Triggerman by Walter Hill and Matz

Hard Case Crime is one of my favourite imprints.

It has been a few years since I've read something from them and today I was taken aback.  Maybe I'm getting old, I dunno, but I found this story excessively violent.  Bullets fly, blood splatters and bodies pile up with quick regularity.

Set in the American west during the height of gangsters and prohibition; Roy is released from prison in order to do a contract revenge job for his employer.  Corruption is everywhere and everybody is out to stab each other in the back.

This was Noir Fiction at its most distilled.  The artwork, by Jef, is dark and gloomy and utterly bleak; perfect for this story.

As good as it was, it was actually a bit too long, considering that nearly every character had to double cross somebody and pay for it in some way.  Much of the violence felt gratuitous.

For a first taste of Hard Case Crime's graphic novel series this one left me a bit disappointed.

This in no way will prevent me from reading their other offerings, I know they publish a terrific variety of crime fiction.  This one was simply not for me.

Hard Case Crime website - http://www.hardcasecrime.com/

Walter Hill's Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Hill

Walter Hill

Dayfall by Michael David Ares - Book Report #222

This was a terrific read.

I am a big fan of SF mysteries, which can have a wonderful twist on the noir novel.

If you're a bit of a detective fiction fan you'll love the sprinkling of classic PI names used throughout the book. That little tip of the hat made me extremely happy.

I was a little bit apprehensive when I started the book since it used an antagonist that I simply do not like - the crazy serial killer.  There is something about insane characters that I just find so boring.  Give me an antagonist with some real intelligence, passion and a willingness to take calculated actions and you've got a winner with me.

The opening scene establishes our main character and protagonist Detective Jon Phillips as a brash, young and dedicated police officer.  Much like a good Bond movie the book starts with a chase scene and the wrapping up of a case, which sets the tone of the book.

The novel is set in a not-too-distant future, in the years following a nuclear war.  Interestingly, the exchange of missiles did not occur between the US and Russia.  All of this is exposition but I did appreciate the author's touch at allowing other parts of the world to play a part in the story.  Far too much fiction today makes the West, and the US in particular, the center of the universe.  It's just refreshing to expand the world, just a little bit.

Jon Phillips' work in the opening pages gets him noticed and sent to New York city to help in solving the case of the Dayfall Killer.  Dayfall is an environmental event that has had people worried for some years.  After the nuclear war the Earth was subjected to a long period of darkness as the ash made its way into the atmosphere to block out the sun for years.  Now that the cloud cover is predicted to dissipate and the return of direct sunlight is anticipated, there is growing worry that the light may drive the population into a kind of frenzy.  The Dayfall Killer is singled out as an example of what may happen.

Capture the Dayfall Killer in time and you may help to calm the citizens of New York.

Having just seen the movie Blade Runner 2049, I was eager to enjoy more of that kind of story.  I was not disappointed.  It was so much fun to see New York as it coped with a changed environment and how the society changed with it.

The story was very satisfying and believable.  I kept returning to the book every chance I got.  In another nod to the old detective fiction of the paperback era, the page count comes in at 286, making it a fast paced book with no contractual filler.  I am glad that Tor Books took the chance on a short novel like this.  It shows that they are not afraid to publish good stories without the hang up of believing that page count plays such a big part in a book purchase decision.

Oh, and the bad guy?  Not insane.  I loved it.

Highly recommended.

Michael David Ares' website - http://www.michaeldavidares.com/

Michael David Ares

Sin City - The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller - Volume One

Oh, my.

This was fantastic.  Such a dark story with a likable bad guy.  This is the story of how Marv uncovers the mystery of the murder of a hooker with a heart of gold.  Oh yea, and her name is Goldie.

Sure it's a cliche, but that is the point.  Get over it and enjoy the heightened emotion and a leading man who is unique and interesting.  It is a very violent comic, but isn't that what noir fiction is supposed to be like?  

The art was striking; black and white with no grey and razor-sharp lines. I don't know how much black ink it took to print but it must have set a record.  

