#47: Four Kinds of Rain by Robert Ward

A broke but noble activist and therapist decides he's sick of both titles when he sees a chance to steal a priceless work of art from an unstable patient in Robert Ward's riveting modern noir Four Kinds of Rain.

I haven't found a lot of noir that I liked since the great Gold Medal era of pulp writing, but Ward's novel belongs on the list of contemporary classics. It compares favorably to another modern favorite of mine, Scott Smith's A Simple Plan, which features literary writing with genre trappings. And Jim Thompson himself couldn't frown upon the unreliable narrator depicted here, whose vast narcissism and cold rationalization of his actions cause the events to unravel in the bloody final chapters.

I found this one on the $1 goodbye shelf at the local Books a Million while out Christmas shopping and devoured it in a couple of settings. Recommended for thriller fans.

#46: Rocannon's World by Ursula LeGuin

Rocannon is a scientist for the League of Worlds, learning about civilizations on uncharted planets; but when a space rebellion leaves him stranded on a Bronze Age-style planet, Rocannon takes up a sword and flying steed and goes after his starborn enemies.

Admirable pulp, and the rookie novel from the great Ursula LeGuin. However, unlike some of the debut works of other sci-fi authors, which often has to come with allowances made for early writings, LeGuin's novel comes out fully-formed and engaging.

I was pleasantly surprised by this short novel, and that it takes place in the same "universe" as some of LeGuin's most well-known science fiction, including The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Interestingly, this is also the first appearance of LeGuin's creation the Ansible, a device for talking between words that others (including Orson Scott Card and his Ender series) have picked up on and used for their own over the years.

A good read for both sci-fi and fantasy fans. I nabbed this off of www.paperbackswap.com, an Ace Double with Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign on the flip side.

#45: Nemesis by Jo Nesbo

Oslo's crumpled cop Harry Hole is back in Jo Nesbo's Nemesis, in which our troubled hero tries to get out of the frame for an ex-girlfriend's murder while tracking a murderous serial bank robber.

Nesbo's first Scandinavian thriller translated into English, The Redbreast, was one of my favorite books of 2008, so I was pleased to find this one at the Morrison-Reeves Public Library. The Redbreast dealt with the emotional and political repercussions of Norway's Nazi involvement in World War II. This new one picks up a lot of themes and characters from his previous novel but, lacking the historical context, doesn't have quite the dramatic resonance of the prior outing.

That being said, Nemesis is a crackling good thriller with a great protagonist that reminds me favorably of Michael Connelly's notable series detective Harry Bosch. I like moody Scandinavian thrillers as a change of pace from American writers, but find that Nesbo has more the stylings of his U.S. counterparts with breakneck storytelling, linear action, and sardonic humor.

Recommended, with the caveat that you should read The Redbreast first. I am looking forward to Harry Hole's next adventure.

#44: River Girl by Charles Williams

A crooked deputy gets one look at a mysterious woman living in the swamp with her husband and is ready to do anything to be with her in Charles Williams' blistering noir River Girl.

It seems to me that Williams is not as well known as some of the other pulp writers of the era, but I have come across his work from time to time and have always found that he delivers the goods. Even though the reader can pretty well guess what's going to happen when our tarnished protagonist gets hooked by the "River Girl," watching the doom unfold is a wild ride and a great read. There is a great sense of time and place (a broiling small Southern town in the 50s) and an interesting (unreliable) narrator. A strong entry and one I would recommend for noir fans.

I surprisingly snagged this one for just .99 for my beloved Kindle.

#43: Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

A paroled bank robber readily slips into his old life with a fake psychic and her crime lord boyfriend even as the police have him in their sights in Elmore Leonard's easygoing crime novel Road Dogs.

I have been a longtime fan of Leonard, but in the latter part of his career he has been a bit hit and miss. This is a good novel for longtime fans, though, as it features a handful of characters from previous novels (including the George Clooney character from Out of Sight). However, for three quarters of the novel they stand around and assess each other's coolness and tell stories; only during the last bit of the novel does the story come to life with double and triple crosses and bursts of violence.

Overall an enjoyable tale, though again not at the top of Leonard's admirable bibliography. I listened to this on a good audio book version on loan from Morrison-Reeves Public Library.

#42: The Apostle by Brad Thor

The U.S. president is blackmailed into approving a covert op in Afghanistan to rescue the daughter of a major donor; meanwhile, a secret service agent who overhears the blackmail works to find out the truth in Brad Thor's military thriller The Apostle.

