Books . . .
© 2005 by John Varley; all rights reserved
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Books . . . © 2005 by John Varley; all rights reserved |
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One of the questions I get asked most frequently is: What books do you recommend?
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THE WRITERS
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People come to the site and see the extensive list of movie reviews and wonder why I don’t review books. There are several reasons, but the most important one is that I don’t enjoy it. For some reason I’m perfectly willing to praise or pick apart a movie, but don’t like to do it with books. The most I’m usually willing to commit to is whether I liked it or not, and how much I liked it. (Or didn’t like it.) Another reason is that I read almost no science fiction. It just stands to reason that people coming to my site would be looking for SF recommendations, and I don’t have many. The reasons I don’t read SF are complex, and sometimes even a bit silly, but I’ll try to explain. Science fiction is my work. I read almost exclusively for fun, for enjoyment, for relaxation during and after a hard day of writing, and reading SF feels like more work. And I usually have one of three reactions to an SF book:
Stupid, I know, but I can’t seem to get around it. So for many years now I’ve been reading popular fiction, mostly in the mystery genre. Some years ago I read the entire output of both Agatha Christie and Rex Stout, and that seems to have used up my tolerance for the drawing room whodunit. Now what I read is usually a lot more grounded in real life. Hard mysteries, if you will, American mostly, tales of the mean streets starring cops and PIs. Escapist fiction, no doubt, but what is SF if not escapist? The best of it, anyway. True, SF stretches your mind more, but often suffers from a serious lack of good prose style. There are some real wordsmiths working in the mystery field, and I have a long list of them. I also have a few that might be called endearing hacks. I’m addicted to the series novel, and the more of them there are, the better. When I find a good writer, I stick with him ... or her, though I sheepishly admit I haven’t found many female writers in this genre lately that I appreciate. Recommendations in that area would be appreciated. From time to time I try a book from out of left field, from no identifiable genre, such as the works of T Coraghessan Boyle or Patrick O’Brian, and I’m often rewarded. Books on the list are books I finished. That is the only implied endorsement. Tastes differ, and you may hate some of these writers, may love some of them. Very infrequently I finish a book I hate, for one reason or another, and those will be clearly labeled as stinkers. Other than that, you're on your own!
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Kage is the exception that proves the rule as far as my reading SF is concerned. I sold a story to Janis Ian for her collection, Stars, and when my copy came I decided, what the hell, I’ll read it. Mostly good stories, but three were standouts. Two were by old pros, names familiar to everyone, and the third was by Kage Baker. Who is this woman? I found her website, read up on her, and discovered she lives a couple of miles away! I bought the first book in her “Company” series, which she promises will be 7 volumes, and was enchanted. Good, solid SF, a new idea—lots of new ideas—and sly, beautiful writing. I devoured the next 4. |
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IN THE GARDEN OF IDEN ê SKY COYOTE ê MENDOZA IN HOLLYWOOD THE GRAVEYARD GAME ê THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME |
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She also wrote fantasy, and I never read fantasy. (Okay, Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket, but that’s it since Frodo was a pup.) But I gave it a try, and she’s the exception there, too. Wonderful stuff! She’s wonderful at short stories, too. You can’t go wrong with Kage Baker. |
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MOTHER AEGYPT ê BLACK PROJECTS, WHITE KNIGHTS THE ANVIL OF THE WORLD |
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Lawrence Block is almost as prolific as Donald Westlake. He got his start writing in the pulp magazines and paperbacks at about the same time as Westlake, they are both New Yorkers, and in fact they are friends. Some of his early books constitute series, and they are pretty much trifles, for the collector or fan. They include Tanner, a man whose sleep center is destroyed and thus never sleeps (THE THIEF WHO COULDN’T SLEEP ê THE CANCELLED CZECH êTANNER’S TWELVE SWINGERS ê THE SCORELESS THAI (TWO FOR TANNER) ê TANNER’S TIGER ê HERE COMES A HERO ê ME TANNER, YOU JANE ê TANNER ON ICE), and Chip Harrison (NO SCORE ê CHIP HARRISON SCORES AGAIN ê MAKE OUT WITH MURDER ê THE TOPLESS TULIP CAPER). At one time I owned copies of all these books, in first editions, when I was collecting. He has another, more recent series starring a quirky hit man named Keller (Hit Man ê Hit List). Most of his stand-alone novels were written early in his career. They are: |
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AFTER THE FIRST DEATH ê ARIEL ê CINDERELLA SIMS ê COWARD’S KISS DEADLY HONEYMOON ê THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART ê MONA NOT COMIN’ HOME TO YOU ê RANDOM WALK ê THE SPECIALISTS SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS ê THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL YOU COULD CALL IT MURDER |
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I’ve read all of those but one. He wrote the first novel I read that dealt with 9/11: Small Town. He is also the master of the short story, with the following collections: |
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SOMETIMES THEY BITE ê LIKE A LAMB TO SLAUGHTER SOME DAYS YOU GET THE BEAR ê EHRENGRAF FOR THE DEFENSE COLLECTED MYSTERY STORIES ê ENOUGH ROPE |
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My particular favorites are those starring Martin Ehrengraf, who never takes a case on a contingency basis, always charges a flat fee, and never loses. If you are Ehrengraf’s client, you are, by definition, not guilty, and will be found to be so, but seldom in a court of law. Unless you don’t pay. Think about it. He has a comic/whodunit character, Bernie Rhodenbarr, who is a compulsive burglar and owns a small bookstore in Manhattan. Bernie handles the locked-room type mystery ideas Block comes up with, with considerable panache. He also gives Block the opportunity for sly digs and inside jokes about the publishing industry: |
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BURGLARS CAN’T BE CHOOSERS ê THE BURGLAR IN THE CLOSET THE BURGLAR WHO LIKED TO QUOTE KIPLING THE BURGLAR WHO STUDIED SPINOZA THE BURGLAR WHO PAINTED LIKE MONDRIAN THE BURGLAR WHO TRADED TED WILLIAMS THE BURGLAR WHO THOUGHT HE WAS BOGART THE BURGLAR IN THE LIBRARY ê THE BURGLAR IN THE RYE THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL |
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But Block’s legacy will be the ex NYC cop, Matthew Scudder. He is unmatched in the genre, and it’s a tough genre. He begins as a severe alcoholic, then becomes an AA member but never becomes a pain in the ass about it. As in most series, they benefit from being read in order, thus: |
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THE SINS OF THE FATHERS ê TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE IN THE MIDST OF DEATH ê A STAB IN THE DARK EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE ê WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES OUT ON THE CUTTING EDGE ê A TICKET TO THE BONEYARD A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE ê A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD ê A LONG LINE OF DEAD MEN EVEN THE WICKED ê EVERYBODY DIES ê HOPE TO DIE ALL THE FLOWERS ARE DYING |
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This extremely versatile and weird fellow used to publish under the name of T. Correghessan Boyle until his last 2 novels. I wondered if some publisher convinced him that people are embarrassed to recommend a book by somebody who’s freakin’ name they can’t pronounce? Whatever. I got into him after seeing the amusing little gem of a movie, The Road to Wellville, about the insane human dynamo Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, the cereal magnate. All the facts and some of the characters in the movie and book are true, though almost impossible to believe. So I started working my way through his novels. No two of them have anything in common, except Boyle's fascinating voice. He is all over the place. One takes place in 1795 in England and Africa. One is set in old New York, in the 1600s. The Tortilla Curtain is in present-day Los Angeles, and brilliantly contrasts the lives of a rich white couple and a dirt-poor pair of illegal Mexicans. One is about growing marijuana. Drop City is a story of hippies in the ‘60s, California and Alaska. There’s one about Alfred Kinsey. One is pretty fair science fiction. Just whatever takes his interest. I can’t guarantee you’ll like all of them (I didn’t, but they were always good enough to finish) but if you don’t like at least some of them you’re seriously challenged. |
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WATER MUSIC ê BUDDING PROSPECTS ê WORLD’S END EAST IS EAST ê THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE THE TORTILLA CURTAIN ê RIVEN ROCK A FRIEND OF THE EARTH ê DROP CITY ê THE INNER CIRCLE |
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Boyle is also a master of the short story. Some of the best I’ve ever read, and some of the weirdest. He’s got 5 collections, and an omnibus. I’ve read them all. |
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THE DESCENT OF MAN ê GREASY LAKE IF THE RIVER WAS WHISKEY ê WITHOUT A HERO TC BOYLE STORIES ê AFTER THE PLAGUE |
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Not everybody goes for Burke. Sometimes I find him a little much, myself. His prose is poetic, non-linear, and sometimes a bit too flowery. I mean, how many smells can you describe in one book? Usually they come in threes. Atmospheric as hell. And yet, it’s all right, it’s all Louisiana, a place I have some experience of. His mainstay is Dave Robicheaux, ex-Big Easy cop, recovering alcoholic, now cop in the small town of Lafayette. Cajun to his bones. He and his podnah, Cletis, an amiable moose ready to do things like drive a bulldozer through a mansion to steal a floppy disk, run into some bad fellows. I like him. |
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THE NEON RAIN ê HEAVEN’S PRISONERS ê BLACK CHERRY BLUES A MORNING FOR FLAMINGOS ê A STAINED WHITE RADIANCE IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH CONFEDERATE DEAD ê DIXIE CITY JAM BURNING ANGEL ê CADILLAC JUKEBOX ê SUNSET LIMITED PURPLE CANE ROAD ê JOLIE BLON’S BOUNCE LAST CAR TO ELYSIAN FIELDS |
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He has a second character, Billy Bob Holland, from Texas and Montana, a lawyer, who talks about things in similar terms. He’s not as good, but worth reading. |
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CIMMARON ROSE ê HEARTWOOD ê BITTERROOT IN THE MOON OF RED PONIES |
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Burke has also written one historical novel: WHITE DOVES AT MORNING |
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Here is a delightful author we won’t be seeing any more of. He died in 2000. He was a TV screenwriter who turned to novels, and wrote quite a few books I haven’t read, then found a really great series character: Jimmy Flannery, an uneducated, plain-spoken, no-nonsense Irishman who works for the city of Chicago. As a sewer inspector! Talk about your average working joe! But he finds trouble regularly, of course, or he wouldn’t be very interesting. And he grows remarkable in this series of cleverly titled books, getting involved in city politics, rising the ladder a lot farther than he ever expected to. |
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THE JUNKYARD DOG (1986) ê THE 600 POUND GORILLA (1987) HIP-DEEP IN ALLIGATORS (1987) ê THE CAT'S MEOW (1988) THINNING THE TURKEY HERD (1988) NIBBLED TO DEATH BY DUCKS (1989) THE GIFT HORSE'S MOUTH (1990) ê IN A PIG'S EYE (1991) SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE (1995) ê THE LION'S SHARE (1996) PIGEON PIE (1999) |
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He has another series just as good, and a lot grittier. These star a darker character named Whistler, a two-bit private eye based in Los Angeles. Some of the best dialogue and atmosphere anywhere. |
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IN LA-LA LAND WE TRUST (1986) ê ALICE IN LA-LA LAND (1987) SWEET LA-LA LAND (1990) ê THE WIZARD OF LA-LA LAND (1995) |
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Less interesting but still enjoyable are two that are only available in hard-to-find paperbacks, starring Jake Hatch: |
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PLUGGED NICKEL (1988) ê RED CENT (1989) |
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People had been recommending this guy to me for a while, so I finally checked him out. As usual, I started with the first book. The character is Jack Reacher, the “ultimate loner.” He’s an ex-Army MP Major, and in the first book he’s just out after force reductions in the ‘90s. He literally owns nothing but the clothes on his back, and he likes it that way. He’s got a little money in the bank, but has no ID, no suitcase, no nothing. He’s big, and he’s direct. I read an interview with Child where he points out that a lot of series character have sidekicks who get to do the things the hero is too pure to do. Spenser and Hawk, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Reacher is his own sidekick. If somebody needs killing, he kills them, and doesn’t lose a minute’s sleep. The books are very, very tough ... and yet, after a few of them, I realized the books they have the most in common with are the Sherlock Holmes stories. Even Agatha Christie. The puzzles are complex, and Reacher is very deductive. Maybe a little too much to believe sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. What an odd marriage: Holmes and Westlake’s Parker, in a lot of ways. But it works. The most impressive thing, to me, is that Child is a Brit. For a guy who never served in the US Army, he knows it backward and forward ... or at least enough to fool a guy like me, who never served, either. He must be a terrific researcher and observer, as all his detail about America is dead on. Very few Brits can do that. I salute him. |
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KILLING FLOOR ê DIE TRYING ê TRIPWIRE ê RUNNING BLIND ECHO BURNING ê WITHOUT FAIL ê PERSUADER ê THE ENEMY ONE SHOT |
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This guy started off with a couple of novels I haven’t read, then created a series character, Myron Bolitar, who began as a high-powered sports agent and ends up mostly as a private detective. He’s a great character. The first one is being developed for the movies. |
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DEAL BREAKER (1995) ê DROP SHOT (1996) ê FADE AWAY (1996) BACK SPIN (1997) ê ONE FALSE MOVE (1998) THE FINAL DETAIL (1999) ê DARKEST FEAR (2000) |
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Since the turn of the century Coben’s been writing top-notch thrillers and has become a bestseller, specializing in edge of the seat stuff where bad things happen to good people, evil inexplicably entering the lives of ordinary people in a sort of Hitchcock manner, and the ways they find to get out of it all. The plots are very good, if improbable. I’m surprised none of them are listed at the IMDb, as they are naturals for Hollywood treatment. (TELL NO ONE has been made in France, and I’ll look for it eagerly) |
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PLAY DEAD (1990) ê MIRACLE CURE (1991) ê TELL NO ONE (2001) GONE FOR GOOD (2002) ê NO SECOND CHANCE (2003) JUST ONE LOOK (2004) ê THE INNOCENT (2005) |
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Collins is an insanely prolific writer, and about 80% of his output is stuff I have no interest in. He is the king of the movie and TV tie-in, with a dozen CSI books, among many others. He’s written graphic novels and comics. He also has a series featuring Eliot Ness, and I tried one and didn’t care for it. He also wrote the graphic novel The Road to Perdition movie is based on. And when he’s not grinding them out, when he takes his time and puts his heart in it, he writes about Nate Heller, a 1930s ex-cop turned private eye in Chicago. Heller deals with all the major gangsters of the time, and Collins’ knowledge of the place and period is encyclopedic. |
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TRUE DETECTIVE (1983) ê TRUE CRIME (1984) THE MILLION DOLLAR WOUND (1986) ê NEON MIRAGE (1988) STOLEN AWAY (1991) ê CARNAL HOURS (1994) BLOOD AND THUNDER (1995) ê DAMNED IN PARADISE (1996) FLYING BLIND (1998) ê MAJIC MAN (1999) ê ANGEL IN BLACK (2001) CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL (2002) |
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Probably hard to find by now are a series about the single-named Quarry, a psychotic Vietnam vet and hired killer in Iowa, which are also good. |
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THE BROKER [APA QUARRY] (1976) THE BROKER'S WIFE [APA QUARRY'S LIST] (1976) THE DEALER [APA QUARRY'S DEAL] (1976) THE SLASHER [APA QUARRY'S CUT] (1977) ê PRIMARY TARGET (1987) |
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The Los Angeles cop hero of Connelly’s main books is Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, kind of a cutesy name but at least he has two of them. |
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THE BLACK ECHO ê THE BLACK ICE ê THE CONCRETE BLONDE THE LAST COYOTE ê TRUNK MUSIC ê ANGELS FLIGHT A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT ê CITY OF BONES LOST LIGHT ê THE NARROWS |
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He has from time to time written novels outside the series, including one starring Terry McCaleb, an ex-FBI agent with a heart transplant that Clint Eastwood made into an excellent movie. These are: |
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VOID MOON ê THE POET ê CHASING THE DIME ê BLOOD WORK |
