#12: The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

Three young women from very different backgrounds end up recruited into the Bletchley Park codebreaking ranks during World War II; a few years later, on the eve of the Royal Wedding, they learn of a dangerous secret from that time in Kate Quinn's The Rose Code.

The Rose Code is an enjoyable, carefully-plotted thriller--with real-life people and situations--that shows three fully-realized characters excited to do their part in the war, alternating with scenes from the near future, which we see their lives altered by grief, betrayal, and death.

The ending ties up amazingly neatly--almost a shade too neatly--but is very satisfying.

This is my first novel by Quinn, and I will be on the lookout for more; it covers an interesting time in history, with a lot of true details from that era, but is also a really solid read.  

The novel was helped tremendously by a great audiobook read from Saskia Maarleveld.  I will be watching out for more of her work, as well.

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana, and listened to most of it on a long car ride.  Recommended, especially in audiobook.

#11: The Assassins by Kirk Hamilton

Two legendary hired guns end up on the opposite sides of a range war, and soon realize all isn't what it seems to be, in Kirk Hamilton's The Assassins.

One gun-hand comes to visit an old friend, the other gunslick is working for a hot-headed neighbor rancher who inherited the ranch from her father.  Both are fighting over a piece of land for what turns out to be curious reasons, once the two men are able to compare notes.

Hamilton was actually Keith Hetherington, a crazily prolific Australian author with a fistful of pseudonyms and a couple of long-running western series.

This is a standalone novel that cracks along at a bruising pace and hits all the right beats, while throwing in a surprise or two.

I have finally been able to grab onto a batch of Cleveland Westerns and am pledging to work through the slender volumes steadily.  So far, so good.

#10: Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré

A British spy being brought back to London to oversee a failing, marginalized branch of the secret service contends with an idealistic young second in command, a few eccentric double agents, and an odd new badminton partner at his local club in John le Carre's Agent Running in the Field.

This is the last of le Carre's books published in his lifetime; he was 89 when he passed away.  But this novel is just as urgent and energized as any of his earlier work. 

The novel is written in terms of a report, as the returning agent talks about everything that led to a calamitous denouement which unfolds slowly over time, and envelopes his lawyer wife, his slick boss, and several other characters.  It just ratchets and ratchets tension to a satisfying close.

Le Carre felt strongly about Brexit, and despite the trappings of the spy world the novel is ultimately about that subject, which may have driven the author to produce this timely, highly enjoyable work.

Recommended for spy novel fans in general and early le Carre fans in particular.

I listened to an audiobook version on loan from the Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana, read by the author.

#9: So Long Waco by Ben Jefferson

A Confederate vet inadvertently sides with a group of outlaws against a band of Union soldiers, then has to throw in his lot with them, in Ben Jefferson's So Long Waco.

Jefferson was really extremely prolific Australian writer Paul Wheelahan, who penned under a lot of names and genres (including comic books).  

To that end, his speed leaves this one rather faintly sketched in, as our hero learns there is a schism between the more "noble" outlaws in the gang and the villainous ones, with the additional of an abandoned wife at a lonely ranch all having the expected results with gunplay and romance.

The Waco of the title, which I thought should have a comma, is the leader of the outlaw gang, Sam Waco.  It IS actually said in the novel.

For a very long time I have looked for Cleveland Westerns in the wild, a company which published multiple genres in a slender novella magazine-style format for more than 50 years in Australia.  They seem to be quite rare in their original form in the States.

I eventually settled on buying any I could find online, if I could find them lest than ten dollars each.  I finally found a Canadian willing to part with a half dozen at a reasonable rate, and this is the first from the stack.

#8: Bobby March Will Live Forever by Alan Parks

In gritty 70s Glasgow, awash in glam rock, heroin, and organized crime, an only slightly crooked cop has to deal with a trio of tricky cases in Alan Parks' Bobby March Will Live Forever.

This is the third novel featuring tarnished angel McCoy, and is my favorite to date.  In this he quietly hunts for the missing teenaged daughter of a colleague, looks for a missing girl who has drawn the attention of the whole city, and is assigned the apparent overdose death of a rocker, the Bobby March of the title.

