#66: Sidewinder by Jack Slade

Gun-hand Lassiter travels to Mexico to collect on an IOU, and ends up embroiled in local corruption and national politics, in Sidewinder, an entry in the long-running series by "Jack Slade."

Jack Slade was a lot of different people, in this case Frank Castle, considered one of the second-tier scribes of the series.  

But I liked this overheated, spaghetti-flavored western, written in a baroque style but never lacking in action.  

This one opens with Lassiter digging his own grave, but he quickly escapes only to be jailed a few more times in between killing owlhoots and bedding women.  

With a whole Mexican town against him, he hides away dynamite and weapons all over town, and needs them all in fast-paced finale.

I got this western in a Christmas swap in a paperback collecting Facebook group I belong to, and read it quickly on a camping trip.

#65: Hangman's Territory by Jack M Bickham

 A gunhand comes to a Montana town to help settle a range war and goes against a hanging judge, a creepy hangman, and a murderous sheriff in Jack M. Bickham's Hangman's Territory.

The gunhand ends up teaming up with a greenhorn lawyer and a colorful, dynamite-happy friend for a tough battle and an action-packed finale.

Bickham wrote a lot of novels across genres, and perhaps is best known for The Apple Dumpling Gang and his Wildcat O'Shea stories.  It seems clearly that the eccentric character "Boom Boom" is an early incarnation of Wildcat, who is a somewhat comic figure with an appetite for explosives as well.

This was once half of an Ace Double but has been reprinted on its own several times.  One of the later versions came to me in a holiday book swap from a paperback collecting group I belong to on Facebook.

I read this one very quickly and would recommend for western fans.

#64: Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

In 1990s Los Angeles, race relations are simmering when a Korean shop owner shoots an unarmed Black teenager; nearly 30 years later, the two families are threaded back together by another crime in Steph Cha's Your House Will Pay.

Cha's novel has elements of the crime genre, but is even more successful when it looks at the lives of the two families; in the Korean family, secrets around the shooting have caused estrangement, and in the other family, mourning has taken both positive and negative forms, from activism to violence.

And readers quickly learn that racial tensions haven't stopped simmering in Los Angeles since, although Cha tries to end on a somewhat positive note.

Your House Will Pay is a worthwhile novel for both genre and literary readers.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Bookmobile and read it quickly.

#63: Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

 A man who is part private eye/part enforcer on a South Dakota Indian reservation goes on a personal quest when drug dealers involve his young nephew in David Heska Wanbli Widen's debut crime novel Winter Counts.

Complicating matters further is the arrival of an old flame, which also embroils him in tribal politics.  Both stories intersect in an explosive, violent denouement.

The crime elements of the book pretty much go where you expect, but the settings and characters are noteworthy.  The reservation and its denizens provide a fresh look at the genre.

Our tarnished protagonist tried to ignore the old ways in favor of stark contemporary reality, but the old ways keep guiding him, whether he wants them to or not.

I enjoyed Winter Counts throughout and would recommend it to readers who enjoy contemporary crime fiction but would like a more unique character and setting.

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

#62: The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly

 "Lincoln Lawyer" Mickey Haller gets the most personal case of his career when a routine traffic stop finds the body of a former client in the trunk in Michael Connelly's The Law of Innocence.

Haller ends up defending himself as the prime murder suspect.  But he has to try to unravel the conspiracy against him from a jail cell, where he is under constant threat from inmates and prison guards alike.

Connelly is probably best known for his notable, long-running Harry Bosch series, but Bosch's half-brother has starred in a couple of his own books (and one movie).

This one is one of my favorites in that series, as it starts on a rocket in the first pages and never lets up.  More of a courtroom drama than Connelly's other books, but still written in the no-nonsense style I have always enjoyed from the author.

Recommended for fans.  I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library Bookmobile and read it very quickly.

#61: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Immediately following the events of Gideon the Ninth, a necromancer joins the Emperor and his inner circle in a bid to destroy an invading army of monsters, all while trying to navigate internal politics, in Tamsyn Muir's sequel to one of my favorite books from last year, Harrow the Ninth.

However, I flat didn't know what to make of this book.  The first one hundred pages (of approximately five hundred) are basically Harrowhawk getting over the shocking finale of the previous book.  Subsequently, she has flashbacks to the events of that novel, which actually don't match the earlier storyline.  

It becomes so dense and unwieldy that I kept going back to Wikipedia and the internet to refresh my memory on who the characters were and what was going on.

