A Slight Digression for Stieg Larsson

I am soon to be wrapping up my The Girl Who Played With Fire contest, over at my other blog, but there is still time to enter. Astoundingly, Knopf asked me to be one of 250 bloggers across this great nation to give away a copy of Stieg Larsson's latest thriller. However, they didn't mention that I couldn't read it first, so the contest ends when I get done. And I read quite a bit last night. And, by the way, it's good. More soon to be written about it here.

#35: Stop This Man by Peter Rabe

An ex-con tries to get back into the crime business by stealing a chunk of gold from a science lab, only to find out it was nuked as part of an experiment. Trailing radioactive death behind him, our protagonist finds himself hunted by the FBI, the cops, and criminals alike in Peter Rabe's rocketing noir Stop This Man.

This is another fine noir in the Hard Case Crime line, a collection of lost pulps repackaged with retro covers. Although fast-paced, I found this one to be uncommonly bleak, even by the high standards of Hard Case Crime. There is nobody to root for and plenty of downbeat moments.

Still, one of my favorites of the series (and I haven't missed many) and from one of my favorite lost noir writers. I had found A House in Naples quite by accident as a teen and always tried to grab anything else by Peter Rabe in the infrequent instances where I came across his work. A truly excellent writer who deserved more attention. Recommended.

I rarely buy Hard Case Crime novels as soon as they hit the stands, but this one I bought from Amazon as soon as I knew it was coming out and read it at a quick pace.

#34: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

After writing several quasi-autobiographies (such as Postcards from the Edge), Carrie Fisher writes her first true tell-all, an amiable, scattershot series of anectdotes about her colorful life.

Fisher gathered a lot of material from her stage show, performed as a way of recalling memories lost through shock therapy and a lifetime of excess; thus, the audio book version is probably the best way to consume this slight volume. Wishful Drinking was an amiable listen (read by the author), but I suspect there isn't enough drilling down on a variety of interesting subjects (among them Star Wars and her movie-star parents) to make a completely satisfying read. Still, I enjoyed it and wished Fisher had provided even more.

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

#33: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Suburban horror features a man who may be the last human on earth and his day-to-day struggles against his friendly-neighbors-turned-vampires in Richard Matheson's milestone horror novel I Am Legend, made into at least three movies and paid homage to countless times.

This is actually the first book I have re-read since I started trying to read fifty books a year last year. My wife and daughter were interested in it, so we listened to a good audio book version on the way up and back from Traverse City, Michigan. I had read it probably around middle school (when I discovered the Charlton Heston movie version) and was eager to see how it held up.

I enjoyed it again, though it is a bit dated, and you have to look past all of the parts that have been cribbed since and try to look at it with fresh eyes. But if you've seen any of the movies, especially the Will Smith one, there are more layers to the novel politically and philosophically that make it worth a look.

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

#32: Half-Injun, Half-Wildcat by John Callahan

The illegitimate son of a ranch baron is shut out of the will when his father dies, but decides to help his hard-headed half-brother save the spread during a range war anyway.

Despite the lurid pulp title, Half-Injun, Half-Wildcat is a pretty good Western (half of an Ace Double) with a lot more nuances than you might think for the time period and the Ace line.

This western came from the prolific pulp pen of Paul Chadwick, who wrote mysteries, sci-fi, and westerns under various names including Chester Hawks and the house name for Secret Agent X. It was a sturdy, quick read that I finished on a single day while on vacation in Traverse City, Michigan.

I was happy to find this Ace Double (backed with Outcast of Ute Bend by Clement Hardin) at a small used bookstore in Traverse City.

#31: Curtains for a Lover by Robert Dietrich

Another pulp adventure from the swingin' sixties, with plenty of hungry women and barking pistols for hero Steve Bentley; though, curiously, it turns out our protagonist is not a private eye or an undercover spy, but a Washington accountant.

Curtains for a Lover is a further curiosity as one of the many paperback outings written under a pseudonym by Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt. When I was younger, I read and enjoyed several of his David St. John spy novels without having a clue who he was, only later learning about his strange role in U.S. history.

I did not know this was one of his other writing non-de-plumes when I picked it up in a little used bookstore in Traverse City Michigan on vacation, but some late-night googling brought me back in touch with an old favorite.