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The series character is Dr. Kay Scarpetta, who starts out as medical examiner in Richmond, Virginia, is eventually fired and moves to Florida. Her niece, Lucy, becomes a more important character as she grows up. They started out very good, full of fascinating detail about autopsies and evidence. And then the books began to wear on me. I kept at it (see Robert B Parker, Janet Evanovich), but the last one just became too much. A common element I find in so many female series characters is that they seem to have no one friendly around them (see Sara Paretsky). Their relatives hassle and berate them, they get little support even from their friends. Okay, probably this is the way it is to be a woman working in a man’s world, but stand up for yourself! Scarpetta notes every slight in obsessive detail, to the point she comes off as a whiner ... then proceeds to do absolutely nothing about it, even when it won’t cost her anything to do so. In Trace, the newest Scarpetta, Cornwell shifts to present tense, a fashion I’m really beginning to hate. She doesn’t handle it well. Scarpetta bristles at everything; she can’t even have a good relationship with Lucy or her lover. Cornwell has absolutely no wit, no sense of humor; I can’t recall one line of joshing, except by her ultra-crude sidekick, Marino, who was always a bit of an asshole, and has now gone whole hog. I’d detest him on sight. Everything is a source of stress to Scarpetta, there is nothing in her life that is pleasant, even a little bit. Everyone around her is incompetent, and in this book she steps into a situation a saint wouldn’t have touched with a ten-meter pole for no reason that I can discern except there wouldn’t have been a story if she hadn’t, and blunders about. Lucy, the supposed genius, isn’t any better. I skimmed the last 200 pages, just to find out what happened, and it was incredibly stupid. I’m through with Scarpetta. |
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POSTMORTEM ê BODY OF EVIDENCE ê ALL THAT REMAINS CRUEL AND UNUSUAL ê THE BODY FARM (1994) FROM POTTER'S FIELD ê CAUSE OF DEATH ê UNNATURAL EXPOSURE POINT OF ORIGIN ê BLACK NOTICE (1999) ê THE LAST PRECINCT
BLOW FLY
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Elvis Cole is the self-styled “World’s greatest detective,” based in LA. He’s flip and funny, and gets better as the series progress and gets more serious as it goes. His sidekick is the almost monosyllabic Joe Pike, ex-army, ex-cop, who is almost preternaturally good at stealth and violence. He’s almost a cipher at the beginning, but evolves as well as Cole does. In order: |
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THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT ê STALKING THE ANGEL LULLABY TOWN ê FREE FALL ê VOODOO RIVER SUNSET EXPRESS ê INDIGO SLAM ê LA REQUIEM THE LAST DETECTIVE ê THE FORGOTTEN MAN |
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Crais began a second character, Carol Starkey, of the LAPD bomb squad in: |
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DEMOLITION ANGEL |
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She is involved with Elvis Cole, and is a major character in the latest Cole novel. Crais has also written a stand-alone book that won some awards and was made into a Bruce Willis movie: HOSTAGE. |
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Though
DeMille has two series
characters, neither series is very long, and I think don’t think of
him that way. He is a Vietnam veteran, and has dealt with some of
those issues in some of his books. They are generally military or
spy oriented, and are excellent of their type. |
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THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER (1992) ê UP COUNTRY (2002) |
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John Corey |
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PLUM ISLAND (1997) ê THE LION'S GAME (2000) NIGHT FALL (2004) |
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Singles: |
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BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON (1978) MAYDAY (with Thomas H Block) (1979) ê CATHEDRAL (1981) THE TALBOT ODYSSEY (1984) ê WORD OF HONOR (1985) THE CHARM SCHOOL (1988) ê GOLD COAST (1990) SPENCERVILLE (1994) |
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In 1974 and 1975 he ground out no less than 6 novels, which I haven’t read, and which are probably paperback originals. Learning his craft, I assume. |
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If John D MacDonald is the Godfather of the Florida Gang and Carl Hiaasen the consigliere, Tim Dorsey is that crazy fuck Joe Pesci played in Goodfellas. You never know what he’s gonna do, and not all of it is pretty. He has pulled off something I would have thought was impossible, making his main series character a serial killer. His name is Serge Storms (get it?), and he is a certified psychotic. But what he’s crazy about is Florida, its history and land. He doesn’t kill people out of malice, but because they get in his way, or are doing something awful to his beloved state, and he does it while delivering amphetamine-like (though he actually takes no drugs) lectures on every tiny bit of Florida history. Dorsey’s latest begins with a complaint from the omniscient narrator, who didn’t show up for work on the book on time and was replaced by another narrator. And the books typically end with a gonzo “Note on the typeface.” Nothing is safe. I admit, once in a while he goes overboard, pushes just a little too hard, but it’s worth it. The guy also gets some of the brightest, nicest book jackets of anyone in the business. |
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FLORIDA ROADKILL ê HAMMERHEAD RANCH MOTEL ê ORANGE CRUSH TRIGGERFISH TWIST ê STINGRAY SHUFFLE ê CADILLAC BEACH TORPEDO JUICE |
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New on the scene, Eisler has made a name for himself very quickly, like Lee Child. That’s because his character, John Rain, half Japanese and half American, is very, very tough. He’s a Vietnam vet, CIA-trained, and would like to retire from his profession as assassin who specializes in killing such that it doesn’t look like murder, but of course once you make yourself into a weapon, somebody is going to want to use you. He has lived in Japan for a long time, can pass as a native. His hyper caution sometimes gets a little wearing, but I don’t suppose he’d be alive if he wasn’t that way. It’s just that sometimes I feel Eisler could let some of the details of the pains he takes everywhere he goes be taken as a given, and get on with the story. But it’s a minor complaint. |
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RAIN FALL (2002) ê HARD RAIN (2003) ê RAIN STORM (2004) KILLING RAIN (2005) |
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Estleman’s Amos Walker, Vietnam vet private eye in Detroit, carries on the hard-boiled tradition of Philip Marlowe just about as well as anybody working today. And he’s has more of a sense of humor, good at the wisecracks. These are tough-minded books, gritty as Detroit itself. |
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MOTOR CITY BLUE (1980) ê ANGEL EYES (1981) THE MIDNIGHT MAN (1982) ê THE GLASS HIGHWAY (1983) SUGARTOWN (1984) ê EVERY BRILLIANT EYE (1986) LADY YESTERDAY (1987) ê DOWNRIVER (1988) SILENT THUNDER (1989) ê SWEET WOMEN LIE (1990) NEVER STREET (1997) ê THE WITCHFINDER (1998) THE HOURS OF THE VIRGIN (1999) A SMILE ON THE FACE OF THE TIGER (2000) SINISTER HEIGHTS (2002) * POISON BLONDE (2003) RETRO (2004) |
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Estleman has been working on “The Detroit Series,” a sort of fictional history of Detroit in the 20th Century, for a while. I don’t like them as much as the Amos Walkers, but they’re good. |
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WHISKEY RIVER (1990) ê MOTOWN (1991) KING OF THE CORNER (1992) ê EDSEL (1996) ê STRESS (1996) JITTERBUG (1999) ê THUNDER CITY (1999) |
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And he also does books a bit farther out, about Peter Macklin, hit man for the mob. He was a bit ahead of Lawrence Block’s Keller, in that he examines the guy’s regular life when he’s not whacking people like the cold-blooded sociopath he is. He’s got a son, and wonders if he should bring the kid into the family business. |
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KILL ZONE (1984) ê ROSES ARE DEAD (1985) ANY MAN'S DEATH (1986) SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLACK (2002) LITTLE BLACK DRESS (2005) |
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This series, starring bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, goes on to nine and ten, with eleven in the offing, but I gave up at eight. They begin well, Stephanie is appealingly scattered, new at her job, learning the ropes. She has a swell grandma who spends most of her time attending and reviewing funerals. But Ms. Plum is still as hapless in eight as she was in one. Every book she wrecks at least one car because she’s a shitty driver, and lets the same felon escape at least three times because of her own stupid mistakes. I have a hard time with people who don’t learn, who don’t get smarter. Link |
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ONE FOR THE MONEY ê TWO FOR THE DOUGH THREE TO GET DEADLY ê FOUR TO SCORE HIGH FIVE ê HOT SIX ê SEVEN UP ê HARD EIGHT |
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This guy is so far out on the edge you can hardly see him with a telescope. He may be too far out on the edge for some folks, but I love him. His novels feature one Thursday Next, who works for Special Literary Operations, whose job it is to do various things concerning literary forgeries ... and things too weird to easily describe. This is a world where people really care about literature and art. There are bloody riots between Raphaelites and Surrealists. People go door to door delivering the gospel that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him. And it is possible to move into a book, even change the plot. Thursday’s arch enemies are Acheron Hades, a man who loves evil for evil’s sake, and Jack Schitt, who works for the Goliath corporation, which pretty much runs England. The Crimean War has been going on for 130 years, Churchill died as a young man, England was invaded and then liberated, relations are tense with the neighboring People’s Republic of Wales ... and I’ve only scratched the surface. In the second book, Thursday’s husband is written out of history and she has to find a way to bring him back, with the help of the Cheshire Cat and Miss Havisham of Great Expectations ... give them a try. |
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THE EYRE AFFAIR (2001) ê LOST IN A GOOD BOOK (2002) THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS (2003) ê SOMETHING ROTTEN (2004) THE BIG OVER EASY (2005) |
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Having read one series of sea stories, I decided to try the granddaddy of them all, Horatio Hornblower. I didn’t regret it for an instant. Hornblower is nothing like the character in the recent series of movies. He is a driven, self-hating, insecure, sea-sick perfectionist, and you like him in spite of all that. Unlike Jack Aubrey, we begin with him at the lowest rank above common seaman. Link |
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MR MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER ê LIEUTENANT HORNBLOWER HORNBLOWER AND THE HOTSPUR ê HORNBLOWER DURING THE CRISIS HORNBLOWER AND THE ATROPOS ê BEAT TO QUARTERS A SHIP OF THE LINE ê FLYING COLOURS ê COMMODORE HORNBLOWER LORD HORNBLOWER ê ADMIRAL HORNBLOWER IN THE WEST INDIES |
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My uncle Don recommend Francis to me many years ago. I was dubious. I don’t much care for horses except to look at. Why would I want to read books by England’s top jockey? Well, because he’s like just a handful of other writers, such as John McPhee, who can make me interested in a subject I’ve never really thought much about. Not all Francis’s stories are about horseflesh, but the great majority are, and that’s okay. He’s written about corners of that world as obscure as the trailers you drive horses around in and the airplanes you use to carry them long distances. Along the way you get a good, tight story, and learn a lot. Francis had one character he revisited a few times, Sid Halley: |
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ODDS AGAINST ê WHIP HAND ê COME TO GRIEF |
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... but otherwise, each story stands alone. They are: |
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DEAD CERT ê NERVE ê FOR KICKS ê FLYING FINISH BLOOD SPORT ê FORFEIT ê ENQUIRY ê RAT RACE BONECRACK ê SMOKESCREEN ê SLAY RIDE KNOCKDOWN ê HIGH STAKES ê IN THE FRAME ê RISK TRIAL RUN ê REFLEX ê TWICE SHY ê THE DANGER BANKER ê PROOF ê BREAK IN ê BOLT ê HOT MONEY THE EDGE ê STRAIGHT ê LONGSHOT ê COMEBACK DRIVING FORCE ê DECIDER ê WILD HORSES TO THE HILT ê 10 LB PENALTY ê SECOND WIND SHATTERED |
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There hasn’t been a new book since 2000. He’s 85 now, so maybe there won’t be any more. That’s a pity. |
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Best known for the chronicles of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, Brigadier-General V.C. K.C.B., K.C.I.E. Sir Harry was a scoundrel, poltroon, coward, and many other unsavory things, managed to get involved in every British military disaster in his lifetime and plenty of other adventures, including fighting on both sides of the American Civil War and surviving Little Big Horn ... and always comes out with a promotion. His papers were discovered in the 1960s and have been released gradually and reluctantly, with copious footnotes. In his lifetime Flashy was a hero to the public, but in his papers he pulls no punches, freely admits and indeed glories in his villainies. ... and at the time of first publication of Flashman, more than a few critics took all this bullshit at face value! Talk about red faces! These books don’t have to be read in any order, as they skip across his scandalous life with abandon, but I’d suggest you read the first one first. Then, if you can stand the fellow (and he has millions of fans, including me and my sister Francine), read all the others. Link |
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FLASHMAN (1969) ê ROYAL FLASH (1970) ê FLASH FOR FREEDOM! (1971) FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE (1973) ê FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME (1975) FLASHMAN'S LADY (1977) ê FLASHMAN AND THE REDSKINS (1982) FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON (1985) FLASHMAN AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT (1990) FLASHMAN AND THE ANGEL OF THE LORD (1994) FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER (1999) ê FLASHMAN ON THE MARCH (2005) |
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Fraser has also written other novels, a few of which involve Flashy and or his father, and collections of short stories. |
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MR. AMERICAN (1980) ê THE PYRATES (1983) ê THE CANDLEMASS ROAD (1993) BLACK AJAX (1997) ê THE GENERAL DANCED AT DAWN (1970) MCAUSLAN IN THE ROUGH (1974) ê THE SHIEKH AND THE DUSTBIN (1988) THE COMPLETE MCAUSLAN (2000) |
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He also wrote an excellent book about the movies: The Hollywood History of the World (1997) ... and several screenplays, including two films on my Top 25 of All Time. |
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THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1974) ê THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973) |
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I don’t read a lot of English mysteries. There are some good ones, I know I should look into certain people, but so many of them are in the Agatha Christie tradition, a tradition I don’t much enjoy. Gash’s Lovejoy, no first name, an antiques expert and forger in East Anglia, England, manages to get to me because he is quite unusual. Reading these books, you learn a ton of stuff about antiques, something I’m normally not too interested in. But Gash makes it work, like Dick Francis with horses and Stephen Hunter with guns. Lovejoy is a rogue, a coward, and has a sixth sense. He’s a “divvy,” he can tell just by looking at something whether it’s real or fake. You’d think he’d be rich because of this talent, but he’s forever broke, forever making deals for stuff he can’t afford, and forever being taken advantage of by gangsters and other hard cases. It all gets a little much from time to time, you want to grab him by the lapels and tell him to stand up for himself ... but he always manages to outwit his enemies. |
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THE JUDAS PAIR (1977) ê GOLD BY GEMINI (1978) THE GRAIL TREE (1979) ê SPEND GAME (1980) THE VATICAN RIP (1981) ê FIREFLY GADROON (1982) THE SLEEPERS OF ERIN (1983) ê THE GONDOLA SCAM (1984) PEARLHANGER (1985) ê THE TARTAN SELL (1986) MOONSPENDER (1986) ê JADE WOMAN (1988) THE VERY LAST GAMBADO (1989) THE GREAT CALIFORNIA GAME (1990) THE LIES OF FAIR LADIES (1991) PAID AND LOVING EYES (1992) THE SIN WITHIN HER SMILE (1993) THE GRACE IN OLDER WOMEN (1995) THE POSSESSIONS OF A LADY (1996) THE RICH AND THE PROFANE (1999) A RAG, A BONE AND A HANK OF HAIR (2000) EVERY LAST CENT (2002) ê THE TEN WORD GAME (2004) |
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John D MacDonald. Donald E Westlake. And William Goldman. Probably my three favorite novelists of all time. Sorry to say that John D is dead, and Goldman hasn’t written a novel in almost 20 years. Maybe it’s because his last one wasn’t really very good, but I’m ever hopeful. His novels: |
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Your Turn to Curtsey, My Turn to Bow (1958) Soldier in the Rain (1963) ê No Way to Treat A Lady (1964) The Thing of It Is... (1967) ê Boys and Girls Together (1969) The Temple of Gold (1970) ê Father's Day (1971) The Princess Bride (1973) ê Marathon Man (1974) Wigger (children) (1974) ê Magic (1976) ê Tinsel (1979) ê Control (1982) The Silent Gondoliers (1983) (writing as S Morgenstern) The Color of Light (1984) ê Heat (1985) ê Brothers (1986) |
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He wrote the best book about Broadway I’ve ever read: The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969) ... and the three best books about the movie business: |
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Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983) The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood?: And Other Essays (1999) Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade (2000) |
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He is also one of the best screenwriters there is, both at adapting his own books: |
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Marathon Man (1976) ê Magic (1978) ê Heat (1986) The Princess Bride (1987) |
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... and original screenplays: |
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) ê A Bridge Too Far (1977) Year of the Comet (1992) ê Maverick (1994) The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) |
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Two of his books were made into good movies by other screenwriters: |