He also has to find time to deal with his best friend from childhood, who happens to be one of Glasgow's top crime bosses, currently trying to kick a drug habit.

These storylines begin to weave together so deftly that even if McCoy doesn't exactly wrap things up neatly, it ends in a highly satisfying way.

Alan Parks is becoming one of my favorite new crime writers.

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle Indiana and read it quickly.

#7: Valley of Skulls by John Benteen

In the early 20th century, tough mercenary Fargo heads to Central America to rescue a party who has discovered a priceless treasure in John Benteen's Valley of Skulls.

Benteen (Ben Haas) was a well-regarded western writer who also wrote the Fargo series, which at first glance look like westerns but are really more "men's adventure."

This one is a little wilder than most, with the priceless treasure being a giant solid-gold cannon that Fargo finds actually comes in handy.  Fargo's manly exploits start on page one--when he gets into a fight at a cockfight!--and run straight through to the last page.

I like reading a Fargo novel when I come across one, and I found this one cheap for my beloved Kindle.

#6: The Basel Killings by Hansjörg Schneider

A hard-drinking, hard-living cop stops for a bathroom break in an alley on the way home from a bar and finds the dead body of a friend, driving him to solve a case he's too close to in Hansjörg Schneider's The Basel Killings.

Schneider is a popular Swiss crime writer, with this the first in his series translated into English.  Although his detective is your standard melancholy noirish cop, the setting in Basel--a city whose suburbs lie in France and Germany--is unique.

As is the milieu, as the detective finds himself most comfortable on the seedy side of the street, among pimps, prostitutes, and outlaws.  Ethnic clashes between these people and the Swiss gypsy community, called the Yenish people, has a key role as well.

A solid European-style police procedural with a colorful cast and setting.  Recommended.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.

#5: Gunsight Trail by Alan LeMay

 At the tail end of a dying Old West, a drifting cowpoke drifts right into a range war in Alan LeMay's Gunsight Trail.

This is an early oater from LeMay, who had great later success in his writing, including having works like The Searchers and The Unforgiven turned into memorable films.

This is a pretty standard western up to a point, with the cowpoke falling for one of the rancher's daughter and throwing in his luck with her family, up until a pretty bleak standoff at the end (that actually reminded me of the coda in the later novel The Searchers).

Still, standard LeMay is a cut above most cowboy writers, and I would recommend it to western fans.

I got this cheap for my beloved Kindle and read it quickly.

#4: The Witch Elm by Tana French

A young man survives a brutal home invasion, and retreats to his uncle's peaceful home to recuperate, only to have his life upended again when a body is found on the property in Tana French's The Witch Elm.

This taut thriller has a classic "unreliable narrator" hook, as the young man's memory gaps begin to make him wonder if he had something to do with the corpse (who turns out to be an old high school friend).  Two squabbling cousins, a dying uncle, and a questioning girlfriend stir the pot.

This one is a genuine puzzle right to the denouement, holding a surprise or two for the very end.  Satisfying characters and situations throughout, from a popular Irish crime writer.

I listened to this on audio book, on loan from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.  Recommended.

#3: The Reluctant Gun Hand by Logan Winters

A misunderstanding lands a cowpoke a six-month prison sentence after a crooked gambler draws on him, and he has no luck staying out of trouble when he gets out, in Logan Winters' The Reluctant Gun Hand.

Winters was Paul Lederer, one of a legion of hard-working old-fashioned paperback scribes who wrote under a handful of names.  This one is a very solid western that reads almost like a noir.

The plot is definitely noir-flavored:  our protagonist is trying to make it back to a nice frontier gal, but is bushwhacked and then waylaid into a gang of outlaws preparing a robbery, with a triple-crossing femme fatale front and center.

Enjoyable, fast read I got for my beloved Kindle and read very quickly over a couple of winter's days.  I'll continue to read Lederer, in all his names, whenever I find him.

#2: The Heap by Sean Adams

A giant, hive-like apartment building, designed as a sort of social experiment, collapses; somewhere deep inside, a lone DJ broadcasts from a radio station there, hanging on as his brother and an eclectic crew try to dig down to him in Sean Adams' The Heap.