Our numbers-cruncher actually appeared in several of "Robert Dietrich's" novels, although the bankbook-balancing generally takes a back seat to boozing and bed-hopping. Here the whole story is set off by a high-maintenance stage actress who thinks someone is forging big checks with her signature. In quick order the bodies are stacking up and the suspect list gets longer.

I found this to be a highly enjoyable read with some good prose passages. I knocked this one out in about a day while on vacation and would be happy if I stumbled across more of Bentley's adventures.

#30: The Murderer Vine by Shepard Rifkin

Slightly shady private eye is convinced to avenge the murder of several civil-rights workers in the deep South in Shepard Rifkin's sobering noir The Murderer Vine.

A long shadow is cast over the first few pages, leading relentlessly to a stark closing chapter that turns detective fiction on its cauliflower ear. Rifkin's private eye, fresh from the big city with his secretary in tow, finds the rural South and its supposed bumpkins a little harder to fathom than he thought. A lot of interesting political and social thought lifts the storytelling.

Rifkin has offered a fine, downbeat work, originally written in the 1970s and reprinted for the excellent Hard Case Crime line, a mix of pulp paperbacks featuring lost noirs and contemporary crime. This would probably be one of my favorites in the entire series, and I haven't missed many.

I read this one on my lovely Kindle and was one of the first three books I bought for this device. Recommended.

#29: Two-Way Split by Allan Guthrie

A mentally unbalanced trio of thieves inadvertently cross paths with an ex-con trying to go straight(ish) and a crooked(ish) private eye in Allan Guthrie's crisp caper novel Two-Way Split.

Guthrie name-checks old-school noir but adds his own touches of blunt humor and quirky characters. The Edinburgh setting adds interest and is also the location of another crackling crime drama from Guthrie that I read last year, Kiss Her Goodbye, which features some of the same characters.

I would easily point any Guy Ritchie movie fans towards Guthrie, or any reader who likes tough noir in a different setting. There is no doubt there is a lot of good mystery writing coming out of Europe today, at times eclipsing our homegrown scribes.

Two-Way Split has the distinction of being the first novel I read on my beloved new Kindle, and I purchased the download at the humble price of around a dollar. I consumed it over a day or so on the beach in Traverse City, Michigan, the perfect spot for reading a good pulpy outing.

I am on the prowl for more of Guthrie's fine, reverent noir writing.

#28: The Ballad of Beta-2 by Samuel R. Delany

Trippy sci-fi has student tasked with tracing a poem that originated during a star-journey in which spaceship society devolved over a generations-long flight. The student makes a space-jaunt to the fleet of supposedly junked ships and finds that they aren't quite as abandoned as he thought.

I became a big fan of Samuel R. Delany last year and keep an eye out for his work. This one was the first one I nabbed from the book-swapping site www.paperbackswap.com (an improvement over BookCrossing, I think, which I used to call "Book Throwing Away Club"). I swallowed this in a single gulp on a long afternoon on the beach in Traverse City, Michigan.

The Ballad of Beta-2 is an early work and, although interesting, not as fully ripened with the wild imagination of some of his later novels such as Nova and Babel-17. In fact, its brief page count means big chunks of exposition are dealt with rather briskly.

However, a lot of Delany's trademarks are here, and there are bouts of neat ideas, making it worth reading for Delany completists like myself.

#27: Go Green, Live Rich by David Bach

Interesting collection of insights about how to green your life and perhaps save/make some money at the same time. Go Green, Live Rich is a rather slender, breezy volume written with the cheery agressiveness of a lot of business books of this type.

This seems like a curious selection based on previous blog entries, and it is. I had to select a "green" book to complete the summer reading program at the Morrison-Reeves Library. I picked this one because of having some interest in green living and green applications at work and home. This very quick read had some decent takeaways; however, I wasn't convinced that if I took all my savings from going green and invested it I would become rich.

Go Green, Live Rich will provide some food for thought as a primer for green thinking, especially if the reader hasn't been exposed to the concepts before.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond Indiana and read it in a short span of lunch breaks.

#26: The Paper Pistol Contract by Philip Atlee

Nullifier Joe Gall is given the tricky assignment of spoiling a French nuclear test and pinning it on the Chinese in The Paper Pistol Contract by Philip Atlee.

