoker Awards than you can count on one hand) is still topping himself with each new novel, singling himself out with his particular style of down-home noir.

Leather Maiden combines Lansdale's talents for mystery plotting, quirky but realistic characterizations, colloquial dialogue that doesn't resort to dialect, and an intense portrayal of the dark and light of daily life in the rural South that can only come from a native. The result of this is a novel that offers emotional depth and authenticity along with a fun read. Last year, I wrote that Lost Echoes, Lansdale's previous novel, was "very likely the best thing he has ever written." Leather Maiden may be even better.

Sleuth (2007) directed by Kenneth Branagh (starring Michael Caine, Jude Law)

Sleuth (2007). Screenplay by Harold Pinter from the play by Anthony Shaffer.

Successful crime novelist Andrew Wyke (Michael Caine) invites actor and sometime hairdresser Milo Tindle (Jude Law) out to his English country home to discuss the woman they have in common: Andrew's wife Maggie. What follows is an elaborate game of wits that can have only one winner. Or is there a winner at all?

The original 1972 Sleuth is one of my favorite movies, so I went into this one with both curiosity and trepidation. I knew it wasn't possible to equate the experience of the original, but with a Harold Pinter script, Kenneth Branagh directing, and Michael Caine as Andrew, I knew I simply had to see what happened. (By pure coincidence, I watched both this and Sweeney Todd in the same week, and they're both remakes of favorites.)

I was both disappointed and pleased. The first hour of the 2007 Sleuth basically replicates the first two-thirds of the 1972 version, up to and including a visit from the police inspector (a small role that is nonetheless pivotal), but in a way that feels very much cut to the bone. All the details are there, but little of the emotion. The meeting of these two should be fraught with tension, but Pinter's screenplay wants so much to just get on with the proceedings that it feels rushed.

From that first hour, however, events begin to depart from the Anthony Shaffer play that is the source. And, similarly, from that point on, things get really interesting for the viewer expecting a retread of the original. In an interview on the DVD, Pinter states that prior to being asked to write this script, he had neither seen the movie nor read the play. He was therefore able to give it his own stamp. And he does indeed. The tone of the final third is completely different from its predecessor, with tonal changes both modern and unexpected (though not necessarily to fans of other Michael Caine films, Deathtrap in particular).

Caine and Law are well paired here. Having played Milo in the original to Laurence Olivier's Andrew, Caine has firsthand seen the role done definitively. Luckily, apart from some hauntingly familiar line readings (Intended? Who knows?), he takes a completely different tack and offers an Andrew almost completely self-assured. Whereas, Jude Law's Milo is a very modern man: somewhat confused by his woman and, certainly in this case, merely acting as the mouthpiece for her needs. But even these perceptions are turned on their heads in a film that refuses to take anything for granted.

I've seen Law in other films before, but Sleuth is the first one where he really shines through the material. This may be due to acting opposite a heavyweight like Caine (that always seems to bring out the best in relative newcomers), or to Branagh's direction (not likely as he seems to cast who he thinks can work without his help), or to the fact that, as producer, Law reportedly initiated this project for his own purposes (the most likely, since it means he already saw himself in the role). Either way, he offers a performance far beyond where I assumed his abilities lay and emerges as the real star of the film.

Though this Sleuth can never expect to stand up to the legacy of the original, it does indeed prove itself to be a worthy companion. And one that deserves respect, if only for taking the road less traveled by. In an era that wants film viewers to take everything at face value, a film that circumvents our expectations is a welcome one indeed.

Ravenous by Ray Garton (werewolf horror)

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on Down in the Cellar. Copyright 2008. Reprinted with permission.

In 1987, author Ray Garton’s novel Live Girls revitalized the vampire novel with its groundbreaking mix of sex and violence, in the process practically creating the “erotic horror” subgenre on its own. Over twenty years later, Garton’s latest is poised to do the same for werewolves, another classic horror mainstay in dire need of a makeover.

Big Rock, CA — His search for The Pine County Rapist has been filling his time, but Sheriff Farrell Hurley’s problems are about to get much worse. His receptionist, Emily Crane, killed the shadowy figure (with silver eyes!) that raped her, but the corpse was subsequently seen escaping from the morgue, running naked through the hospital waiting area to the outside, where it attacked and killed a deputy who tried to catch it.

After the attacks in the opening pages, Garton holds off for almost one hundred pages before the next batch. In the interim, he develops his characters so that we get to know them as people before it’s their turn to be transformed into creatures with undeniable cravings for raw meat and rutting.

In Ravenous, lycanthropy is a virus that is transmitted sexually when an extant werewolf couples with an uninfected person. Garton plays with the suspense factor since a person does not have to know they’re infected to pass on the disease. That the infection makes the recipient randier than usual only means that it spreads more quickly in this small town.

(Though best known for his erotic horror, Garton’s approach is not exploitive. Only the consensual sex scenes in Ravenous are written to titillate; the various rape scenes are appropriately horrifying. This sets him apart from some horror writers who don’t seem to know the difference.)

And around the halfway point, all bets are off. Garton plays for keeps. There are no favored characters. Everybody is a possible target for sex or supper, even if they were only introduced pages before. But in a Ray Garton novel, the walk-ons get a full characterization, too. Garton doesn’t shirk in his writing, which makes him one of the top horror writers working today.

(Update: a sequel, Bestial, is forthcoming in April 2009.)