With its frustrated middle management, fractured relationships, telephone booths, radio stations, instant coffee, and burnt-orange paint schemes, Adams' book reads exactly like a lost Philip K. Dick novel, and I enjoyed it more for that.  To me, it is a contemporary novel written as if was penned in the 60s or 70s and imagining today, if that makes sense.  

Unusual setting, with wry plotting that propels right along and holds a few surprises.

Recommended for sci-fi fans of Dick, Ballard, Delany, LeGuin.  I got this for my beloved Kindle and read it quickly.

#1: Hello, Transcriber by Hannah Morrissey

A troubled police transcriber in a crime-choked Wisconsin town makes a spate of poor decisions that puts her right in the middle of a murder investigation in Hannah Morrissey's debut Hello, Transcriber.

Morrissey features an unreliable narrator (one of my favorite topics in crime fiction), signaling from the opening pages when the protagonist contemplates jumping off the bridge.  She then starts a destructive affair with a detective just back from suspension, investigating a murder that might involve her duplex neighbor.

The crime aspects hit all the right beats, but it is the characters and setting that really shine.  As opposed to a TV show like Fargo, Morrissey doesn't hold her Midwesterners at an ironic distance; she lives in Wisconsin (and was also a police transcriber), and her characters are flawed and fully-realized.

A good way to start off 2022; recommended for genre fans.  

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

Top Ten of 2021

In another bad year, I had a good reading year, with a lot of great choices below.  Here are my Top Ten books, in a year where I passed by goal of 50 and hit 64.   Enjoy!

RAZORBLADE TEARS by SA Cosby

STILL LIVES by Maria Hummel

ZERO ZONE by Scott O'Connor

UNDER THE HARROW by Flynn Berry

THE RESISTERS by Gish Jen

HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead

THE KILLING HILLS by Chris Offutt

THE GUIDE by Peter Heller

THE BODY SCOUT by Lincoln Michel

THE MISSING AMERICAN by Kwei Quartey

#64: Girl A by Abigail Dean

 A teenager breaks her chains and escapes from the family home, revealing a literal house of horrors to the world; several decades later, the surviving siblings cope with their lives in various ways in Abigail Dean's Girl A.

The Girl A of the title is now a lawyer, who reluctantly inherits the abandoned childhood home and desires to turn it into a community center; but she has to--even more reluctantly--gather up her brothers and sisters, among them a brother who is a headmaster at a school, a sister who has found religion, and another brother who has descended into drugs.

Although the flashbacks to what happened at the hands of their father, who seemed to be slowly and then quickly going mad, are short, they are very potent, and based on that alone the book cannot be recommended to anyone with even a modest history of childhood trauma.

But the novel is really about the complicated connections between siblings, and is a sharp, literate novel in that regard.  More of an examination of a shattered family than a thriller, but a few twists and turns in the latter third--one I saw coming and one I didn't--could land it in a couple of different categories on the bookstore shelves.

Recommended for those with a high tolerance for harrowing storytelling.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

#63: Seducers in Ecuador by Vita Sackville-West

A man dons a pair of heavy, blue-tinged sunglasses in Egypt but decides not to take them off when he gets back to London, setting off a chain of disasters including a secret marriage, a murder, and an execution, in Vita Sackville-West's Seducers in Ecuador.

Sackville-West's slender novella from the 20s is heavy on plot, dark humor, and irony and is a brisk, prickly read.  The "seducers" of the title are men a lovelorn young woman is (supposedly) writing to when she agrees to the secret marriage.  Why she agrees to it is confounding right up to the end, and even then you aren't sure what is true or not.

I first learned of the author through a film about her romantic relationship with Virginia Woolf.  Over the years, Sackville-West's star has dimmed while Woolf's has only grown, though during their time together (and the time of the writing of the novella) Sackville-West was more popular as an author.

Her work is worth a look, if you are unfamiliar with her.  I will definitely seek out more.

I bought a lot of Vita Sackville-West novels from eBay for my wife, a Humanities professor, and picked this one up out of curiosity. 

#62: All's Hell on Peach Street by Brett McKinley

A young man, more or less raised by a frontier town when he was orphaned, inadvertently wins a shoot-out with a deadly outlaw; when the rest of the gang seeks revenge, the town rises up to protect him in Brett McKinley's All's Hell on Peach Street.

