CRY FATHER by Benjamin Whitmer

Compared to other books that are placed in the "crime" section, not much action really happens in Cry Father. But it's miles away from being uneventful or boring. Thanks to Whitmer's uncanny sense of characterization and his vivid and forceful prose, this book is a standout and is more engaging than many of the popular crime novels these days. It probably shouldn't even be considered "crime." It's a portrait of two damaged men: Patterson Wells, a tree clearer in disaster zones that are just as torn apart as he is, who tries to cope with the loss of his young son by writing letters to him, and Junior, the younger son of Patterson's neighbor, a destructive drug dealer that blames his father for all that's wrong in the world. 

 The thing about grieving is how much you need to just sit still and stare, how little you need to try to figure things out. That's what's always made him like pills. It makes it easier to sit still and stare at things without trying to make sense of them.

Just like with his first novel, Pike, Whitmer's writing is exciting to read. He really knows how to set a scene and illustrate a character in efficient, unique ways so that the reader has no question where we are in the story or who we're reading about. Check out this little excerpt:

A fat man sits at the bar next to a blond, cherub-faced lady with cheeks as pink as a drugstore rose, and off in one corner a tall cowboy sleeps at one of the low bar tables underneath a whorehouse nude. It's windowless, everywhere trimmed in red vinyl, the kind of place where old jackpot rodeo riders drink away the ones they couldn't ride and the ones that walked away.

The book addresses themes of loss, bearing the pain, and the duties of fatherhood. It's about the mistakes we make and owning up to them. If you want some harsh words, hard violence and drug use, you can find some of that in this book, but that's not really the focus. The focus is on how these things are used as crutches and as consolation for our characters, and what happens when you strip all of that away and they have to focus on their problems head on. Great book.

That's what he thought back then, that children were some kind of little machines that ran on the guilt adults pumped into them. Now he knows better. Now he knows it's exactly the other way around.

GRADE: A-

THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM by Victor LaValle

"The veil of ignorance has been set over your face since birth. Shall I pull it free?"

While I'm generally familiar with HP Lovecraft and his work, including his Cthulhu mythos, I haven't  read that much from him. From what I gather though, he was a hardcore racist, and one must look past some of the uncomfortable material in his work to get to the good stuff and appreciate him. It seems like this has been the case with author Victor LaValle, who begrudgingly considers himself a fan. But he decided to use this conflicted appreciation of the horror master as inspiration for his latest project. In this novella, he has taken what many consider to be one of Lovecraft's most xenophobic work, "The Horror at Red Hook," and remixed it, cleverly transforming it into a cosmic horror tale that is also a commentary on racial and immigrant prejudice, and a big clapback at Lovecraft's bigotry in his own work.

The smell of age, meaning undifferentiated time, had settled throughout the home, a musty odor, as if the winds of the present never blew through here. 

I don't want to say much about the plot other than it's about a young black hustler in Harlem that does whatever it takes to survive as a black man in 1920's New York, the strange world he encounters in the underbelly of the city, and how these things affect and provide an outlet for his frustration and anger at the oppression that he must endure everyday. There's some great creepy imagery in this that LaValle handles masterfully and with a steady pace that sucks you in, making this short book hard to put down.

A cataclysm was happening on Parker Place, and belowground the air here smelled of sewage and smoke and the threat of divination.

GRADE: B+ 

KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock

This debut short story collection by Donald Ray Pollock is comprised of hard little nuggets of country grit that follow a variety of individuals living in and around the small Ohio holler of Knockemstiff, a place based on Pollock's own hometown. It's hard to look back on the book and single out stories for review because each story truly does feel like part of a whole, making the book feel more cohesive than most story collections. Many of the characters are referenced in more than story, and some even reappear in multiple stories. But, at the risk of sounding like a cliche, the main character in all the stories is the town itself, acting as the stories' sort-of-antagonist, placing an almost mystical hold on its inhabitants. Some dream of leaving but are either held back by circumstances or terrified of the world outside. Some even actually leave but are ultimately brought down by the past or are pulled back. And here, Pollock's blunt and doom-filled language gives the reader a hint of what's to come in his great follow-up novel, The Devil All The Time.