I had never heard of Brad Thor or his series of books when I picked this audio book up on a whim from the shelf at the Morrison-Reeves Public Library. I was quickly hooked on the fast-paced story with realistic overtones. As the plot rocketed along I found Thor leaned more and more to the right, to the point of making Tom Clancy read like Al Franken. The president, a demonized version of the worst of Clinton and Obama, who rides to the presidency on a wave of support from "the mainstream media," was my first clue.

But I enjoyed the storytelling overall and understood, via Google, that Thor did quite a bit of legwork and research on Afghanistan before writing this outing, and it shows. Politics aside, there is enough rough bromance and gun fetishism to slake the bloodthirst of any military thriller fan. I will look for more of Brad Thor's work.

#41: The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delany

In a post-apocalyptic world, a ragtag band of adventurers journeys to a mysterious island to secure a treasure and head off a potential enemy invasion in Samuel R. Delany's The Jewels of Aptor.

This is Delany's first published work, and bears a lot of the same motifs he explores, with more polish, in later classics like Nova and Babel-17; artists and misfits as protagonists, critical plot points featuring music and literature, psychedelic overtones. We also see the early emergence of some of his more curious obsessions, such as people wearing one shoe, rope belts, and sporting chewed fingernails.

But The Jewels of Aptor stands on its own merits, a brisk mix of high fantasy and sci-fi with some lyrical passages. A worthwhile read for fans of Delany (and I am one).

I nabbed this from www.paperbackswap.com, one half of an Ace Double with James White's Second Ending on the reverse.

#40: Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

Rant Casey is a mysterious hillbilly who turns out to be Patient Zero in a virulent rabies outbreak and a leading figure in a night-time car-crash ritual; when he dies in a flaming wreck, an oral history of his brief, strange life makes up the core of Chuck Palahniuk's Rant.

Initially I was a bit afraid to take on Chuck Palahniuk's dark vision but found, with Diary and Snuff (part of last year's 50 books), that he is quite a good writer, though decidedly not for all tastes. The contents of a "sex tornado," and a time travel device that is mostly used to rape, murder, and commit incest, could conceivably bring the casual reader up short.

But Palahniuk is, as usual, full of good ideas, and is a smart, literate writer; sort of a Kurt Vonnegut with the sensibilities of Howard Stern. Rant takes on more a science fiction bent than some of his other novels, though I was quite a ways into it before I realized its near-future setting, sort of a rural cyberpunk.

I bought this with a Books A Million card my daughter gave me and enjoyed it throughout, and am now trying to decide which unsuspecting friend to give it to, to turn on to Palahniuk's work.

For discerning readers up for a challenge, Chuck Palahniuk's work is quite rewarding. Recommended, with reservations.

#39: The Laughter Trap by Judson Philips

Hard-nosed journalist Peter Styles is snowed in at a ski lodge along with a cold-blooded killer and plenty of suspects in Judson Philips' The Laughter Trap, the first in the Styles series from prolific writer Philips.

Philips offers an agreeable enough thriller, plotted a bit like an Agatha Christie whodunit with a few hard edges in a Ross Macdonald vein. One curious element is that the novel is narrated by another character observing Styles' investigation, and had I not known that Styles returns in a series of other novels I would have suspected--with his obsessive tendencies and violent outbursts--that he was the killer himself. The novel is also a bit different in that although it was written in the swingin' 60s, unlike some authors of that time period Styles definitely puts himself in the Silent Majority and looks askance at some of the beatniks and hippies around him.

I ended up with two Peter Styles novels in a big chunk of pulp I landed from ebay, and though I am not driven to read the other one I am sure will turn to it one day.

#38: Babylon Babies by Maurice G. Dantec

An Eastern European mercenary helps a young schizophrenic woman impregnated with two mysterious babies travel from Russia to Canada, along the way brushing up against the Siberian mafia, Native American hackers, Canadian biker gangs, a self-aware Artificial Intelligence, a doomsday religious cult, and more strange characters.

Maurice Dantec's baroque cyberpunk novel Babylon Babies is a dense, maddening chunk of
sci-fi, but not without its merits for patient readers. Dantec is brimming with fresh ideas, delivered in a sardonic tone, but is prone to lengthy digressions and side treks. I would recommend this to anyone who had read a lot of the sci-fi canon and would like a challenge.

The movie Babylon A.D. is a Vin Diesel action flick theoretically based on the book, though the movie has the slenderest whisper of a connection to this sprawling, chewy work.

I listened to a very good audio book version of this on loan from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.