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Soldier in the Rain (1963) ê No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) |
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And last but not least, he has adapted other people’s books, with results ranging from excellent: |
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Harper (1966) (Ross McDonald) ê The Hot Rock (1972) (Donald E. Westlake) All the President's Men (1976) (Woodward & Bernstein) Misery (1990) (Stephen King) |
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... to okay |
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The Stepford Wives (1975) (Ira Levin) Absolute Power (1997) (David Baldacci) Hearts in Atlantis (2001) (Stephen King) |
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... to plain awful: |
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The Chamber (1996) (John Grisham) ê Dreamcatcher (2003) (Stephen King) |
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Most of Goldman’s scripts are in print, so if you want to see how the screen trade is done, you can read them while watching the movies. That’s how I learned. It pains me to think of Bill wasting his time on crap like Dreamcatcher, and his numerous and uncredited “script doctor” assignments for other films in deep trouble. I’d sure like to think he’s working on another Boys and Girls Together, or The Color of Light ... who knows. He looks healthy, he could still have another novel in him ... |
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Here’s a guy who doesn’t write much, but when he does, they are quirky and realistic. His San Francisco private detective agency, Daniel Kearney Associates (DKA), spends most of its time doing what real PIs really do, which is auto repo and skip-tracing. He knows con artists and grifters. Link |
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DEAD SKIP (1972) ê FINAL NOTICE (1973) ê GONE, NO FORWARDING (1978) 32 CADILLACS (1992) ê CONTRACT NULL AND VOID (1996) STAKEOUT ON PAGE STREET (2000) ê CONS, SCAMS, AND GRIFTS (2001) |
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You don’t have to have a gimmick to sell series novels, but it doesn’t hurt. John D MacDonald used colors in all his Travis McGee novels. Ed McBain uses fairy tales in his Matthew Hope stories, at least until the last one. Janet Evanovich uses numbers, and Sue Grafton uses the alphabet. (Lawrence Block made fun of this in one of his Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, describing books Grafton might write when she moves on beyond zebra: AA is for Alcoholics, for instance.) She got off to a cracking good start up to about I or J, then suffered something common in books like this: a quality slump. Kinsey Millhone began to spend more time on her domestic squabbles than on her cases, and it got boring, for me. Not for everyone. Her sales never faltered, so far as I know. But she’s picked up again, and I still read her, though without blazing enthusiasm. |
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A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R ... is for ... Alibi, Burglar, Corpse, Deadbeat, Evidence, Fugitive, Gumshoe, Homicide, Innocent, Judgement, Killer, Lawless, Malice, Noose, Outlaw, Peril, Quarry, and Ricochet, and soon, Silence. |
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The best of the San Francisco private detectives. John Marshall Tanner is a fully drawn character who grows as the books progress. SPOILER: And Greenleaf has done something in his most recent book, Ellipsis, that I’ve never seen before. He seems to be retiring Marsh Tanner, giving him his walking papers, letting him free of the dangerous plots he has spent his fictional life surviving. In the last three books Tanner was forced to kill his best friend, then screwed up a case big time, and finally put his daughter in mortal danger. Enough! He has a new lover and he wants to marry her, he has come to doubt his ability, and to hate his job. Normally in a series the hero sucks it up, his lover gets killed a la Travis McGee, and he soldiers on. Not here. The last chapter of Ellipsis is clearly a good-bye party for Tanner, with all his surviving friends there. Now, what’s he going to do with the rest of his life? Ta-da! Greenleaf lets him win $6 million in a magazine lottery! Hey, I created him, I can kill him if I want, or ... I can let him live happily ever after, and fiction is the only place where that can happen! Unlikely? Sure. But no more unlikely than living in the eternal peril a series character lives in to sell books, the sort of life that no cop, no PI, no lawyer actually lives. Greenleaf seems to be saying to Tanner, “Well done, good and faithful protagonist! Go now and find happiness!” I can’t tell you how satisfying I find this, though I’ll miss Tanner. I could be wrong. Maybe Tanner will change his mind, or maybe Greenleaf has some plan for him after his retirement. But the last one was published in 2000, and it’s been 5 years now ... |
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GRAVE ERROR (1979) ê DEATH BED (1980) ê STATE'S EVIDENCE (1982) FATAL OBSESSION (1983) ê BEYOND BLAME (1986) ê TOLL CALL (1987) BOOK CASE (1991) ê BLOOD TYPE (1992) ê SOUTHERN CROSS (1993) FALSE CONCEPTION (1994) ê FLESH WOUNDS (1996) ê PAST TENSE (1997) STRAWBERRY SUNDAY (1999) ê ELLIPSIS (2000) |
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Greenleaf also wrote two other books, that in some ways were even better than the Tanner series, because they weren’t constrained by the genre. They are The Ditto List (1985), a really great novel about a divorce lawyer, and Impact (1989), a terrific examination of the law as it applies to air crashes. |
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Joe is a friend, a Vietnam veteran, and one of the few science fiction writers I read regularly. His first book was a more-or-less autobiographical story of his time as a young man in the war, and reminds me of Heinlein but without the love of the military. No surprise; though Heinlein served, he never saw combat. Joe did, and was wounded. It has flavored a great deal of his fiction since then, including his masterful Forever War trilogy. The first book was an absolute mind-boggler, and seldom has a book been more deserving of the Hugo and Nebula. It was published as a series of novelettes in Analog, and told the story of a high-tech war involving the effects of relativity, so that you never knew whether the enemy you went into battle with would be decades behind you in technology ... or a century ahead. Talk about scary! |
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THE FOREVER WAR (1974) ê FOREVER PEACE (1991) ê FOREVER FREE (1999) |
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He has another trilogy, almost as good: |
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WORLDS: A NOVEL OF THE NEAR FUTURE (1981) ê WORLDS APART (1983) WORLDS ENOUGH AND TIME (1992) |
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... and a bunch of singles: |
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WAR YEAR (1972) ê MINDBRIDGE (1976) ê 1968 (1984) TOOL OF THE TRADE (1987) ê THE LONG HABIT OF LIVING (1989) THE HEMINGWAY HOAX (1990) ê THE COMING (2000) ê GUARDIAN (2002) CAMOUFLAGE (2004) ê OLD TWENTIETH (2005) |
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And like most of my favorite SF writers, his short stories are some of his best work. |
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ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED (1977) ê INFINITE DREAMS (1978) DEALING IN FUTURES (1985) ê VIETNAM: AND OTHER ALIEN WORLDS (1993) NONE SO BLIND (1996) |
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Thorn (no first name, and I guess we have Robert B Parker to thank for that fad) is a beach bum who makes his living tying flies that work better than anyone else’s. That’s all he aspires to, but naturally he gets in trouble constantly. He’s a very appealing character, and has grown a lot over the course of these books. In Body Language he introduced a new character, who later becomes Thorn’s main squeeze. She’s good, too. Hall’s most recent book concerns someone new, Charlotte Thorn, who has what is almost a wild talent for reading faces. She could become a good series character. Hall has also collected 40 essays in Hot Damn, which my library doesn’t carry. I just ordered a copy from Amazon. |
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Under Cover of Daylight ê Hard Aground ê Bones of Coral Tropical Freeze ê Buzz Cut ê Gone Wild ê Mean High Tide Rough Draft ê Body Language (Alexandra Rafferty) Red Sky at Night ê Off the Chart ê Blackwater Sound Forests of the Night |
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(1923-2004) Writers’ bios don’t come much stranger than Hansen’s. He was probably not the first gay man to feature a gay detective in his books, but he was the first to break out of the ghetto of “gay fiction” and enter the mainstream. Dave Brandstetter is a death-claims investigator in Los Angeles. The books were groundbreaking for their theme, but also damn good fiction. As for Hansen himself ... he was married to a woman all his life, and had a daughter. Who knows what their sexual arrangement was? But he is on record as saying he was a gay man in love with a straight woman. To put a cherry on the cake, his daughter later had sexual reassignment surgery, and now lives as a man. That’s enough gossip. After 1991 he wrote more novels, but I haven’t read any of them. |
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FADEOUT (1972) ê DEATH CLAIMS (1973) ê TROUBLEMAKER (1975) THE MAN EVERYBODY WAS AFRAID OF (1978) THE DOG AND OTHER STORIES (1979)ê SKIN FLICK (1979) GRAVEDIGGER (1982) ê NIGHTWORK (1984) THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED (1986) ê EARLY GRAVES (1987) OBEDIENCE (1988) ê THE BOY WHO WAS BURIED THIS MORNING (1990) A COUNTRY OF OLD MEN (1991) |
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Non-series books: |
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BACKTRACK (1982) ê STEPS GOING DOWN (1985) LIVING UPSTAIRS (1993) |
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For my money, John Francis Cuddy is twice the Boston detective Spenser is. Three times. More. Okay, so I’m fed up with Spenser ... Anyway, Healy writes stories with meat on their bones, and Cuddy is much deeper and more believable than stoic, self-satisfied Spenser. I can’t think why he isn’t as popular. Maybe because it takes more than an hour to read one of his books. |
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BLUNT DARTS (1984) ê THE STAKED GOAT (1986) SO LIKE SLEEP (1987) ê SWAN DIVE (1988) YESTERDAY'S NEWS (1989) ê RIGHT TO DIE (1991) SHALLOW GRAVES (1992) ê FOURSOME (1993) ê ACT OF GOD (1994) RESCUE (1995) ê INVASION OF PRIVACY (1996) THE ONLY GOOD LAWYER (1998) ê SPIRAL (1999) |
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Recently Healy has shown signs of being tired of the series character, as so many do. So he wrote some stand-alones: |
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THE STALKING OF SHEILAH QUINN (1998) ê TURNABOUT (2002) |
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Then he did something unusual for a man so established. He adopted a pseudonym for a whole new series featuring Mairead O'Clare and Sheldon Gold, her mentor. They are Boston lawyers, too. My guess is that, after a time, you realize that your name is too connected to a series that has not made you a household name. So you start over, and your publisher promotes you, and you hope for the best. These new books by “Terry Devane” have the look of bestsellers. I haven’t read them yet, but I will soon. |
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UNCOMMON JUSTICE (2001) ê JUROR NUMBER ELEVEN (2002) A STAIN UPON THE ROBE (2003) |
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Jules Verne wrote great adventure tales. HG Wells told some pretty good stories. As far as I’m concerned, you can have your Edgar Rice Burroughs and your Hugo Gernsback. Stupid stories. The modern age of science fiction didn’t get started until John Campbell took over Astounding Science Fiction in the late 1930s and started publishing people like Isaac Asimov, L Sprague de Camp, Theodore Sturgeon, Lester del Rey, Leigh Brackett, Clifford D Simak, Jack Williamson, and most of all, Robert A Heinlein. These people developed science fiction as we knew it in the 1950s, when I first started reading it. Lately we’ve taken what is, to me, a giant step backwards into the 1920s with space opera dominant (don’t get me wrong, space opera can be fun), but there are still many people carrying the torch for RAH’s type of meticulous SF. He began with an actual chart that showed a “Future History,” something that is common now among writers like Larry Niven and ... ahem ... myself, but it’s good to remember that it was something brand new at the time. The history originally consisted of one novel and a lot of shorter fiction. He added to it in 1973, and I think a lot of his later novels tie into it, too, but I’m not sure which ones, so I’m not listing them here. |
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METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN (1941) THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON (1950) THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH (1951) ê REVOLT IN 2100 (1953) ORPHANS OF THE SKY (1963) THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW (1967) TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE: THE LIVES OF LAZARUS LONG (1973) |
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His other short stories were collected in 4 books: |
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WALDO AND MAGIC INC. (1950) ê ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY (1953) THE MENACE FROM EARTH (1959) THE UNPLEASANT PROFESSION OF JONATHAN HOAG (1959) |
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Then there were his novels for adults. People are divided on these. I am one who loved everything he wrote until I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, which I didn’t like at all. In fact, I didn’t really like anything he wrote from the ‘70s on, and that makes me sad, but there it is. I found the NUMBER OF THE BEAST virtually unreadable, windy, pointless, and with no characterization I could discern. But I’ll tell you what I did like: I think THE DOOR INTO SUMMER and DOUBLE STAR are two of the best SF novels of all time. Mostly because more was emotionally at stake in those two books than in all his other adult novels put together. |
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BEYOND THIS HORIZON (1948) ê SIXTH COLUMN (1941) THE PUPPET MASTERS (1951) ê DOUBLE STAR (1955) THE DOOR INTO SUMMER (1957) STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (1961) ê GLORY ROAD (1963) FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD (1964) ê THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS (1966) I WILL FEAR NO EVIL (1970) ê THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST (1979) FRIDAY (1982) ê JOB: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE (1984) THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS: A COMEDY OF MANNERS (1985) TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET (1987) FOR US, THE LIVING: A COMEDY OF CUSTOMS (2004) |
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But his crowning achievements for me were the 12 “juvenile” novels that he wrote at the rate of one per year beginning in 1947. The first really is rather juvenile, but he got better and better and better until he reached STARSHIP TROOPERS, which the publisher turned down ... apparently much to Heinlein’s relief, since he didn’t get along with the publisher but he had agreed to write them as long as they were buying. Released from his obligation, he published that book as an adult novel. It won the Hugo. It is a controversial novel, and the first one that really showed his propensity to lecture about his political views. In spite of that, it’s a rip-roaring story. There was one more juvenile to follow, one of his weaker ones, and that was it for my golden age of SF. I’ve read all these books multiple times, and they hold up wonderfully. |
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ROCKET SHIP GALILEO (1947) ê SPACE CADET (1948) RED PLANET (1949) ê FARMER IN THE SKY (1950) BETWEEN PLANETS (1951) ê THE ROLLING STONES (1952) STARMAN JONES (1953) ê THE STAR BEAST (1954) TUNNEL IN THE SKY (1955) ê TIME FOR THE STARS (1956) CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY (1957) HAVE SPACESUIT - WILL TRAVEL (1958) ê STARSHIP TROOPERS (1959) PODKAYNE OF MARS (1962) |
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Carl Hiaasen is probably the biggest star of the current crop. He is a newspaperman, still writes an irregular (in both senses of the word) column for the Miami Herald. He co-wrote three novels with Bill Montalbano (Powder Burn ê Trap Line ê A Death in China), forgettable thrillers, then hit pay dirt with a combination of over-the-top wackiness and deadly serious violence and has stuck with it. They don’t really belong with the series novels here, though there is one recurring character: Skink, the ex-governor of Florida who went nuts and now lives in the swamp, wrecking havoc on those who would despoil his beloved state. And that’s Hiaasen in a nutshell, too. He carries on the John D MacDonald tradition of decrying the rape of the peninsula, and under his crazy humor is rage. He has two books of collected columns (Kick Ass ê Paradise Screwed) and an attack on the Disney Machine (Team Rodent) which I haven’t read. The ones I have read are: |
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TOURIST SEASON ê DOUBLE WHAMMY ê SKIN TIGHT NATIVE TONGUE ê STRIP TEASE ê STORMY WEATHER LUCKY YOU ê SICK PUPPY ê BASKET CASE HOOT (a children's book, but don't let that put you off) ê SKINNY DIP |
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Everybody likes Tony Hillerman, don’t they? I mean, what’s not to like? He has picked a setting and a culture so exotic to most of us that it might as well be the moon: The Navajo Nation, America’s largest reservation of America’s most populous tribe, in the desolate Four Corners area. His two heroes, the assimilated old pro Joe Leaphorn, and the traditional younger cop Jim Chee and their respect/rivalry relationship is just wonderful. You learn to love and be amazed by the way of the Dineh, with their different way of looking at the universe. At the same time, these are wonderful mysteries and police procedurals. Everything about them is wonderful. |
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THE BLESSING WAY ê DANCE HALL OF THE DEAD ê LISTENING WOMAN PEOPLE OF DARKNESS ê THE DARK WIND ê THE GHOSTWAY SKINWALKERS ê A THIEF OF TIME ê TALKING GOD ê COYOTE WAITS SACRED CLOWNS ê THE FALLEN MAN ê THE FIRST EAGLE HUNTING BADGER ê THE WAILING WIND ê THE SINISTER PIG SKELETON MAN |
