Blood Work by Michael Connelly - Book Review

This morning I finished Blood Work by Michael Connelly (one of my favorite authors). 

This novel was made into a movie back in 2002 which I missed completely.  I'll have to chase down the DVD of this one. 

The story is about an ex FBI agent who finds out a terrible truth about the heart transplant he's just gone through. 

Nearly 500 pages long it moved like a book half its length.  I really liked this one.

Recommended.

Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx by Max McCoy

I dusted off my copy of  Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx by Max McCoy.

This was a good one; the book started right in the middle of a discovery and just keep going.

 Indy is in a race to find the Omega Book an artifact that tells the destiny of every human being.  Powerful stuff if it winds up in the wrong hands. 

It felt like it could have been a movie.

Home is the Sailor by Day Keen

Home is the Sailor by Day Keene first published in 1952 and re-printed, by my favorite publisher, Hard Case Crime in 2005.

It's the story of a sailor who retires and wants to settle down.  He meets a nice woman who then gets him to do things he would never have been capable of in the past.

I kept wondering just when he would wake up and see what was going on.

A pretty good read.

Hunt: Beyond the Frozen Fire by Gabriel Hunt

Here's a run down of what was read and seen for the past couple of days

Wow!  A modern day Indiana Jones!  There were even evil Amazon Nazi women in a hidden valley of Antarctica complete with a Nazi dooms-day machine pointed at Washington, DC!

Too bad it was still boring.

This is the second book in the Hunt series, that I've read, and the second one that I found dull beyond words.  I would have stopped reading both books but I want to believe in the publisher and so I keep reading right to the end.

I have one more book on the shelf but I'll wait before I try this series again.

Sanctuary by Ken Bruen - Book Review

As you know I love my crime fiction.  Make it dark, make it mean, but don't give me psychopaths or insane serial killers. 

One of my favorite authors is Ken Bruen who lives in Galway, Ireland.  His Jack Taylor series is set in Galway and is steeped in Irish culture.  There are currently seven books in this series and Sanctuary is the latest one.

This one breaks my "no serial killers" rule but this killer is different and not killing for the fun of it.  Plus it clocks in at a thin 223 pages which is my kind of page count.

Ken Bruen

Book Review - Queenpin by Magan Abbott

Books are a passion for me, which is interesting considering how long it can take me to read one.  If only I could be like Maddy and blast through one in a weekend.  Man, I'd be reading all the time!

I will stick with a book though, I can't think of many that I've out-right quit reading.

The buzz in the crime fiction world these days is all about Megan Abbott.  She writes neo-noir with these wonderful painted covers, just like in the hey-day of trash paperbacks.  Abbott won the 2008 Edgar award for her book Queenpin.  It won in the Best Paperback Original category.  So I was pretty confident that I'd enjoy it.

I am sad to say that I never really got into it and I can't understand why.  It had everything going for it; from the period to depiction of life in organized crime, there's even a gruesome murder in it but I found it never explored the *crime* that surrounded the main characters.  Abbott kept the characters too distant from me, I never really got into their heads and so the book felt really flat to me and the plot kind of wondered around with out any convincing reasons for why certain events happened at all.

I was disapointed.

Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski

On a recent visit to my parents, I was able to spend some time reading.

One of my favorite authors is Duane Swierczynski I've read all his books except his first, Secret Dead Men.

His latest is Expiration Date which is a wonderful twist of a book: a murder mystery / time travel story.  The book is old school in that it also has illustrations sprinkled around it.  I tore through it in the time I was there and I was very happy with the story but disappointed that it ended.  I could have kept reading for another 300 pages.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - Read It.

I finished reading a back issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine from June 2004.  Here is the cover and the table of contents.  Notice the story form Stephen King.

As always just click on the picture to get a larger image.

That's all for now.

Book Review - Thuglit Presents: Hardcore Hardboiled

First the book; I've been listing each individual story that I read from the fantastic Hardcore Hardboiled but I'll remove those stories from the list and simply add the book itself.

Some stories missed the mark but that only amounted to 3 of the 24.  One in particular stood out and I've since purchased the authors four novels directly from the publisher.  It was Rescuing Isaac by Frank Zafiro.  His novels are set in the same city as the story so it will be like going back to a familiar place when I read the novels.

What I Read - Crime Fiction

Anybody who knows me knows that I love two genera: Crime Fiction and Science Fiction.

I read for the enjoyment of the pass-time. I love to be flung into worlds I know nothing about and to watch an adventure in that world. In the case of crime fiction, I love the heist; this is the most fun; the lovable smart criminal who hurts no one but gets away with the money.

I also love the grit and violence that comes in drug trade stories. THAT is one scary world buddy! Never mind vampires, monsters or serial killers. Gimme a mean mother fucker with a gun and a pile of coke and my heart will race 'cause I'm scared. I'd piss my pants if I was flung into that kind of world.

In science fiction I love a good vs evil romp with space ships and smart-assery. I usually don't go for aliens, my best SF stories don't have gimmicks like that, just everyday Joe's who are trying to make a living with ships that break down and need fixing. A perfect alien culture, to me, is another world that has been populated with humans that want self-determination and the conflict that comes with that.