Naturally, this being written in the swinging 60s, Joe leaves a little time for the ladies and to kill a Godless Communist or two. But in the end I was a bit surprised how philosophical Gall is and more surprised at a somewhat downbeat ending; in fact Gall's "contract" more or less ends in ruins, with the bodies of friends and foes alike around him.

Atlee also displays a fine, full sense of place and character that makes his writing a cut above the usual pulp fare of that era. I was genuinely pleased with the last Joe Gall adventure I read (scroll down) and will keep looking for more of Atlee's work (even as, it seems, more and more of the Gold Medal paperbacks of my youth are in landfills, or somewhere).

I bought this one in a big heaping helping of Atlee and Edward S. Aarons paperbacks from ebay and looking forward to more.

#25: Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett

A Thai cop with his own curious code of ethics (on display in Burdett's last novel with this character, Bangkok 8) intervenes when a prostitute--who works in his mother's brothel--kills an American spy. Soon our somewhat tarnished protagonist stages a coverup that draws the attention of the U.S. government, potential terrorists, and corrupt cops and soldiers.

John Burdett's writing features steel-hearted storytelling spiked with dark humor and shocking bursts of sex and violence. Plenty of Bangkok red-light adventures makes this one cautious treading for the unwary reader, but I really liked our protagonist's circuitous philosophical musings. I will be looking for the third in this series, I believe freshly released.

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

#24: Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Billy Beane continues to spin straw into gold with the Oakland A's, a traditionally underfunded baseball team with ongoing successes. How he does so is at the center of Michael Lewis' Moneyball, an entertaining piece of reporting heavy with arcane baseball logic but leavened with interesting human interest stories.

Whether you are a hardcore baseball person or a more fair-weather dabbler like myself, Moneyball is engaging storytelling. A reader can tell that Lewis enjoyed the subject and he writes in a bright, clear style. It is interesting to see what has happened to some of the characters--I mean, actual baseball players--since the writing of the book and how the A's have fared overall.

I picked this up for a quarter at a library book sale and passed it on to another baseball fan when I was finished.

#23: Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs, a private investigator and amateur psychologist in 1930s London, takes on the case of a missing heiress that eventually leads back to multiple murders driven by a shameful act during World War I.

This is the second of the series featuring Maisie Dobbs, and like the first has a mildly engaging mystery. But Dobbs has a great backstory; she was a poor girl who came up "in service" as a maid to a quirky mistress who later sent her to college, then later still serves as a nurse at the front in World War I, becoming wounded and then coming under the toutelage of a Poirot-like investigator and eventually taking over his practice.

Consequently, I picked up the second novel mostly to see what happened to Maisie Dobbs next, and again found the storylines from the past more compelling than the present mystery presented. I think the writing is a little more clear-eyed than what you might find in the typical English "cozy" mystery, and Winspear writes with a nuanced ear for details. This, more than any plotting, would encourage me to get the next in the series.

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

#22: The Silken Baroness Contract by Philip Atlee

Secret agent Joe Gall, "The Nullifier," goes deep undercover to sort out various intrigues in the Canary Islands and elsewhere in Philip Atlee's enjoyable spy outing The Silken Baroness Contract.

As I wrote recently, I have a renewed interest (along with a fair chunk of fandom) in finding some pulpy Gold Medal books of the 50s-70s, and getting acquainted (or re-acquainting myself) with this body of work.

I had not read Atlee before and found myself pleasantly surprised. His protagonist, Joe Gall, never found a doll he didn't want to bed or a commie he didn't want to kill, but Atlee has a great sense of detail and place and passages of fine writing, as well as finely-tuned action scenes and bolts of (non-PC) humor. Gall was a more well-rounded character than I thought I would find, once you get past all of the saber-rattling (including one eyebrow-raising scene where Gall, in a steambath, kneads the stump of a Korean War vet who lost his leg).

I thought I would briefly dip into Atlee before resuming another Edward S. Aarons book, but find myself inclined to try Atlee again sooner.

I bought this book in a happily large lot of Gold Medal paperbacks from ebay.

#21: Brimstone by Robert B. Parker

Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, the two laconic gunmen from Robert B. Parker's Appaloosa and Resolution novels, return for a third round in Brimstone, another tightly-wound Western.