Everything about this book is unique and I was sold by the third page.

I am looking forward to reading volume two.

Frank Miller

Batman Noir, The Dark Night Returns by Frank Miller (artist and writer) and Klaus Janson (artist)

With all the hype around the new Batman Vs Superman movie I thought I would go back to Frank Miller's work. He is credited in the movie as being an inspiration.

Miller is a strange cat and he sure can put some serious violence and crazy on a page.  I've always liked his noir sensibilities but, incredibly, the art in this book somehow missed the mark for me.  Batman should have been easy to create a menacing mood as the covers surly did.  The interior art, however, was manic and, at times, impossible to understand what was drawn.

The book is a collection of four issues first published in 1986. Miller wrote the story and collaborated with Janson to draw the series.  The mini-series told the story of the return, after a 10 year absence, of Batman.  It explored the reaction of his return by the populous of the city, the criminals and, most interestingly, Bruce Wayne's.  Wayne has aged, and now, in his mid-50's, has to cope with his physical limits.

The entire run was narrated by television news which I thought could have been eliminated. Without it the story would have been cleaner, clearer and darker.  To be honest I felt like I was reading a Judge Dredd story.

Some panels felt more like sketches than finished art and I was constantly wishing Miller had used more of his Sin City methods in the telling of this story.  In the third story, Hunt the Dark Night, the Joker's flying kid-bombs were just too cartoon-like and took me right out of the story.

The entire book was redeemed with the last installment, The Dark Knight Falls where he comes to terms with Super Man and begins to take his crusade in a new direction.

Frank Miller

Klaus Janson

You Dirty Rat by Nigel Bird - a short story review

You Dirty Rat is the opening story from Speedloader, a six story collection of noir fiction.

First set in the trenches of WWI Verdun, France, we witness the brutal conditions there.

The story takes place over a span of many years, from the terrible death of a brother to a heartless application of military law to revenge.  This story will leave you chilled in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

This is the first story I've read by Bird; I'll be looking for his name from now on.

Speedloader is available as an eBook, I downloaded the sample of it for free from the Kindle store which included YDR.  I may have to go back to purchase the whole thing just to make sure Bird gets his 10 cents in royalties. The entire anthology is 99 cents by the way.

Loved it.

Nigel Bird's Goodreads pages is HERE.

Purchase the eBook HERE.

Book Report #68 - Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman

The opening pages made my heart race; it was so intense and scary.

Bruen's work has a quality of malevolence that I've encountered from no one else.

The structure of the book is interesting; it begins at the end and works its way back to it in two separate narratives.

Each part of the book tells the same story, in first-person, but through the eyes and minds of the two main characters.  Nick and Todd have been life-long friends both have become involved with an Irish mobster.

The book tells the story of how each one got involved and, ultimately, out from under the thumb of their boss.  The lies, betrayals and violence are impressive.

If you like your crime fiction stone-cold then you should pick up anything with Ken Bruen's name on it.  This is my first taste of Coleman's writing and it tied in very well with Bruen's.  I'll be adding his books to my watch list.

This book clocked in at 172 pages, at throwback to the paperback era, which makes it a perfect summer read with a fast moving plot.

Ken Bruen

Reed Farrel Coleman

Muddy Pond by Maureen Tan - New Orleans Noir

Muddy Pond by Maureen Tan:  Set in Village de L'Est just a day or two after the storm we meet Sonny Vien as he emerges from his attic bent on rescuing a statue of the Virgin Mary from his back yard.  He's doing this for his wife, who died six months previously, knowing that she'd want him to do so, if she was still with him.

While moving the statue Sonny takes a good look around his ruined neighborhood; he soon discovers that things are very serious next door.

We've been told many times that most crimes are crimes of opportunity but who could imagine that crimes could still be committed in the wake of a natural disaster.  The crime in progress is so despicable that I stood up and cheered at the fantastic and sudden ending.

Book Report #61 - Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

Oh what fun!

Reads like an Elmore Leonard in that i never knew where the story was going to take me.  Random events and pure, believable, chance cropped up to throw the plans of the principal characters.