Give me gritty crime/science fiction and I'm yours. The best movie to describe that is Blade Runner and the best TV show is Firefly.


Three Crime Websites I Love

For straight ahead detective fiction go to The Thrilling Detective Website. The website is published like a magazine complete with a cool cover. All you have to do is click on a title and it will bring you right to the story. Thrilling Detective is a labour of love and is published infrequently but don't let that stop you, after you've read the current issue you can dive in to the bottomless archive to get your fill of detective fiction.

Under the current cover look for a bunch of links click on the "fiction" link and you'll be sent to a page with every issue laid out, in order of publication. Just scroll down the page and you'll see it all. This guy has been publishing since 1998!

Plots With Guns is another great site, published quarterly also with a bottomless archive. Here is how they describe themselves:

PLOTS WITH GUNS is an online literary journal for noir & transgressive fiction, as long as it has a gun in it somehow, some way.

Minimum Word Count: 2000 // Maximum word count: 10000

No pay, but if accepted, the Editor owes the Author a drink next time he sees him or her.

Cool, eh?

The last one I'll tell you about is the hardest of hard-boiled; Thug Lit. To enter the site you are greeted with brass knuckles (just so you are not confused.)


This is crime fiction - bad guys doing bad things and using bad language. It's like opening a window after a long winter; refreshing!  These stories get right to it in 5000 words or less.

This site is also laid out like a magazine, just click on the title and a PDF pops up. The PDF makes this website easily transportable to an e-reader or just off-line reading on your computer or laptop.

If you like crime fiction these websites are my favorites.

Cheers!

Book Review - Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

I've been a fan of Robert J. Sawer for a while now; his books are always entertaining, fast-paced, interesting and feel plausible.

So when I heard that his book Flashforward has been turned into a TV series, I started to read the book.  I blasted through it in three days (a fast pace for me) but unfortunately it left me cold and re-reading the back cover blurb to see if I missed something.

It starts out with a particle collision experiment at the Large Hardon Collider where the unexpected side effect propels the entire human consciousness forward 21 years.

Cool idea.  And the first 100 pages live up to the promise; you know, scientists trying to figure out what went wrong.  But the next 100 pages just goes on (and on) about how this flashforward "vision" affects people.  Which is OK but it does drag the pace to a crawl.  The last 100 looks at what happened after the experiment is repeated and it becomes a different story all together.  It takes such a "left turn" that it left me wondering if I had picked up the wrong book.

The premise is very interesting and I hope the TV show takes the idea in a different direction.  I think there is a lot to explore and a TV drama might me a good vehicle for this story.

Sorry Mr. Sawer; I'm still a fan but this book just did not do it for me.

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.

Book Review - Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge

First published in 1949 Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge has been newly published (2005) by Hard Case Crime (HCC - 010).

The Hard Case crime website describes the book like this:

"Al Colby should never have agreed to smuggle the package from Chile to Peru. Now one man’s dead, two beautiful women have betrayed him, and a couple of gunmen are hot on his trail. All because of an ancient Quechua manuscript pointing to the hiding place of a priceless hoard of gold, lost for centuries. Now the race is on — by train, by plane, by motorboat and by mule — first to find the treasure and then to escape with it alive..."

It was a good read. However, the main character, Colby, was a bit of a putz: he was double crossed, beaten, tied up and otherwise outwitted at just about every turn. He certainly was tenacious but the amount of times he came out the looser in situations made it a bit distracting. Indiana Jones her certainly was not.

Still, I never lost interest and that is the real test of a book.

Book Review - The Ax by Donald Westlake

Donald Westlake was one of the most prolific writers of pulps and paperback originals and one of my favorite authors. He's always interesting and makes a quick read.

Sadly he passed away on December 31, 2008. But he lives on through his bushels of books. You can always find something by him in the used book stores and he still has original works in the pipeline.

The Ax was written during the last recession and is apt for this one as well. His main character is laid off and in his two years of unemployment he uses a unique method of getting rid of his competition. Find out if he gets his dream job.

Deep Black: Dark Zone by Stephen Coonts and Jim DeFelice

Back in June of 2006 I started keeping a list of all the books I've read.

So I'll share some of these with you.

The first was from Stephen Coonts. Like Tom Clancy Coonts started to co-write an adventure series: Deep Black.

This one took place in Paris and involved a terrorist plot to destroy the Channel Tunnel.

I found it a bit difficult to get into but once the plot lines started to merge it was quite a page-turner. A good summer beach read.

Deep Black: Dark Zone

The Destroyer #8 by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy

Last night was a long one; poor Sue is quite sick and had a hard time sleeping so, consequently, so did I. I gave up and moved to the couch where I not only began my blog but also finished reading The Destroyer #8, Summit Chase. Published in 1973 Pinnacle this was a quick, fun read about how Remo Williams and Chiun stop criminals from forming their own crime country in Africa.

Always fun with wonderful dialog between Remo and Chiun these early books are a treat.

The book series was once filmed in the attempt to create another action adventure film hero. This was during the Indiana Jones era and did not have any success. It stared Fred Ward and Joel Grey, filmed in 1985 it took advantage of the restoration of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor and used it as a set for a chase sequence.

The movie was called Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089901/