Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance by Peter Brandvold writing as Tabor Evans (2013 Longarm Giant)

I'm glad to see the return of the giant editions of the adult Western series, which have been on a general hiatus since 2010. Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance begins with an exciting scene aboard a train, with Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Parker Long, known popularly as "Longarm," taking on an entire gang of owlhoots singlehandedly.

It ends with a similarly rousing confrontation, and the middle ain't too shabby, either.

After the train tussle, Longarm asks for some well-deserved time off. But Chief Marshal Billy Vail denies his request, sending him straight off to the town of Holy Defiance, Arizona.

Vail wants Longarm to find out what happened to some Arizona Rangers and U.S. marshals who've not been heard from since they were sent to investigate the location of a gold shipment (insured by the Pinkerton agency) that was stolen from a stagecoach.

And he wants Longarm to go with a Pinkerton as his partner. But Longarm meets his match in Pinkerton agent Haven Delacroix.  Not only is she as good at her job as he is at his, and as brave and proud to boot, but they're also both horndogs of equal measure.

Because of this, the contractually obligated sex scenes in Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance actually serve to add an extra level of tension between the pair of protagonists. They spend at least as much time thinking about each other as they do about the case.

Author Peter Brandvold, writing under the house name Tabor Evans, does not choose to continue the tradition of having Longarm work with Jessie Starbuck and Ki from the Lone Star series. (This was begun with the first Longarm Giant, Longarm and the Lone Star Legend, continued for a while, then abandoned until the thread was picked up again by James Reasoner.)

But this is hardly a disappointment, since Brandvold brings his own energetic storytelling skills to Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance, making it the most gripping read of the series yet and confirming my opinion of him as the best Western writer working today.

(An observation: Once, while reading The Devil's Lair, an entry in Brandvold's series of Westerns featuring bounty hunter Lou Prophet, I was struck by the similarity between that novel and this series, especially since the plot involved Prophet's taking over a marshal's post.  This feeling was confirmed during Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance when I caught two accidental references to Longarm as "Prophet.")

Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime; Jack and Maggie Starr)

Manhattan, 1954—Comics are on trial, both in the court and in the media. Dr. Werner Frederick's best-selling book Ravage the Lambs offers a warning against — or, for some, a guide to — the "worst" of the full-color, graphic (both meanings apply here) publications allegedly warping the minds of America's youth.

A good deal of participants in the comics industry would like to see Dr. Frederick done away with. When he is subsequently murdered by strangulation, is his theory being proven correct?

Seduction of the Innocent is the third in the Jack and Maggie Starr trilogy of historical mysteries by author Max Allan Collins. The previous volumes, A Killing in Comics and Strip for Murder appeared in 2007 and 2008, respectively, but then the publisher chose not to continue with the series.

Lucky for us, Hard Case Crime saw fit to rectify that oversight, and now readers can once again follow the exploits of the Starrs, complete with brand-new art, including fourteen pages of illustrations from Terry Beatty (Ms. Tree) and a suitably lurid cover painting from Glen Orbik.

Maggie Starr runs the Starr Newspaper Syndication Company. Her stepson Jack is a private investigator whose only client is the Starr Syndicate. Jack's father, known primarily as "the major," willed the syndicate to his young wife upon his death, which Jack repeatedly says doesn't bother him. (Maggie is also a former ecdysiast only 10 years Jack's senior, a situation that is a source of Oedipal-incest jokes at Jack's expense.)

Like its predecessors, Seduction of the Innocent has some basis in history, but author Max Allan Collins emphasizes that truth was only the inspiration. He plays around with the facts here more than in, say, his Nathan Heller series. The Heller novels hew closely to the facts with just a fictional character or two thrown in for the sake of the story.

A primary difference between Seduction of the Innocent and history is that Fredric Wertham, the real-life counterpart of Dr. Werner Frederick (and the author of the original best-selling anti-comics screed from which this novel takes its name), died of old age, so Collins even had to invent a murder to solve.

This explains why the main participants' names are fictionalized right along with the timeline of events and the characters' relationships. Collins gives them names that aren't obvious caricatures, but realistic names in the style of the real ones.

Collins himself states that he "invite[s] readers — particularly comics fans — to enjoy the roman à clef aspects," but that Seduction of the Innocent "is a mystery in the Rex Stout or Ellery Queen tradition, with a dollop of Mickey Spillane." But readers who are interested in the period will quickly realize that Collins's usual in-depth research is still strongly at play here, as the surrounding events (including death threats that didn't happen) are all based on fact.

So, it's an interesting mix, and there were times that I was torn by whether to read Seduction of the Innocent as a slice of history or simply as a golden-age mystery. It's fun either way.

Glock: The Rise of America's Gun by Paul Barrett (modern history)

Author Paul Barrett has been writing about the gun industry for 15 years at BusinessWeek. Given this breadth of experience, he seems unequivocably qualified to write this history.

Glock: The Rise of America's Gun tells the story of the firearm that rose from humble beginnings to eventually supplant the revolver as the United States's preferred Roscoe. This unassuming plastic piece was designed by Gaston Glock, an Austrian engineer with no experience in gun design, and this proved to be what was needed to bring his gun above the fray.

