Stolen Away by Max Allan Collins (Nathan Heller historical mystery series #5)

The fifth novel in Max Allan Collins's Nathan Heller series of historically accurate private-eye mysteries not only won the Shamus Award for best private-eye novel (the second in the series to win after True Detective), but is also, at 600 pages, the longest private-eye novel ever written.

But there's a lot of story to cover in Stolen Away, which focuses on the kidnapping of the "Lindbergh baby," 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr., son of the famous pilot ("Lucky Lindy"), who flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic and was the first person to do it solo.

The story begins, however, with Heller, at this point still a cop on the Chicago force, following a suspicious-looking blonde, baby in tow, through the local train station. The Lindbergh kidnapping is only a few days old, and Heller thinks he might be on the trail to solving it, which would do wonderful things for his career.

He tails the woman all the way home, only to discover he's stumbled onto another kidnapping entirely. But this case catches the attention of Charles Lindbergh ("Slim" to his friends), who requests Heller's assistance in the investigation of his own child's disappearance.

Since Heller is still a cop throughout most of the book, Stolen Away walks the line of being a true private-eye novel. It is only Heller's distance from his normal jurisdiction that, in the long run, makes it feasible -- that and its part in the already established series. Heller works alone, and I guess that's what counts.

Having an elderly Heller writing his "memoirs" from his retirement complex in Coral Springs is a nice touch. It lends a realism that an actual person is recounting these events from memory (though he must have Archie Goodwin's memory for dialogue to be able to remember conversations as clearly as he does).

Collins' solution to the kidnapping is a little too clean for my taste, but Stolen Away as a whole is quite a gripping read with a surprisingly emotional conclusion. Fans of the series will tear through this, but I would especially recommend it to those interested in the Lindbergh kidnapping as history, given that Collins's usual exhaustive research is in high gear here. All the characters, except Heller, are either real people, "have real-life counterparts," or are composites of real people, and their actions and motives are taken from various articles and books about the case, mostly written by the participants.

That it all fits together so well is a testament to author Max Allan Collins's skill, especially since, in his "I Owe Them One" afterword (where he lists his sources), he cites the "conflicting source material" and the fact that "none of the books contemporary to the Lindbergh case proved entirely reliable." Nevertheless, Stolen Away is by far my favorite Heller mystery, and Collins is always my go-to guy whenever I want to indulge my taste for a great historical whodunit.

Flesh Worn Stone by John A. Burks, Jr.

Chalk one up for free e-books. It's unlikely I would ever have heard of Flesh Worn Stone had it not come up in a list of books available free for the Kindle. But the name of the author, John A. Burks, Jr., also rang a bell from my time at a message board years ago. Said message board inspired a horror anthology, Damned Nation, which was co-edited by David T. Wilbanks, with whom I would later form Acid Grave Press. And Burks's story was one of the highlights within.

Flesh Worn Stone, despite its inscrutable title (which is mentioned near the end of the story), is a gripping novel that held me in its thrall for an entire weekend. A handful of people wake up to find themselves caged on a beach.

When they are taken out, these folks are introduced into an unfamiliar society overseen by an faceless individual who judges them on how well they perform in the Game — and who decides if they will eat or if one of them will be eaten.

The Game is an occasional event where two numbers are displayed and the people whose arms are tattooed with those numbers are expected to perform the requested action or pay the consequences. The consequences to breaking just about any rule involves being that night's dinner.

Burks has taken the post-apocalyptic-society scenario and taken out the apocalypse, and it still works.  This makes Flesh Worn Stone all the more interesting as the question, "Why are these people in this situation?" remains unanswered for quite some time. 

The answers are eventually forthcoming, but Burks skillfully holds them back and dishes them out carefully one by one when they'll yield the most dramatic punch.  I even gasped a couple of times — actually, physically gasped out loud — from the shock of some of the revelations in Flesh Worn Stone. And you know how rare that kind of physical reaction is with fiction, however much blurbers would like you to believe otherwise.

Hard Country: A Novel of the Old West by Michael McGarrity (family saga Western)

"When I first put Kevin Kerney on the page as the protagonist in my crime novels, I was already imagining his family history back several generations or more.... As the series progressed and Kerney grew and developed, I knew I would someday have to tell his family’s story generation by generation. I never once entertained the notion of simply writing the back story of Kerney’s life.... That seemed too mundane."

—author Michael McGarrity in an interview with Bookgasm

Fans of author Michael McGarrity have been waiting a long time since his last book, Dead or Alive, published back in 2008. And now that Hard Country is out, we know why. This beast of an epic Western was intended to be a single novel and ballooned into a trilogy!

McGarrity is best known for his series of southwestern mysteries featuring law enforcement officer Kevin Kerney. The only one of these I had read before Hard Country was Hermit's Peak, which was excellent, both as a mystery and as a portrait of New Mexico.

That McGarrity has been nominated for awards by both Western and mystery communities says a great deal about his ability in combining the genres. Hard Country is a deliberate departure from that series, but it retains a tie by going back into Kevin Kerney's ancestral line and telling the story of the expansion of the American West, from after the Civil War through the end of World War I, through the eyes of some of those involved.

From the opening portrait of a young wife's frustration with frontier life, I was caught up in McGarrity's characters' world. John Kerney is in west Texas to build up his Double K ranch. But, when his wife dies in childbirth, and his brother and nephew are murdered, he leaves his ranch and son behind to find the killers. Later, when Kerney decides to reclaim his son, Hard Country really starts to show its stuff. McGarrity's prose is so skilled as to be invisible, the words simply unveiling the story like truly great writing should.