I'm beginning to believe that anything that I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.

GRADE: B+

THE DAY I WORE PURPLE by Jake Vander Ark

I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this one. Not only is it a tender love story and grand family drama, it's also an epic of speculative science fiction that spans a trillion years, examines the creation of our universe, and takes a look at what it would be like to live forever and the effect that would have on society. But above all it's a portrait of a complex woman trying to find meaning in eternal life. Not only does the book defy genre, but the synopsis on Amazon barely cracks the surface of what readers are in for.
 
I read this is as an advance prereader in exchange for constructive notes, of which I gave a ton. So the edition of the book that was released today might be different. But it's most likely even better than the version I read. Vander Ark is a writer of great talent and deserves to be discovered by more readers. Get on the train early! While The Day I Wore Purple isn't as tightly wound and smoothly crafted as his previous novels like The Accidental Siren and The Brandywine Prophet, it's Vander Ark at his rawest; the book is undeniably his most ambitious, and in some ways, the most impressive. The closest I can get to describing my reaction after finishing it was the same way I felt about finishing Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar. After the end, not only did I have to put my brain back together again , but I knew that I'd seen something unique, something that wrestled with ideas beyond what everyone else is tackling in stories. But because of  it's size and ambition, like Interstellar, it's almost impossible for the book to be perfect. It can get a bit long-winded at times and it sometimes stumbles on it's tightrope balance of character development, exposition and sci-fi ideas. But even with its rough edges, you can sense Vander Ark pouring his all into this story, writing as if it's the last time he'll ever get to sit at a keyboard.

Some might love it, some might be confused, some might even think it's a mess, but I'm 100% positive that everyone who finishes it will think of it for a long time afterwards. Everyone should experience it!

GRADE: A-

FEDERALES by Christopher Irvin

This somber novella examines the power that the cartels have over certain states in Mexico, the futility of the efforts to stand up against them, and the brave and passionate people that still try to do just that. The book's main character, Marcos, is a tired and disillusioned federal police officer who takes a job protecting an outspoken anti-cartel politician and her young daughter.  I love the idea of Marcos knowing that it's impossible for him to solve Mexico's cartel problem all by himself, but believing that maybe the least he could do is protect this little family, making up for his failures. This too-short book is best read all at once, to soak up the imagery and atmosphere that author Christopher Irvin evokes in his to-the-point, no-frills prose that is still vivid and expressive. It moves at a slow, thoughtful pace until Irvin pulls the rug out from under you in the bittersweet final act.

GRADE: B

A TASTE FOR SIN by Gil Brewer

While the last Brewer novel I read left much to be desired, A Taste For Sin, one of his later works, hits all the right notes! In it, we follow Jim Phalen, a drunk with money problems, as he hooks up with Felice Anderson, a hot, barely legal Latina with rough rape fantasies. It's all fun and games at first, but then this feisty femme goes from zero to fatale almost immediately, blackmailing him into helping her not only kill her husband but also rob the bank where he works of a million bucks.

She was a juvenile delinquent with a Spanish tinge, and she was absolutely out of her mind.

This book has a lot of the ingredients that make a great pulp novel: ultra fast pacing that leaves you breathless, a vulnerable and morally questionable protagonist, an icy but irresistible femme fatale, dark humor, and surprising violence. We've seen a plot like this many times in pulp noir, but Brewer stands out and writes it all with his usual sharp wit and ratchets the intensity way up.

I read this book as part of the Gil Brewer two-fer from Stark House that also includes Wild To Possess. While that book was pretty bland with a clunky plot, in A Taste For Sin, not only does the plot move as smooth as butter, but Brewer holds no punches with the depravity in the material. There aren't many books where you'll have a scene where the two main characters run around the house rough-sexin' each other while they have a police officer blind-folded and gagged and dog-chained to a radiator upstairs. A fun read!

