Recent Reads

Here are two books that I have finished recently and enjoyed... both are recommended as fun, fast and hard boiled crime novels. 

Baby Shark by Robert Fate

Texas 1952, Pool Hall, Murder, Rape, Bikers are to blame. You can almost hear the Hank Williams on the Juke; you can feel the dusty wind and smell the stale beer and sweat. Baby Shark is the story of a girl left to die, a girl with everything taken from her, and looking for revenge. The stripped down story telling, the simple driving theme, return from trauma, taking vengeance, the long road back, it’s all in this sharp, quick, engrossing story.

In the hands of Fate (groan here pun haters) this material, which let’s face it isn’t exactly original, is crafted into something between the psychological quest for self, and the action adventure Rape Revenge stories of the 1970s and 80s. It drags a little in the middle and the end feels a little rushed. For a debut novel it’s solid and I look forward to reading the next entry.

How much would you bet on the flip of a card?

Lucky at Cards

Lawrence Block

 A Hard Case Crime Novel

             Lucky at Cards is the 3rd Hard Case Crime Book by Block that I have read so far, and like the others (A Diet Of Treacle and Grifter's Game) this book was a fast paced read that follows the adventures of people on the margin of what I like to call the G.I. life, which is to say a ‘normal’ life. In this case the main man on the margin is Bill Maynard, a former magician and current card mechanic. He has just been caught cheating in Chicago and finds himself in a new and unmanned town, where he is invited to a card game and falls in with a couple of guys from the upper middle/ lower upper class set. They take a liking to Bill and help him set up with a straight job, a girl, and the promise of that G.I. life….. only they don’t know about his grifter past, and his lack of comfort with the straight world.

             I enjoyed the book, and am looking forward to the other Lawrence Block Hard Case entry, The Girl With The Long Green Heart (currently sitting on my nightstand)… and I wonder, like the other three will it have the same theme. Over and over though Lucky at cards I was reminded of Block’s other books, and the thread that flows though all of them seems to be exploring the lives of people who are on the margins of the society, who all seem to know that they are on those margins, and all seem to know that they don’t really fit in either world…. And it’s freedom that seems to drive the protagonists of his books, and finding that freedom in many places, drugs, on the road, having lots and lots of money… and then there is the question of the price of that freedom… the rootlessness, the acts committed to get that money.. and of course the toll that drugs take.

             Highly recommended. 

Motherless Brooklyn

I finished reading this one today..  not bad, it took a while to get through, and I did enjoy it...

Games, Games, Games

Grifter’s Game by Lawrence Block

A Hard Case Crime 

            It’s all a con, at least that’s what David Mamet seems to always be on about… and that’s the story of this fast paced page turner from the golden age of pulp… or maybe the end of the golden age of pulp. It’s your basic story about boy is playing the wrong side of the track and meets a girl, who appears to be everything that he wants out of life… and he seems to be everything she wants… only she’d married and her husband has to go bye-bye so they can make off with his money. That’s the basic set up, and it’s a well worn Noir path… but what really set’s this book apart is the end, it’s not the ending that you would expect from this kind of story, maybe it’s that it was from ’61, and it was reflecting the end of the 50’s era, and the entrance into a new era, maybe it’s that Block could see where things were going and was on the cutting edge of where not only crime but social decay was starting.

 

            I should give a few words about Block here. I haven’t read any of this stuff for years, but he has an energy, a style and the occasional turn of a phrase that has made him one of the modern grand masters of the crime novel. He has that page turning energy, and the first half of this book flew by like a great Hi Energy Garage Punk tune.  There is also a slower side to his writing, and in several places he talks about the hypnotic effects of things, the pulse of the waves, the blur of a motion picture, and in some ways his writing has that effect, it draws the reader in and holds them long enough to get what it needs from them, it’s like the Grifter’s Game, it takes you along on this journey and keeps you coming back for more…. And soon enough I will be back, as I have two more of his Hard Case Crime entries sitting on my bedside table.

The Return of Max and Angela

Slide By Kenn Bruen and Jason Starr

This was one of the few books that I have read where you can feel the velocity of the story while reading. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s even funny. You have the remaining cast of Bust racing towards meeting once again; the book is filled with unhinged, deluded criminal types getting caught up in their own stupidity and failing to achieve. Not only is the book a fun read, it was obviously a fun book to write… in that it’s very over the top, almost to the point of parody, but never getting too ridiculous… unless you want to think that an assault on one of the authors of the book happening in the book as an act that’s over the line. I do have The Max, which is the third book in the Max and Angela series on my bedside table, and plan to read it soon.