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An Oregon boy, Hoyt is a bit of a nut. I mean that in a nice way. I’ve met him, and he has a million stories. He’s been a newspaperman and worked in military intelligence. He writes stories set all over the world, and won’t write about any place he hasn’t checked out himself. A site I found says he’s been to Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Morocco, Mexico, Guatemala, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Gibraltar, Canada, Jamaica, England, Portugal, Hong Kong, Brazil, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, Spain, and Belize. Sounds like fun. Researching Head of State, he crossed the USSR on the Trans-Siberian express, which doesn’t sound like fun. That novel, by the way, features a plot to steal Lenin’s head ... and that’s how his stories often go. James Burlane, an ex-CIA operative turned private investigator in the USA, is featured in: |
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TROTSKY'S RUN (1982) ê HEAD OF STATE (1985) THE DRAGON PORTFOLIO (1986) ê SIEGE (1987) ê MARIMBA (1992) RED CARD (1994) ê JAPANESE GAME (1995) ê TYGER! TYGER! (1996) |
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John Denson, an ex-reporter and ex-army intelligence operative and flaky private investigator in Seattle, Washington, is featured in: |
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DECOYS (1980) ê THIRTY FOR A HARRY (1981) THE SISKIYOU TWO-STEP (1983) ê FISH STORY (1985) ê WHOO? (1991) BIGFOOT (1993) ê SNAKE EYES (1995) THE WEATHERMAN'S DAUGHTERS (2003) ê PONY GIRLS (2004) |
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Non-series books: |
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THE MANNA ENZYME (1982) ê COOL RUNNINGS (1984) DARWIN'S SECRET (1989) ê OLD SOLDIERS SOMETIMES LIE (2003) |
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This guy reminds me most of Dick Francis. Not because his books are anything like Francis’s; they aren’t. No, what it is, both of them have managed to entertain me over and over while sticking to subjects I know nothing about and care even less about. With Dick Francis it’s horses, and with Stephen Hunter it’s guns. I’ve never owned a gun and seldom even fired one. They hold no attraction for me, and I’d like to see a lot fewer of them in the world. So maybe Mr. Hunter and I would disagree if we ever sat down and talked, but who cares? He writes cracking good thrillers that teach you a lot about guns and shooting. He seems to know everything there is to know about the physics and engineering or weaponry, and he’s unmatched with strategy and tactics. Early in his career he wrote 4 books, or which I’ve read 2, and they’re okay: |
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THE MASTER SNIPER ê THE SPANISH GAMBIT |
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Then in 1993 he began his series character, Bob Lee Swagger, an Arkansas boy who happens to shoot better than anybody in the world and would just like to be left alone. He doesn’t even hunt deer. Naturally, the world won’t let someone with his talents alone. There are six of these novels, and they divide into stories about Bob Lee and stories about his father, Earl, set considerably earlier. This is unusual, because in one of the books we see how Earl died, while Bob Lee was still young. So we know his fate when we read about him. This adds, rather than detracts, from the books. In order: |
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POINT OF IMPACT ê BLACK LIGHT ê TIME TO HUNT ê HOT SPRINGS PALE HORSE COMING ê HAVANA |
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There is another stand-alone novel that I have to mention: Dirty White Boys. This is simply one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read. If you don’t mind a lot of extreme but real violence, you must read this one. |
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Hard to know where to start when telling about my friend Dean. When he designed and built his pride and joy custom car, the Magnum, he not only made something that would go real, real fast and looks like a shark, he made sure it got good gas mileage, too. Anything Dean doesn’t know about aviation is just not worth knowing. If he’d stayed with aerodynamic engineering, he’d probably have out-Rutaned Burt Rutan. But he went into SF writing instead, and has steadily turned out great fiction. I don’t think he’d describe himself as a survivalist. That brings to mind nuts with howitzers and ambitions for nuclear weapons hiding out in the piney woods and shooting anything that moves. Dean isn’t like that, but he’s a survivor. Anything hairy comes Dean’s way, he’ll know how to deal with it. He wrote a trilogy about a post-apocalyptic world: |
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SYSTEMIC SHOCK (1981) ê SINGLE COMBAT (1983) ê WILD COUNTRY (1985) |
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Beyond that, his books can be all over the place, from some pretty funny stuff, to spy stories, to aviation-based thrillers that put Craig Thomas and Dale Brown in the shade. If Dean describes an extremely strange bird (and all his airplanes are strange, way out there on the edge), you can bet it would fly. He is a member of that small group of maniacs who build ultra-light, ultra-small balsa and paper planes powered by big rubber bands, and compete to see whose can fly the highest, and for the greatest length of time. He told me that for a plane to fly out of sight and be lost is seen as an accomplishment! |
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SOFT TARGETS (1979) ê HIGH TENSION (1982) ê PULLING THROUGH (1983) CHAOS IN LAGRANGIA (1984) ê THE LAGRANGISTS (1984) BLOOD OF EAGLES (1987) ê FIREFIGHT 2000 (1987) CHERNOBYL SYNDROME (1988) ê THE BIG LIFTERS (1988) THE RANSOM OF BLACK STEALTH ONE (1989) THE NEMESIS MISSION (1991) ê BUTCHER BIRD (1993) ê SPOOKER (1995) FLYING TO PIECES (1997) ê THE SKINS OF DEAD MEN (1998) LOOSE CANNON (2000) ê THE RACKHAM FILES (2004) |
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In the ‘80s he wrote some novels with Mack Reynolds. I haven’t read them, but one day I will. |
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HOME, SWEET HOME 2010 A. D. (1984) ê ETERNITY (1984) THE OTHER TIME (1984) ê TROJAN ORBIT (1985) DEATHWISH WORLD (1986) |
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Here’s a guy whose life ends with a scene from a detective novel ... one of his own. He was found hanging from his 14th floor office with a rope that was tied to the leg of his desk, which is a scene that appeared in an unfinished novel. His death was ruled a suicide. Before that, he wrote some really good novels set in Chicago. He had had some success early on, went into a bad period, but seemed ready to break out with a series character. Didn’t happen. But we still have these: |
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SPECIAL VICTIMS (1994) ê MR. X (1995) ê JADED (1996) *êTHE TAKE (1987) BAD GUYS (1988) ê EIGHTH VICTIM (1988) ê BOOSTER (1989) PRIME ROLL (1990) ê INVASIONS (1990) ê PROWLERS (1991) TRIBAL SECRETS (1992) ê TONY'S JUSTICE (1993) BULLETIN FROM THE STREETS (1995) ê SAFE HARBOR (1995) PLAYERS (1996) ê A MATTER OF HONOR (1997) ê CRIMINALIST (1998) |
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Another prolific writer. He began with the Toby Peters books, which adhere to a rigid formula, though Toby grows as the books go on. He works in Hollywood, starting in around 1938, and after 24 books he’s into 1943. The gimmick: he always works for a famous person, usually a Hollywood star. He is about the lowest of low-rent PIs. He drives a Crosley, lives in a rooming house with a crazy deaf landlady who thinks he’s an exterminator, and has a motley assortment of friends and helpers, including the world’s worst dentist, an ex-wrestler poet, and a midget who he met on the set of The Wizard of Oz playing a munchkin. He isn’t smart, but he’s dogged. At the end of every book he gets a message from another star, letting you know who will be in the next book. Total formula fiction, and I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend them, but I enjoy them. You pop them like M&Ms, and move on to something else. Here they are, including the guest stars: |
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Bullet for A Star (Errol Flynn) Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (Judy Garland) You Bet Your Life (The Marx Brothers) ê The Howard Hughes Affair Never Cross a Vampire (Bela Lugosi) ê High Midnight (Gary Cooper) Catch A Falling Clown (Emmett Kelly) He Done Her Wrong (Mae West) ê The Fala Factor (Eleanor Roosevelt) Down for the Count (Joe Lewis) The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (John Wayne) Smart Moves (Albert Einstein) ê Think Fast, Mr. Peters (Peter Lorre) Buried Caesars (Douglas MacArthur, Dashiell Hammett) Poor Butterfly (Leopold Stokoswki) ê The Melting Clock (Salvador Dali) The Devil Met A Lady (Bette Davis) Tomorrow is Another Day (Clark Gable) Dancing in the Dark (Fred Astaire) ê A Fatal Glass of Beer (WC Fields) A Few Minutes Past Midnight (Charlie Chaplin) To Catch a Spy (Cary Grant) ê Mildred Pierced (Joan Crawford) Now You See It (Harry Blackstone) |
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Kaminsky has several other series, and they are much different. The best of the lot star Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, a Moscow cop. Kaminsky began these books before the fall of the Soviet Union, and each book now reflects a lot of changes, especially for Rostnikov’s best detective, Emil Karpo, for whom communism was virtually a religion. I recommend these highly: |
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ROSTNIKOV'S CORPSE (AKA DEATH OF A DISSIDENT) BLACK KNIGHT IN RED SQUARE ê RED CHAMELEON A COLD RED SUNRISE ê A FINE RED RAIN ê ROSTNIKOV’S VACATION THE MAN WHO WALKED LIKE A BEAR ê DEATH OF A RUSSIAN PRIEST HARD CURRENCY ê BLOOD AND RUBLES ê TARNISHED ICONS THE DOG WHO BIT A POLICEMAN ê FALL OF A COSMONAUT MURDER ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN EXPRESS |
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Next best are a series starring Abe Lieberman, a Chicago cop. These are street novels, full of wry humor, especially in Abe’s dealings with his synagogue and the old alter cockers in his brother’s deli. But they are tough-minded, too. You don’t want to mess with Abe, he’ll kill you and calmly finish his pastrami sandwich. |
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LIEBERMAN'S FOLLY ê LIEBERMAN'S CHOICE ê LIEBERMAN'S DAY LIEBERMAN'S THIEF ê LIEBERMAN'S LAW ê THE BIG SILENCE NOT QUITE KOSHER ê THE LAST DARK PLACE |
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Then there is Lew Fonesca. He used to be a PI in Chicago, then his wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver and he gave up on life. He lives in Sarasota, Florida, and finds people, when he can stir himself from bed. He’s so depressed he needs a forklift just to raise his eyelids. I just finished the fourth book in the series, DENIAL, and had decided to swear him off. I mean, there’s only so much angst I can take, it’s a hard one to pull off. Westlake did it with his “Tucker Coe” books, but Kaminsky isn’t Westlake. But then at the end of the book Fonesca decides to actually do something he should have done years ago, which is find the sonofabitch who killed his wife ... so maybe I’ll read one more. |
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VENGEANCE ê RETRIBUTION ê MIDNIGHT PASS ê DENIAL |
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The first five of the Alex Delaware books were among the best I’d ever read in the genre. Since then they’ve become a little routine, with a low point reached in THE WEB, but they’re still readable. Alex’s sidekick, the gay cop Milo Sturgis, is fully as interesting as Delaware himself, maybe more. |
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WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS ê BLOOD TEST ê OVER THE EDGE SILENT PARTNER ê TIME BOMB ê PRIVATE EYES DEVIL'S WALTZ ê BAD LOVE ê SELF DEFENSE ê THE WEB THE CLINIC ê SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST ê MONSTER DOCTOR DEATH ê FLESH AND BLOOD ê THE MURDER BOOK A COLD HEART ê THERAPY ê RAGE |
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Kellerman also wrote a stand-alone book set in Israel: THE BUTCHER'S THEATER. And he has recently begun with a new character, Petra Connor, who sometimes interacts with Alex. These are quite good, too: |
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BILLY STRAIGHT ê THE CONSPIRACY CLUB ê TWISTED |
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I’m not going to list all of Stephen King’s books here. I’ve read them all, pretty much, and they vary considerably in quality. Good or bad, he always keeps me reading. Oddly, I think he is at his best when he’s working at novella length instead of the books you need a forklift truck to move, which he produces a lot of. And he’s better when he keeps the supernatural crap out of it, or to a minimum. His stories “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” and “The Body,” both made into excellent movies (“The Body” became Stand By Me), are simply shattering. This is not to say his scary stories are bad. I think he is the best sheer storyteller working today. Ideas just burst out of him. He is unequalled in making your hair stand on end. His chief problem, in my opinion, is the same one Michael Jackson has: There’s nobody to tell him no. He is so wildly successful that no one has the nerve to point out that his stories would be tighter and scarier if they were given another edit, removing maybe as much as 30% of his text. Why fuck with it when it’s gonna sell a billion copies? It’s hard to argue with that, and yet I still feel it would be better to improve the book, which would still sell a billion copies. King is proudest of his books THE STAND, which he went so far as to have republished with all the stuff that had been edited out the first time, and his DARK TOWER heptology, which took about 25 years to finish, and might not have been finished at all except for his brush with death, which prompted him to sit down and finished the last three in a marathon outpouring which included including himself as a character. If I was faced with all 7 of these books as a lump I probably wouldn’t make my way all the way through them. But since I’d started in 1982 and taken the first 4 spread out over the years, I went ahead and finished the last three, which came out the next thing to all at once. This is almost 4000 pages of overwritten prose ... yet I’m glad I finished. It is a long a gruesome trip, and a stunning vision of the universe. |
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THE DARK TOWER 1: THE GUNSLINGER
THE DARK TOWER 2: THE
DRAWING OF THE THREE |
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This writing team did some of the best stories of the Golden Age, the ‘40s and ‘50s. But it’s hard to know where to begin. They each wrote under their own names, and they shared the pseudonym “Lewis Padgett,” who was well-known on his own. And it seems that most of what either of them wrote was in fact a collaboration to one degree or another. Kuttner probably published more for a simple and ugly reason: Catherine Lucile Moore, even disguising her sex with the C.L. bit, was paid less for the same number of words than Kuttner was. They were incredibly prolific for over a decade, using a whole array of pen names – Edward J. Bellin, Paul Edmonds, Noel Gardner, Will Garth, James Hall, Keith Hammond, Hudson Hastings, Peter Horn, Kelvin Kent, Robert O. Kenyon, C. H. Liddell, Hugh Maepenn, Scott Morgan, Lawrence O'Donnell, Woodrow Wilson Smith, Charles Stoddard ... because editors wouldn’t put two stories by one author in the same issue of a magazine. I’m not going to attempt to sort any of it out, I’m just assuming that each contributed to the works of the other. They eventually burnt out, and Kuttner died in 1958. Moore lived on until 1987, but didn’t write much after that. Kuttner wrote some mysteries featuring Dr. Michael Gray just before his death: |
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THE MURDER OF ANN AVERY (1956) THE MURDER OF ELEANOR POPE (1956) MURDER OF A MISTRESS (1957) ê MURDER OF A WIFE (1958) |
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I haven’t read any of those. His other novels were: |
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THE CREATURE FROM BEYOND INFINITY (1940) EARTH'S LAST CITADEL (1943) ê THE DARK WORLD (1946) VALLEY OF THE FLAME (1946) ê FURY (1947) THE MASK OF CIRCE (1948) ê THE TIME AXIS (1948) MAN DROWNING (1953) ê MUTANT (1953) THE WELL OF THE WORLDS (1953) ê DESTINATION: INFINITY (1956) DR. CYCLOPS (1967) ê ELAK OF ATLANTIS (1985) PRINCE RAYNOR (1987) |
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They were at their very best at the short length, and had many collections. My personal favorites were a series involving an inventor named Gallegher. He is a genius, but only when he’s dead drunk, and when he comes down from a bender he never knows what he’s created while blotto. He has to figure it out. One of the things he invents is a narcissistic robot who insults him. Very funny stories. |
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THE PROUD ROBOT (1952) ê ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS (1952) AHEAD OF TIME (1953) ê NO BOUNDARIES (1955) BYPASS TO OTHERNESS (1961) ê RETURN TO OTHERNESS (1962) CLASH BY NIGHT: AND OTHER STORIES (1980) CHESSBOARD PLANET: AND OTHER STORIES (1983) KUTTNER TIMES THREE (1988) ê DETOUR TO OTHERNESS (2001) |
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Moore published these novels: |
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EARTH'S LAST CITADEL (1943) (with Henry Kuttner) THE MASK OF CIRCE (1948) (with Henry Kuttner) DOOMSDAY MORNING (1957) ê JIREL OF JOIRY (1969) BLACK GODS AND SCARLET DREAMS (2002) |
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... and these collections: |
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JUDGMENT NIGHT (1952) ê SHAMBLEAU (1953) NORTHWEST OF EARTH (1954) ê THE BEST OF C.L. MOORE (1977) NORTHWEST SMITH (1981) |
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Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are the series characters here, from the guy who wrote the story that was made into the extremely weird and wonderful low-budget horror Bubba Ho-Tep. One of the oddest combos you could imagine. Hap is white and straight and a Democrat, Leonard is black and gay and Republican, and they are bonded by a friendship that is deeper than romantic or sexual love usually is. They are poor, usually work at day-labor type jobs. Both are educated, but have little ambition beyond the day. They live in a little fictional shithole in Texas, not far from Tyler, which is not far from my hometown. The stories are quite violent and told with wit and compassion. Lansdale is very prolific, he has won a ton of World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards, writes a lot of non-fiction, and has a ton of story collections and non-series novels, which I will get to as soon as I finish this series: |
