#49: Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth

Since the Civil War, the President of the United States has had a vampire to do his bidding, linked to the office by a voodoo curse; in the modern era, the president's vampire takes on the immortal Doctor Frankenstein in Christopher Farnsworth's Blood Oath.

Rollicking, cinematic-style adventure is an enjoyable outing in what appears to be the first in a series from Farnsworth.  Undemanding as both a horror novel and a thriller but full of knowing elements for fans of both.

I picked this audio book up on a whim and ended up liking it.  I believe it was helped significantly by a very good reading by, of all people, Bronson Pinchot.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library and consumed it quickly.

#48: Fake I.D. by Jason Starr

A bouncer with a minor acting career, a middling gambling addiction, and a major sociopathic streak will do anything to buy a racehorse in Jason Starr's contemporary noir Fake I.D.

Fake I.D. is part of the highly admirable Hard Case Crime line, a mix of lost pulp novels alongside newer works in the same vein.  Jason Starr's work is a credible addition, sort of a Jim Thompson lite.  Like many Thompson protagonists, Starr's flawed narrator continues to unravel more and more, despite the banal narration, to a chilling finale.

I had never read Jason Starr but will seek out more of his work.  I thought this book was comparable to two of my favorite old-school flavored modern noirs, Scott Smith's A Simple Plan and Robert Ward's Four Kinds of Rain; good company indeed.
Had I had a single day to read this, undoubtedly I would have read it straight through. 

I nabbed this off of www.paperbackswap.com and read it quickly.

#47: The Killers by Peter McCurtin

Drifter Carmody, who drifts just this side of the law, ends up being talked into helping out his cousin as sheriff of a small town in the Old West; but he takes up law enforcement at an untimely moment, as a bandit gang and a murderous backwoods family have the town in its crosshairs.

Carmody was a Western series character of Peter McCurtin, a very busy pulp scribe of the 60s-80s and beyond who many speculated was actually a pseudonymous legion of writers.  Apparently he was a real person after all, and if this outing is any indication he was also a talented writer.

McCurtin's Carmody is a bit more tongue in cheek than the average Western hero, and McCurtin also writes in the first person, less common in Westerns than, for instance, the private eye genre.  Overall the various elements made The Killers a slight cut above.

I got a mixed batch of 50-cent paperbacks at a flea market which included a lot of authors I had not heard of before, including McCurtin, and I'm always eager to find new writers and stories.  I also found another McCurtin Western series character, Sundance, which I am sure I will dig into before long.

#46: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

A teen girl is torn between two brothers, even as zombies strain at the fences to tear them apart, in Carrie Ryan's Young Adult horror novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

I picked this up as a recommendation after enjoying Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games novels.  Ryan's story also features a post-apocalyptic setting, this time a few generations after a zombie uprising, where the residents of a small town deep in the forest now believe they are the last living humans on Earth.  Their village is surrounded by a lot of chain link fence that has to be constantly maintained to keep the dead at bay.

A young girl remembers her mother talking about the ocean, and yearns to set out on what seems to be a doomed quest.  In the meantime, she deals with the various heatings and coolings between herself and the brothers as well as herself and various family members.

A curious mix of teen romance and gruesome horror, sort of a version of Lois Lowry's The Giver as directed by George Romero.  It's hard to recommend for those who like a few chills with their romance, as there are some pretty grisly sequences (including a pregnant zombie and a baby zombie, of all unpalatable things), but it's even harder to recommend it to gorehounds as the teen pines away even as civilization gets torn down around her.

An interesting read, and not without its merits for the careful reader. 

I picked this up with my Books A Million gift card I got for my birthday and read it at a steady pace.

#45: Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey

Ghana detective Darko Dawson from the Accra city police force heads for the countryside to look into the strange death of a medical worker in Kwei Quartey's debut Wife of the Gods.

Quartey's first novel has been compared to Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, but I think they are worlds apart.  Quartey writes straight-up crime drama, putting Dawson on the street with nothing but a cricket bat, a bag of weed, and some anger management issues between him and the criminal element.

