CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS by Joe R. Lansdale

*Book 6 of the Hap and Leonard series*

Hap and Leonard have been in some pretty bad situations over the years but nothing can prepare them for the open seas. After Hap gets a sizeable reward for saving a teenage girl from a tweaked out murderer, he decides to go on a cruise ship vacation with Leonard. But rather than the restful trip they had planned, they end up on the cruise from hell and find themselves balls-deep in trouble as usual, when their ship leaves them stranded in a Mexican beachtown. 

One weird thing that stood out is that this novel felt like the most negative Hap and Leonard installment. With how much they constantly nagged, it felt like everything that the boys experienced was the absolute worst thing to ever happen to them: from the ocean, to the food on the cruise ship, to the hotel in Mexico and every person they meet along the way. In the past, our heroes have usually been pretty positive throughout everything, but here, both Hap and Leonard felt like those friends you have that just complain about everything under the sun. But, this book is ultimately a big improvement over the last one, Rumble Tumble, because of its much more engaging storyline. The story takes it's time to get going, but once it does it really takes off and you forget the grumbling first act. The action is clear and concise, many of the supporting characters really come into their own here, and the new characters really shine, including Leonard's new boyfriend John. Even with issues, it's hard to resist reading about the adventures of Hap and Leonard, and this novel is no exception.

GRADE: B-

DIG MY GRAVE DEEP by Peter Rabe

 Pulpy Tagline: "He wanted out of the big rackets—and the boys said okay—feet first!"

Oh man, this one was hard to get through! This was one of the most difficult times I've had reading something that I was actually interested in. I was attracted by the reputation of pulp author Peter Rabe, the nifty title, and the awesome cover. The story of a gangster who's lost the taste for the bad life and having to fight to get out from under his mob bosses isn't the most original of plots, but if done well, could be pretty great. But jeez, all the shady deals with crooked politicians and pages-long talks about wards and taxes and properties just bored me to tears. And the book is only like 150 pages! I feel like I'm getting increasingly impatient while reading now that I've seen what could be done when great, efficient writers take the helm, and this book might be an unfortunate victim of that impatience. To add to that, the writing was glaringly awkward, clunky, dated, and sometimes downright confusing. I read a review where someone mentioned that Rabe learned English as an adult and knowing that now, that might be a big factor in the writing style. Granted, the problems that I had got better as the book went on but ultimately it still wasn't very enjoyable. But Rabe was a very popular pulp novelist and a Gold Medal star and I have some other attractive books by him, so I'll give his work another try. Maybe this wasn't the one to start with...

GRADE: D-

THE SCORE by Richard Stark

*Book 5 of the Parker series*

The plan might sound completely nuts but it's too tempting for Parker to pass up. This time, he signs onto a heist to rob the entire town of Copper Canyon, North Dakota! Author Richard Stark had a real knack for conceiving really original plots for his various heist novels. As I've mentioned in other reviews, these books are so simple and although there's not really a whole to talk about, so far they've been consistently enjoyable for what they are. The omniscient POV style that is a trademark to the Parker novels works damn well here as the heist reaches its crescendo. The pace really starts to move as we jump from one point of view to another. If you're looking for a quick, dependable read, so far you can't go wrong with these Parker books, and The Score is a great example!

GRADE: B

FALLEN LAND by Taylor Brown

Fallen Land is an expansion of Taylor Brown's title story from his award-winning collection In The Season of Blood and Gold, which I read last year and loved. This debut novel follows teenagers Callum and Ava, thrown together after he saves her during a pillaging in the middle of the Civil War. Together with their horse Reiver, they search for a place to call home, while trying to evade Callum's former gang and an infamous one-armed bounty hunter.

While I was equally impressed with Brown's writing here as I was when reading his short stories last year, this novel was a disappointment and a bit of a slog to get through. Most of the novel focuses on Callum and Ava riding through the countryside, which would have been alright if I were engaged with the characters. But ultimately they never really flew off the page for me. I'll be reading more by Brown because there's tons of promise and I like his short stories, but I really had high hopes for this one and it just turned out to be "okay."

*I received an advance copy of this through Netgalley in exchange for my honest take on it.*

GRADE: C+

MY 2015 IN BOOKS!