Visually this could very well be a Quentin Tarantino film; the violence is quick, brutal and unexpected.  There were great gobs of dark, dark humor in here too.  So if you like either Leonard or Tarantino this book is for you.

The good news is that it's the first in a trilogy.

So, what's it about?  One of the most unlikable guys in literature decides he wants to kill his wife because he certainly doesn't want a divorce and give up half his money.  Through his mistress he hires an assassin who calls himself Popeye.  And that's the only part of his plan to goes as he wants it.  From then on the book is like an amusement park ride - you just don't know what's going to happen next.

There is nothing I love more than reading about an idiot's life as it starts to spiral out of control and how he deals with it.

This was great fun and I'm already reading the sequel - Slide.

Open Mike by James Nolan - New Orleans Noir

The longest story in the book so far, it was also the first straight-up detective story. Set in pre-K French Quarter and back alley dives, our detective searches for answers surrounding the death of a young woman.

The settings were wonderfully seedy, made more interesting by being set in the open mike world of the poetry community.

I thought the author did an excellent job of telling an interesting story with careful touches of humour.

Well worth the read.

The Battling Priests of Corpus Christie by Jervey Tervalon - NewOrleans Noir

Pretty cool story here.

We have two priests; one is a bigot the other a skirt-chasing drunk. Pretty rich territory when you also add a hatred between the two.

The story is told by a young adult girl of mixed race.

I would really like to read this story in a novel-length form. I found the short story less than satisfying because the conflict just resolves itself, in two paragraph0,s away from the narrators' eyes.

Boy, I liked the set up though. I really think the author has a great idea for a cracking read.

Pony Girl by Laura Lippman - New Orleans Noir

Set in pre-Katrina Treme, New Orleans; a young college student joins a second line parade on Mardi Gras day. She is dressed far too provocatively for the neighborhood (if such a thing can be imagined) and attracts the attention of many men including the narrator.

He sees that the girl has attracted the attention of a dangerous man and decides to follow in order to give her some protection.

What follows was a gruesome surprise both to me and the antagonist.

After watching the first season on Treme I could really picture what the parade line is like in the story.

This was very well done. I could have read more. I'll definitely be looking for Lippman's work from now on.

Algiers by David Fulmer - New Orleans Noir

Set in Algiers, New Orleans, 1905.

An enforcer comes into an Algiers tavern to run off a card-cheat who's been making a nuisance of himself.

It read a lot like a western, which, given the year the story is set in, is about right.

It was wonderful. My heart rate went up while reading the final scene.

Schevoski by Olympia Vernon - New Orleans Noir

Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans.

Well, I didn't get this one.

Something about a drunken university student vomiting all over a Magazine Street bar.
Her Russian boyfriend broke up with her.

Was everything real or imagined? I really didn't care.

Part of the problem, for me, is that the author works in the literary side of things and is not a bona fide mystery author. Nothing happens. It's just a navel gazing, self-pitying story about a girl vomiting dramatically.

Thankfully it was short

Scared Rabbit by Tim McLoughlin - New Orleans Noir

Set in pre-Katrina Irish Channel, New Orleans.

We are treated here to a soul-searching story about police corruption.

I loved the quiet desperation of this story.

Two-Story Brick Houses by Patty Friedman - New Orleans Noir

Set in pre-Katrina Uptown, New Orleans this story is about a young girl who tries to be accepted by a group of popular girls.

Her participation in a game of "Secrets" has some very real and unexpected consequences.

Very sad and well told.

What's The Score by Ted O'Brien - New Orleans Noir

A guy walks into his favourite bar in Mid-City New Orleans.

Trouble looks like it's brewing when two sets of soccer fans take over the bar to watch a match on the TVs.

Trouble does come but not quite in the way we expected.

Book Report #41 - Case of the Vanishing Beauty by Richard S. Prather.

Case of the Vanishing Beauty

by

Richard S. Prather.

Prather is my favorite author from the paperback area of mystery fiction.  Published in 1950, I was lucky enough to read a 1962, Gold Medal reprint of Prather's first Shell Scott novel.