When you dine with Death, Fear sits at the head of the table.

GRADE: A-

ALL YOU DESPISE by Tom Piccirilli

"Some would say I was pessimistic and self-defeating. I tended to think that I dreamed from the bottom up."

All You Despise is another great piece of work by the peerless Tom Piccirilli. It's less a crime novella and more of a painful, tragic confession of regret. It's a short but powerful character portrait of fathers and sons, the vice-grip hold that family loyalty can have over someone, and the dark-side of brotherly love and a father's legacy. The ideal that you love your family no matter what is a beautiful one, but it could also be a crippling one. Focusing on a lonely man that wakes up to find his brother arriving at his trailer  in the middle of a drunken blackout and soaked in someone else's blood, not a whole lot of action actually happens in this short book. But it is still gripping, a testament to Piccirilli's power with character and prose.

GRADE: B+

WILD TO POSSESS by Gil Brewer

This novel opens with a neat but pretty unbelievable premise where a lonely, drunk sign-maker overhears a couple of strangers plan a kidnapping plot and decides to get in on the action. It's basically a noir-within-noir structure where the main character has his very own James M. Cain story playing out in front of him and he decides to write a role for himself, interrupt the whole shebang and take off with all the ransom money, while trying to also deal with a horny girlfriend, and a man that shows up knowing all of the dark secrets of his past.

The events that follow were difficult to buy into and I was never truly engaged beyond the surface action. It just felt too "conceived," like I could see the uneven gears of Brewer's plot turning. Thankfully, Brewer's trademark pacing kept things going at a quick clip and there were a few tense scenes. But then things just fizzled out with a weak climax and a forgettable resolution.

GRADE: C-

DIG TWO GRAVES by Eric Beetner

Goddammit. I'd hoped to get this over with in one bullet. At this rate, I'd empty the clip before morning. 

When gangster and bank robber Val gets arrested after a perfectly executed heist, he finds out the hard way that you can't trust anyone these days! He discovers that he's been ratted out by the one person who he expects to be trustworthy: Ernesto, his prison-bitch when he was inside; the one he has started to catch a few feelings for. Val escapes from police custody and stalks the city on a manhunt to track down the snitching bastard and get his vengeance.

Starting off strong with a great title that's both deceivingly simple and completely illustrative, this revenge story stays strong to the end. The book is fast-paced, violent, and many times laugh-out-loud funny. Author Eric Beetner maintains a great balance between the dark noir tones and the humor and creates an engaging voice in the narrator Val, a man who seems to be desperate to maintain his reputation for having a cool and collected demeanor throughout the whole thing but whose composure starts to strain as the odds and betrayals stack against him. This is the first book I've read by rising pulp noir star Beetner and I quickly scooped up some of his other awesomely-titled work to check out soon!

GRADE: A-

HONKY TONK SAMURAI by Joe R. Lansdale

*Book 11 of the Hap and Leonard series*

I'm disappointed. It might be my book series fatigue but the Hap and Leonard series seems like it's turned into an epic talk-fest. Because this novel was just released, I decided to jump ahead a couple books in the series and read it. The first four books in the series were exciting reads, with compelling plots, a great balance of both light-hearted humor and palpable danger, and tender bits sprinkled throughout. But as the series went on, it seemed like Lansdale started to depend solely on the humor and witty dialogue over developing a memorable story, losing the great balance that he started out with. Here, Hap and Leonard, and especially Jim Bob Luke, blabber on and on throughout the book, trying to make us laugh, which they succeed at for the most part. But while it's hard to resist the unending charm of Hap and Leonard as characters and Lansdale's talent with words, I immediately forgot what the plot was once I finished. I remember it had something to do with a mystery involving a tranny car salesman and redneck assassins that take their victims severed nutsacks as trophies...so it has that going for it!

GRADE: C+