Parched Lake Mead Yields Bodies and Ghosts of Old Las Vegas by Simon Romero

 As Climate Change Produces Grim Discoveries,

Theories Abound on Remains Found in a Barrel

From

The New York Times, Sunday, May 22, 2022

Okay, the title and subtitle give the article away. But how fascinating is that story?

Lake Mead, the reservoir of of the Hoover Dam, is now just 30 percent full, and is revealing its secrets. 

Given the long history of Las Vegas and the Mafia’s involvement, is it any surprise that old cold cases are being solved?

One of the unexpected consequences of climate change I suppose

AB Negative, An Anthology Of Alberta Crime - Book Report #148

I first heard about this book from The Edmonton Journal.  I am a sucker for local stuff; too much media is set in New York or LA.  It's always refreshing to read something set in places I know.  Plus, I enjoy supporting local efforts whenever I can.

I can say the anthologist, Axel Howerton, who has a gritty entry here, does a terrific job of including a wide verity of genres to this collection.  That said the collection just kept getting better with each story.  I am so happy I bought it.

The book opens with Murder On The Mall by Randy McCharles.  52/100 - A straight up PI story, one of my favourites, our hero, Galloway, is on a case, trying to help a western wear retailer who is being shaken down for protection money.

It was a fine story, I liked that Galloway still has ties to the police department and there was a clever use of taxi cabs that could become a thing.

The only thing that took me out of the story was one bit of slang.  I have never heard a $20 bill referred to in much the same way Americans refer to their money.  That was a minor complaint, otherwise the story was very entertaining, quickly paced and believable.

Freezer Breakdown by Susan Calder - 52/100 - Vincent's mother has just died.  He's in his mid-forties and has spent much of it living with her. Now that she's gone how will he get by?

This was a quick read, a-day-in-the-life type of story.  It lacked a certain menace that I think the author was trying to convey. 

It felt more like a slice of literary fiction rather than crime fiction. 

Devil's Due by Axel Howerton - 53/100 - This was a fascinating story about a drug distributor, Devil, taking the time to give one of his underling-dealers a lesson about following rules. 

What comes is an epiphany of sorts for Devil. It's interesting how paradigm shifts occur. 

The story started out gritty and scary then took an unexpected turn. Well worth reading for anybody who is a fan of straight up crime fiction. 

Movable Type by S. G. Wong - 54/100 - There sure was a lot packed into this one. Nothing quite so satisfying than reading a story about corruption and it's uncovering. 

Plus it's set in a newspaper in the 1930's so it had some nostalgic charm. But the twist was the best. 

A Dead Reckoning  by Robert Bose - 55/100 - My goodness this was a fun story. It has very strong similarities to The Dresden Files and thankfully also had a good dose of humour. 

Tagged Boon is a fixer, of sorts, who is helping a woman to release a spirit from an artefact.  So there is a bit of occult here which is usually not my thing. But when it's done well, like this story, it can be a breath of fresh air. 

It was fun and I hope there is more from Bose out there. 

The Workman's Friend by Janice MacDonald - 56/100 - MacDonald's domestic flair is back in this quick cozy. 

Although the cozy is not my preferred genre of crime fiction, the author can create scenes that are vibrant in the imagination. 

A good addition to this volume. 

The Coelacanth Samba by Al Onia - 57/100 - Corporate shenanigans with an unusual murder. 

Darren McLean is an ex-RCMP officer gone private.  He is hired to find a missing executive from a small oil company. 

I found it very well written. Onia has a real grasp of who this character is and his confidence comes through in his writing. 

Cappy's Smart Monkey by Sharon Wildwind - 58/100 - What a cool, Calgary based Western this was.  I'm certain the recent flooding inspired this story of a planned heist upset by a storm. 

The characters were fully formed, believable and interesting. I felt like I was reading a classic pulp magazine story. I mean that in the best possible way.  Often short stories feel like they come from a larger work or stilted and rushed due to a short word count. This tale worked extremely well in it's space. 

Well done, indeed.

Silicone Hearts by Brent Nichols - 59/100 - A human PI is hired by a robot to find a missing robot. What follows is a violent and often funny exploration of the world of artificial humans.  Some are victims while others are heroes.

It reminds me of The Plutonium Blonde series of books (by John Zakour) blended with a bit of the Blade Runner movie. 

Very well done.

A Little Bit Easy by Therese Greenwood - 60/100 - A retired southern Alberta dairy farmer rents out a house on his property to a young woman from New Orleans.

She is very private and is doing some interesting improvements to the old house.  People being people it's hard not to get to know each other.

The story was vivid and well paced.

Butch's Last Lesson by R. Overwater - 61/100 - Oh my god. This one made my heart race. Not for fans of the "cozy."  This is hard neo-noir.

Fantastic.