Being a fan of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels I've always been happy to know that there are 42 Shell Scott novels waiting for me as well.  Both authors had fantastic dialogue and humor in their books.  I've come to look forward to Prather's opening paragraphs where he typically describes a woman.  

In this book a beautiful woman comes to Scott's office asking him to find her missing sister.  The story then uncovers the world of drug trafficking and cults.  For a fist book this one had plenty of twists and I was surprised at just how relaxed Prather's prose came out.  The book came it at 160 pages making it just the right length for a tight mystery story.

Like I said, I like Prather's style, here's an example:

She looked hotter than a welders torch and much, much more interesting.

She was in her early twenties, and tall.  About five nine, and every inch of it loaded.  Her lips were the dangerous red of a stop light and her eyes were the same black as the masses of black hair piled high on top of her head.  She was slim, but with hips that were amply ample and high, full breasts that she was careless about but nobody else would be.  Plus a flat stomach, a slim waist, and golden skin smooth as melting ice cream.

 Prather was hard-boiled here's a passage that I found chilling:

After so long a time you get a little sick of violence.  You see guys gasp and bleed and die, and it makes you feel a little funny, a little sick while its happening, when it's right in front of your eyes.  But it isn't ever quite real when it's going on, when you're in it.  Maybe a muscle man slugs you, or a torpedo takes a shot at you, or you're pulling the trigger yourself or smashing a fist into a guy's face, and you're hurting or crippling or killing some trigger-happy hood.  But when it's actually happening, you've got adrenalin shooting into your blood stream, your heart pounds, your breath comes faster, pumping more oxygen into your veins.  Glands and body organs start working overtime to keep you sharp, keep you alive, and you're not the same; you're not thinking like the same guy.  It's all kind of blur like a picture out of focus jumping in front of your eyes, and you don't think much about what's going on, just let your reflexes take over.  If the reflexes are trained right, and if you're lucky, you come out of it scared but O.K.  Nothing to it; all over.

But when it is all over, when you've got time to think, that's when you get sick remembering vivid little details you hardly noticed at the time.  The way a body jerked when a bullet ripped through fine skin and flesh and muscle and bone, or the way it jerked just before it stopped being a man and became what they call down at the morgue a "dead body" or the "deceased."  Maybe you even wonder what kind of man he was, what he liked for breakfast,  when he was born, stupid things like that -  and wonder what made him get a gun in his hand and like the feel of it.  Maybe you even wonder what it is that goes out of a man when 158 grains of lead drive into his brain or his heart.  Maybe you get sick and your stomach turns upside down and then it's all over and you forget about it.  Almost.

So to hell with it. 

 I ate it up.  A very good book.

Book Report #40 - Drive by James Sallis

Drive

by

James Sallis

 I was searching for a movie to watch, not long ago, when I saw the Ryan Gosling trailer for Drive; now THIS looked like an intense movie.  Unfortunately we didn't watch it - it was not what we were looking for at the time.  But the story stuck in my head and I  searched for it on the web and discovered the movie was based on a novella by James Sallis.  Coming in at 158 pages this is the kind of crime novel not seen in decades.  I was happy to see it available as an ebook and downloaded it to my Kobo Vox.

I loved how Sallis toyed with the time line; starting in the middle and flashing back and ultimately forward in the story made it very enjoyable.  I was not able to read it in one sitting, although it felt possible, and I did suffer a bit of confusion when I put the book down for a couple of days then tried to remember where I was when I picked it up again.  So I would suggest giving yourself plenty of time to sit back and enjoy the story.

This is a wonderful example of neo-noir, gritty, scary and very, very interesting.  The story revolves around a gifted Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a get-away driver for criminals in his spare time.  In time the life of crime is more alluring to him and he is slowly drawn in to the world completely.

I've always been fascinated by stories like these; how can a normal person turn to a life of crime?  I found myself rooting for him to make the right choice only to watch him spiral further into a world he can't control.  It was great stuff.

I'll be watching the movie this week, for sure.