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SAVAGE SEASON (1990) ê MUCHO MOJO (1994) TWO-BEAR MAMBO (1995) ê BAD CHILI (1997) RUMBLE TUMBLE (1998) ê CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS (2001) |
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This guy is the best find I’ve had in many a year. The character is Victor Carl, a down and out Philadelphia lawyer. There is no resemblance to Perry Mason, Atticus Finch, any of the schmucks on Law & Order, or the works of Scott Turow. Lashner is much better than Turow. That’s because Victor Carl is a loser, and thus believable. All he wants to do is get ahead, so he gets himself into hot water by taking cases he shouldn’t touch with a ten-foot writ of mandamus. He ends up doing the right thing, but mostly to save his own sorry ass. His life ambition it to be the sort of lawyer I hate, and he can’t do it, and that makes him attractive to me. If I was casting Carl in a movie, I’d have no hesitation: Billy Bob Thornton, at his seediest. Please, somebody! Do it! |
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HOSTILE WITNESS (1995) ê BITTER TRUTH [APA VERITAS] (1997) FATAL FLAW (2003) ê PAST DUE (2004) FALLS THE SHADOW (2005) |
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... is the class act in the spy genre. He doesn’t really have any peers. There are plenty of people who can write an exciting thriller, plenty who can almost make you believe their bullshit ... but in the end, it’s all bullshit. Robert Ludlum, Ian Fleming, you name it; the spy business isn’t like that. Spying is a dirty, dirty business. It involves betraying your country, your friends, everything decent people believe in, or in convincing other people to do those things. Plans may not come to fruition for thirty years or more. Spies are like spiders, one foot on the web, feeling for signals that may be fantastically subtle. There are layers upon layers, triple and quadruple crosses. This is the real world of spies, on the ground, not tearing around in Aston-Martins, shooting machine guns. There may be only one moment of violence in a Le Carre novel. There may not be any violence at all, except mental torture. Le Carre’s crowning achievement is quiet, bland, cuckolded George Smiley, who figured in 2 good novels ... |
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CALL FOR THE DEAD (1961) ê A MURDER OF QUALITY (1962) |
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2 very, very good ones ... |
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THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1963) THE LOOKING GLASS WAR (1965) |
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and then a trilogy that has been collected in one volume, The Quest for Karla, and are simply some of the best books of the 20th Century. The first was made into a terrific four or five-part television series. It was decided that the second was basically not adaptable for film, and then Alec Guinness was brought back to make the last one, which was, sadly a disappointment. But the books survive, and are must-reads for anyone who wants to see how nasty the spy business can really be. |
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TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (1974) THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY (1977) SMILEY'S PEOPLE (1980) |
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All along he has written other novels, some of them spy stories, others not. After the fall of communism and the end of the cold war some people speculated he wouldn’t have much to write about, but not to worry. He’s found plenty of material, and his last novels have been fully as good as the ones in the prime of his career. He’s a little slower in turning them out now, but I’ll take what I can get. A word of warning: If you expect to get into slam bang action on page one, you probably should skip Le Carre. He builds slowly, nothing is out on the surface, easy to see, and the twists and devices can be so subtle that, if you blink, you might miss them. He makes you work, his heroes are deeply flawed, but it’s well worth the journey. |
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A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY (1968) THE NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL LOVER (1971) THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL (1983) ê A PERFECT SPY (1986) THE RUSSIA HOUSE (1989) ê THE SECRET PILGRIM (1990) THE NIGHT MANAGER (1993) ê OUR GAME (1996) THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (1996) ê SINGLE & SINGLE (1999) THE CONSTANT GARDNER (2000) ê ABSOLUTE FRIENDS (2004) |
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Lehane got his start with an engaging pair of Boston PIs, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, smart, tough, wisecracking. Unfortunately, when you devour as many books as I do, like popcorn, it gets difficult to recall individual kernels after a few years have passed, so they are a bit hazy to me, though I recall liking them very much. Lehane hasn’t written one since 1999, however, instead doing the fabulous and tough-minded Mystic River, and Shutter Island. I have no idea if or when he will revisit the PI pair. |
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A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR ê DARKNESS TAKE MY HAND SACRED ê GONE, BABY, GONE ê PRAYERS FOR RAIN |
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This is one of those seminal writers like John D MacDonald who take an old and possibly not-too-well-respected genre and breathe new life into it. After Elmore Leonard dialogue, plots, and characters were forever changed. There are literally hundreds of writers now who ape Leonard’s dialogue and narrative style, and even a few who get close to it. His plots are always different from what you expect. Aside from Lonesome Dove, I have read almost no westerns, but Leonard is so good that I even went back and read his early ones, and loved them. He knows the street, he knows bad guys, and his good guys always have a satisfying twist to them. One of the best there is. |
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THE BOUNTY HUNTERS ê THE LAW AT RANDADO ESCAPE FROM FIVE SHADOWS ê LAST STAND AT SABER RIVER HOMBRE ê VALDEZ IS COMING ê THE MOONSHINE WAR THE BIG BOUNCE ê FORTY LASHES LESS ONE FIFTY-TWO PICKUP ê MR. MAJESTYK ê SWAG UNKNOWN MAN NO. 89 ê THE HUNTED ê THE SWITCH GOLD COAST ê GUN SIGHTS CITY PRIMEVIL: HIGH NOON IN DETROIT ê SPLIT IMAGES CAT CHASER ê LA BRAVA ê STICK ê GLITZ ê BANDITS ê TOUCH FREAKY DEAKY ê KILLSHOT ê GET SHORTY ê MAXIMUM BOB RUM PUNCH ê PRONTO ê RIDING THE RAP ê OUT OF SIGHT JACKIE BROWN ê CUBA LIBRE ê BE COOL ê PAGAN BABIES TISHOMINGO BLUES ê MR. PARADISE ê THE HOT KID |
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This is a terrific author who didn’t publish very frequently. He won some major awards with his series about Serendipity Dahlquist, a precocious 15-year-old girl and Leo Bloodworth, grumpy, 50-something private eye in Los Angeles. They make an unlikely but very engaging team, as they try to track down her lost dog and get into more trouble than they reckoned on. They are featured in: |
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SLEEPING DOG (1985) ê LAUGHING DOG (1988) |
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He started another series featuring Terry Manion, private eye in New Orleans, is featured in: |
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BLUE BAYOU (1992) ê THE NEON SMILE (1995) |
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And he has a story collection: Lucky Dog and Other Tales of Murder (2000). Take a look at those dates, and you see it was taking him 3 to 4 years to do a novel. My guess is he had to hold down a job while he wrote, and since none of his books made the bestseller lists, I assume his life was not an easy one. Then he did something different. He hooked up with Christopher Darden. I write his name like that because it’s the reverse of how they’re billed on the book covers, and it reflects what I believe is the actual relationship. You know Chris Darden, the failed lawyer who asked OJ to try on the gloves, and thus gave that asshole Cochran the excuse for the most famous line in jurisprudence: “If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit, this piece of shit.” Okay, the last line is mine, but it rhymes. (Which is apparently the only thing the jury understood in the whole trial.) Anyway, pretty much washed up in the DA’s office, Chris went looking to cash in on the two things he possessed: a mine of story ideas from his days as a prosecutor, and a famous name. Trouble was, he couldn’t write for shit. Trust me, if he could write fiction, he would write it, all by himself, simple as that. I’m sure he was dynamite at legal briefs, but nobody pays to read those, they get paid to suffer through them. (I’ve seen this sort of thing happen before, but even more egregiously, in the case of Robert K Tanenbaum, who didn’t even put his collaborator, Michael Gruber, on the covers of “his” books. Then Gruber left, and Tanenbaum’s solo efforts sucked, big time. And they still sold real well, just like Patricia Cornwell’s burnt-out last few books have sucked and still sold. Lesson: Tanenbaum had become a famous name, like Robert B Parker, and once you attain that it’s hard to get off the bestseller lists.) So Christopher Darden went looking for a “collaborator,” and lucky for him, found Dick Lochte. Since then, Lochte has produced pretty much one novel per year, and is in a new league. Bestsellers! I hope I don’t sound disdainful, because I’m not. More power to him. It’s too bad that it took hooking up with a front man to get people to read his books, but I guarantee you, those of us who have read his early stuff are now joined by a lot of others who understand who the talent is, and will stick with him when he sheds Darden. “They” have two series, both with black protagonists. The first was Nicolette (Nikki) Hill, 30-something black prosecutor in Los Angeles. She is featured in: |
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THE TRIALS OF NIKKI HILL (1999) ê L.A. JUSTICE (2001) |
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More recently, “they” have started another, featuring a defense lawyer, also in LA, Mercer Early. |
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The Last Defense (2002) ê Lawless (2004) |
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John D MacDonald and the Florida Mafia |
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For some reason I can’t explain, more really great series characters have come out of Florida in the last 10 or 20 years than just about every place else combined. Some of them are dead serious, and some are goofy in a way that could probably only happen in Florida. I don’t know what it is about the state. It’s sort of a combination of Faulkner country and laughing gas. Every craziness in the country used to be Californian in origin; I’d argue that the national nutball has now rolled around the landscape and lodged firmly in Florida. Maybe my favorite writer of all time. It’s hard to believe he’s been dead now for almost 20 years. He was my first introduction to Florida fiction, which has become a sub-genre of its own, and my favorites in what I’m calling the “Florida Mafia” are listed below. All these new writers owe a gigantic debt to the Godfather of them all. He was the first real pulp writer who the critics noticed and approved of. Too bad they waited so long; he labored in the paperback ghetto for too long before The Dreadful Lemon Sky made him into a bestseller. He’s best known for the 21 books with colors in the title about the wonderful Travis McGee. Rumors that there might be a “Black” Travis book in his vaults when he died have pretty much died out. Before Travis McGee there were many, many series tough guys like Shell Scott by pulp writer Richard S Prather, mostly pretty bad. When his publisher suggested JDM create such a character he was dubious. He didn’t want to get identified with a character he might come to hate. So he did an extraordinary thing. He wrote the first four ... in one year. Only when he was that sure he liked the dude did he send them to the publisher, and thus eventually find a much larger audience and income. Link |
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THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY ê NIGHTMARE IN PINK A PURPLE PLACE FOR DYING ê QUICK RED FOX ê A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD ê DARKER THAN AMBER ONE FEARFUL YELLOW EYE ê PALE GRAY FOR GUILT THE GIRL IN THE PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER ê THE LONG LAVENDER LOOK A TAN AND SANDY SILENCE ê DRESS HER IN INDIGO ê THE SCARLET RUSE THE TURQUOISE LAMENT ê THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY THE EMPTY COPPER SEA ê THE GREEN RIPPER ê FREE FALL IN CRIMSON CINNAMON SKIN ê THE LONELY SILVER RAIN |
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If Travis is all you’ve read, you’ve missed a lot. All through the ‘50s and ‘60s he wrote other books, most of them trashy-looking paperbacks that are a lot better than they look. Even back then he was head and shoulders above the pack. I have read all of them except Weep For Me, which has never been reprinted because JDM apparently thought it was bad. I looked for it for 20 years without success. Now, in these Internet days, I just located 26 copies, the cheapest of which sells for $35! |
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THE BRASS CUPCAKE ê JUDGE ME NOT ê BALLROOM OF THE SKIES WEEP FOR ME ê PLANET OF THE DREAMERS ê THE DAMNED CANCEL ALL OUR VOWS ê DEAD LOW TIDE ê SOFT TOUCH THE NEON JUNGLE ê ALL THESE CONDEMNED ê AREA OF SUSPICION CONTRARY PLEASURE ê CRY HARD, CRY FAST ê A BULLET FOR CINDERELLA YOU LIVE ONCE ê MURDER IN THE WIND ê APRIL EVIL ê THE EMPTY TRAP DEATH TRAP ê CAPE FEAR ê THE PRICE OF MURDER PLEASE WRITE FOR DETAILS ê BORDER TOWN GIRL ê A MAN OF AFFAIRS CLEMMIE ê THE DECEIVERS ê THE CROSSROADS ê DEADLY WELCOME THE BEACH GIRLS ê SLAM THE BIG DOOR ê THE END OF THE NIGHT THE ONLY GIRL IN THE GAME ê WHERE IS JANICE GANTRY? ONE MONDAY WE KILLED THEM ALL ê A FLASH OF GREEN MURDER FOR THE BRIDE ê THE GIRL, THE GOLD WATCH AND EVERYTHING DROWNER ê ON THE RUN ê LAST ONE LEFT ê A KEY TO THE SUITE NO DEADLY DRUG ê CONDOMINIUM ê ONE MORE SUNDAY ê BARRIER ISLAND |
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He sold a lot of short stories in his day, and the best are collected in these books: |
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THE GOOD OLD STUFF ê END OF THE TIGER: AND OTHER STORIES ê SEVEN OTHER TIMES, OTHER WORLDS ê TIME AND TOMORROW MORE GOOD OLD STUFF |
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This fellow was born Salvatore A Lombino, and has written that he felt he’d never get anywhere with a “wop” name like that. So he changed it to Evan Hunter. Nice Anglo-Saxon name. Then he changed it again. And again, and again. In order handle his incredible output he has written under the nice Anglo-Saxon names of Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, Richard Marsten, mostly back in the 50s and 60s when he was working in pulps and paperbacks. This is the only guy I know who makes Donald Westlake and Stephen King look lazy. He has 55 novels just in the 87th Precinct series! I enjoyed every single one of them. In fact, they’ve just gotten better over time. They are the original police procedurals, and you won’t find any super-human sleuths here, just dogged working stiffs usually facing the usual mopes. And then every fourth or fifth book they run into a true crazy criminal genius, The Deaf Man, and he runs rings around them. It is a wonderful family to settle in with, the dialogue is terrific, and the plots are always ingenious. The 87th Precinct novels are set in “Isola” (Italian for island), which is obviously New York City, and are: |
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COP HATER ê THE MUGGER ê THE PUSHER ê THE CON MAN KILLER'S CHOICE ê KILLER'S PAYOFF ê KILLER'S WEDGE LADY KILLER ê 'TIL DEATH ê KING'S RANSOM GIVE THE BOYS A GREAT BIG HAND ê THE HECKLER SEE THEM DIE ê LADY, LADY, I DID IT ê THE EMPTY HOURS LIKE LOVE ê TEN PLUS ONE ê AX ê HE WHO HESITATES ê DOLL EIGHTY MILLION EYES ê FUZZ ê SHOTGUN ê JIGSAW HAIL, HAIL, THE GANG’S ALL HERE ê SADIE, WHEN SHE DIED LETS HEAR IT FOR THE DEAF MAN ê HAIL TO THE CHIEF BREAD ê LONG TIME NO SEE ê CALYPSO ê GHOSTS ê HEAT ICE ê LIGHTNING ê EIGHT BLACK HORSES ê POISON ê TRICKS MCBAIN'S LADIES: THE WOMEN OF THE 87TH ê LULLABY VESPERS ê WIDOWS ê KISS ê MISCHIEF AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE ê ROMANCE ê NOCTURNE THE BIG BAD CITY ê THE LAST DANCE MONEY, MONEY, MONEY ê FAT OLLIE'S BOOK THE FRUMIOUS BANDERSNATCH ê HARK! |
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"Ed McBain" also writes other novels, and they're good, too: |
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THE BIG FIX ê RUNAWAY BLACK ê CUT ME IN DEATH OF A NURSE ê THE SPIKED HEEL ê EVEN THE WICKED THE SENTRIES ê WHERE THERE'S SMOKE ê GUNS WALK PROUD ê ANOTHER PART OF THE CITY ê DOWNTOWN DRIVING LESSONS ê ALICE IN JEOPARDY (2005) |
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When McBain wants to get more literary he lets Evan Hunter handle it. I’ve read quite a few of them, and frankly I don’t like them so much, though there are some good ones. I’m not going to list them here. Finally, this tireless fellow writes stories about Matthew Hope, a Florida lawyer, which are very good, too: |
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GOLDILOCKS ê RUMPELSTILTSKIN ê BEAUTY AND THE BEAST JACK AND THE BEANSTALK ê SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED CINDERELLA ê PUSS IN BOOTS ê THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT THREE BLIND MICE , MARY, MARY ê THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL GLADLY THE CROSS-EYED BEAR ê THE LAST BEST HOPE |
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These are among the most charming books I’ve ever read. They concern Mma. Precious Ramotswe, the finest and only woman detective in Botswana. The author is South African, and knows his subject. Life is different in Botswana, and so are peoples’ attitudes toward life. You want to say they are simpler, but of course that sounds condescending. They seem more direct, and more honest. I love them, one and all. I couldn’t recommend these books more highly. Thank you, Marilyn! |
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THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY ê TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE THE KALIHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS ê THE FULL CUPBOARD OF LIFE IN THE COMPANY OF CHEERFUL LADIES |