Here our lawmen sort out a town in which a somewhat suspicious religious leader carries on a spiritual campaign against the saloons with some heavily-armed "deacons" while a rogue Indian killer nips at the town's heels. But at the center of the story is Virgil Cole's relationship with a serially unfaithful woman, highlighting that even the fastest gun in the West is still susceptible to the p-whip.

I would rate this trilogy highly in the modern Western canon; certainly not at the level of Larry McMurtry or Cormac McCarthy but within shooting range of Elmore Leonard and probably ready to have a showdown with Loren Estleman. Terse writing, leavened with humor, makes this a fast read.

I checked this out from the Farmland Public Library and chewed through it quickly.

#20: Assignment Madeleine by Edward S. Aarons

Spy Sam Durrell reluctantly goes to Algeria in the heat of the French conflict there to bring back a triple-crossing American agent who killed his mentor; soon he ends up fighting killers on all sides during a race across the desert in Edward S. Aarons' Assignment Madeleine.

I dipped into Aarons' "Assignment" series with Sam Durrell many, many years ago and remember the few books I read being competent but perhaps a notch below my favorite of that era, Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm novels. However, reading this one with fresh, or perhaps more seasoned, eyes I found this to be very tough, terse writing. Aaron presents the political nuance of John LeCarre as well, which surprised me for a series novel.

Fortunately I bought a big chunk of these (and some Philip Atlee Joe Gall novels in the same ebay lot, an admirable load of Gold Medal paperbacks) and will be able to try some more later and see how others stand the test of time.

Once I had some of these of my own, but I can't find them or have let them slip through my fingers, and in fact a lot of people have done the same as you can't find Gold Medal books in used bookstores like you used to, all crowded out by big thick Tom Clancys and John Grishams.

Edward S. Aarons seems to be having a bit of a revival in pulp fandom, so I thought I would find out for myself. And I was glad I did.

#19: Missing by Karin Alvtegen

A woman with a privileged upbringing ends up living on the streets, but a shocking murder draws her back into society in Karin Alvtegen's Swedish thriller Missing.

I have enjoyed this recent spate of moody Scandinavian mysteries winding their way here, and would rate this one highly. The story of how our protagonist, Sibylla, becomes homeless is almost more compelling than the central mystery, in which through circumstances (and then intent) she becomes the central suspect in the ritual killing.

But Missing is compelling overall and reads at a good clip (I think I finished it in three or four days). For mystery fans, most of these Scandinavian writers represent a good change of pace. I will look for more from Alvtegen, already well established in her own country. Recommended.

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

#18: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

A boy with an alter-ego named "Crow" runs away after being told of an Oedipal curse on his head; meanwhile, an elderly man who can talk to cats begins on a parallel odyssey after a brutal killing. Their paths converge at a strange library not far from a ghost-filled wood. Both a painting and a one-hit wonder song called "Kafka on the Shore" play critical roles.

Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore is incredibly difficult to summarize, as one might derive from the previous paragraph. It is strangely dreamlike, to the point of drowsiness, paragraphs of mundane detail punctuated with surprising bursts of murder, rape, and more. Serial killers and pimps drift past librarians and truck drivers. There are slugs falling from the sky, possible UFOs, and various benign and evil spirits.

Obviously not for all tastes, but certainly unique and with merit for those looking for a change of pace. I borrowed this on audiobook from my pal Michael, who you can see in the sidebar is also trying to read 50 books this year.

#17: The Repairmen of Cyclops by John Brunner

Galactic cops get on the trail of interplanetary body-snatchers in John Brunner's brisk sci-fi outing The Repairmen of Cyclops.

John Brunner was a popular sci-fi writer of the 60s and 70s who I have never gotten into; and, in fact, I can think of two or three of his novels I have picked up and put down over the years without finishing. This was my first one of his I read all the way through, and I found it to be a serviceable yarn on one half of an Ace Double I snagged for a quarter.

I learned this was the last of a trilogy featuring these characters in various space exploits, though I didn't feel any confusion or loss from missing the others. Enough neat ideas, at a good clip, to make me think about revisiting some other Brunner.

