Books I read in 1991

Following Patti's lead, here is what I read in 1991. I was a High School Senior and College freshmand during this year and managed to read a lot. Most of it was, well crap. Anyway on with the show.

The Cherokee Trail by Louis L'amour
Radigan by Louis L'amour
Danger in the Ashes by William W Johnstone
Death in the Ashes by William W Johnstone
Under the Sweatwater Rim by Louis L'amour
North to the Rails by Louis L'amour
Cat's Cradel by William W Johnstone
Kid Rodelo by Louis L'amour
Survival 200: Blood Quest by James McPhee
Where the Long Grass Grows by Louis L'amour
Playing the Dozens by Willam D Pease
Native Son by Richard Wright
Overload #9: Huntsville Horror by Bob Ham
Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler & Robert B Parker
Survival in the Ashes by William W Johnstone
The Scions of Shannara by Terry Brooks
Manchild in the promised land by Claude Brown
Callaghen by Louis L'amour
Fury in the Ashes by William W Johnstone
Freedom's Rangers #6: Snow Kill by Keith William Andrews
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Killing Man by Mickey Spillane
Deathlands: Latitude Zero by James Axler
They Call Me the Mercenary #1: The Killer Genesis by Axle Kilgore
Track #1: The Nintey Nine by Jerry Ahern
They Call Me the Mercenary #3: Fourth Reich Death Squad by Axle Kilgore
Warday by Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka
They Call Me the Mercenary #?: Assassin's Express by Axle Kilgore
Overload #10: Michigan Overload by Bob Ham
Hawaiian UFO Alines by Mel Gilden
Stardust by Robert B. Parker
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Wind in the Ashes by William W Johnstone
They Call Me the Mercenary # 9: The Terror Contract by Axle Kilgore
Watchers in the Woods by William W Johnstone
Dutchman's Flat by Louis L'amour
The Strong Shall Live by Louis L'amour
Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman
West from Singapore by Louis L'amour
Toy Soliders by William P Kennedy
Talking God by Tony Hillerman
Mutants Amok by Mark Grant
Crossfire Trail by Louis L'amour
They Call Me the Mercenary # 11: Deathlust by Axle Kilgore
Survival 200: Renegade War by James McPhee
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Mutants Amok #2: Mutant Hell by Mark Grant
Mutants Amok #3: Rebel Attack by Mark Grant
Sitka by Louis L'amour
Overload #11: Alabama Bloodbath by Bob Ham
The Guardians: Night of the Phoenix by Richard Austin
The Guardians: Armaggedon Run by Richard Austin
The Mountain Valley War by Louis L'amour
They Call Me the Mercenary # 14: Siberian Alternative by Axle Kilgore
Chancy by Louis L'amour
Track #12: Drug Runner by Patrick Andrews
Toy Cemetery by William W Johnstone
Rustlers of West Fork by Louis L'amour
Hanging Woman Creek by Louis L'amour
Westward the Tide by Louis L'amour
Kiowa Trail by Louis L'amour
Rage by Richard Bachman
The Long Walk by Richard Bachman
Road Work by Richard Bachman
The Guardians: War Zone by Richard Austin
The Defender #1: The Battle Begins by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #2: The Killing Wedge by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #3: Out of Control by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #4: Decision Time by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #5: Entrapment by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #6: Escape by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #7: Vengence by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #8: Justice Denied by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #9: Death Grip by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #10: The Good Fight by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #11: The Challenge by Jerry Ahern
The Defender #12: No Survivors by Jerry Ahern
A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman
Kilkenny by Louis L'amour
Comstock Lode by Louis L'amour
Showdown at Yellow Butte by Louis L'amour
Catlow by Louis L'amour
The Moon is Always Full by David Hunter
Shalako by Louis L'amour
Surfing Samurai Robots by Mel Gilden
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Californios by Louis L'amour
Broken Claw by John Gardner
Down the Long Hills by Louis L'amour
The Guardians: #7 Brute Force by Richard Austin
The Takers by Jerry Ahern
Steel Lightning by Kevin Sherrill
Sweet Dreams by William W Johnstone
Deathlands: Seedling by James Axler
Under Siege by Stephen Coonts
The Night Whistlers by Dan Trevor
The Survivalist # 22: Brutal Conquest by Jerry Ahern
Survival 2000: Frozen Fire by James McPhee
Mutants Amok: Holocaust Horror by Mark Grant
The Takers: River of Gold by Jerry Ahern
Courage in the Ashes by William W Johnstone
Overload #12: Vegas Gamble by Bob Ham
Revenge of the Mountain Man by William W Johnstone
There was Blood on the Snow by David Hunter
Journey of the Mountain Man by William W Johnstone
tubular Android Superheroes by Mel Gilden
The Devils Heart by William W Johnstone
Blood Bond: Gun sight Crossing by William W Johnstone
Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler
Christmas Slaughter by Mark Grant
Deathlands: Dark Carnival by James Axler
Black Friday Coming Down by David Hunter
The First Mountain Man by William W Johnstone