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With the success of the NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY books, Mr. McCall Smith has either gone into a writing frenzy seldom seen in the Western world, or is cleaning out his trunk of things he never sold before, cashing in on his new fame. If the latter is the case, it could have been bad news, but it isn’t. Three of the new publications concern Professor Dr Mauritz-Maria von Igelfeld, romance philologist, author of the definitive and almost-unread 1200 page opus PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS, and the very personification of the proper German, the academician, and the bumbling pedant. It is said that the smaller and more rarefied the field, the more vicious the arguments, and von Igelfeld and his handful of colleagues prove this over and over. They are delightful, but probably not for everybody. |
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PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS THE FINER POINTS OF SAUSAGE DOGS AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCE |
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He has also written another book, THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB, which might be the basis for another series, but I’m afraid it was a bit rarefied for my tastes. |
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This guy is a recent discovery for me ... sort of. I read Island of the Sequined Love Nun when it was new, liked it, and then didn’t see any more books by him. Recently I read Lamb, and loved it, immediately read everything else he’d ever written. I loved them all. He is extremely quirky and funny, probably not for everyone, but give him a try. Link |
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THE PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING (1991) ê COYOTE BLUE (1994) BLOODSUCKING FIENDS: A LOVE STORY (1995) ISLAND OF THE SEQUINED LOVE NUN (1997) THE LUST LIZARD OF MELANCHOLY COVE (1998) LAMB: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BIFF, CHRIST'S CHILDHOOD PAL (2002) FLUKE: OR, I KNOW WHY THE WINGED WHALE SINGS (2003) THE STUPIDEST ANGEL: A HEARTWARMING TALE OF CHRISTMAS TERROR (2004) |
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This guy showed up in 1987 with a novel about Artie Deemer, who owned a dog named Jellyroll, who had the ability to seem to smile. This got him the job of spokescanine for R-r-ruff Brand dog food, which led to roles in crap kids movies, fame and fortune. So here was a guy who only wanted to loll around in his Eames chair and listen to jazz, and because of his famous dog, is able to do it. The funny and ridiculous premise worked, and he wrote two more until 1996, and seems to have quit. Possibly he thought he had stretched it too thin. Maybe it was too hard to keep making up plots where Jellyroll got in trouble (in the last one it was a crazed celebrity stalker). He has written some sailing books, but maybe he’s just ... sitting in his Eames chair, listening to jazz. Too bad, as these books are witty without being jokey, and are full of great and hilarious detail. Link |
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LOVER MAN ê LUSH LIFE ê DON’T EXPLAIN |
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I never read a sea story until after I saw Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and loved it. I decided to try the Aubrey/Maturin novels, set in the Napoleonic Wars and afterward. I totally loved them, and read all 20. Aubrey is a jolly man of action who also loves to play the violin. We follow him from his first captaincy through many adventures to an admiral’s flag. Aubrey has almost as much trouble ashore as he does fighting at sea, running from his creditors and gambling debts. Maturin is an unlikely companion, no seaman, a surgeon with some advanced ideas like sterilization, but who still believes in bleeding, like everyone in those days, an Englishman / Catalonian, and a spy for His Britannic Majesty George III. But they work wonderfully well together. Link In chronological order: |
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MASTER AND COMMANDER ê POST CAPTAIN ê HMS SURPRISE THE MAURITIUS COMMAND ê DESOLATION ISLAND THE FORTUNE OF WAR ê THE SURGEON’S MATE THE IONIAN MISSION ê TREASON’S HARBOUR THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD ê THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL THE LETTER OF MARQUE ê THE THIRTEEN-GUN SALUTE THE NUTMEG OF CONSOLATION ê THE TRUELOVE THE WINE-DARK SEA ê THE COMMODORE ê THE YELLOW ADMIRAL THE HUNDRED DAYS ê BLUE AT THE MIZZEN |
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It’s hard to explain the appeal of PJ to an old liberal like myself. He styles himself a Republican, but I sense that he likes them only marginally more than he likes Democrats. Or maybe he hates them less. His writing reveals him to be more of a Libertarian. It seems to me that he has little love for many of the things Republicans do these days—saying they hate Big Government while endlessly expanding it, preaching fiscal conservatism while running up mind-boggling deficits. But he has understood that in the world of conservative humor ... he is a lonely wit in a sea of meanness and stupidity. Bluntly, the Left has a surfeit of sharp humorists, and the Right has only PJ. More money to be made there, because there’s less competition. He is so trenchant, so adept in skewering the blatant idiocies of the Left, that I can’t help but love him. And agree with him, more often than I’m always comfortable with. Yeah, he goes over the top, but who doesn’t? Mostly, he hoists the windbags on their own petards. And there is a lot of wind on the Left. I’ll read Al Franken when I want to see the other side skewered. The first book on this list covers his work from when he was a drug-crazed hippie through his reformation, with many non-political side trips, and would be a good place to start. |
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AGE AND GUILE BEAT YOUTH, INNOCENCE, AND A BAD HAIRCUT ALL THE TROUBLE IN THE WORLD: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF OVERPOPULATION, FAMINE, ECOLOGICAL DISASTER, ETHNIC HATRED, PLAGUE, AND POVERTY EAT THE RICH ê THE ENEMIES LIST GIVE WAR A CHANCE: EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF MANKIND'S STRUGGLE AGAINST TYRANNY, INJUSTICE AND ALCOHOL-FREE BEER HOLIDAYS IN HELL: IN WHICH OUR INTREPID REPORTER TRAVELS TO THE WORLD'S WORST PLACES AND ASKS WHAT'S FUNNY ABOUT THIS PARLIAMENT OF WHORES: A LONE HUMORIST ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN THE ENTIRE U.S. GOVERNMENT REPUBLICAN PARTY REPTILE ê PEACE KILLS: AMERICA’S FUN NEW IMPERIALISM |
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This
man drives me crazy. He revitalized the PI novel back in the
‘70s, with
Spenser, the
educated tough guy. He was really, really good for about 9 or 10
novels, and then he threw it all away. Nowadays his books are almost
self-parody, and I don’t think he has a clue. Why should he? They
continue to sell well. They continue to be read, even by me, and I
often wonder why. Short paragraphs. Short chapters. Last one had 300 pages and 60 chapters. They are printed on thick paper, large typeface, wide margins. You can easily finish one in a day, while doing a lot of other things. And I guess there are still rewards here, though almost every page I grit my teeth. How many times in this book will Spenser tell Susan “I can’t imagine life without you”? How many times will Hawk and Spenser wryly congratulate themselves and each other on how wry they are, and how they know big words? How many pages will be eaten up with endless, self-congratulatory odes to a personal code that John Wayne summed up as “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do”? He has discovered a secret: write novellas and publish them as full-length novels and nobody will call you on it. He publishes 3 or 4 books per year (this year he will have 4 titles). Oh, well. Here are the Spenser novels: |
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THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT ê GOD SAVE THE CHILD MORTAL STAKES ê PROMISED LAND ê THE JUDAS GOAT LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE ê EARLY AUTUMN A SAVAGE PLACE ê CEREMONY ê THE WIDENING GYRE VALEDICTION ê A CATSKILL EAGLE ê TAMING A SEAHORSE PALE KINGS AND PRINCES ê CRIMSON JOY ê PLAYMATES STARDUST ê PASTIME ê DOUBLE DEUCE ê PAPER DOLL WALKING SHADOW ê THIN AIR ê CHANCE ê SMALL VICES SUDDEN MISCHIEF ê HUSH MONEY ê HUGGER MUGGER ê POTSHOT WIDOW’S WALK ê BACK STORY (with Jesse Stone) ê BAD BUSINESS COLD SERVICE |
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He has a second series, starring Sunny Randall. Guess what? Her outlook on life is identical to Spenser’s, except for one thing. She can’t imagine life without her old boyfriend, who she also cannot seem to live with. |
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FAMILY HONOR ê PERISH TWICE ê SHRINK RAP ê MELANCHOLY BABY |
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He’s got a third character, Jesse Stone, and guess what? He sounds exactly like Spenser. |
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NIGHT PASSAGE ê TROUBLE IN PARADISE DEATH IN PARADISE ê STONE COLD |
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He totally fucked up Raymond Chandler’s unfinished manuscript, POODLE SPRINGS, by making Phillip Marlowe sound exactly like ... guess who? And he followed it up with another “Raymond Chandler” novel, PERCHANCE TO DREAM. He wrote a story with Jackie Robinson and a PI in it, and ... they both sounded exactly like Spenser and Hawk. (DOUBLE PLAY) Then he wrote a truly awful novel with Wyatt Earp in it, of all people (GUNMAN’S RHAPSODY) ... and you already know who Wyatt sounded like. You know what? I’m think I’m through with this shithead. Writing it all down here and seeing how boring he really is may have finally given me the courage to kick. Maybe they have a 12-step support group somewhere, PA, Parker Anonymous. “Hi, I’m John, and I’ve hated the last 12 Parker books, but I keep reading them.” Please, somebody stop me from checking out the next two Parkers: APPALOOSA (June) SCHOOL DAYS (September) |
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In the ‘80s, Paretsky was the big deal. Her Chicago PI, VI Warshawsky, was smart and tough and sassy, a feminist’s dream. I read and enjoyed them as soon as they came out. Then something changed, either her or me. I started losing patience with her. This disturbs me, because the same thing has happened with just about all the female series characters I’ve been reading (Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, etc.). The pattern is, they’re women in a man’s world, and they don’t get no respect. That’s okay. But they don’t get no support, either, and that’s not okay. I wouldn’t stand for it, and I don’t see why a woman should. VI’s landlord kvetches at her mercilessly. Her best friend and mother-substitute, Lotty, I just can’t stand. All she does is criticize VI’s choice of profession. It gets so frustrating I could scream. So I stopped reading her. (Oddly, she seems to have taken a 5-year sabbatical at about the same time.) Now she’s back in business, and I read Blacklist. It’s better ... but still not satisfying. Lotty is hardly in it, which is good. The ending is not satisfying, which is bad (a very rich person is going to go scot-free for three murders). Yes, yes, I understand this is often how it happens in the real world ... but let’s face it, we don’t read these kind of page turners to see the perp walk away at the end. Down-to-earth though they may be, we expect the heroine to solve the crime, and we expect the bad guy to die or go to jail. In other, more “serious” literature, real-world realism is okay. Geniuses like the Polanski/Towne duo can get away with it in Chinatown ... but Paretsky doesn’t rise to that level. Still, I might try the upcoming one, Fire Sale. |
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INDEMNITY ONLY ê DEADLOCK ê KILLING ORDERS BITTER MEDICINE ê BLOOD SHOT ê BURN MARKS WINDY CITY BLUES ê GUARDIAN ANGEL ê TUNNEL VISION HARD TIME ê TOTAL RECALL ê BLACKLIST ê FIRE SALE (2005) |
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Not on my short list, but Patterson writes legal/political thrillers better than either John Grisham or Scott Turow. His biblio says he has a series character, Christopher Paget, but it’s been so long since I read them I don’t recall much about him, and I’m sure the books can stand alone. |
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THE LASKO TANGENT ê DEGREE OF GUILT ê EYES OF A CHILD |
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His other novels: |
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THE OUTSIDE MAN ê ESCAPE THE NIGHT ê PRIVATE SCREENING THE FINAL JUDGEMENT ê SILENT WITNESS ê NO SAFE PLACE DARK LADY ê PROTECT AND DEFEND ê BALANCE OF POWER CONVICTION |
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Here’s a guy who hasn’t been around that long, and has really carved out a place for himself. His beat is Washington, DC, sometimes in the present but more memorably in the ‘50s or ‘60s, when it has an almost small-town feel. Pelecanos is a very tough writer, includes a lot of ethnic Greeks in his stories, and is pleasantly quirky. These are books that would be great with a soundtrack, as the characters know and love music and talk about it and listen to it all the time. I don’t know all of it, but when I do I’m able to point the laser at my internal CD player—or more likely drop the needle down on my mental 45 rpm record player—and listen along. Nick Stefanos, a ‘50's bartender and private eye in Washington D.C., is featured in: |
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A FIRING OFFENSE (1992) ê NICK'S TRIP (1993) DOWN BY THE RIVER WHERE THE DEAD MEN GO (1995) |
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Derek Strange, black and successful, and Terry Quinn, white and barely holding on are ex-cops turned private investigators in Washington D. C., featured in: |
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RIGHT AS RAIN (2001) ê HELL TO PAY (2002) SOUL CIRCUS (2003) ê HARD REVOLUTION (2004) |
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Non-series books: |
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SHOEDOG (1994) ê THE BIG BLOW DOWN (1996) KING SUCKERMAN (1997) ê THE SWEET FOREVER (1998) SHAME THE DEVIL (2000) ê DRAMA CITY (2005) |
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One of my favorite writers. He began with one two of the finest books ever written in the genre, about a man brought up to be an assassin, THE BUTCHER’S BOY, and followed it up with one even better, METZGER’S DOG. Metzger is a cat. Then there was a gloriously funny novel, THE ISLAND. Hell, all his books are good. Link |
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THE BUTCHER'S BOY ê METZGER'S DOG ê BIG FISH ê ISLAND SLEEPING DOGS ê DEATH BENEFITS ê PURSUIT ê DEAD AIM |
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In 1994 he began a series featuring Jane Whitefield, an Indian from New York who specializes in helping people vanish, like a private witness protection program. She is very, very good. |
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VANISHING ACT ê DANCE FOR THE DEAD ê SHADOW WOMAN THE FACE-CHANGERS ê BLOOD MONEY |
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Spider is probably best-known for his Callahan’s stories, some of the finest short stories the field has ever produced. Oddly, the stories have spawned the phenomenon of alt.callahans, a usenet site that is frequented by what seems to be as odd an assortment of people as those who drop into the fictional saloon, some of whom don’t even know who Spider Robinson is. I must say that the “legend” of the series has become sufficiently complicated that it might be tough to pick up the last one and just jump right in. Best to start with some early ones. |
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CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON TIME TRAVELERS STRICTLY CASH ê CALLAHAN'S SECRET CALLAHAN AND COMPANY ê CALLAHAN'S LADY LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE ê THE CALLAHAN TOUCH OFF THE WALL AT CALLAHAN'S ê CALLAHAN'S LEGACY THE CALLAHAN CHRONICALS ê CALLAHAN'S KEY CALLAHAN'S CON |
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Spider claims to be proudest of his series of three novels written in collaboration with his dancer/choreographer wife, Jeanne, concerning zero-gee dance and transcendence. And he should be. |
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STARDANCE ê STARSEED ê STARMIND |
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He also writes excellent stand-alone novels: |
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MINDKILLER ê TIME PRESSURE ê LIFEHOUSE ê TELEMPATH NIGHT OF POWER ê THE FREE LUNCH ê VERY BAD DEATHS |
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And last but certainly not least, he is the master of the short story. I only wish he had the time to write more of them ... which is something people have said to me, too. Sorry to say, you just can’t make a living at short fiction, and this is what both of us do. Novels put groceries on the table. |
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ANTINOMY ê MELANCHOLY ELEPHANTS ê TRUE MINDS USER FRIENDLY ê BY ANY OTHER NAME GOD IS AN IRON: AND OTHER STORIES |
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What can you say? If you don’t like Harry Potter, you’ve allowed yourself to get too damn old. Shame on you! I just read the first 13 pages of the new one while standing in line at the DMV, and hardly noticed I was in one of the worst places on Earth. Great laughs and sly wit, and I’ve got more than 600 pages to go! What would you think if I called my next book Harry Potter and the Struggling Science Fiction Writer? |
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HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE |
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The series character is Lucas Davenport, and he’s a cop in Minnesota. In the course of the stories he moves steadily up the ranks until he’s forged his own position as a political troubleshooter. He’s also helped by a considerable fortune, made from computer simulation programs he wrote and sold to other police departments. These are very slick and enjoyable formula stories, usually on the bestseller lists. His gimmick is to always have Prey in the title. Lawrence Block, in one of his Burglar books, made mention of a Sandford book about a mad vegetarian killer, titled Lettuce Prey. Good one, Larry! The Davenport books: |
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RULES OF PREY ê SHADOW PREY ê EYES OF PREY ê SILENT PREY WINTER PREY ê NIGHT PREY ê MIND PREY ê SUDDEN PREY SECRET PREY ê CERTAIN PREY ê EASY PREY ê CHOSEN PREY MORTAL PREY ê NAKED PREY ê HIDDEN PREY ê BROKEN PREY |
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He has a second series with characters called Kidd, who is an old-time hacker, and his friend and sometime lover LuEllen, a cat burglar. They are some of the first books I read where computers are used knowledgeably and with at least reasonable accuracy. Gimmick here is the titles all refer to Tarot cards: |