The Glock seems to have an equal-opportunity appeal, drawing everyone from police officers to gangbangers, from drug dealers to hobbyists, and seemingly every other gun enthusiast in between. Not being one of those myself, I was astonished at how drawn in I was by the tale of the Glock. Barrett's prose is smooth, and the story he tells is surprisingly involved and entertaining.

2012: The Year in Review(s)

• Antiques Disposal: A Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins writing as Barbara Allan
• Best of the West, Vol. 1: Classic Stories of the American Frontier
• The Boar by Joe R. Lansdale
• Dark Side of the Morgue by Raymond Benson
• Death Waits at Sundown by L. Ron Hubbard
• Flesh Worn Stone by John A. Burks, Jr.
• Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield
• Hard Country: A Novel of the Old West by Michael McGarrity
• Outlaws All: A Western Trio by Max Brand
• Shadows from Boot Hill by L. Ron Hubbard
• Sky Birds Dare! by L. Ron Hubbard
• Stolen Away by Max Allan Collins
• Too Poor for Texas by Joe Donn Martin
• Torture Garden directed by Freddie Francis and written by Robert Bloch
• The Words by Douglas Clegg

Christmas Crime: Antiques Flee Market: a Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery by Barbara Allan (Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins)

Following her divorce, Brandy Borne moved back in with her mother, Vivian, in her hometown of Serenity. Much to her chagrin, the first thing they did together was attend a mother-daughter meeting of the local Red Hat Club. (Mystery readers all, the local branch has been named The Red-Hatted League.) Vivian couldn't go with Brandy's much-older sister Peggy Sue (they were both named after popular songs of their day) because Peggy Sue was already a member.

Before her arrival, Peg informed Brandy that Vivian sold off most of her prized possessions to an antique dealer while on a "drug holiday" from her bipolar meds. When the antique dealer was found dead — and both Brandy and Vivian admitted to running over the body in their car — it was up to the Borne girls to sift through the other suspects (the dealer was known for taking advantage of citizens) and find the real killer. This story was told in the first "Trash 'n' Treasures" book, Antiques Roadkill.

Since then, they've become amateur sleuths of a sort, investigating murders in their formerly quiet little Midwestern hometown and generally causing havoc of one sort or another while getting in the way of genuine police investigation. The second book in the series, Antiques Maul, is Halloween-themed. It concerns Brandy's trying to keep Vivian out of trouble by opening a booth at the local antiques mall, then finding a woman dead, presumably by her pit bull.

The third book in the series is Antiques Flee Market. Now it's Christmastime, and a former "conquest" of Vivian's (a "mercy mission" during wartime) has been found dead in his nursing-home bed.

Along for the search this time is the victim's British, Goth granddaughter, Chaz, an ex-con with less than savory friends and a delightfully Cockney way of speaking. Meanwhile, Brandy is troubled by an anonymous note that suggests Vivian is not her real mother, and Vivian is excited by news that she is no longer bipolar but merely schizo-affective (which is actually bipolar with psychotic tendencies).

Antiques Flee Market shows a marked improvement over the first book in the series, which I was actually unable to finish (I skipped the followup). The prose here is smoother, with very little sign of one author taking over for the other. The Collinses work well together as "Barbara Allan," and even the humor — which definitely felt inserted into Antiques Roadkill — is much more seamlessly integrated, making for a genuinely funny read (as opposed to simply a joke-filled one).

Fans of co-author Max Allan Collins will appreciate a couple of touches that must have come from him: namely a Mike Hammer reference and the fact that the antique this time around is a rare edition of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs (the "sleuth" Collins used for his Disaster series book The Pearl Harbor Murders). But all in all, "Barbara Allan" is really coming into her own, and the Trash 'n' Treasures series has to be the quirkiest cozy series on the market.

In fact, in many ways, the Collinses seem to be turning the classic tropes of the cozy subgenre on their ear. After all, the Bornes aren't independently wealthy; their dog is diabetic, blind, and named after raw fish; they're highly dependent on psychiatric medications just for their daily functioning (with disastrously funny results if, for example, they get their pill boxes confused); and their antiques are solely low-rent, flea-market fare (Mother is not averse to Dumpster diving) that clearly falls under the heading of the series' inspiration, the adage "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

In short, unlike most escapist fiction protagonists, the Bornes do not have a life to which it is likely the reader will aspire (except perhaps for those readers who should be, but aren't already, on psych meds). It more closely resembles horror fiction in that the events make you feel better about your own life.

Of course, I could be off on my facts a bit there, given that I wouldn't even have heard of this series if it weren't co-written by one of my favorite authors. But Antiques Flee Market actually turned out to be quite a fun read. Each chapter ends with an (often tongue-in-cheek) antique-buying tip, and the couple have a delightfully wicked sense of humor (dig that soap-opera-derived cliffhanger ending!). I'm already looking forward to reading the fourth book in the series, Antiques Bizarre.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy holidays!