Category Archives: Great Depression

When a Thousand Crows Fall

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Thousand Falling CrowsA Thousand Falling Crows
Larry D. Sweazy
Seventh Street Books
Paperback $15.95
ebook $ $11.99

I love noir, especially Depression Era noir, and most especially when it’s set in my home state of Texas. So A Thousand Falling Crows was my pint of hooch. Many thanks to the good folks at Seventh Street Books for the review copy.  Seventh Street has an outstanding line, and I need to get caught up on a number of their titles.

Sonny Burton is a Texas Ranger in the Panhandle who has been forced to retire after a shootout with Bonnie and Clyde in which he took a bullet in his right arm. Now the arm has been amputated, Sonny is no longer a Ranger, and he’s got to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

He befriends the janitor, Aldo Hernandez, at the hospital. Aldo’s daughter has stolen her father’s recipe for bathtub gin and run off with a couple of minor league bootleggers, twin brothers. Aldo is afraid she’s going to end up in serious trouble with the law. He’s right. His daughter and the brothers are about to set out on a Bonnie and Clyde crime spree that is only going to escalate. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Cornell Woolrich

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cornell woolrich smokingMystery and suspense author Cornell Woolrich was born on this day (December 4) in 1903.  He died in 1968.

Although he started out in the 1920s writing jazz age stories in the vein of F. Scott Fitzgerald, he soon began writing stories of crime and suspense.

His work is characterized by protagonists who often feel as though they are at the mercy of forces beyond their control.  In much of his work from the 1930s, the Depression was a major theme.  Few writers were capable of ratcheting up the tension like Woolrich.  He never wrote a sequel, so there was never a guarantee that any of the characters would survive until the end of the story, including the protagonist. Continue reading →

Step Up to the Bar and Have a Shot of Sugar Pop Moon

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Sugar Pop MoonSugar Pop Moon
John Florio
Seventh Street Books
Trade paper $15.95
Ebook $11.99  Kindle Nook

Sugar Pop Moon is a high class moonshine made from beets. It’s also a fine novel. Take your pick. Either way, it will be top notch.

Most of the story is set in New York during Christmas of 1930. (There’s a secondary plot taking place in 1906 filling in part of the backstory.) The country is sinking deeper into the Great Depression. Jersey Leo, AKA Snowball, is a young albino, the illegitimate son of a black boxer and a white gangster’s daughter. To make ends meet, he runs a speakeasy owned by Jimmy McCullough, a major gangster and bootlegger. Jimmy’s laying low after a raid when Snowball, in a bind because the regular supplier won’t deal with him directly, buys a shipment of what is supposed to be a high end moonshine known as sugar pop moon from a Philadelphia gangster. Only what he gets isn’t high end. It’s swill.

Now Snowball has to track down the gangster and get Jimmy’s money back before Jimmy returns. Easier said than done, when there are powerful people who don’t want Snowball to find the man he’s looking for. Throw in some members of a crazed voodoo sect who collect the bones of albinos, and Snowball will soon have his hands full. Continue reading →