This oater from Cleveland Publishing, a long-time Australian company, was actually written by Paul Wheelahan, who wrote hundreds of westerns for Cleveland under a fistful of names (as well as writing comic books and TV shows).

I didn't know anything about the McKinley moniker and picked it up based on the offbeat title alone.  It's an above-average western with an interesting plot and characters and lightning-fast action.

I find it extremely difficult to find Cleveland westerns in the United States, but happily got this for my beloved Kindle and read it very quickly.  Interested in reading more from this writer, under whatever name.

#61: Triple Cross by Nick Carter

KIllmaster Nick Carter hunts an elusive, suicidal group of assassins called Blood Eagle across the European continent in one of Dennis Lynds' entries in the long-running spy series, Triple Cross.

Triple Cross was part of my casual re-read of the Nick Carter series I was so devoted to as a teenager.

Dennis Lynds writes a more well-rounded Nick Carter than some of the other authors (all writing quickly, with little reference to what happened in previous editions) and imagines more epic, complicated stories (in my opinion).

However, Lynds doesn't mind falling back on the familiar "teaming up with the sexy Soviet spy" trope.  Carter and his sidekick have quite a few setbacks and surprises before they uncover Blood Eagle, and their curious motive that crosses national boundaries.

Along with the Nick Carter novels penned by Martin Cruz Smith, I find Dennis Lynds one of my favorites to date, with this being the second one I've come across by him.

I got this from a big lot of Nick Carter paperbacks somewhere and read it quickly.

#60: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

A furniture dealer kind of trying to go straight, and his cousin who is not trying as hard, get into a variety of scrapes in late 50s-early 60s Harlem in Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle.

The cousins first get involved in a hotel robbery, where they steal something from a crime lord by mistake; then, later, the furniture dealer gets an elaborate revenge after a snub; and then in a melancholy coda the cousin gets afoul of a powerful New York family.

Whitehead is a literary writer whose books can loosely slip into various genres, from crime to science fiction to fantasy.  This one is an good read, with interesting characters and sense of place and time, and would be enjoyable by fans of literary fiction or crime fiction.

Dion Graham is one of my favorite audiobook narrators, and he did another great job here.  I checked it out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and finished it quickly.

#59: The Green Wolf Connection by Nick Carter

Killmaster Nick Carter finds himself on loan to the CIA for a hit on a terrorist called The Green Wolf, but quickly finds himself the patsy in a larger scheme, in The Green Wolf Connection, an action-driven entry in the long-running spy series, this one penned by Dennis Lynds.

This is part of my casual re-read of a series I enjoyed as a teenager; this entry is from the mid-70s, right when I was reading them.  I don't know if I have ever read anything by Dennis Lynds--although he wrote under several other names--but I was a fan of his wife Gayle Lynds' spy novels (and she wrote some Nick Carter books, too).

I once read where someone said that there is so little continuity between Carter novels, written so quickly by a legion of paperback authors over such a long period of time, that it is better to treat each author's Nick Carter as its own character apart from the ones from other writers.  

I did find Dennis Lynds' Carter markedly different than some I've read; a bit more cynical and cerebral but just as quick to fight or have sex as any other iteration.

More so, Lynds writes good action, with big set pieces, making this entry a cut above the usual b-grade fare from the Killmaster novels.

I got this from a big lot of Nick Carter books somewhere and read it quickly.

#58: The Resisters by Gish Jen

In a near-future dystopia, a couple give birth to a child with an unearthly pitching arm; as she grows, her family's struggles with a totalitarian government run by artificial intelligence expands as well--until she's needed for the Olympic baseball team.  

Gish Jen's The Resisters is a heady mix of David Halberstam and George Orwell, Big Brother by way of Sandy Koufax.

If there was ever a year I would read two dystopian baseball novels, I guess this was it (the other was The Body Scout). This one I found to be more literary-minded, closer to an early Margaret Atwood.  

Besides a few eccentric touches, the world-building is very close to believable, and probably my favorite part of the book.  But the baseball passages also reflect how the sport became known as the national past-time.

The Resisters is an offbeat read for really anyone who likes genre or mainstream fiction.  Recommended.