2015 was another good year in books, where I read just under 100 books of varying length and genre! Here are the ones I wanted to highlight:

FAVORITE NOVELS I READ IN 2015:

*The Book of Night Women by Marlon James

Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich
The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout
American Tabloid by James Ellroy
The Whites by Richard Price

   

WORST NOVEL I READ IN 2015:

Skinner by David Bernstein

 

FAVORITE NOVELS PUBLISHED IN 2015:

*Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich

The Whites by Richard Price

MOST ENTERTAINING NOVELS:

*Savage Season or Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale

The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski
Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick: Double D Double Cross by Christa Faust
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

FAVORITE STORY COLLECTIONS:

*Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson
In the Season of Blood and Gold by Taylor Brown

FAVORITE SHORT STORIES:

*"Dress of White Silk" by Richard Matheson

"Whorehouse Piano" by Taylor Brown
"The Confidential Informant" by George Pelecanos
"Lucy In The Pit" by Jordan Harper 
"Playing Dead" by Jordan Harper 

FAVORITE NOVELLAS:

*Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli

The Rain Dancers by Greg F. Gifune
With Fury In Hand by Lee Thompson
Saint Homicide by Jake Hinkson

FAVORITE CRIME NOIR:

*Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli

The Posthumous Man by Jake Hinkson
Hell Hath No Fury (aka The Hot Spot) by Charles Williams
Hell on Church Street by Jake Hinkson
The Cold Kiss by John Rector

FAVORITE HORROR:

*Suffer The Children by Craig DiLouie

Crawl by Edward Lorn
Come Closer by Sara Gran
The Underdwelling by Tim Curran

FAVORITE BOOK SERIES:

The Hap and Leonard Series  by Joe R. Lansdale


MOST IMPRESSIVE PROSE/WRITING:

*Benjamin Whitmer in Pike

Glendon Swarthout in The Shootist
Marlon James in The Book of Night Women and John Crow's Devil


FAVORITE AUTHORS I DISCOVERED THIS YEAR: 

*Jake Hinkson

Tom Piccirilli
Benjamin Whitmer
Christa Faust

FAVORITE BOOK HEROES:

*Lilith from The Book of Night Women
 
Hap Collins and Leonard Pine from Savage Season and The Two-Bear Mambo
John Booth from The Shootist
Hugh Glass from The Revenant

FAVORITE BOOK VILLAINS:

*Simon Holly from Bull Mountain
 
Rudi "Gatsby" Barnard from Mixed Blood

THE BIG UGLY by Jake Hinkson

The Big Ugly is more of a hard-boiled mystery than the all-out dark noir in Hinkson's other work. But that's not a bad thing at all. This novel sports the most sympathetic and likable character in all of his work, even if she's not the most fascinating. Ellie Bennett is a recently released ex-convict and former correctional officer who has just been released from prison for beating up one of her inmates. Once she gets out and is in need of a job, she tries her hand at a little detecting after she's approached with the task of tracking down a fellow parolee that every shady character in the city seems to want to find. Now that I think about it while writing this, the book reminds me a lot of Walter Mosley's great Devil In A Blue Dress, in regards to plot and structure.

What follows this time around is a somewhat toned down Hinkson tale when compared to his past work but it's still just as confidently written, compelling, and as unflinching at its commentary of Christianity. He also makes Ellie Bennett instantly like-able, a woman in prison but guilty of nothing but making bad relationship decisions. Her dreams of working as a cop are ruined but I love how she latches on to psuedo-detective work as the next best thing. She's a little rough around the edges as a detective, but that's what makes the story interesting! This is another enjoyable piece of work by an author who is consistently rewarding. If you're a fan of great crime fiction, stop what you're doing and read this guy!

GRADE: B+

A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE by Lawrence Block

*Book 9 of the Matthew Scudder series* 

"Sometimes it's a dog-eat-dog world and the rest of the time it's the other way around."

This year I've realized that I'm not that big of a fan of standard detective series. They get too repetitive and frankly boring after a while. It nearly broke my heart when I realized that I was starting to feel the same way about this book in Lawrence Block's Scudder series, arguably the top of the detective pack. As I read, I started to notice the formula and the trends. Once again, Scudder has to explain that he's not an official private detective, once again Scudder "struggles" with what to charge people for his services, even though he always seems to settle on the same price (somewhere between $2-3K), and once again Scudder has a moment where he's unsatisfied with his work and considers giving the client a refund, even though he's never actually gone through with it yet. I guess it's designed for the casual reader that might jump into the series at anytime, but for me it becomes a slog reading the same shit over and over. At least in this book we were spared him having to explain why he's not a cop anymore; I'm a little tired of hearing that story too.