When all is revealed, it is a genuine surprise, and the story rockets along for the last one hundred pages or so (and ends basically on a cliffhanger for the wrap-up of the trilogy).

I ended up really enjoying this book but can't recommend it on its own merits; at this point, I feel it is best for new readers to wait for the trilogy to complete, and then read them all straight through.  I love Muir's writing style, and  Harrow the Ninth is a highly memorable science fiction romp, but just doesn't really stand on its own merits.

But if you have already read the first one, refresh your memory and then dive right in.

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

#60: Tall Man Riding by Peter McCurtin

 Gun-hand Carmody decides, at the spur of the moment, to rob a small bank, only to cross a gang who also wanted to rob it; when they beat him mercilessly in the middle of the street, he won't rest until the whole gang is dead in Peter McCurtin's Tall Man Riding.

McCurtin was an extremely prolific writer and editor across many genres; Carmody was a western series character that appeared in a number of volumes.  

To say Carmody is an anti-hero is putting it mildly; he kills men and beds women without much of a thought for either throughout.  To that end, it would be most polite to say that the book is a product of its time, with race relations and gender relations not portrayed in a contemporary vein.

But McCurtin is just a cracking good paperback writer, and I've found his books to be enjoyable for discriminating readers.

I got this in a batch of mixed western paperbacks from a friend and read it quickly.

#59: Southern Showdown by Louis Masterson

 Lawman Morgan Kane walks away from the badge and becomes a hired gun, but soon suspects he signed on to the wrong side of an oil dispute, in Louis Masterson's Southern Showdown.

Masterson was Norwegian writer Kjell Hallbing, and his Morgan Kane series numbered close to a hundred volumes and was immensely popular.  Holding the storytelling threads together through various books, and showing the character grow and change, seem to be two hallmarks that readers enjoy.

But my sampling size is two, as only some have been translated into English, and are extremely hard to find in the wild.  If I see one on eBay for less than ten dollars, I snatch it up, which is where I found this one.

Southern Showdown is definitely spaghetti-flavored, full of sex and bloodshed, with an above-average story.  Masterson is worth seeking out for western fans looking for a series they might not have known about.

#58: These Women by Ivy Pochoda

 A serial killer is dispatching women on the bad streets of LA, and it's up to a disparate group of struggling women to sort out the truth in Ivy Pochoda's These Women.

Pochoda's writing is downbeat and clear-eyed, and the characterizations are vivid.  Chapters alternate between a haunted mother whose daughter died 15 years before, a hard-living stripper, a demoted police detective with PTSD, an artist with a myriad of repressed emotions, her equally repressed mother, and the killer's lone survivor whose voice goes unheard through the years.

The identity of the serial killer unspools rather readily but the storytelling is striking throughout, as the dominoes begin to tip over--who was a babysitter, who was a neighbor or a friend, until the plot threads right together to a tight finale involving everyone.

A compelling crime novel with a literary bent that I read at a rocket pace and found rewarding throughout.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library bookmobile.

#57: The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda

 A mass poisoning at a family gathering in the 1970s, where only an enigmatic blind child survives, resonates through the decades in Riku Onda's The Aosawa Murders.

The plot sounds straightforward but the storytelling is unique, with each chapter telling the story from different perspectives, including characters with major roles such as a neighbor child who later writes a bestseller about the murders and an origami-loving detective down to people who only were involved peripherally, such as the neighbor of the suspected killer, the author's research assistant, and the children of various characters like the family housekeeper.  

Newspaper articles, interviews, and segments from the bestselling novel-within-a-novel also play an unusual role.

This is a strangely elliptical crime novel that had me guessing right to the very end, and even then I wasn't sure what had happened.  

Really a fascinating and offbeat read from a popular Japanese writer.  This is her first novel translated into English, via Bitter Lemon Press.  I hope more of her work is translated.  Recommended.

I got this for my birthday and read it steadily.

#56: Beyond the Pass by Lee Leighton

A bounty hunter takes a job tracking a pair of outlaws holed up in a small town about to get snowed in for the winter, thinking he can reconnect with his father and perhaps connect with a fiery young woman he had met there once before; but when he rides in and finds his father married to the woman, it makes for a long winter in Lee Leighton's Beyond the Pass.

Making things even more complicated, the outlaws don't seem that bad and the townspeople have a lot of dark secrets.  As it happens, his new stepmother may be the most dangerous one of them all.

The western veers close to noir before the finale.

I had never heard of Lee Leighton, who was actually Wayne Overholser, until pretty recently, and was surprised how good Hanging at Pulpit Rock was.  This one was also a cut above, with interesting characters and an above-average plot.