The setting of Ghana sets the mystery apart from other crime novels as well, as Dawson contends with witchcraft and tribal beliefs as he tries to solve the killing using contemporary methods.  All the while he also struggles with buried family secrets that begin to surface as parallels between the recent murder and the long-ago disappearance of Dawson's mother surfaces.

I picked up this audiobook from Morrison-Reeves Public Library without having heard of the book or the author and enjoyed it tremendously.  I will be on the lookout for Kwei Quartey's second novel.

#44: Fargo by John Benteen

Fargo is a mercenary for hire who signs up for a seeming suicide mission bringing a load of silver out of revolution-torn Mexico in Fargo, the first in a series by prolific, pseudonymous scribe John Benteen.

Not long ago I read The Trail Ends in Hell by Benteen, aka Ben Haas, a sturdy little Western that interested me in finding more of his writing.  However, despite Fargo's trappings I would say it was more Men's Adventure than Western, not only in its time period (early 20th century) and focus on action, but also in its casual handling of women and fetish-like attachment to weapons.

Benteen again writes a solid story, and I must not have been the only one that thought so as the Fargo series went on for some time throughout the 60s and 70s.  I was able to get a handful at a flea market and I am sure I will jump on another one before long.

#43: The Super Barbarians by John Brunner

In the far-flung future, Earthmen have been subjugated by a technically advanced, but culturally backward, alien race.  Through playing on the aliens' superstitions--and their unexpected coffee addictions--humans begin to get the upper hand again in John Brunner's light, tight space opera The Super Barbarians.

Brunner was a hugely prolific and popular sci-fi author in the 60s and 70s, but I find his writing kind of mixed and have picked up and put down a lot of his books over the years.  I stuck with this one because it didn't take itself too seriously and had a brisk, tidy plot.

This one caught my fancy after seeing it on a flea market goodbye shelf and I read it at a good pace.  I continue to keep a lookout for John Brunner's work.

#42: Known to Evil by Walter Mosley

New York private eye Leonid McGill is asked by a well-connected politico to look into the whereabouts of a young beauty, unleashing a murderous chain of events in Walter Mosley's Known to Evil.

This is the second McGill mystery in a new series Mosley began recently.  Mosley's Easy Rawlins books, which takes a sort-of detective through life in L.A. from post World War II to post Watts riots and beyond, is one of my favorite contemporary mystery series and I believe will be remembered as one of the greats of the late 20th century.  I think Mosley is trying to do the same for New York, in a contemporary setting, with milder results.

McGill is a former very crooked P.I. who is somewhat bent back straight, with all the complications that ensue from that situation.  His home life, with an unfaithful wife and three kids with uncertain paternity, also weighs on his mind.  These main themes, and several other subplots, make for an overly dense narrative with a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion.

But a moderately successful Mosley novel is always above the average read, so I would recommend it for fans.

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

#41: Red Fury by George G. Gilman

Gun-for-hire Edge, a drifter and loner with his own fractured moral code, finds himself in the middle of a bloody feud  between a small town and some only slightly settled Indians in George G. Gilman's Red Fury.

I have been reading a lot of Gold Medal paperbacks from the 60s and 70s and frequently saw Gilman's Edge series, billed as "the most violent Westerns in print," advertised in the back.  I found a handful at a flea market and grabbed this one at random.  This volume was from deep in the series and one can only surmise features an older, more reflective Edge, as it was not so much violent as rather unpleasant.  There are lots of murders, rapes, some incest and torture, and a notable scene where Edge holds a straight razor to a pregnant woman's stomach to escape.

A little googling shows that Gilman has a legion of fans, but I found his work a curiosity; the result of a British writer penning stories of the American West after apparently watching a lot of Italian Western films.  On the covers Edge looks like Charles Bronson, and on the inside pages has the mean streak of Lee Van Cleef and the dry wit of Clint Eastwood.  In fact each chapter strains to end, rather painfully at times, on some sort of pun or quip, as odd a conceit as I've seen.