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THE FOOLS RUN ê THE EMPRESS FILE ê THE DEVIL'S CODE THE HANGED MAN'S SONG |
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He has written on stand-alone novel, THE NIGHT CREW. |
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I don’t know what’s happened to this dude. He came slamming out of the Keys with about one book a year, and now we haven’t heard from him in 5 years. Far as I can tell, there’s nothing in the pipeline, either. Maybe he burnt out. But if he starts again, I’ll be first in line to read him. He works the small-time crime scene, also-ran would-be gangsters, maybe displaced from New Jersey and unable to take in the massive craziness that is Florida. You will meet Bert the Shirt and his constantly constipated companion, a miserable little Chihuahua named Don Giovanni. And lots of other wonderful characters. Shames is just plain fun to read. I hope he starts again. |
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FLORIDA STRAITS ê SCAVENGER REEF ê SUNBURN TROPICAL DEPRESSION ê VIRGIN HEAT ê MANGROVE SQUEEZE WELCOME TO PARADISE ê THE NAKED DETECTIVE |
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Here is a writer I got into because of an excellent film. It was The Big Fix, starring Richard Dreyfuss, and it turned out it was a very accurate adaptation. Moses Wine, private investigator in Los Angeles, is an old radical who is cynical now, but still remembers the good old days in Berkeley. He’s divorced, and has to take his time with his kids at inconvenient and funny moments. Cynical or not, his politics are intact, he just doesn’t think he can change the world anymore, so he does his best to change a little piece of it at a time. Simon does screenplays, so he doesn’t get around to novels too often, but it’s worth the wait. |
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The Big Fix (1973) ê Wild Turkey (1974) ê Peking Duck (1979) California Roll (1985) ê The Straight Man (1986) Raising the Dead (1988) ê Dead Meet (1988) The Lost Coast (1997) ê Director's Cut (2003) |
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“Lemony Snicket was born before you were, and is likely to die before you as well. His family has roots in a part of the country which is now underwater, and his childhood was spent in the relative splendor of the Snicket Villa which has since become a factory, a fortress and a pharmacy and is now, alas, someone else's villa.” The good news is that these are 11 of the most delightful books I’ve ever read. The bad news is there will only be 13. You learn things about the Baudelaire orphans and Mr. Snicket in little snippets like the above. (You don’t learn much about Snicket in The Unauthorized Autobiography; it is so wonderfully fragmentary, with penciled corrections, bits and pieces that add up to nothing but sheer lunacy. The book was printed with a reversible cover so you can disguise the fact you’re reading it, in case any of Lemony’s numerous enemies are watching you. The other cover is The Luckiest Kids in the World! by Loney M. Setnick.) Children reading these books will enrich their vocabularies and knowledge of all sorts of figures of speech in the most delightful possible ways, by means of humor (a word which here means “sly understatement and irony”). The author uses every trick in the book, and then invents even more of his own. Try them! |
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A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS: THE BAD BEGINNING ê THE REPTILE ROOM ê THE WIDE WINDOW THE MISERABLE MILL ê THE AUSTERE ACADEMY THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR ê THE VILE VILLAGE THE HOSTILE HOSPITAL ê THE CARNIVOROUS CARNIVAL
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
ê
THE GRIM
GROTTO |
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(1918-1985) Ted was, in my opinion, the best short fiction writer the SF field has ever produced. You can’t describe a Ted Sturgeon story, you just can’t do it. You have to read them. Most of them are available in a long series of older collections, some of them hard to find. Ted was the poster boy for writer’s block. He must have had a dozen of them, the first one lasting five years, the last one taking up basically the last decade or more of his life. But when he was clicking, when the fiction was pouring out of him, he had no equal, and still doesn’t. There has never been a more human nor a more empathic writer than Theodore Sturgeon. |
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WITHOUT SORCERY (1948) ê CAVIAR (1955) ê A WAY HOME (1955) THUNDER AND ROSES: STORIES OF SCIENCE-FICTION & FANTASY (1957) A TOUCH OF STRANGE (1958) ê ALIENS 4 (1959) E PLURIBUS UNICORN (1959) ê BEYOND (1960) STURGEON IN ORBIT (1964) ê THE JOYOUS INVASIONS (1965) STARSHINE (1966) ê TO MARRY MEDUSA (1966) THE WORLDS OF THEODORE STURGEON (1972) TO HERE AND THE EASEL (1973) CASE AND THE DREAMER: AND OTHER STORIES (1974) STURGEON IS ALIVE AND WELL (1977) ê VISIONS AND VENTURERS (1978) MATURITY: THREE STORIES (1979) ê THE GOLDEN HELIX (1980) ALIEN CARGO (1984) ê A TOUCH OF STURGEON (1987) |
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Some of his stories had become hard to find. Then ten years ago Paul Williams and the North Atlantic Press brought out the first of an announced 10-volume set that would put all of his stories back into print. The last one came out this year, and I’ve heard they are fabulous, but at $30 a pop I haven’t bought any. I don’t buy a lot of books of any kind anymore, but I’d like to have these, even though I’ve read just about all the stories. One of these days. |
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1. THE ULTIMATE EGOIST (1994) ê 2. MICROCOSMIC GOD (1995) 3. KILLDOZER! (1996) ê 4. THUNDER AND ROSES (1997) 5. THE PERFECT HOST (1998) ê 6. BABY IS THREE (1999) 7. A SAUCER OF LONELINESS (2000) ê 8. BRIGHT SEGMENT (2002) 9. AND NOW THE NEWS... (2003) 10. THE MAN WHO LOST THE SEA (2005) |
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Ted never really clicked with the novel form, though the first two below are some of the best I’ve ever read. Some of Your Blood is pretty damn good, too. |
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THE SYNTHETIC MAN (AKA THE DREAMING JEWELS) (1950) MORE THAN HUMAN (1952) ê THE COSMIC RAPE (1958) VENUS PLUS X (1960) ê SOME OF YOUR BLOOD (1961) VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961) THE RARE BREED (1966) ê THE STARS ARE THE STYX (1981) GODBODY (1986) |
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What an odd and sad saga. Tanenbaum was an assistant DA in New York City, later the Mayor of Beverly Hills (!), and during that time he seems to have collected a million stories about the typical dirtbags on the street. That, and maybe he can plot. No one knows. What he can’t do is write for sour apples. So he engaged his cousin, Michael Gruber, to do the characters and give these books their special flavor. They concern Butch Karp, Jewish DA in Manhattan, fighting an endless battle with red tape, politics, plea bargaining, and outright criminal activity in the DA’s office. He’s married to Marlene Ciampi, who begins with the DA but can’t stand the horseshit and sets up her own protection agency for wives and celebrities being stalked by psycho fans or deranged husbands. Butch won’t cross any legal lines; Marlene ignores them and does whatever it takes. Anything. She tries the legal stuff first, but if someone has to be killed she’s not above setting him up for it and gunning him down. They get into an improbable number of scrapes and adventures, but that’s standard for this sort of series. There are also an improbable number of coincidences, but the books are so well-written that I forgive them. The books start in the '70s and work their way up to present day. They have a daughter, Lucy, a devout Catholic and a language genius. She can pick up a language in a few weeks. There are many other delights. Then Tanenbaum and Gruber had a falling out. Gruber went on to write two wonderful books starring a black Cuban cop in Miami, which mix cop work with spirituality and religion in a way I normally would sneer at, but Gruber makes it work. Tanenbaum went on to publish another Karp/Ciampi book, HOAX, which is a piece of shit. I finished it, feeling all the time like I was watching a car accident in slow motion involving a lot of people I loved. Wanted to vomit. But the first 15 books are swell. |
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NO LESSER PLEA ê DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE IMMORAL CERTAINTY ê REVERSIBLE ERROR ê JUSTICE DENIED CORRUPTION OF BLOOD ê FALSELY ACCUSED IRRESISTIBLE IMPULSE ê RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT ACT OF REVENGE ê TRUE JUSTICE ê ENEMY WITHIN
ABSOLUTE RAGE
ê
RESOLVED
ê
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Tappley is what I think of as a reliable mid-level writer. He’s never made the bestseller lists, perhaps because his protagonist, Brady Coyne, is fairly laid back. He’s a Boston attorney who doesn’t go into the office any more than he has to. He has a normally quiet practice, managing estates for a small number of wealthy clients. Personally, he’d rather go fishin’. There’s nothing he loves more than wasting a day hip-deep in a trout stream, but naturally his cases regularly take him into the crapper. |
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DEATH AT CHARITY'S POINT (1984) ê THE DUTCH BLUE ERROR (1984) FOLLOW THE SHARKS (1985) ê THE MARINE CORPSE (1986) DEAD MEAT (1987) ê THE VULGAR BOATMAN (1987) A VOID IN HEARTS (1988) ê DEAD WINTER (1989) CLIENT PRIVILEGE (1990) ê THE SPOTTED CATS (1991) TIGHT LINES (1992) ê THE SNAKE EATER (1993) THE SEVENTH ENEMY (1995) ê CLOSE TO THE BONE (1996) CUTTER'S RUN (1998) ê MUSCLE MEMORY (1999) ê SCAR TISSUE (2000) PAST TENSE (2001) ê A FINE LINE (2002) ê SHADOW OF DEATH (2004) NERVOUS WATER (2005) |
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He has collaborated twice now with Philip R. Craig, who has his own series character. I haven’t read them yet. Apparently, the two characters work together in these. |
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FIRST LIGHT (2001) ê SECOND SIGHT (2005) |
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This guy died in 1995, after a great career. Thomas was wiser and more cynical about politics better than any writer I know. He’s great on characters, too. He’s got two series featuring two guys. The first is "Mac" McCorkle, a saloon owner and Mike Padillo, a spy in Bonn, Germany: |
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The Cold War Swap (1966) ê Cast a Yellow Shadow (1967) The Backup Men (1971) ê Twilight at Mac's Place (1990) |
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Then there’s Artie Wu and Quincy Durant, a couple of soldiers of fortune for their company, WuDu Ltd.: |
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Chinaman's Chance (1978) ê Out on the Rim (1987) ê Voodoo Ltd. (1992) |
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His knowledge of the workings of politics shows up best in his non-series books, which are set in a variety of countries: |
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The Seersucker Whipsaw (1967) ê The Singapore Wink (1968) The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (1970) ê The Porkchoppers (1972) If You Can't Be Good (1973) ê The Money Harvest (1975) Yellow-Dog Contract (1976) ê The Eighth Dwarf (1979) The Mordida Man (1981) ê Missionary Stew (1983) ê Briarpatch (1984) The Fourth Durango (1989) |
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He had a pseudonym, Oliver Bleeck, who wrote about Philip St. Ives, a professional go-between. That means somebody needs to get something to someone else in dangerous circumstances. He has to rely on his reputation for getting it done no matter what, and never selling out his employer. A pretty good film was made from the third one, called St. Ives, starring Charles Bronson. |
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The Brass Go-Between (1969) ê Protocol for a Kidnapping (1971) The Procane Chronicle (1972) ê The Highbinders (1974) No Questions Asked (1976) |
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In 1972 a writer created THE EIGER SANCTION, what he thought of as a spoof of spy thrillers. Then, to what he has described as his considerable embarrassment, it became a runaway bestseller. This writer styles himself “Trevanian.” I have discovered several contradictory stories about who he really is, as well as other pen names he has used. I choose to discount them all and say only that he is one of the best writers around, whoever he is. He wrote one more Jonathan Hemlock book, THE LOO SANCTION, which was even more over the top and just as good. Since then he has appeared infrequently, given only one or two interviews, and produced four books that are as wildly different as books can be. One, THE MAIN, is one of my favorite books of all time. His most recent is described as an “autobiographical novel,” in which he cheerfully admits he embellished freely but which apparently contains core truths about his poverty-stricken childhood. It is also the first book I’ve read with “cybernotes,” where the extensive footnotes can be found at a website. He is old now, and ill, but if another book by him appears I’ll snap it up instantly. |
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THE MAIN ê SHIBUMI ê THE SUMMER OF KATYA INCIDENT AT TWENTY-MILE THE CRAZYLADIES OF PEARL STREET |
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There’s a bit of a mystery here. Valin burst on the scene in the early ‘80s with Harry Stoner, an old-fashioned hard-boiled detective in Cincinnati, of all places. He produced a book every few years, and then I didn’t hear from him again for a long time. I heard a rumor that he was writing for television, but can’t confirm it. Now I’ve found two new ones I haven’t read, and am picking up on them. Stoner is from the old school, no money, fiercely loyal to his clients, who are often losers, drives the same old Pinto he’s been driving since the ‘70s. He’s good, and I wish we got more of him. |
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THE LIME PIT ê FINAL NOTICE ê DEAD LETTER ê DAY OF WRATH NATURAL CAUSES ê LIFE'S WORK ê FIRE LAKE EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES ê SECOND CHANCE THE MUSIC LOVERS ê MISSING |
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I know this guy slightly. He “burst upon the scene” in the 1970s with a series of short stories and novellas set in something called “The Eight Worlds.” I don’t remember all the details, but it was something about alien invaders occupying the Earth, and humanity getting by on the rest of the planets. His first novel was set there, and in the ‘90s he returned to the milieu with two more books. There is a rumor that that will be a third, IRONTOWN BLUES, to make up a “Metal Trilogy,” but who knows? The dude can be seriously lazy. |
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THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE (1977) ê STEEL BEACH (1992) THE GOLDEN GLOBE (1998) |
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Then he wrote another trilogy, set inside a really big living creature called Gaea. There was a female protagonist, Cirocco “Rocky” Jones, and maybe it was here that the rumors started that “John Varley” was really a woman. He did have a lot of female main characters. I find the accusation ridiculous, myself. I’ve met him—a tall, handsome, eternally youthful Greek God with a winning smile—and he’s no more a woman than George Eliot, George Sand, Oscar Wilde, or James Tiptree, Jr. He says people keep pestering him for a fourth book in the series, but it ain’t gonna happen. |
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TITAN (1979) ê WIZARD (1980) ê DEMON (1984) |
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After that he got involved in writing for Hollywood. He worked on four or five scripts, he can’t remember for sure as that whole time is rather fuzzy in his memory. Only one got made, Millennium, and it stunk. He novelized it, and it was nothing like the movie. |
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MILLENNIUM (1983) |
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Lately he has been working on what he’s calling “The Heinlein Tribute Trilogy.” By that he means the novels are inspired by the Heinlein juvenile novels that were the first things he read in the SF field, in junior high school. The second one will be coming out in April 2006, and he’s at work on the third, ROLLING THUNDER. |
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RED THUNDER (2003) ê RED LIGHTNING (2006) |
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He recently wrote a stand-alone novel, which was originally going to be a screenplay. David Crosby recently wrote to tell Varley he really liked it. |
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MAMMOTH (2005) |
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But most people like his short fiction best. Too bad he doesn’t have time to write more of it. They can be found in four collections, with some duplications. The last one includes introductions that take you through Varley’s rather weird life. He’s not to everybody’s taste, but buy his books anyway, okay? Buy lots of them. |
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THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION (1978) THE BARBIE MURDERS & OTHER STORIES (AKA PICNIC ON NEARSIDE) (1980) BLUE CHAMPAGNE (1986) ê THE JOHN VARLEY READER (2004) |
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Probably the best cop writer there is, probably because he really was a street cop, for many years, and must have loved it because he stuck with it even when he was rich and famous until he couldn’t be effective because people he was arresting were asking for his autograph. My personal favorite of his books is The Choirboys, an insane sort of Catch-22 for cops. But they’re all good. |
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The New Centurions (1970) ê The Blue Knight (1972) The Choirboys (1975) ê The Black Marble (1978) The Glitter Dome (1981) ê The Delta Star (1983) The Secrets Of Harry Bright (1985) ê The Golden Orange (1990) Fugitive Nights (1992) ê Finnegan's Week (1993) ê Floaters (1996) |
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He also writes non-fiction, which has been critically acclaimed, but is not really my sort of thing. |
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The Onion Field (1973) ê Lines and Shadows (1984) Echoes in the Darkness (1987) ê The Blooding (1989) ê Fire Lover (2002) |