Hell Hath No Fury by Dwayne E. Clayden - 62/100 - This was probably my favourite of the bunch.  It starts off with our narrator getting a beating from three brothers of a woman he is involved with.  We find out later that he is a PI with a half brother on the police force.  Our guy takes a "domestic" case that quickly spirals from one suspect to another. 

Throughout the case he is stalked by the brothers and he is having difficulties getting a grip on the circumstances. 

The whole story delivered all the satisfaction of a novel and even left a plot points unresolved setting up a possible follow up.

Sudden Death by Jayne Barnard - 63/100 - Nope.  I think this one is my favourite.  It is pretty much a crime comedy of errors, written much like an Elmore Leonard novel.  There are lots of not very smart characters, all trying their hands a different crimes during a storm and the NHL playoffs.

Classic.

The Mystery of the Missing Heir by Kevin P. Thorton - 64/100 - What fun, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche set in 19th century Ft. McMurray.  It also had a fun nod to the TV show Due South.

The real treat was in the merging of Holmes and northern Alberta.

This province has a lot of talent.

-

Book Report #29 - Under a Raging Moon

Under a Raging Moon

by

Frank Zafiro

Zafiro's first book.  If you like Ed McBain this is the police procedural for you.  In the fictional city of River City the novel follows the lives of the RCPD.  River City is loosely based on Spokane, WA, Zafiro's home town.

The main thrust of the book is the apprehension of an armed robber who is holding up convenience stores to fund his drug habit.  Each robbery gets more and more violent leading to the exciting conclusion of the novel.  As police procedurals go, this is a good one, Zafiro takes us into the mundane world of a uniformed cop.  Mundane with the ever present possibility that a routine event can turn deadly.

Being a first novel I found it a bit clunky at first, or perhaps it was just me not getting into the rhythm of his voice, but by the middle third the story really clicked along.  I found myself flipping pages at a steady rate; I really ate up the book.  Once I got to know the characters I began to have strong feelings for each one.  Not knowing this author I really had a sense of dread for the safety of each officer of the RCPD.

For this type of story the conclusion was never in any doubt but Zafiro proved that he's not afraid to mix up the story or to have a character come to a sticky end.  This book took few chances but the chances Zafiro took were a definite surprise.

For that reason I'm looking forward to his next book:  Heroes Often Fail.

Book Report #25 of 26 - L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories

by

Various Authors

Because this is a project tied in to a video game some explanation is needed.  L.A. Noire the game, is the newest title by Rock Star.  The game and the stories from the collection are set in post WWII Los Angeles, 1946 - 1947.  Think of all those Fedoras and that Detroit steel when Hollywood was as corrupt as any mafia family.

The collection has eight stories from the biggest names in crime fiction today.  Every story is set in the same time period as the game, some use characters right out of the game others just use the environment to inspire the narrative.

Each story has it's own art work to support it and I'll share them here.

STORY ONE: The Girl by Megan Abbott.

This was a drug addled story of a nearly out of control Hollywood party.  While reading I was screaming at June to just to the right thing.  There is loads of illicit behaviour going on that is only hinted at in the story which I found to be very effective, I can imagine quite a bit.  Abbott can write raunchy like no one else.

STORY TWO: See The Woman by Lawrence Block

One of my favorite authors Block is not stranger to the intimate crime story.  It's about two LAPD cops who have to deal with a recurring domestic disturbance.  It's tragic in the original problem and in the solution to it.  Dark, dark, dark.  Fantastic.

STORY THREE: Naked Angel by Joe R. Lansdale

This was a nice straight-ahead police detection story.  It relied a bit too much on the cop's hunches but in the end they all made sense.

I'd read more from Lansdale.

STORY FOUR: Black Dahlia & White Rose by Joyce Carol Oats

This was a well thought out retelling of the Black Dahlia murder of 1947.  (Just imagine a world without Marilyn Monroe!)

STORY FIVE: School for Murder by Francine Prose

A veteran from the war is having trouble finding his motivation in the production of a new movie.  The director helps him out by sending him to acting class.  All the clues are there.

Loved this one.

STORY SIX: What's In a Name by Jonathan Santlofer

Oh, ick.  A mentally deranged sociopath serial killer story.  I hate stories about insane people - they make no sense, I can't understand them and they usually do terrible things to people or their bodies.  Yuck.

Obviously it was well written because I got the above reaction.  But this is a side of crime fiction that I usually try to avoid.

STORY SEVEN: Hell of an Affair by Duane Swierczynski

My favorite author!  Swierczynski can twist a story like no other.  This is a straight-up story about a straight-up working Joe who meets a stunning woman and the start a whirlwind affair.  Even though he knows he should question her motivation he just goes along with it all.

The story does not end like you'd expect, believe me, just when he's getting a grip on the situation ...