I feel I should give Edge another try but won't be rushing back into my swap meet stash anytime soon.

#40: The Keep by Jennifer Egan

Genuinely creepy-crawly story-within-a-story features a pair of cousins working together (and sometimes against each other) in restoring an eerie, remote Eastern European castle; meanwhile, a prisoner attends a creative writing class while doing time and workshops a story about two cousins restoring an old castle, intriguing his troubled teacher.

Jennifer Egan's The Keep is an enjoyable, offbeat read that I was pleasantly surprised to find.  I had not heard of Jennifer Egan before a friend recommended this one.  I nabbed it off of www.paperbackswap.com and read it at a good clip.  Egan writes in an interesting voice and featured plenty of neat twists and turns with a chilling undertone throughout.

Unfortunately I thought the ending unraveled a bit, but I was completely sold on it for nine-tenths of the way through, and immediately went looking for more of Egan's work.  Recommended.

#39: Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem

In a post-apocalyptic future, a loner called Chaos, whose dreams seem to be able to influence events, takes off for California to see what remains of the world in Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon.

Jonathan Lethem wrote the introduction for the Library of America's worthy collection of Philip K. Dick's writings, and after reading this early work from Lethem it is easy to understand why.  Lethem definitely pays tribute to Dick in this piece, as he did in another early work I read previously, Gun with Occasional Music.  To me, it isn't until Motherless Brooklyn and his masterpiece (in my mind, to date) Fortress of Solitude that Lethem really gains his own voice.

But Amnesia Moon is enjoyable in its own right, and is enjoyable for sci-fi fans and/or Lethem completests.  I nabbed this off of www.paperbackswap.com.

#38: The City and The City by China Mieville

A cop in the city-state of Beszel tries to solve the murder of a woman from the neighboring city-state of Ul Quoma, while facing political complications and his own inner demons, in China Mieville's ultra-strange science fiction/noir hybrid The City and The City.

Despite the brief summary, Mieville's work is hard to explain.  Beszel is a fading Eastern European-style city, whereas Ul Quoma is a rising military dictatorship experimenting with democracy; guarding the borders between the two cities is a mysterious policing group called The Breach.  But both cities occupy the same geographical space, differentiating philosophically by citizens "unseeing" each other and the other part of the city.

It's as unique a chunk of sci-fi as I have read (and I read a lot of Philip Dick, Ursula LeGuin, and Samuel R. Delany); sort of what might happen if Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko went to visit Delany's Dhalgren. 

For those willing to be patient, and take a chance on something quite unique, this comes recommended.

I actually took a recommendation on this one myself from my pal Troy, and checked it out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#37: Assignment Manchurian Doll by Edward S. Aarons

In the heat of the Cold War, an old enemy of U.S. spy Sam Durell has decided he will only defect across the Iron Curtain to him, sending Durell to Japan and then "Red China" while double- and triple-crossing friends and enemies stalk his every move in Edward S. Aarons' Assignment Manchurian Doll.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I have been rediscovering and enjoying Aarons' espionage novels of the 50s and 60s after snagging a big stack on ebay some time ago.  Most of the books I have read to date take place in the more sober late 50s, with plenty of rain-slick Washington streets, but this entry is square in the middle of the freewheeling 60s.  There is a lot more sex and sadism than the ones I had read prior, with some oversized villains of the flavor Ian Fleming favored at the time. 

For the curious, the "Manchurian Doll" of the title is a sexy Stalinist who loves Durell's enemy and has to team up with Uncle Sam's finest to defeat a greater foe.

Another good entry in the long-running Gold Medal series.

#36: I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

A teen in a quiet town lives above a funeral parlor with his mom, has a dorky best friend, and pines for an unattainable girl; he also tries to quell the murderous impulses within him, finding some solace in stalking a demonic killer that suddenly surfaces in town in Dan Wells' debut I Am Not A Serial Killer.

