RIP, Ed Gorman

ed-gormanI’ve just learned that Ed Gorman has passed away.  Ed had been battling cancer for quite some time.  His Sam McCain series of detective novels presented a view of the 1950s small town America that were an homage to the pulp detective novels of the period.  There are a couple I haven’t gotten to yet.  He also wrote horror novels under the name of Daniel Ransom and westerns under his own name.

As much as I enjoy his novels, it was at shorter lengths that I really got the most from his work.  It’s been long enough now that my memory is fuzzy, but I think the first book of his I read was the paperback collection The Dark Fantastic. Containing some of his dark fantasy and horror tales, Ed included an introduction in which he listed some of his influences when he was growing up.  Among the list of writers I also admired was Henry Kuttner, who has remained my favorite.  I knew when I read that Kuttner had influenced Gorman that I was going to like Gorman.  I was right and have been reading him ever since.  The Dark Fantastic is long out of print, but you can still pick up copies fairly cheaply online.  Check it, or any of Ed’s other books, out.

I never had the pleasure of meeting him, although he commented on one of my posts and said it was well written.  I was on cloud nine for days after that.  Ed will be missed.  I’m going to read some of his work later today.  Bill Crider has published this tribute.

Take a Trip with Mr. Finn

the-prison-guards-sonThe Prison Guard’s Son
Trace Conger
Paperback $12.95
Ebook $4.99

I’d like to thank Trace Conger for sending me the review copy of The Prison Guard’s Son.  I’ve been hooked on the Mr. Finn novels since I read the first one.  That was The Shadow Broker, which won a Shamus Award.  (Read my review here.)

While the first two books dealt with aspects of unlicensed PI Finn Harding’s family, this one takes him a bit farther afield.  Set approximately one year after the events in Scar Tissue (review here), Finn is hired by a retired prison guard whose eight year old son was murdered two twelve year olds after they took him  from a mall.  Although tried as adults, the killers were sent to a juvenile facility and released when they turned 18.  For some reason they were put in the federal witness protection program.

Now the grieving father wants Finn to find them.  Not because he intends to offer forgiveness, either.  Just the opposite.  He wants to kill them. Continue reading

Death in the Library

the-paris-librarianThe Paris Librarian
Mark Pryor
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper $15.95
Ebook $9.99

I’d like to thank Seventh Street Books for sending me a copy of The Paris Librarian. It’s been out for about a month now. I finished the book about the time it was released, and things have just slowed down enough to write the review. The reviews you’ve seen in the past month were for things I’d finished before this one. Hopefully things will settle down for a bit, and I can be more productive.

This is the sixth installment in the Hugo Marston series.  I’ve not read any of the previous books.  Seventh Street has sent me review copies, but I’d not been able to work any of them in until now.  I’m going to go back and read some of them. Continue reading

Killing The Kind Worth Killing

kind worth killing 2The Kind Worth Killing
Peter Swanson
William Morrow
paperback $9.99
ebook $14.99
audio

I was in the mood for a thriller and this one caught my eye. I think it was the blurb about four unreliable narrators that did the trick, although the one about three plots twists didn’t hurt.  (No, it wasn’t the nubile young woman silhouetted in the skimpy negligee. But that didn’t hurt.)

One of the blurbs compares the book to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and I think that’s a fair comparison.  Other than the twist on the first page of the second part, which would be darn hard to pull off in a visual medium, this novel has all the elements of a Hitchcock thriller. Continue reading

Trouble in Lamar County

The Rock HoleThe Rock Hole
Poisoned Pen Press
Reavis Z. Wortham
paperback $14.95
ebook $0.99
audio $3.49

The Rock Hole is one of those books in which Literature goes slumming and dresses up in genre drag.  Often the results, while they may be beloved by the critics, are only embarrassing.  But then an author comes along and shows the rest of the world how it’s done.  More on this in a bit.

Young Top Parker comes to live with his grandparents in rural Lamar County, Texas, in 1964.  Top’s grandfather Ned is the constable and farmer.  When he gets there, someone is mutilating animals.  Ned fears it’s only a rehearsal for killing a person, and he’s got reason to believe that person will be a child.  What he doesn’t realize is that the killer has Top in his sights. Continue reading

A Brilliant Death is a Brilliant Book

A Brilliant DeathA Brilliant Death
Robin Yocum
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper $15.95 US/$17.00 CAN
ebook $9.99

First I’d like to thank Seventh Street Books for the review copy of A Brilliant Death.  This book reached out, grabbed me, and pulled me in like no book has done in a long time.  Robin Yocum has just been added to my Read-Anything-He-Writes-Including-His-Grocery-List List.  A Brilliant Death catapulted me into a time and place and made me feel like I was there.

The narrator is Mitch Malone, and his best friend is Travis Baron.  They’re high school students in the town of Brilliant Ohio in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Brilliant is a real places, Mr. Yocum’s hometown in fact.  That’s proably a main reason the town described in the book seems so real.

Travis’s mother Amanda died when he was a baby, killed when a barge sunk a riverboat she and her lover were on in the middle of the night.  At least, that’s the story everyone believes.