This time around Scudder takes on two cases that somehow end up connected, determining whether or not a TV producer was responsible for the rape and murder of his wife, as well as tracking down the masked sex killers in a grisly smut film he stumbles onto in the middle of watching a VHS rental of The Dirty Dozen. This novel's plot developments were based on so many coincidences that the plotting seemed a bit lazy this time around. But even with these issues that I personally had and the fact that this book lacks the emotional weight of Eight Million Ways to Die, the freshness of When The Sacred Ginmill Closes, or the urgent danger of A Ticket to the Boneyard, it's still as thoughtful, readable, and well-written as any of the other novels in Block's Scudder series, with some cool characters and nasty villains.

"We are closer than close, you and I. We are brothers in blood and semen."

So although it suffers from the usual stale repetitiveness as other later novels in most mystery series, it's still a Block novel so it's still one of the better detective books out there. If you're going to read a repetitive detective series, this should be the one you read.

"Well it's a hell of a story," he said. "And I guess you could say it has a happy ending, because you didn't drink and you aren't going to jail."

GRADE: B-

COLD AS HELL by David Searls

Here I go again, reading another tale of cheerful holiday spirit this Christmas! This time, it's a quick-read novella from DarkFuse that feeds into every parent's nightmare, following a man who he loses track of his twin children after letting them ride on a kiddie train for an 18-minute ride around the fancy outdoor mall on a cold and snowy night. Time seems to stop, people seem to not have seen the train or know that one even exists, and as his Uncle Buster and Santa Claus tell him: "Things Are Not What They Seem."

It's a moody, well-written tale where the author blurs the lines of reality and has you questioning everything your read. His use of the increasing biting cold and snow adds a strong, creepy atmosphere over the story, with the jovial Christmas spirit of the mall providing an unnerving contrast. This book is best read in one sitting and packs a lot in it's small page count.

GRADE: B

YOU'D BETTER WATCH OUT by Tom Piccirilli

With the holidays rolling around, I was in the mood for a good Christmas tale and I thought it would be a great opportunity to read another Tom Piccirilli book before the year was out! And because it's Tommy Pic, let me tell you, if you're looking for a heartwarming holiday tale of good tidings and cheer, go look somewhere else, because You'd Better Watch Out is definitely not for you. It's a brooding, hard-hitting Brooklyn "noirella" about an unnamed man who, as a child, witnessed his corrupt, abusive cop father brutally murder his mother. He grows up a foster child, learns violence at an early age, and becomes muscle for a prominent New York crime outfit, waiting patiently for the moment when his no-good Pops gets out of prison.

It's a simple tale, but as usual in the hands of Piccirilli, it stands out for it's storytelling economy, dead-eye prose, no-holds-barred depiction of violence, and how quickly and intuitively he can find the beauty and emotion in such dark and nihilistic material. This is my fourth novella so far by Piccirilli and he's really mastered that length and structure. I can't wait to jump into his longer work and see what he can do when he has more pages to impress me with!

GRADE: B+

THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS: STORIES by Stephen King

It's always an event when a new Stephen King short story collection is released. Much of his best material comes in the short form and he's proven time and again to be one of the best short story writers working these days. I adored his previous collection Just After Sunset, and I couldn't wait to jump into this one! I had read about a third of the stories when they were previously published, including the two novellas in the collection, the inventive and entertaining magic Kindle story UR, and the highly disappointing killer car story Mile 81, which is wrecked by it's atrocious ending.

Unfortunately my favorite stories in the book were ones I'd read before, which lessened my enjoyment a bit with the collection as a whole. It's by no means a bad collection, I just didn't have many amazing discoveries but enjoyed the re-reads. My favorites were the captivating "Morality," about a New York City couple who are approached with a tempting way to get themselves out of the economic slump, the beautiful and heartbreaking story of a highway accident, "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive," and the Raymond Carver-esque tale of a doomed marriage, "Premium Harmony", all of which I'd read before. There were a few new stories that I enjoyed and which read like classic King shorts: "The Dune" (which had a nifty ending), "Obits," and "Bad Little Kid," all of which would fit snugly right in the middle of his Skeleton Crew collection.

Some of the others were less enjoyable, with King's occasional tendency toward disappointing endings on display. He's famous for not outlining his stories and not knowing what will happen once he starts writing, which most of the time is not a problem. But in some of these stories, it's glaringly obvious and he doesn't bring it home very well. But as I mentioned, a collection of new King stories is always a big deal. And there's enough great stuff here to get excited about!

"Memory's job is not only to recall the past but to burnish it."

GRADE: B-