Wells can't avoid drawing parallels to both the novels and television series Dexter, about a Miami serial killer who focuses on dispatching only those that deserve it.  Jeff Lindsay's series has also taken a turn towards the supernatural, veering off significantly from the television series (a strange plot twist the TV series has avoided to its benefit, in my opinion).  Fans of either the series of books or TV episodes will find much to enjoy here. 

I have become a bit lukewarm on the Dexter books and found myself on the same uneasy footing with this novel.  Most curiously, the protagonist is shown to be very unlikable while the demon in human guise is portrayed fairly sympathetically.  I also think the narrator of the audiobook version that I listened to was ill-suited to the material, which may have hampered my enjoyment.

That being said, I understand that this is the beginning of a trilogy, and am interested enough to know what happens next.

I listened to this via an audiobook checked out from Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#35: The Trail Ends In Hell by John Benteen

A trail boss takes his cattle to a town to sell them off, only to find the town overrun by crooks and shysters; he then takes it upon himself to clean up the place, knowing it is the only way he is going to be able to get a good price on his herd.  The Trail Ends in Hell is a burly western by John Benteen, the psuedonym for busy pulp writer Ben Haas.

I like to read an old western from time to time to change things up and found that I really enjoyed this one. It is from that late 60s-early 70s era when westerns began to drop the straight-laced, singing cowboy-style persona and reflect more the violent "spaghetti western" stylings of the time. 

Benteen presents a particularly hard-nosed story here, though our stubborn trail boss protagonist does, in old-time western fashion, manage to tame down both the town and a hot-blooded rancher's daughter at the same time.

I enjoyed this read quite a bit and devoured it quickly.  I bought this paperback for a dollar at a flea market and will definitely go on the prowl for more John Benteen/Ben Haas.

#34: Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk

A fading star in moviedom's Silver Age is tended to by her faithful assistant, who has to go to extremes to keep the wolves from her door in Chuck Palahniuk's Hollywood send-up Tell-All.

Although I intentionally avoided Palahniuk for a number of years after hearing others talk about his rather disturbing novels (Fight Club notable among them), I finally gave him a go and actually found him to be a very accomplished, interesting writer--though pretty much all of his novels I have read to date have to be approached with caution and an open mind.

That being said, I was probably more shocked by this book than any of the others of his I have read.  It is sort of a breezy, outlandishly plotted satire with little of the dark material of his typical work.  I honestly don't know who Palahniuk wrote this novel for; it surely will not satisfy his fans, and the casual reader who might be interested in the lighter fare would be reluctant to pick it up.  Basically it's a good fit for someone who can stomach Palahniuk's darker turns, but has a deep love for classic cinema (everyone from Thelma Ritter to John Agar to Bonita Granville are name-checked, and Lillian Hellman plays a critical role).  So I think Chuck, me, and some guys I took film classes with at Ball State are its primary audience.

That being said, I did enjoy the novel, which I heard via a good audiobook version read by Hillary Huber.  I checked it out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#33: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Arnold Spirit is a Spokane Indian who tries to improve his fortunes by leaving his school on the reservation and going to a white high school a short distance away, but a world apart, in Sherman Alexie's comedic and tragic Young Adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Despite the Young Adult label Alexie remains in full effect here, in all his rage and glory, unflinching in his portrayal of "the rez" but also leavening the proceedings with genuine humor. The novel seems to be at least somewhat autobiographical but even more so rings true as a coming of age story.

Even though the novel is accompanied with some neat cartooning throughout, the storytelling is definitely for more sophisticated readers; but I would recommend this to anyone middle school age on into adulthood.  It stands very well alongside Alexie's other works.

I have been a big fan of Sherman Alexie for a while but did not know about this YA novel.  I picked it up because I have been reading along with a YA fiction class my daughter is taking this summer at college. 

I traded for this on www.paperbackswap.com and read it quickly, then donated it to my daughter for the little library she hopes to have in her own classroom one day.  Recommended.