Patti's List can be found HERE

FFB: The Tall Dark Alibi by Carol Jerina

Lo' those many years ago, when as a High School student I would wander to the Community News Center book shop on the corner of Liberty and Division streets, brave the looks of the homeless hanging out at liberty plaza and spend my meager lunch money on paperbacks and gun magazines. I was sticking my toe into the world of crime fiction and flashy covers, and this one caught my eye.

I read it, and I held on to my copy for years, but I don't know that I could tell you really anything more about it. It was simply average and forgettable, a slice of paper that was trying to sell the TV series Moonlighting vibe in a book.

I kept looking for more books by Carol Jerina and none appeared at the Community News Center (which is now long gone of course), and the book, it's story and even the title faded from my mind. Now that I have done a little research it seems she was a romance writer, no wonder none of her other work ended up in the mystery section.

I held on to my copy of The Tall Dark Alibi for years, never reread it, and it went away in the purge of 2002 I think.

George Kelly is hosting this weeks Forgotten Books round up over at his site HERE

Books Aug 2010

I managed to get through 5 whole books this past month and, well here's the list.

The Lovecraft Papers by P.H. Cannon
Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella
The Damsel by Richard Stark
Grave Descend by John Lang
Hunt at World's End by Nicholas Kaufmann
Barrier Island by John D MacDonald


The Lovecraft Papers is a collection of stories, the first and longest is a kind of mash up of Lovecraft and Conan Doyle, with the later shorter stories being a set P.G. Wodehouse tales by way of Lovecraft. It's good stuff, but I am not sure that I would want a steady diet of it.

Charlie Stella is a name that I have heard and when I heard that Stark House Books was going to publish their first non-reprint I knew I was going to have to check it out. It was a great twisting early 70s low level mob crime tale. I'm not going to get into all the in's and out's let's just say that if you dig 70's crime this should be right up your alley. I really like that it referenced both the book and the film The Friends of Eddie Coyle to which it has a similar feel.

Richard Stark, you can't go wrong there. The Damsel is one of the Grofield books and while it's a little meandering and took a bit to get going, it's another better than average entry in the Stark cannon. The plot is pretty basic, while recovering from the events of The Handle and a Damsel climbs in his window. She needs help, and having drawn Grofield into her drama he has little choice other than to get her out of town and into play. This isn't a heist story, but one of political intrigue, family drama with a bit of road trip/ on the run type stuff thrown in-- most importantly it left me looking forward to the next Parker book The Rare Coin Score (by the way, the newest batch of the the University of Chicago Press reprints hit shelves in the last couple of days)

Grave Descend was my Hard Case Crime selection for the month, and my first Michael Crichton read. It's a breezy, fun adventure set in the Bahamas. I am not sure why, but it left me wanting to see the film The Deep again or maybe it just put me in mind of Jacqueline Bisset (all you pulp fans really need to check her out in Le Magnifique) anyway, it was good, and I look forward to the other Crichton HHC entry Zero Cool.
I
speaking of adventure pulp and Le Magnifique I also read the 3rd book in the Hunt for Adventure series, HUNT AT WORLD’S END. It was ok, I have to honestly say I liked the first two better, but this was an passable adventure. I liked the globe trotting, and the archelogical set up was fine, there was just a few things that didn't jive for me, some little-- there is no safety on a SAA Colt 45 for instance -- and then there were bigger issues like the pacing was a bit herky-jerky for me. For what it was, it was fine, and I am really looking forward to getting into HUNT BEYOND THE FROZEN FIRE as told to Christa Faust.