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This guy is new on the scene, only three shortish novels so far. They are connected, but not a series. Meely LaBauve is a dirt-poor Cajun boy with a lot of nerve and wit. His dad's a drunkard, and he's persecuted by a guy named Junior, and he’s funny and smart. Then Wells set himself a challenge. Tell the story of Junior (Junior’s Leg). A tough proposition, because he’s not a nice guy. But why isn’t he nice? There’s always a reason, unless you’re a stone psychopath, and Junior is not. By the end of the book he’s trying to reform himself. Then yet another challenge: Tell the story of Meely’s no ’count father (Logan’s Storm). He pulls that one off, too. I love these books. Link |
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I don’t have a favorite living author, but if I made a short list, Donald Westlake would be on it. He is both the wittiest and the toughest writer going, in one or another of his incarnations. And the best thing about him is that he is wildly prolific. You can count on 3 or 4 Westlake books a year. He has used 8 pen names that he admits to, one (“Samuel Holt”) that is an open secret, and who knows how many others? I’ve read every book he’s ever written except for a juvenile called Philip, 4 trashy (his word) potboilers for Monarch Books in 1961 under the name “Edwin West,” which are impossible to find (BROTHER AND SISTER, CAMPUS DOLL, YOUNG AND INNOCENT, and STRANGE AFFAIR), a biography of Elizabeth Taylor (by “John B. Allen”), of all things, also impossible to find, and a disaster-movie parody called COMFORT STATION, by “J. Morgan Cunningham.” If anybody out there knows where to find any of these books, I’d be eternally grateful if you’d let me know. His novels have been made into movies many times, most of them awful. He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay adaptation of Jim Thompson’s The Grifters, and wrote the excellent thriller The Stepfather (and none of the terrible sequels). The dude can write anything, and does it a lot. You gotta love that. Under his own name he has written the following novels, most but not all of them comic capers and adventures: |
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THE MERCENARIES ê KILLING TIME ê 361 ê KILLY ê PITY HIM AFTERWARDS ê THE FUGITIVE PIGEON ê THE BUSY BODY THE SPY IN THE OINTMENT ê GOD SAVE THE MARK WHO STOLE SASSI MANOON? ê SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY UP YOUR BANNERS ê ADIOS SCHEHEREZADE I GAVE AT THE OFFICE ê COPS AND ROBBERS GANGWAY (with Brian Garfield) ê HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER BROTHERS KEEPERS ê TWO MUCH ê DANCING AZTECS ê ENOUGH CASTLE IN THE AIR ê KAHAWA ê A LIKELY STORY HIGH ADVENTURE ê TRUST ME ON THIS ê SACRED MONSTER HUMANS ê BABY, WOULD I LIE? ê SMOKE ê THE AX ê THE HOOK BAD NEWS ê PUT A LID ON IT ê MONEY FOR NOTHING |
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Story Collections: |
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THE CURIOUS FACTS PRECEDING MY EXECUTION ê THIEVES DOZEN |
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His most beloved character is John Dortmunder, a career criminal with a gang that has been called “blundering” by some reviewers, who missed the point entirely. Dortmunder and his gang of regulars (Andy Kelp, Stan Murch, Tiny Bulcher, and others) are not stupid, they are smart and professional. But Westlake knows that things go wrong, that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Dortmunder knows this (he expects it, he is a confirmed pessimist and fatalist), and knows how to roll with the punches. Who else would have to steal the same emerald four times? Who would come up with the idea of stealing a bank? Not robbing it, stealing it? And that’s just in the first two books. Reading the Dortmunder books becomes like settling in with a bunch of old friends, pulling up a chair in the back room of the OJ Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue and plotting along with them to steal some unlikely thing. There are almost no jokes in these books, but there is wit on every page, sometimes in every sentence. No matter what book I’m reading, when a new Dortmunder comes in I drop it like a hot rock and sit down and read it. It goes right to the top of the stack. The Dortmunder series: |
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THE HOT ROCK ê BANK SHOT ê JIMMY THE KID NOBODY'S PERFECT ê WHY ME ê GOOD BEHAVIOR DROWNED HOPES ê DON'T ASK WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN? ê BAD NEWS THE ROAD TO RUIN ê WATCH YOUR BACK! |
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The Mr. Hyde to Westlake’s Dr. Jekyll is "Richard Stark." He’s been writing them since 1962 as original paperbacks. He wrote 20 of them, then stopped for 23 years. Lately he’s started again, and we’ve been blessed with 6 new ones. The character is Parker, no first name, and he’s tough. He is a total pragmatist. He’s not a killer by nature, but he thinks nothing of killing. If you are standing between him and something he wants, you’ll soon have a Parker-sized hole in you. This is the more realistic side of Dortmunder, and he’s not for everybody. But if you like this sort of stuff, Parker is the best there is. |
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THE HUNTER ê THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE ê THE OUTFIT THE MOURNER ê THE SCORE ê THE JUGGER ê THE SEVENTH THE HANDLE êTHE RARE COIN SCORE ê THE DAMSEL THE GREEN EAGLE SCORE ê THE BLACK ICE SCORE THE SOUR LEMON SCORE ê THE DAME ê THE BLACKBIRD LEMONS NEVER LIE ê SLAYGROUND ê DEADLY EDGE PLUNDER SQUAD ê BUTCHER'S MOON ê COMEBACK ê BACKFLASH FLASHFIRE ê FIREBREAK ê BREAKOUT ê NOBODY RUNS FOREVER |
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From 1966 to 1972 Westlake wrote 5 novels under the name “Tucker Coe,” about an almost suicidally depressed ex-cop who was reluctantly dragged into PI-type cases when all he wanted to do was build a big wall in his back yard. They are excellent: |
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KINDS OF LOVE, KINDS OF DEATH ê MURDER AMONG CHILDREN WAX APPLE ê A JADE IN ARIES ê DON'T LIE TO ME |
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Westlake is a writer’s writer. I’ve literally never met a writer who doesn’t like him, if they’ve read him at all. Sadly, he’s never really had a bestseller, though I think The Ax did pretty well. Once again, that book is totally ingenious and inexorable in its logic and characters. The world dodged a bullet when Don Westlake decided to be a writer instead of a criminal mastermind. Nothing would be safe if he set his mind to steal it. And the literate world is missing a lot by not buying his books by the millions. Oh, one more recent pseudonym: Judson Jack Carmichael, THE SCARED STIFF |
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Here’s a dude who knows everything about the outdoors that I don’t. He worked for years as a fishing guide, and is an ardent traveler to the swampier places of the world. He has collected his travel essays into 4 books, of which I’ve read only Batfishing in the Rainforest. His series character is Doc Ford, a marine biologist who used to be a member of a supersecret military group that specialized in assassinations. He wants to leave all that behind him but ... well, you know. You can’t write a thriller about a guy with coke-bottle glasses who does nothing but bother fish. Which is what he’d be if trouble didn’t come looking for him. He is the complete rationalist and pragmatist, no understanding at all of the spiritual side of life. His sidekick is one Tomlinson, who couldn’t be more different. Drug-addled but brilliant, Tomlinson never met a screwball theory he didn’t love. The odd couple business works very well. Most Florida writers concentrate on Miami or the Keys. White lives near Sanibel Island, on the Gulf Coast, the less glamorous part of the state, and that’s where his novels take place. There is a lively subtext of life around the marina there, and many real places and businesses are mentioned. The Doc Ford Books: |
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SANIBEL FLATS ê THE HEAT ISLANDS ê THE MAN WHO INVENTED FLORIDA CAPTIVA ê NORTH OF HAVANA ê THE MANGROVE COAST TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS ê SHARK RIVER ê TWELVE MILE LIMIT EVERGLADES ê TAMPA BURN ê DEAD OF NIGHT |
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Kate is a good friend, though I’m sorry to say it’s been a long time since I’ve contacted her. I’ll have to do something about that this Christmas. She began her career as a science fiction writer, and was married for a long time to SF golden age writer and editor Damon Knight. But SF was too restrictive for Kate. She branched out into just about anything, and lately seems to have settled comfortably and, as usual, extremely professionally, into series stories of the law and detection. Kate is a writer’s writer, and you can easily see that by looking at the list of her award nominations and wins, here. She has a ton of nominations and wins for the Nebula, which is given out by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Only a few Hugo nods, which come from the readers. This is a case of being too good for most SF readers, I believe. Face it, many SF fans are style-deaf, and they want to be challenged scientifically but don’t much care for moral ambiguity or complicated characters. (By no means all, I hasten to add. There’s just not always enough fans who appreciate good literature to award Hugos where they ought to go.) Kate’s career seems to fall, very roughly, into three stages. SF in the ‘60s. Then in the '70s she branched out in all directions, including a comic novel. By the late ‘80s she was solidly into series novels. The first involved Charlie Meiklejohn, ex-arson investigator P.I., and Constance Leidl, a psychologist, in New York: |
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THE HAMLET TRAP (1987) ê THE DARK DOOR (1988) THE SMART HOUSE (1989) ê SWEET, SWEET POISON (1990) SEVEN KINDS OF DEATH (1992) A FLUSH OF SHADOWS [5 novellas] (1995) |
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Then she started another series with Barbara Holloway, a defense attorney in Oregon, where she has lived for many years: |
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DEATH QUALIFIED (1991)ê THE BEST DEFENSE (1994) MALICE PREPENSE (1996) ê DEFENSE FOR THE DEVIL (1999) NO DEFENSE (2000) ê DESPERATE MEASURES (2001) CLEAR AND CONVINCING PROOF (2003) ê THE UNBIDDEN TRUTH (2004) |
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But you can’t keep Kate tied down in one series. Here are her earlier books, and other stand-alones done recently: |
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MORE BITTER THAN DEATH (1962) ê THE MILE-LONG SPACESHIP (1963) THE CLONE (with THEODORE L THOMAS) (1965) ANDOVER AND THE ANDROID (1966) ê THE NEVERMORE AFFAIR (1966) THE KILLER THING (1967) ê LET THE FIRE FALL (1969) THE YEAR OF THE CLOUD (with THEODORE L THOMAS) (1970) MARGARET AND I (1971) ê CITY OF CAIN (1974) THE INFINITY BOX (1975) ê WHERE LATE THE SWEET BIRDS SANG (1975) THE CLEWISTON TEST (1976) ê FAULT LINES (1977) JUNIPER TIME (1979) ê A SENSE OF SHADOW (1981) LISTEN, LISTEN (1981) ê THE WINTER BEACH (1981) OH, SUSANNAH! (1982) ê WELCOME, CHAOS (1983) HUYSMAN'S PETS (1985) ê CRAZY TIME (1988) ê CAMBIO BAY (1990) NAMING THE FLOWERS (1992) ê JUSTICE FOR SOME (1993) THE GOOD CHILDREN (1998) ê THE DEEPEST WATER (2000) SKELETONS: A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE (2002) THE PRICE OF SILENCE (2005) |
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She is also the master of shorter fiction, collected in: |
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THE DOWNSTAIRS ROOM (1968) ê ABYSS: TWO NOVELLAS (1971) SOMERSET DREAMS: AND OTHER FICTIONS (1978) BETTER THAN ONE (with DAMON KNIGHT) (1980) CHILDREN OF THE WIND (1989) ê AND THE ANGELS SING (1992) |
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Series featuring Alan Gregory, psychologist, and his wife Lauren, an assistant DA in Boulder Colorado. Lauren has progressive MS. Alan is a cross-country and mountain biker. His cases almost always involve the conflict between information he has received in confidence, and the ethical dilemmas that gets him into. Not for lovers of the hard-boiled, but intelligent and appealing. In chronological order: |
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PRIVILEGED INFORMATION ê PRIVATE PRACTICES HIGHER AUTHORITY ê HARM’S WAY ê REMOTE CONTROL CRITICAL CONDITIONS ê MANNER OF DEATH ê COLD CASE THE PROGRAM ê WARNING SIGNS ê THE BEST REVENGE BLINDED ê MISSING PERSONS |
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Another dead man. Willeford labored a long time in the cheap paperback coal mines, like John D MacDonald. For a while I didn’t seem to have written much fiction at all. I think I read that he was a newspaperman, but I won’t swear to it. Then his career took off with the invention of Hoke Moseley, a cop in Miami, and a bit of a fuck-up. But an endearing one. Hoke lasted four novels and was getting a following, when Willeford died. The first one, MIAMI BLUES, was made into one of the best movie adaptations I’ve ever seen. |
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MIAMI BLUES (1984) ê NEW HOPE FOR THE DEAD (1985) SIDESWIPE (1987) ê THE WAY WE DIE NOW (1988) |
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Before that, his pulp books, none of which I’ve read: |
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HIGH PRIEST OF CALIFORNIA (1953) ê WILD WIVES (1954) PICK-UP (1955) ê LUST IS A WOMAN (1956) THE BLACK MASS OF BROTHER SPRINGER (1958) THE WOMAN CHASER (1990) ê UNDERSTUDY FOR DEATH (1961) NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY (1961) THE MACHINE IN WARD ELEVEN [SS] (1963) THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY (1971) KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE (1987) |
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And he has an excellent collection: |
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THE SHARK-INFESTED CUSTARD (1993) |
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(Note: There are two Don Winslows. One of them writes what look like bodice-rippers for guys. You can usually distinguish them by the titles.) Winslow got his start with a series featuring Neal Carey, a young man who does troubleshooting work for a mysterious group called Friends of the Family, which does things for rich people that lawyers can’t do. It’s been a while since I read them, so details are hazy, but I remember enjoying them immensely. And I love the titles: |
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A COOL BREEZE ON THE UNDERGROUND (1991) THE TRAIL TO BUDDHA'S MIRROR (1992) WAY DOWN ON THE HIGH LONELY (1993) A LONG WALK UP THE WATER SLIDE (1994) WHILE DROWNING IN THE DESERT (1996) |
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Then he wrote a tough and gritty and funny stand-alone, and then another, and that seems to be his direction now: |
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THE DEATH AND LIFE OF BOBBY Z (1997) CALIFORNIA FIRE AND LIFE (1999) |
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Then, this year, 2005, he came out with his masterpiece. It is The Power of the Dog, and it is the most ruthless, relentless, unblinking examination of our way-beyond-insane “War on Drugs” that’s ever been written, or at least that I’ve ever read. He examines it with characters from multiple points of view, from the growers and drug kingpins in Mexico, to an idealistic DEA agent who never dreams how far he’ll go in the ever-diminishing hope of actually doing something, until he goes far beyond what any sane man would do, pretty much like our government has. It begins early on in the game, back in the ‘70s, and tracks the sorry story of how we, like the very definition of insanity, continue doing exactly the same stupid things and expecting to get a different result. I can’t recommend this book too highly. Or, for that matter, all of Winslow’s books. |
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Along with Hunter Thompson and some others, Wolfe invented the “New Journalism” in the '60s, and that’s both good and bad. It can go over the top, but it also intends to bring the reader more deeply into the story, right along with the author’s prejudices, which are right out there on display, take ‘em or leave ‘em. Myself, I prefer Wolfe to Thompson, as he is sly and witty, sober without ever being boring, and usually makes a lot more sense to me than most other essayists. When he moved to fiction he wrote a brilliant book, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and another which I still haven’t read. The one I just finished, Hooking Up, contains some old stuff, a novelette, and Wolfe’s takes on the Internet Village and such-like at the turn of the century, and is brilliant as usual. His blistering counter-attack on what he calls “My Three Stooges,” John Irving, Norman Mailer, and John Updike, is worth the price of the book by itself. |
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THE KANDY-KOLORED TANGERINE FLAKE STREAMLINE BABY THE PUMP HOUSE GANG ê THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST RADICAL CHIC AND MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS THE PAINTED WORD MAUVE GLOVES & MADMEN, CLUTTER & VINE THE RIGHT STUFF ê FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE IN OUR TIME ê THE PURPLE DECADES THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES ê A MAN IN FULL ê HOOKING UP |
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I think of this guy as a popcorn writer. Sometimes there’s just nothing new available from the writers I really love, and I am a compulsive reader, with a strong bent toward fiction. Sometimes I’ll try something new, sometimes I’ll take a shot at non-fiction, but often I’ll go to my list of people who are readable but not wonderful. You can rely on Woods for a decent story. His main series character is a lawyer who gets richer and richer with every book, enjoys fine food at Elaine’s in New York (Elaine is an actual character), and isn’t really very deep. But he’ll do. Sometimes. Will Lee: |
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CHIEFS ê RUN BEFORE THE WIND ê GRASS ROOTS ê THE RUN CAPITAL CRIMES |
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Stone Barrington: |
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NEW YORK DEAD ê DIRT ê DEAD IN THE WATER SWIMMING TO CATALINA ê WORST FEARS REALIZED L.A. DEAD ê COLD PARADISE ê THE SHORT FOREVER DIRTY WORK ê RECKLESS ABANDON ê TWO-DOLLAR BILL |
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His female series starring small-town police chief Holly Barker are more believable. I don’t suppose he’ll run out of “Orchid” titles any time soon. There’s about a million types of orchid. |
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ORCHID BEACH ê ORCHID BLUES ê BLOOD ORCHID IRON ORCHID |
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He also writes stand-alone books: |
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DEEP LIE ê UNDER THE LAKE ê WHITE CARGO ê PALINDROME SANTA FE RULES ê L.A. TIMES ê DEAD EYES ê HEAT IMPERFECT STRANGERS ê CHOKE THE PRINCE OF BEVERLY HILLS |
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