Night Walker by Donald Hamilton

Night Walker by Donald Hamilton

A Hard Case Crime Novel

Making my way thought the Hard Case Crime entries so far has had one big lesson for me, and that is that I understand so much more clearly the underlying message of these stories, and their impetus, and that’s the level of distrust of others that really came to the fore in the post WWII era. Now I am sure that it was there before, what with the history of swindlers, shysters, thieves, and politicians who were on the con, but it feels to me like the major social fall out of the war was that you really didn’t know who to trust.

 The story is pretty simple, a Navy Reserve Lieutenant is on his way to report for duty, he’s not looking forward to his having been called back, mostly because he is suffering from Post traumatic Stress Disorder, and when he is picked up hitch hiking to his duty station and kidnapped, he finds himself with what might be an out. He awakes to find himself weakened and playing a role in the plans of a groups of Reds who are under the watch of the feds. Now, this isn’t always the clearest, but that works, as our Lieutenant is in and out of it due to his injuries, and it takes him and the reader a while to figure out what has happened, who he can trust and how to get out of the situation.

The things that I liked most in this book were the little things, the fact that so many people had issues with the nick names they were given, as if they were saying to each other, don’t distill me to just this one little thing, this name that paints me as a child, a hair color, or a profession. I also enjoyed the fact that the book took place in a limited space, just like our hero, was trapped in his head, and in his body that wasn’t always respond ding the way he would have wanted.

 Yes he book isn’t big on action, and it’s kind of a twisted puzzle of a story, but it never drags, and it’s a quick enough read. I am not really sure how this fits into the Hard Case Crime world, but hey they must have had a reason to republish it. I have to admit that I have never read any of Hamilton’s other books, he is most famous for writing the Matt Helm spy novels in the 60’s, and I do have a couple of his Westerns lurking around.

 Over all this was a solid (and I need to find a new word to describe an acceptable, or slightly more than acceptable book) entry in the Hard Case Line.

Home Is The Sailor by Day Keene

A Hard Case Crime

In my continuing quest to read though the Hard Case Crime series, I have found another winning entry. Day Keene’s Home is the Sailor is a quick Hard Bolied blow of a book. It’s the story of a sailor who has not business getting off the boat, as it’s nothing but trouble for him. He drinks to much, he falls for the wrong dame, and gets himself in trouble. I should take umbrage at the disparaging of my heritage in the fact that he is called Swede and is think, then again he is from Dumbasota, so let me just assure you that all the dumb Swedes did end up the land of gods frozen people… us Michigan Swedes are a cut above, kinda like those living 08… but anyway, what I like about the book is it’s pure unapologetic dumb muscle guy getting past a head full of booze, lust and good old fashion dumbness and figuring out how he’s being set up and how he has to get out from under… more than anything this book reminded me of the joy of reading Vikki Hendricks Miami Purity recently (see review), they had similar plots, and the same quick prose…. Speaking of prose there were two great passages in this book:

“The magic madness of the cliff was gone. Now all there was between us was flesh.”

and

“Love. A Will-o’-the-wisp. St. Elmo’s fire. A biological deep rooted urge of the male to propagate his kind. A packet of cigarettes. A Hershey Bar. A Ten-thousand dollar mink coat. Five Dollars.”

And this gem of wisdom:

“I had to stop spending my life like it was money”

I also have to say that this was one of my Fave Hard Case Crime covers….

MY first hardcase..

Here is the review that I wrote for this book a couple of weeks back...
This is a solid noir adventure of revenge. The plot moves along quickly, and briskly. I'd put the Dracula factor close to James Ellroy but only slightly less twisted. The heroine of the story is a former Porn actress who is put into play by someone that she doesn't even know, and has to navigate a underworld that she knows, but at the same time that she doesn't know. This book isn't for the faint of heart, if you like the kind of mystery where the cat and a cup of tea solve everything... this isn't for you...

Book Review: Miami Purity by Vikki Hendricks

Dark. X rated. Demented. This book chronicles the attempt of a stripper to go straight, only to end up finding that maybe the 'real' world is even more dishonest, that at least when you are selling vice, you know exactly what everyone wants. This book has a lot of sex in it, but none of it was really erotic, and the violence is pretty minimal.