I was surprised again by Leighton/Overholser and happen to have one or two more in this big lot of mixed westerns I picked up.

#55: The Executioner Weeps by Frederic Dard

 A painter accidentally knocks down a mysterious woman carrying a violin along a desolate road in Spain; when she awakens with amnesia, they form an unhealthy attachment in Frederic Dard's The Executioner Weeps.

The artist becomes obsessed with the young woman, and doggedly ignores signs that maybe all was not well in her previous life; a quick trip back to France to check on clues reveals a tragic truth that leads to a downbeat ending.

Dard was a highly prolific author of French noir, and this entry was an award winner when it came out in the late 1950s.  This is a recent translation by the imprint Pushkin Vertigo.

The French noir novels I have sampled overall have a tendency to be short, very dark, and unpleasant, and I would say this first dip into Dard's work fits the criteria.

That being said, I enjoy Dard's writing quite a bit and would look for more of his lengthy bibliography.

#54: A Dark Redemption by Stav Sherez

 A mismatched pair of London cops are assigned to investigate the murder of a college student, but find the roots of the case reach into complex Ugandan politics, in Stav Sherez's A Dark Redemption.

This World Noir entry had a somewhat familiar pair of protagonists--the lead detective kind of an eccentric outcast, his new partner carrying a lot of baggage from a messy breakup--but the African themes in the plot elevate the surroundings.  

Of most interest is the lead detective, who had a promising recording career before visiting Africa with two friends after graduation; they make a few mistakes that lead to tragedy, and influences the detective's current behavior.  The flashbacks are one of the more compelling aspects of the storytelling.

This is a very solid police procedural and apparently the start of a new series.  I would look for the next one.  A pretty good change of pace.

I picked this up somewhere and read it steadily.

#53: Peking and The Tulip Affair by Nick Carter

Nick Carter, Killmaster, hunts his old enemy Mr. Judas (actually escaped Nazi Martin Bormann) as Judas teams up with the Chinese to launch a deadly drug called Agent Z, in Peking, part of the long-running spy series.

As a teen, I read Nick Carter books avidly, and have decided to tentatively dip my toes back in to see how they hold up.

In this entry, Carter forgoes his usual array of nicknamed weapons and instead using an Astra Firecat .25 pistol and an incredibly handy pen that actually injects a serum that makes the recipient seem dead (and is used multiple ways at convenient times throughout).

This one was penned by Arnold Marmor, an old-school pulp fiction jockey, who writes in a terse, overheated style with a Nick Carter prone to anger and violence.

So terse, in fact, that the story goes that the book was too short, so instead of padding it out Marmor wrote a little short story to stick in the back.  To my knowledge, this is the only time this was ever allowed to happen, and might have contributed to the fact that Marmor only wrote one Killmaster book.

The short story, The Tulip Affair, is a pretty poker-faced and straightforward account of a double agent called Tulip who Carter sets out to kill and chases around Asia a bit before finishing the job.

This is a second-tier spy novel I picked up in a big stash of Nick Carters somewhere, and read quickly.

#52: Killer's Corral by Merle Constiner

A former gunslinger gets a second chance at a normal life and job; but a trio of owlhoots guns down his boss, sending him back on the vengeance trail in Merle Constiner's Killer's Corral.

It's a straightforward description of a pretty fast-paced western, peppered with eccentric characters and humorous digressions, despite the novel's murderous thread featuring a lightning-fast gun-hand who ends up sideways of cattle rustlers.

Constiner is a long-time favorite of mine, and like to dip into one when I find it. He is a colorful, engaging writer with a wry sense of humor. 

This was half of an Ace Double on the other side of The Long Wire by Barry Cord (a pseudonym of another author I like, Peter Germano).  Curiously, this one features the protagonist in charge of grading of a road from a town to a fort, and The Long Wire features characters stringing telephone line; whether this was a coincidence in themes or designed I'm not sure, but makes an interesting Ace Double.

I read this one quickly; enjoyable for fans.

#51: Fair Warning by Michael Connelly

 An investigative reporter learns that a one-night stand is murdered, and he is a peripheral suspect; thus he decides to investigate the murder himself, and finds himself in the sights of a serial killer and in the middle of a dark web conspiracy in Michael Connelly's Fair Warning.

Connelly is probably best known as the author of the long-running Harry Bosch crime series, which I admire greatly, and then probably for The Lincoln Lawyer novels, which features Bosch's half-brother; but he occasionally features other protagonists from the same general milieu.  