It is impossible to read Hard Country and not recall some of the often-cited Western classics like Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove and A.B. Guthrie's The Big Sky in its sheer scope. But the book it most reminded me of was Wallace Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain, especially in its portrait of a father. At nearly 700 pages, the sweep of Hard Country is breathtaking, and yet its pages zip by like a desert wind and remains accessible to even the most reluctant reader. I'm already looking forward to the sequel.

Antiques Disposal: a Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery by Barbara Allan (Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins)

Fans of Storage Wars, take note. Antiques Disposal, the sixth entry in the Trash 'n' Treasures cozy mystery series from author Barbara Allan (actually spouses Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins) has heroines (or anti-heroines, depending on your take) Brandy and Vivian Borne bidding on a storage unit to stock their antique shop. There they discover both a cornet (that may have belonged to Bix Beiderbecke) and a corpse (that definitely belongs to Big Jim Bob, owner of the storage area and ex-flame of Vivian's).

If you're new to the antics of the mother-daughter dueling duo (as well as the authors' prevalent parenthetical asides — apparently the subject of much debate), you may wish to start with the first novel in the series, Antiques Roadkill, though the authors will catch you up satisfactorily in Antiques Disposal. 

Just be aware that facts presumed here were used as revelations in previous entries, so reading a later book may spoil the impact of earlier ones.  (The authors tackle this with admirable wit within the text.)

The Collinses as "Barbara Allan" produce another wacky, lightweight romp perfect for an evening's escapism, despite the Bornes' increasingly complex family tree.  This series is just pure fun, and the humor, though readers of more "hard-boiled" fiction might call it silly, is a treat. 

However breezy the novel feels, writing funny is actually quite difficult to pull off while keeping a tight rein on a murder-mystery plot.  The fact that this pair (the Collinses, not the Bornes) keep managing to pull this off while remaining happily married is a credit to them. 

(For those thinking that the authors are merely cashing in on a popular fad, looking into the history on Max Allan Collins's blog reveals that the first chapter and synopsis of Antiques Disposal were sent to the editor in June 2010, and Storage Wars debuted in December of that year.)

Stressed by Taxes? Vinewood's Got it Worse!

SINKHOLE SHAKES UP VINEWOOD RESIDENTS Vinewood, GA — A sinkhole that appeared without warning in the middle of Main Street has the residents of Vinewood up in arms. It has already claimed one life, that of local man Calvin Hull, when it opened up under his car while he was driving. Local pharmacist George “Doc” Taggert attributes Hull’s to pure bad luck — simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “It could’ve been any one of us,” Taggert said. “But it just happened to be Calvin on that very spot when the earth fell out from under him. Can you imagine what that must’ve been like? Tooling along Main Street in your new car, then boom. The street falls away and the earth swallows you up.” The sinkhole is currently roped off with yellow “Caution!” tape, and through-traffic is blocked by yellow-and-black saw horses affixed with battery-operated flashers. But one man thinks that is not enough to protect the town....

Read the rest of “Sinkhole Shakes Up Vinewood Residents” over at the Acid Grave Press blog.

Outlaws All by Max Brand (Western novellas)

Outlaws All contains three novellas by author Max Brand. Like many of the novella collections released by Leisure Books, they are completely unrelated, except that they all originally appeared in Western Story Magazine, and two of them in 1921. Luckily, this does not matter so much, as Frederick Faust (under whatever name he wrote) was such a good writer that it is hard to go wrong with his work at any length.

"Alec the Great," a prologue to author Max Brand's novel Sixteen in Nome, was originally published in 1930 as "Two Masters." It is a "chronicle of hatred" between Massey and Calmont. The duo were inseparable friends, though almost total opposites. Then a third made them even more devoted enemies.

A girl? No indeed. It is a canine force that draws these friends apart: the titular puppy, Alexander. Confronted with this addition to their Alaskan gold-finding venture, the pair seem to completely forget their search... and their friendship.

This novella is a good example of why I enjoy Max Brand so much. In addition to his poetic yet accessible style, he writes nontraditional Westerns of other frontiers (called "North-Westerns" by some).

"Riding into Peril" saw print in November 1921 as by John Frederick. The Kid — Kestrell Irving Dangerfield — was a true presence in Jorgenville. His silky blond hair and mild blue eyes drawing the ladies to him, and his way with a gun endearing him to the townspeople due to his ending fights with transients (not starting them).

Justice Bland, even with his affection for Dangerfield, knows the Kid needs to be taken down a notch. But he has no legal recourse until Dangerfield accidentally wounds an innocent bystander — even though the Kid apologized immediately, took the victim right to the doctor, and paid his bill. Bland then tries to teach the Kid a lesson, saying he will make sure Dangerfield serves a full six years in the county jail unless he promises to forever put down his guns.

The title story, "Outlaws All," appeared in September 1921 and features Brand's popular Bull Hunter character. It was, in fact, used as the opening chapters of that character's second eponymous novel. (A total of five novellas comprise the two novels Bull Hunter and Bull Hunter's Romance.)

The main focus, however, is on the half-wolf, half-dog known as The Ghost. The first chapter is a beautifully written and self-contained tale of the Ghost's attack on a bull, and the majority of it is told from the dog's point of view. This is unusual even for Brand, who is even now remembered for taking the Western to uncommon places.

This trio of Western novellas was a treat, and both those who enjoy traditional Westerns and those looking for something a little different will find something for them in Outlaws All.