Barrier Island was the John D book for this month, and it was the last of the books he published. It stands to his knowledge and understanding of low level business crime and his ability to tell a simple story that this book flowed so easily and kept my attention. I had to keep reminding myself that it was set in the mid 80's and not the 50's or 60's, which in hindsight was good as it didn't feel overly dated and littered with then current pop culture, fashion and slang. The cover of my copy announced that it was 13 weeks on the best seller list, I hope that many of those who picked it up in 1986 have gone back and given it another read, maybe someday I will.

that's it for the month-- thoughts, comments, ect.

forgotten music: The Groovie Ghoulies ‘World Contact Day”

In the summer of 1996 I was killing time between having had my college graduation and completing the internship that would give me that last credit I needed. I had moved home and was working as a minimum wage security guard 4 days a week. I spent the rest of the days at a coffee shop/ record in the next town over. It was called Vinyl Joes and my buddy Matt owned it. I would drink coffee, hang out, BS, listen to music generally pass the time.

Music was in flux at that moment, the Alternative Nation Days of the early 90’s were one their way out (in fact the Screaming Tress album Dust came out that summer, it’s your basic requiem for the Seattle/ Grunge scene), but young people had discovered that underground music was out there, that it was as good if not better than what was being shoveled by mainstream radio and the apocalypse of the 1996 Telecom act was yet to destroy more than we could have expected.

It was at this point that the Groovie Ghoulies released their 3rd album, World Contact Day. A short blast of Ramonesy garage punk clocking in at around a half hour, it carries all the energy and fun that a band with a name like the Groovie Ghoulies implies. This was my introduction to the band, who I would get to see live about a dozen times before they called it quits, and over those years I got friendly with the lead singer Kepi (who is still touring and recording today).

Here is the track list, I would point out that it includes 2 cover tunes, see if you can pick them out.

Tracklist:
1. Intro World Contact Day
2. Hello Again
3. Bring Her Back
4. Running With Bigfoot
5. Island of Pogo Pogo
6. When the Kids Go Go Go Crazy
7. Lonely Heart Blues
8. Ghoulies Are Go!
9. 50,000 Spaceships (Watching Over Me)
10. Singing the Blues
11. New England
12. Punk Pt. II
13. Outro World Contact Day

Thoughts, comments, ect….

FFB: book I loved when I was 23!

L.A. Confidential by by James Ellroy

Ok, Ok I can hear you all now, there is no way that James F’n Ellroy is a forgotten writer and L.A. Confidential is not a forgotten book--- even if it is:


books we loved when we were between 18-23, college age. What book did you read when you should have been reading THE ODYSSEY and THE HISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION? over at Patti’s FBB round up (HERE)

According to my list, yeah I kept a list of books read from 1991 into the start of 2002, I read L.A. Confidential for the first time between 28th of March 1996 and the 2nd of April 1996. I was 23 years old and it was my last semester as a student at Michigan State University.

II am going to shock you all and say that it’s the film (as amazing a piece of work as it is) that is remembered and not the book. I would go so far as to say the film has so overshadowed the book that people don’t even know there was one of thee most chilling serial killers ever in fiction in the book. That’s right L.A. Confidential features a killer so vile that he out creeps Dr Hannibal Lecter at least he did when I first read the book as a college student back in the mid 90s.

The plot of the book is pretty much the plot of the film, which stripped away several subplots and deleted a few characters and as I like to say ‘took the lest interesting parts of the book and made an amazing film out of them”--- and that’s not a knock on those least interesting parts, which are better than the most interesting parts of a lot of other books.

If you have not seen the film or read the book, it’s the story the third of his L.A. Quartet series, all of which cover L.A. in the 1950s, starting really in the late 1940s and the book The Black Dahlia Ellroy tells the story of social control an depression by the LAPD and the city power structure. Of the Quartet this is the Lynch pin book, with the Black Dahlia, and The Big Nowhere leading up to the events of the book,.

Characters from the film that people already know like Bud White, Jack Vincennes and Edmund Exley are all here, along with Dudley Smith and several remnants of the cast of previous book The Big Nowhere. There is more on the back stories of our heroes and several plot threads and subplots that were omitted from the film. Ellroy weaves all of these together expertly and really is in top form in this book. This is the Ellroy who’s words were just stripped down enough and has yet to kinda loose his way trying to write about the 1960s.

It’s the first book I think of when I think of Ellroy and for me it is his best.