I checked it out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#57: Who's Afraid? by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

 A cheery young woman takes a job as a traveling salesperson, and almost immediately finds herself surrounded by menace, in Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's Who's Afraid?

Our protagonist is calling on housewives in a small town, but quickly finds the husband of one of them dead along a path, with herself in the law's sights.  She tries to keep up her spirits even while a pair of young men--whose motives she begins to question--both vie to help her.

Stark House Press seems to be trying singlehandedly to bring Holding's work back into the public eye (she wrote from the 20s-50s), and deservedly so; she is a sharp, darkly funny crime writer.

I was very shocked to find an Ace Double with this on one side and her Widow's Mite on the other out in the wild on a camping trip, as her books are hard to find outside of Stark House Press reprints.  Unfortunately, I dropped it and my dog promptly peed on it.  I bought the Stark House Kindle version to finish it up.  

Credit where credit is due, when I posted about this on social media, Stark House Press sent me two more Holding books for Kindle, a welcome surprise.

I read this one quickly and enjoyed it; recommended for those who have yet to discover Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.

#56: Slow Bear by Anthony Neil Smith

 A former cop on a North Dakota Indian reservation tries to follow his tarnished code of ethics, but his own phantoms keep getting in the way, in Anthony Neil Smith's relentlessly grim noir Slow Bear.

Smith is a tough-minded crime writer who sets his books in bleak midwestern settings.  This short, blistering novel seems to be the first of a series (or has a pretty nihilistic ending).  

In it, Micah "Slow Bear" Cross, wounded physically and emotionally, is at the dead end of a dead-end town but gets modest comfort from a bartender he befriends.  When misfortune befalls her, Cross sets out to tackle a crime boss, with fatalistic results.

I would think this blog's readers, seeing the adjectives I've used above, would understand that this is as black a chunk of noir as you come across in contemporary writing.  If not, fair warning.  

Enjoyable for crime fans who like their narratives as dark.

I bought this from Fahrenheit Press and read it quickly.

#55: No One Goes Alone by Eric Larson

A family staying in a house on a remote island off the British coast disappears, and an intrepid group of paranormal investigators heads there to find out if anything spooky happened to them, in No One Goes Alone by Eric Larson.

Larson is known as a non-fiction writer--my favorite is The Devil in the White City--but he makes the jump to fiction in this outing, which takes place in the early 20th Century and features several historic figures.  

Perhaps more unusually, Larson decided this would only come out as an audiobook, as he stated ghost stories should be read aloud.

Larson's book feels as if it could have been written in that time period, and is overall more atmospheric than downright scary, but is an enjoyable listen with an unsettling denouement.

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

#54: The Foreign Girls by Sergio Olguin

An Argentinian investigative reporter goes on vacation, and meets two young women she decides to travel with; but one fateful night those women turn up dead, and the reporter won't quit until she knows what happened in Sergio Olguin's The Foreign Girls.

This is the second in Olguin's Veronica Rosenthal series, and carries over some of the threads from the first book, but is missing the previous story's unusual plot.

The first novel, The Fragility of Bodies, centered around a sinister gambling ring that bets on whether underprivileged kids can jump out of the way of a speeding train in time.  This one is more standard, as the two girls' deaths seem to be tied loosely to occult practices but more directly to a pair of affluent families who have literally gotten away with murder over the years.

The most interesting part, for North American readers, might be the casual and pervasive political corruption in Argentina that the reporter and her intrepid friends deal with, while trying to bring to justice people who normally don't have to be ruled by it.

Philosophical, but laden with sex and violence; compulsively readable, but a half-step from the first novel.  

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.

#53: The Lonely Grave by Dave Waldo

Easygoing gun-hand Johnny Ross ends up the sheriff of a cowed town caught up in a range war in Dave Waldo's oater The Lonely Grave.

Waldo apparently wrote a number of novels about Ross, but this is the first one I've ever come across, finding it in the wild at a flea market.  

Waldo writes a steady, though unsurprising, western, helped considerably by a light first-person narrative style.  The laconic commentary adds value.  The gunfights come at a regular pace and a modest frontier romance blooms.

I liked Dave Waldo's writing style for a quick read and will look for more of his work.