Travis’s father, Big Frank, is a long haul trucker who was on the road the night his wife died.  He doesn’t have much time for his son, unless it’s to beat him.  So not surprisingly, Travis spends a lot of time at Mitch’s house.

Also not surprising is the desire Travis has to know more about his mother.  He can’t help but overhear the stories people in town tell about how she died.  It doesn’t help that her body was never found, nor was the body of her lover.  And since no one turned up missing in the area, it’s widely believed that he managed to swim to shore and is still alive.

What is surprising are some of the things Travis learns about his mother.  Not everything everyone “knows” turns out to be true.

Yocum does a great job of peeling the layers of the mystery away, like digging through the layers of an paleontology dig.  There are plenty of twists in this one, each one believeable and completely logical.  Mitch and Travis come across as thoroughly real people.  They each have their motivations and quirks.  The amount of detail is especially well handled, with things you think are there just for background turning out to be important.  Pay close attention to the memorial service in Chapter 2.  Most of what follows is flashback, and there are some details that are significant in that chapter.

The author bio on the back cover of A Brilliant Death says Mr. Yocum is a former crime and investigative reporter.  It shows in his writing.  From the disgraced detective who treated Amanda’s death as a hoicide to the ways the boys go about gathering evidence, there’s a clear logic in what we’re told and when.  Remember, details.

In academic circles, there are arguments among people with too much education and too much time on their hands over whether genre can also be Literature.  That’s with a capital “L”.  I submit that A Brilliant Death is Literature.  And a fantastic read.

There’s a prologue in which Mitch setting the stage where he mentions he has two cousins.  All three were born a few months apart.  He says that all three of them had a common bond between them and that was murder.  But their stories aren’t his to tell.  (The cousins pop in and out of this story.)  I really hope that means we’re going to see two more novels from Mr. Yocum.

A Brilliant Death is highly recommended.

What Happens When Promises are Broken

Broken Promise
Linwood Barclay
Penguin
mass market paper $9.99
ebook $9.99

I’d seen Broken Promise in Wal-Mart and considered picking it up.  But at the time, I wasn’t familiar with Mr. Barclay’s work, and I had a ton of stuff to read, and…you get the picture.

Then last week Richard Chizmar, publisher of Cemetery Dance,  tweeted that he couldn’t put the book down.  So I went and picked up a copy over lunch.  Then I was a bit under the weather over the weekend.  So I read it.

I get what Chizmar meant about not putting it down.  Broken Promise has a lot going for it.  I’ll be reading more of Mr. Barclay’s work.

After his wife died, David Harwood had left the town of Promise Falls and taken his son with him to Boston.  But he spent all his evenings at work rather than with his son, so now he’s back.  His first day on the job, the newspaper where he works closes.

So he’s got some time on his hands and agrees to take some of his mother’s soup over to his cousin Marla.  He finds a bloodstain on the door and Marla with a baby boy.  She says an angel brought the child.  Marla had lost her own baby about 10 months prior, had tried to steal a baby from the hospital, and isn’t the most reliable of witnesses.  It doesn’t help that she has a mental condition that makes it hard for her to remember and recognize faces.  (This is a real condition, not something Barclay made up.)   Something that works against her when the child’s mother is found brutally murdered. Continue reading

Where It Hurts

where it hurtsWhere It Hurts
Reed Farrel Coleman
Putnam
harcover $27.00
ebook $13.99

I’ve been a fan of Reed Farrel Coleman for years, ever since I read Walking the Perfect Square.  So when I saw he had a new series, I didn’t hesitate to pony up the cost of a hardcover.

It was a good investment, I’m looking forward to further installments in this series. Continue reading

John D. MacDonald’s Death Trap

john d macdonald death trapDeath Trap
John D. MacDonald
Fawcett Gold Medal, 1957
mmpb, 191 pgs.,

If you recall, I picked up some old John D. MacDonald paperbacks last summer, which I wrote about here, with one reviewed here.

Well, while I was laid up with the flu last week, I got the hankering to read another one rather than the fantasy novel I’m susposed to be reading for review.  (I blame it on the pharmaceuticals.)

This is one of MacDonald’s earliest novels and went through a number of reprintings, as evidenced by not only several different covers, but several different prices on the same cover illustration.

The setup in this one is pretty straight forward.  MacReedy works for an international construction company.  A few years ago he was in charge of widening a highway from two to four lanes outside a small college town.  While there he meets a young woman named Vicky Landy, whose whiz-kid brother is a freshman at the college.  Vicky and Alister are orphans, and Alister is one of those brilliant kids who hasn’t quite caught the knack of fitting in socially.

MacReedy seduces Vicky, a seduction that culminates just as he is finishing the job.  Vicky had hoped to marry him, and he leaves her with a broken heart.  MacReedy spends the next three years in Spain on a major project, but he can’t get Vicky out of his mind.

Upon his return, he is planning on taking a couple of months off to do some fishing when he sees a small story on the back page of the paper.  Alister is set to be executed for the rape and murder of a 16 year old girl. Continue reading

When a Thousand Crows Fall

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