FFB:Transmetropolitan Vol. 1: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis

Transmetropolitan Vol. 1: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis

Following on from last weeks Liam José FFB on Crooked Little Vein by Old Man Ellis as he is know in my family, I thought that I would point everyone towards his master work, the series Transmetropolitan (Transmet for short) and it’s introductory collection of the first three issues Back on the Street.

In this starter collection we are introduced to mad journalist Spider Jerusalem a kind of Hunter S Thompson malcontent looking at the future of what is extensively America. Over the course of the series Spider is going to take on religion, politics, and the media Establishment, but it all starts with these 96 pages.

from wiki (cause I’m too lazy to type my own story arc synopsis-- oh and here’s the link)

"Back on the Street" #1-3
Spider Jerusalem, the God-King of Journalists, is presented as having resided for five years on The Mountain, a tranquil and relatively unspoiled retreat, unmolested except for the odd murder attempt, where he has had time to grow his hair long and devote his attention unadulteratedly to exploring new drug experiences. He is contacted by the 'Whorehopper', an editor of the Driven Press group, to whom Jerusalem still owes two books out of a five book deal. To avoid lawsuits, Jerusalem returns to The City, where he finds work at his old workplace, The Word, as a newspaper journalist, loses all his hair in an incident with the shower unit, and manages to stop a major riot. And this is just the beginning...

Yeah that’s pretty much the start of it all, and it’s a great read, but what I really want to talk about is that way back before I was part of this little circle of noir and crime fiction fans, I was one of the Warren Ellis Forumites. I met other Ellis fans locally and around the world, I was in the WEF chat room as 911 was happening, and I was scolded by the old man himself several times. Ellis built a community and he created something, not only with the WEF, and Transmet, but with his other books The Authority and Planetary (which all of you pulp fans really should check out) that in many ways prepped me for what I do now on this blog and everything that I have done in the last 10 years on line.

and to think it all started when my local comic shop The Vault of Midnight pimped this slim 96 TPB to me on some random forgotten day.

[Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmetropolitan for more info and all that jazz]

Thoughts, comments, spare change?

FFB Echo: Murder Among Children by Tucker Coe (Donald Westlake)

For the week of June 4, Ed Gorman wrote about Murder Among Children by Donald. E Westlake, the second of his Tucker Coe books. I had read and enjoyed the first Coe book and Ed's review got me to get back on the Coe trail reading Murder Among Children. Friday's Forgotten Books, June 4, 2010

First A few quotes From Ed's review:
"Donald Westlake, who was not only a master writer but a master observer of our society, wrote a novel in which an older man, the former cop Mitch Tobin, is forced to defend a young hippie girl accused of murder. Tobin's wife insists because the girl is related to them."

" In each book we see Tobin building the wall in his back yard. He literally wants to wall himself off from the world. He has good reason to. Tobin had a mistress he couldn't leave alone, He'd sneak up to see her while his squad car buddy covered for him. Then one day his buddy needed back up while Tobin was in bed with his mistress--and his partner got killed without Tobin there to back him up."

" Westlake takes us on a tour of hippie life in NYC `67. He has the eyes of a good reporter and the constitution of an honest broker. Tobin sees a lot he likes and a lot he doesn't. I especially like the intersection he sees between crime and the hippie lifestyle. Some very bad people hid out with the somewhat naive hippies."


The first thing that stuck me about Murder Among Children was the cover of the battered hardback that the Iron Wood Michigan sent via inner library loan was the Cover.

If you can't see it,it's a coffee cup, saucer and spoon. I doubt anyone in 1967 ever thought that coffee and coffee shops would become what they are today. I doubt that the hippie wannabe Beatnik coffee joint would give way to starbucks and a million small chains and local places. It's an interesting place to look back and realize just how radical the concept of the coffee house was in the late 1960s. You throw in some upstart religious weirdos and you have a pretty average guy Tobin peering into this world and trying to figure out who has it out for the kids and why.

On the surface it is about the murder and about Tobin being forced out from behind his wall and having to face an imperfect world. It's this element that pushes the novel beyond the standard PI story-- it really deals with Tobin's guilt about what drove him off the force and his inability to seemingly forgive himself.

Westlake was a master and the Tucker Coe books are well worth seeking out. I look forward to checking out where Westlake took Tobin in the third book.