#32: Dealing Out Death by W.T. Ballard

Bill Lennox is a "troubleshooter" for a big movie studio back in Hollywood's golden era; in his latest case, he tries to help a starlet out of a jam, only to get in deeper himself, in W.T. Ballard's Dealing Out Death. 

Lennox ends up following the starlet to Vegas and deals with the gumshoe's general supply of smart-aleck mobsters, angry cops, and willing dames.

I was not aware that W.T. Ballard was a prolific mystery and western writer of the pulp era, or that Bill Lennox was one of his more well-known characters, when I spent 99 cents on this one for my beloved Kindle.  But I enjoyed this pretty undemanding read and read it over a day or two.

#31: Assignment Mara Tirana by Edward S. Aarons

Sam Durrell, deep in the shadowy world of espionage in the cold war '60s, has said goodbye to his longtime girlfriend Diedre; a year later, she is set to marry America's first astronaut, Adam Stepanic, who has the misfortune of veering off course on his return trip from orbit and landing behind Communist lines.  It's up to Durrell to go behind the Iron Curtain and rescue him in Assignment Mara Tirana, an admirable entry in Edward S. Aarons' long-running spy series.

I have been chewing through a big stack of these Sam Durrell novels that I snagged off of ebay some time ago and have yet to find a lemon.  In fact I am willing to say that the series, from what I have read, is the equal to some more well-regarded series of the time period, including Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm and even Ian Fleming's Bond.

This entry is a bit different from the norm as it tells a parallel story, following the astronaut's nerve-wracking attempt to escape from the Eastern Bloc while Durrell closes in on him from the other side.  The Mara Tirana of the title is a fiery woman who ends up grudgingly helping the astronaut while various complications impede Durrell's progress, but all ends up rather neat in the end.

I read this in a single day while staying at a cabin at New Harmonie State Park.  A good entry in the series, and I am eager to dive into another.

#30: The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

A young boy, adept at solving mysteries, teams up with his sister and a boyhood chum to unravel the town's crimes.  After his sister's suicide, the boy is institutionalized, emerging as an adult to try and solve the greatest mystery of his life in Joe Meno's The Boy Detective Fails.

I heard Joe Meno read from his work during a public reading at the Ropewalk Writer's Workshop in New Harmony Indiana.  I bought this book that night and read it straight through the next day while staying in the state park nearby.  The following day I spend about four hours breaking the numerous codes throughout, including one that can be deciphered with a decoder ring you can cut out of the back of the book.

This was an offbeat read to say the least, reminiscent of book series from my youth like "Encyclopedia Brown" but with a distinctive postmodern edge, verging on the hallucinatory.  I really enjoyed Meno's style as well as picking out the many pop culture references throughout.  The codebreaking added an unusual element I had not seen in other work.

A happy surprise from an author I was unfamiliar with and will seek out going forward.  Recommended.

#29: Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire by Gabriel Hunt and Christa Faust

World adventurer Gabriel Hunt heads to the South Pole to find the missing father of a beautiful young woman, only to quickly stumble onto a larger conspiracy involving Nazis, Amazons, and an underground kingdom in Christa Faust's rollicking Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire.

The Gabriel Hunt series was cooked up by the same people who brought Hard Case Crime into the world, an admirable collection of lost noirs and contemporary novels in the pulp vein.  This new series attempts to recapture what might best be called Men's Adventure novels of yore.  Supposedly Gabriel Hunt "narrates" these tales to a stable of current writers, which makes for the curious byline.

Honestly I have picked up and put down others in the series before latching onto this one from Faust, whose other novels I have enjoyed.  Thankfully Faust keeps tongue firmly in cheek as Hunt's predicaments become increasingly outlandish, culminating with a nude wrestling match and a hair-raising flight in an old Nazi airplane to escape a steaming jungle under the ice cap.  If this description makes the hair on your neck stand up, this series is definitely for you.