Jack McEvoy was the lead in The Poet and The Scarecrow and because of circumstances in those novels has tumbled quite a ways from lead bylines in prominent LA papers to writing for a consumer website.  His off and on again love interest, Rachel Walling, has also lost her job as an FBI profiler (because of McEvoy!) and is now doing corporate background checks.  Yet both still have the fire in the blood for crime, and each other.

They start chasing The Shrike, who they quickly find out is targeting women using a DNA website like Ancestry.com or 23 and Me.  

This novel is a slow boil that continues to ratchet and ratchet the tension to an explosive finale, and a second chance for several characters.

Connelly is a solid writer and this is a decent thriller to add to his admirable bibliography.

I checked this out from the Bookmobile for the New Castle-Henry County Public Library--my first library in six months--and read it quickly.

#50: The Last Lawman by Peter Brandvold

 An aging lawman goes after a deadly gang in Peter Brandvold's The Last Lawman.

Western vet Brandvold has written a lot of "fast action" westerns frequently heavy in sex and violence.  This one has all of that plus features a unique character, a grizzled and cantankerous old law dog who is hoping his heart doesn't quit on him before he has sent a lot of bad guys to Boot Hill.

The bad guys are an especially evil bunch called The Vultures who rape, murder, and pillage across a pretty wide path while our protagonist doggedly follows, gaining and losing a lot of gun-help along the way.

This one has a memorably blood-soaked finale, set in a rotting ghost town that evoked, to me, late-period spaghetti westerns.  The surprise appearance of another Brandvold series character will be welcome to fans.

Brandvold knows how to write westerns for people who like them tough and mean, and I have enjoyed all that I have sampled.  I bought this one for my beloved Kindle and read it quickly.

#49: Big Red's Daughter by John McPartland

Freshly back in the U.S. after a tour in Korea, a young man gets in a fender-bender where he meets a lovely young woman and her hot-headed boyfriend; he loves one on sight and hates the other on sight, leading to plenty of trouble in John McPartland's Big Red's Daughter.

McPartland writes a super-charged noir where destructive emotions run high from the first page; it appears that McPartland himself lived a similar life and died young.  

But he seemed to have left a number of memorable novels.  This one paints a picture of a bohemian 50s California that is fully realized as a backdrop to a pretty brutal story; there are a number of grisly fights, terrorized women, a handful of murders, and a jailbreak, all before a conclusion that makes a turn and wraps up more upbeat than one would think.

This was a rapid-fire read and a nice surprise from Stark House Press, which is dedicated to bringing back more obscure and out-of-print crime, detective, and noir books from the past.  

I would definitely recommend this in any edition you can find it in for noir fans, and will be checking out more of John McPartland.

#48: The Devil's Dozen by Nick Carter

Nick Carter avenges the death of a fellow secret agent by trying to break the back of a drug ring in the spy novel The Devil's Dozen.

Unfortunately, Carter meets a strong-willed crime boss who is every inch his equal, and he contemplates his place in the spy game as a result.  But there's more action than introspection, including a helicopter versus skier fight and a memorable wresting match against a Turkish villain, both in a remote mountain fortress.

Nick Carter starred in hundreds of spy novels, written by a legion of writers, and I read a ton of them as a teenager.  I have recently gone back and revisited all three of the ones by Martin Cruz Smith (a favorite contemporary author) written in his peanut-butter days, and liked this one the best.  It's a good second-tier spy novel on its own merits.

I would rank them as this one, Code Name: Werewolf, and then The Inca Death Squad for those interested.

I tracked this one down on eBay and read it quickly.  I might go back and look for more Nick Carter spy novels if the pseudonymous author is a good match for more interests.

#47: The Inca Death Squad by Nick Carter

 In 1970s Chile, superspy Nick Carter is asked to bodyguard a Soviet dignitary against revolutionaries as part of a secret deal in The Inca Death Squad.

I read these Nick Carter novels by the stack during my teen years, and thought I would revisit a few to see how they held up.  Although I could tell the quality varied widely, I didn't know they were all written by different people until the internet.  I wanted to start with the three Martin Cruz Smith wrote, as his ongoing Arkady Renko series I have steadily enjoyed.

The first I read, Code Name: Werewolf, was a solid second-tier spy novel, but this one I just didn't enjoy as much.  

The core plotting just doesn't make a lot of sense, starting with Carter delivering a new style of bulletproof clothing to the oafish Russian for kind of hazy reasons.  Later, rather oddly, he has a bolo fight with an Aztec warrior in ancient garb, but still has time to bed all of the Russian's comrade harem, which includes an undercover KGB agent.