Book Report #31 - Jack Wakes Up

Jack Wakes Up

by

Seth Harwood

I've been following Mr. Harwood's career for a long time.  He's very big in the podcast world and has made this novel (and others) available as an audio download.

The coolest thing about a podcast novel is that it is a complete throw back to the early days of radio.  Harwood himself  reads one chapter at a time and it builds into a serialized story.  When the novel was first podcasted I'd have to wait a week between chapters.  Now you can listen to the whole thing as quickly as you like.

The reason he put it out on the Internet, free for anybody to listen to, was to generate interest and to build a fan base.  By having hard numbers (the amount of times the book was downloaded) he could show a publisher that he had a number of fans who would also turn into buyers of his book.

It worked and Jack Wakes Up was published by Three Rivers Press, in 2008, as a paperback original.

I always knew I wanted to read the book more than I wanted to listen to it.  So I only listened to the first third and waited for the book to be published.  Then I bought it as soon as it was available - then it sat on my shelf for nearly three years - and now I've read it!

It was a very polished and quickly paced first effort.  This guy has got some chops. Harwood can certainly take you into the darkest, seediest, and scariest corners of San Francisco.  This is my kind of stuff.  

The story is about a drug buy.  A big drug buy.  So you know there are going to be some scary characters all over the place.

The book reads like an action movie and some of the scenes, especially in the clubs, I could feel the music thudding in my chest.  Harwood can write a tough guy like the best of them.  His action sequences are thrilling to read.

Did I like the book? Oh, yea, baby!

I only had one bit of trouble with the book.

Palms is an ex-action hero movie star, a one hit wonder.  His career is all but over when a friend calls him up to help smooth over the drug transaction.  Circumstances change early in the book and Palms has to complete the task on his own. Jack's a smart guy but what I had trouble understanding was how he had the experience to pull off a buy that was going so dangerously wrong.  Maybe I missed something early on in the book (and that's very likely) but any rational person would have walked away.  Although he was in financial difficulty I never felt like that was the only motivation for Jack.

With that bit of negative news assided I can tell you that Harwood had my heart racing a few times through the book.  Visit this guy at his website, download one of his free audio novels and give it a try.  If you like crime fiction, suspense and action you can't go wrong with this first effort.

Book Report #30 - Heroes Often Fail

Heroes Often Fail

by

Frank Zafiro

Wow!  

What a difference a second book makes.  

This guy Zafiro, gave us a pretty standard police procedural with his first book Under A Raging Moon.  Heroes Often Fail picks up about six months to a year after the events of the first novel.  Many of the same characters are back with the introduction of some new ones.  

The stakes are higher in this story; the kidnapping of a little girl, right off the street, in broad daylight!  Every parent's nightmare.

I thought I was going to get pretty much the same kind of story as the first novel; a standard and safe account of the men in blue of the River City Police Department.  With this second showing Zafiro shows us that he's not afraid to take us in a darker direction.  I got the feeling that this was his intention all along; get us hooked and then show us just how ugly the world can be.

This is by no means a splatter book, full of senseless violence or depravity (Like the cesspool Patterson plays in.) No, it is suspense in pure form; there are only two criminal acts in the primary plot line and Zafiro never exploits either of these crimes.  They are shocking because they happened but he does not go into any detail at all leaving the reader to his imagination.  Which feels like a nod, from the author to the reader, that he expects you to figure it out yourself.  It's almost as if he won't sink to the level of his antagonists; he's just telling the story to an intelligent person.  

I liked this book a lot.  It was entertaining, with quick chapters that move the story along like a TV show.  It never slowed down in the middle third, like a lot of books do.  What struck me the most was the growth of the author himself.  He could have played it safe and had the story turn out like a TV show, but this is literature, you can get away with so much more; you're not trying to please the advertisers, the book has already been paid for so you can tell the story any way you think is best.  Zafiro took a turn into Noir and Hard Boiled fiction, something I am grateful for.

This is an excellent series so far and I'm looking forward to the third book Beneath A Weeping Sky.