I bought this for my beloved Kindle and read it in one fell swoop one day while camping  in New Harmonie State Park.

#28: Love Me and Die by Day Keene

Hollywood P.I. Johnny Slagle is asked to find out what happened when a studio's fading star allegedly hit and killed a young woman while drunk driving.  Faced with a cover-up, Johnny quits the studio job and vows to bring the killer to justice, even as various forces converge against him, in Day Keene's Love Me and Die.

I have been a Day Keene fan since ever since I read Home is the Sailor, and I try to find the pulp writer's work wherever I can.  I felt lucky to nab this from www.paperbackswap.com.

I learned later I got a better deal than I thought as this book is a bit rare, having been expanded by fellow pulpster Gil Brewer in an uncredited turn.  Although I have not read anything from Brewster, I understand he is another genre writer who could use some rediscovering.

No matter what its origins, Love Me and Die is brisk and tough as Johnny plows through the sordid underbelly of Hollywood (as if there is any other kind) as the corpses stack up around him.  He makes the enemy of studio bosses on down to underworld yeggs, and angers a few dames as well.  A really enjoyable slice of noir with some go-go Hollywood mixed in.

#27: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

In the wake of his classic album "Juliet" a moderately famous American musician disappears into a self-imposed exile, prompting a rabid online fandom; meanwhile, a lonely British woman strikes up an online friendship with him, and the two gradually coax each other back to life in Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked.

I have been a fan of Hornby's books for a while.  They are usually pretty light and funny, and thus have been easily digested into moviedom (High Fidelity, About A Boy).  He has always been adept at writing about people who have come to some sort of dead end and need to be jolted awake by various turns of events.

Although Juliet, Naked features a lot of Hornby's familiar standbys--stunted adults, busted relationships, wise children, pop culture riffs--I think his storytelling has been deepening over his last few novels.  His observations seem more pointed and his characters more complex.

I always look forward to Nick Hornby's latest and found this one especially rewarding.  Recommended.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#26: Monster by Walter Dean Myers

An inner-city teen is on trial for his role as a lookout in a murderer/robbery in Walter Dean Myers' Young Adult novel Monster.

Myers has been writing mostly urban YA novels since I was a young adult myself, and I had enjoyed my previous exposure to his work.  I picked this up, after a long layoff from his books, as I have been reading along with my college daughter's Young Adult Fiction class.

Monster has a unique format; portions of it are written as the protagonist's diary, and portions are written in screenplay format as the main character develops the skills learned in a school video club while waiting in jail. Most of the story takes place during the teen's trial, with flashes of home and school life. Photography and unusual layouts are of interest.  The novel has a straightforward narrative but no easy solutions; in fact the teen's actual actions and motivations are left open to much speculation, and would definitely be worth talking about to a young person.

A good read that I picked up from www.paperbackswap.com.

#25: The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

A master vampire lands in Manhattan, leading to an undead plague in The Strain, the first novel by horror movie director Guillermo Del Toro alongside veteran thriller writer Chuck Hogan.

The novel opens with an empty plane landing at JFK, mirroring Dracula's memorable boat scene (one of many homages paid to a variety of horror classics).  In the long, leisurely creepy opening chapters  the CDC is dispatched, suspecting terrorism or some sort of viral outbreak.  By the time the scientists fathom what has really happened the vampire rampage is in full swing.

Then the novel ramps up full blast as the scientists end up with a smattering of ragtag helpers, including an aged vampire hunter, a municipal rat catcher, and a gangbanger, pursuing the king vampire and his minions across the Big Apple.

Probably 95 percent of the big cast of characters gets killed or turned before the cliffhanger ending (The Strain is the first of a reported trilogy).  But along the way there are plenty of skin-crawling shocks and scares to satisfy any horror hound.  Del Toro and Hogan come up with their own credible vampire mythology (and no, they aren't sparkly) that adds to the interesting read.

I listened to a really good audio book version read by actor Ron Perlman, on loan from Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.