Almost worth owning just for the cool orange 60s cover alone; google it and you'll see waht I mean.

#16: Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas

P.I. John Blake finds out a murdered stripper, found on the roof of a seedy NYC strip joint, was his former high school girlfriend last seen heading for medical school ten years' past.  Blake decides to dig into the murder, much to his regret, in Richard Aleas' Hard Case Crime novel Little Girl Lost.

I actually read Aleas' second John Blake novel, Songs of Innocence, first, and found it to be one of my favorite of the contemporary entries in the Hard Case Crime series, mostly reprints of lost noir with attractive retro pulp covers.  As well it should be, as Richard Aleas is actually Charles Ardai, the editor of Hard Case Crime and no slouch himself, as it turns out, in hard-boiled writing.

In fact, his John Blake mysteries are pretty seamy and downbeat, even by the high standards of the Hard Case Crime line.  Overall, the two Aleas books are among the stronger on the contemporary side of the Hard Case Crime house.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana, and was surprised to find it amidst their small paperback collection.

#15: An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe

A Broadway stage star is convinced by a wizard detective to spy on a powerful industrialist recently returned from an alien planet, causing romantic and dramatic complications, in Gene Wolfe's genre-bending pulpfest An Evil Guest.

Wolfe's wholly original Book of the New Sun opus (which begins with The Shadow of the Torturer) stands as one of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy series, though its density may not be for all tastes.  The same might be said of this stand-alone outing, a tribute of sorts to the pulp era, an oddball mash-up that might have happened if H.P. Lovecraft and Cornell Woolrich decided to put on Ziegfield's Follies.  If you know what I'm talking about, rush out and get this right away.

I'm a big fan of Gene Wolfe and thought this was a solid entry to his, I think, somewhat underrated body of work.

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

#14: Meet Me At The Morgue by Ross Macdonald

A parole officer gets drawn into a kidnapping plot when he is convinced one of his parolees is innocent. In trying to find the kidnapped child, our protagonist gets drawn into a dark tangle of broken families and failing marriages in Ross Macdonald's Meet Me At The Morgue.

Like many, I find Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer mysteries one of the touchstone series of contemporary crime fiction. Macdonald's eye for the inner lives of people as well as the external world he lived in (centered around California) is unparalleled. I long ago devoured most of the series.

This is a non-series work, but features a lot of the key themes of Macdonald's writing. A bit more workmanlike than some of his novels, but features several memorable turns of phrase and passages of fine writing.

I bought this for a quarter at a library book sale and read it even as the yellowed pages were falling out of it. Made me hanker to find more Ross Macdonald that I had previously not read.

#13: Real World by Natsuo Kirino

In the Tokyo suburbs, a troubled teen clubs his mother to death and goes on the run, drawing four curiously disaffected classmates into his web.  The four girls' misguided efforts to alternately help and hinder their classmate "Worm" end in suicide, more murder,  and general mayhem, in Natsuo Kirino's noirish psychological novel Real World.

Although I have enjoyed a fair slice of anime, manga, and Japanese horror films, I don't think I knew enough about Japanese culture to fully understand what Kirino was trying to say about her teenage protagonists; but most of the story can be applied to desensitized and pop culture-glutted young people anywhere.  Chilly prose and chilling storytelling throughout.

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

#12: The Black Path by Asa Larsson

Lawyer Rebecka Martinsson, reeling from the traumatic events of her recent past, retreats to her grandmother's old cabin in northern Sweden and eventually gets drawn into a local brutal murder by steadfast cop Anna-Maria Mella.  The victim is part of a debauched, jet-setting elite group with messy business ties that both women try to unravel in Asa Larsson's philosophical thriller The Black Path.

I found Larsson's first novel Sun Storm a solid legal thriller, but the second, The Blood Spilt, almost a rewrite of her first effort. The storytelling is quite different here and relies on a much larger group of characters, including giving a broader role to the police characters from the first two novels.  Larsson jumps around from viewpoint to viewpoint, killers to victims to hunters, weaving more of a psychological study than a true mystery.  The ending, especially, leaves the reader to draw a few of their own conclusions. 

Overall I found The Black Path to be a solid read for those familiar with the more morose, meandering writings of the Scandinavian mystery writers.  I will look for the next in Larsson's series.

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