STORY EIGHT: Postwar Boom by Andrew Vachss

Book Report #21 of 26

The Cleanup

by

Sean Doolittle

This book is a real tip-of-the-hat to Elmore Leonard.  It's crime, for sure, but in that funny-how-things-happen sort of way.  These types of stories feel more real than most crime fiction because the plot can be sent off in an unexpected direction simply because a character turned left instead of right.  Which is how most crimes get solved in the world; someone makes a tiny mistake and the whole master plan comes crashing down.

This story revolves around Matthew Worth who's been busted to night patrol at a supermarket where we find him bagging groceries, just to help out.  He meets Gwen, a check out girl and one night she comes to him with a problem.  From the blurb on the back of the book the story is described like this; "Worth discovers just how far he's willing  to go to protect and to serve.  The next thing he knows, he's driving a stolen car with a corpse in the trunk, a pistol in the glove box, and no way to turn back."

This is definitely a ride and I liked it a lot.

Book Report #6 of 26

London Boulevard

by

Ken Bruen

Another good read from an Irish crime author known for his violent and dark novels.

In this book Mitchell is released from prison.  He then walks a fine line between is old life and the new one he's trying to create.  He does not want to go back to prison but his old life keeps tugging at him; dragging him into situations that he barely has control over.

Much of his past is revealed to be not like he thought it was and once the body count starts we are lead in one direction only to have the whole story take a tilt that is surprising and satisfying.  In many ways the ending gave a real feeling of just what Mitchell was dealing with all along.  His revelations through out the story were not all that surprising to the reader, because we've read some of it before but the twist ending gave a real sense of how all of the previous surprises really felt to him.

It was a very satisfying read.

Book Report #5 of 26 - The Bobbly Gold Stories by Anthony bourdain

The Bobby Gold Stories

by

Anthony Bourdain

This was an interesting novel suggested to me by my sister Janick.

Anthony Bourdain is a world-famous chef.  He's been on the Food Network and now the Travel Channel and is best known for eating outrageous foods from around the world.  He's very charismatic and, I'm sure, pisses many, many people off.  He's obviously very intelligent and self-confident to the point of arrogance.  But he's also very compelling to watch.

My sister told me, a few weeks ago, that he is also an author of crime fiction.  "You've got to be kidding. He's a cook!.  What could he possibly write about?"  I already knew that he'd written a few memoirs but fiction is another kind of writing. 

The Bobby Gold Stories is his third novel. It could easily have been published by Gold Medal Books if this were the 50's.  The book is short, 165 pages, and the first two chapters will grab you by the throat and shake you around the room.  The pacing is lightning fast and the atmosphere is so authentic you can hear and smell the locations the book is set in.

Set in modern times, in New York City, the book follows Bobby Gold from prison to being an enforcer for a small-time crime boss named Eddie Fish.  Fish owns a night club that Bobby runs security for, Fish is also a loan-shark and Bobby has to sometimes "encourage" payment from his customers.

Bobby Gold is good at what he does, even though he doesn't like the job as much any more.   But Bobby's life is about to change when he meets Nikki; a cook in the night club.

The story is fun, the dialog jumps off the page and the story is interesting in that it does not go where you'd expect.  One of the things I like about the book is what it leaves out; you can be in the middle of an action scene and Bourdain just fades out and skips ahead a few months.  This has the combined effect of keeping you reading to find out how things ended up and you get the feeling that Bourdain was thinking, "You know how this goes, blah, blah, blah.  Let me tell you what happens next."  But the effect was a good one; the story was told in a fresh way which I enjoyed.

The best moment, for me, that set the tone of the whole book was chapter 2.  Oh my God!  That was tense.

Book Report #4 of 26

Kiss Her Goodbye

by

Allan Guthrie

 Wow! 

This was N-O-I-R. 

Nice and dark; filled with interesting characters.  

Joe Hope is an enforcer for a loan-shark named Cooper.  The phone rings and Joe's world turns upside-down when he hears that his daughter has been found dead, an apparent suicide.  To make maters worse, on the heels of this news, he is also framed for a murder.

Joe must find out who did this to him and why and he'll do it on his own terms.

The book is set in modern times, it's not a reprinted pulp from the 50's but a contemporary thriller set in Edinburgh, Scotland.  

At the final climax of the story my heat was racing and I had to put the book down for a few minute, make myself a pot of coffee and catch my breath before I could finish the story.

This book was a lot of fun and you can bet I'll be looking for my from this author.

Book Review - The Girl with the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block

First published in 1965 (what a great year that was) Hard Case Crime has republished it in 2005.

It's a great real estate swindle, yea, sounds boring but it's not. Plus a lot of the action takes place in Toronto. Part of the fun of reading this book besides the wonderful pulpy lines like "I wanted to make her purr" is also just how different travel was back in those days. In a post 9/11 world its fun to read about people carrying guns on board a plane and steak knives being used with the meal service.

Lawrence Block has long been one of my favorite authors. He's been writing for decades and is a Grand Master of crime fiction. He's always easy to read and his stories have always kept me turning pages.