But there is plenty of action, including a cavalry charge on a band of outlaws and a jeep versus fighter plane battle.

I have heard that Smith disavowed these early novels, and I can see a better argument for it here.  I have one more, The Devil's Dozen, to decide.

#46: Red Dust by Yoss

 On the space station William S. Burroughs a dangerous psionic criminal is on the loose, and it is up to a robot policeman with a Raymond Chandler obsession to catch him in Red Dust by the Cuban sci-fi writer/rock star Yoss.

Yoss writes a pretty goofy romp, awash in pop culture references and action-oriented.  But Yoss has a somewhat cloaked political side as well, which features a triumvirate of alien races who have more or less subjugated humankind, allowing them only limited knowledge of their superior technology.  The robot lawmen are the mediators between both factions, and generally disliked by all.

Yoss appears to be very popular in Cuba, and Restless Books is getting some of his novels translated into English--I also liked Super Extra Grande, about a vet who works on giant alien animals, and has to go inside one (the hard way) to rescue some girlfriends.

Yoss writes a light, fresh, largely comedic science fiction story that is worthwhile for a change of pace.  

I got this for my birthday and read it quickly.

#45: Hanging at Pulpit Rock by Lee Leighton

 A greenhorn deputy is put in charge of a tough frontier town when the rugged sheriff goes on a three day fishing trip in Lee Leighton's Hanging at Pulpit Rock.

Leighton was actually Wayne Overholser, a well-regarded western writer whose books I see everywhere, though I had never knowingly dipped into one.  I actually started reading this for the odd cover, which features an angry man slipping a hangman's noose around another man who is smiling enigmatically.  There is a hanging, as per the title, but there isn't any smiling.

Leighton's plot is a cut above, with interesting characters and situations.  Almost right away a murder and alleged rape happens, and the greenhorn deputy proves out to be the fastest gun anyone has seen, tested by any number of owlhoots.  The crooked town leadership doesn't help as a rampaging lynch mob leads to a trial by fire for some of the more upstanding citizens.

I enjoyed this western quite a bit, and would look for more from Overholser/Leighton.  I got this as part of a big lot of western books I was more interested in from eBay but read this one first.  A good find for western fans.

#44: Dark Times in the City by Gene Kerrigan

Not long out of prison after a fight that went wrong, Danny Callaghan impulsively jumps in during an attempted shooting at his local pub, inadvertently putting himself in the middle of a Dublin gang war he doesn't want a part of in Gene Kerrigan's Dark Times in the City.

Kerrigan writes a propulsive, sardonic crime story that is full of satisfying beats.  About two-thirds through he offers a lengthy flashback that sets up the violent finale, a nice bit of narrative style.

Dark times indeed, as the final chapters leave no characters unscathed, and only a handful alive.

Kerrigan is an Irish journalist with a couple of crime novels to his name; his knowledge of Irish politics and contemporary history plays no small role in the storytelling.  This is a very self-assured outing, and I would look for more from him.

I received this from World Noir, a part of Europa Editions, and read it quickly.

#43: Boxes by Pascal Garnier

 A man slowly unraveling after the disappearance of his wife moves to their newly-purchased country home, only to fall into the circle of a strange neighbor, in Pascal Garnier's Boxes.

Garnier was a French author of bleak, unpleasant noirs, often made more palatable with surreal humor.  This one has a fair amount of humor and is light on the noir, with any sort of crime not really materializing until the final chapters of the novel.

What mystery there is centers around the neighbor, a fragile, pale woman with the overprotective older friend of her deceased father hovering nearby and a lot of unanswered questions--if only our protagonist could keep his wits about him long enough to answer them.

More a study of mental unraveling than a crime novel, Garnier still writes with a speed and wit that makes his writing readable for the discerning.

This is the final novel in a collection I purchased titled Gallic Noir Volume 2.

#42: The Blurry Years by Eleanor Kriseman

 A teenager comes of age in the shadow of an alcoholic mother in Eleanor Kriseman's debut The Blurry Years.

The young woman lives on the fringes of Florida society, and dips in and out of various dangerous situations; an ill-advised road trip with her mother to Oregon begins to tip the scales in her favor, but their return to Florida leads to the breaking point.

Although I didn't think Kriseman's novel broke any new ground, I liked the storytelling, with a good feel for time and place.  The characters are complex and the novel ends with a respite of sorts, but with no easy answers.  I'm curious to see what Kriseman would write next.

This novel was sent to me by Two Dollar Radio, and I read it quickly.