DARK MATTER by Blake Crouch

It's really hard to find something else to add to the ton of accolades that's already been heaped onto this book, one of the most talked about novels of the year. The story by Blake Crouch, of a physics professor who is kidnapped one night and forced into an adventure beyond anyone's wildest imagination, has all the elements of crowd-pleasing, perfectly escapist entertainment. It has an amazing concept on which Crouch expertly adds layers upon layer, forcing me deeper into the rabbit hole. But not only does the concept make for great entertainment but it's also an ingenious way to tackle the issues that Crouch is really after: choices, regret, and what it truly means to love your family.

Along with a tender romance, a likable protagonist, and possibly the worst villain you can imagine, this book is a fast-moving adventure story that kept me reading past all the acceptable time limits! I'll just stop now because I don't have much more to add other than what others have already written. The book is cool as hell and much more fun than this redundant review.

Go read it.

GRADE: A-

A F*CKLOAD OF SHORTS by Jedidiah Ayres

Jedidiah Ayres is such a great writer that if he wrote more accessible stuff like a coming of age family drama or a thriller with the word Girl in the title, he would be a household name. But instead he writes stuff like this collection of stories full of depraved violence, filthy sex, disturbing psychology, comedy blacker than the darkest night, and characters devoid of any moral center and it's all for the better. It's one of the best written pieces of work I've read this year by a writer more people should know about. Most of the stories in this collection shouldn't work; they should feel too ridiculous. And Ayres takes these things to places you were sure he wouldn't dare go, but you'll be so wrapped up in his storytelling flair, that by the time you get to the witch-burning and the necrophilia, you will simply be along for the ride.

He tries his hands at a variety of genres here, from noir, Western, apocalyptic, or a couple of comedies that have a Friends of Eddie Coyle-ish stream-of-dialogue style, but he puts his own twisted spin on all of them. Try reading "Hoosier Daddy," "The Whole Buffalo," or this bewildering and tantalizing passage near the beginning of "The Adversary," and not want to read everything else he's written:

The witch had been holding ceremonies. Sacrifices. Poultry mostly. She blessed and hexed for a fee and she'd send and deliver messages across the Stygian chasms separating worlds.  All of her arts were brought over from the Dark Continent and she practiced in the woods under penalty of death by the Law of Moses, which the Reverend Chalfont Avery was charged with upholding now in the face of Armageddon.  He had been present at her execution, a willing and enthusiastic participant, but the kicking feet of the blasphemer brought not the warmth of God to his soul, so they torched her home to mirror the flames of Hades and on them he warmed his hands.

It's a shame that this book is out of print by SnubNose Press. I'm lucky to have stumbled onto a used copy in an LA bookstore. If you can find it, snatch it up. But if you can't, his novella Fierce Bitches is the best thing I've read so far this year, and I'm sure his full-length novel, Peckerwood, which I haven't read yet (soon come), is just as great.

GRADE: A-

KILL 'EM WITH KINDNESS by C.S. DeWildt

Sometimes, when presented with the opportunity to be a good samaritan, maybe you should think about just leaving well enough alone!

I'm sure Nick Gillis realizes this, after he helps a beautiful girl at a bar, and ends up on the radar of Chad Toll, the most dangerous dude in town. If Nick's own trouble trying to get over the suicide of his wife wasn't enough, now he has a psycho fascinated with him.

Chad, the charming psycho in question, is a well-illustrated, three-dimensional villain, who takes Nick on a date to watch classic films at the drive-in, before taking the most brutal act of revenge you'll read in fiction this year. He's one of the keys to the book's success, providing a quiet menace that permeates the book, even in scenes where he's absent, as if he can just pop up when you aren't expecting him and shocking you again with stunning violence. I'm sure that's how protagonist Nick Gillis felt too! This is a gripping novel that maintains the danger from beginning to end.

He pulled her tighter and she continued to cry. He felt better than he had in a long time. His own demons could sleep while he was dealing with hers. But even the relief nagged at him. Was it worth it? Leave one hell to vacation in another? And how long until he had to go back home?

GRADE: B+

THE COLD SIX THOUSAND by James Ellroy

*Book 2 in the Underworld, U.S.A. Trilogy*

"You never know when you might rub shoulders with history."

Well here it is, the book that ends my A grade streak with James Ellroy's books. But it's definitely not a bad book, just not as impressively crafted as the others and much more difficult to read.

John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, all assassinated within five years, all by lone gunmen who all claimed to not be the only ones involved. Coincidence? James Ellroy thinks not, and just as in the stellar American Tabloid, he deconstructs the turbulent 1960's and rewrites his own version of American history during that time, leading up to the deaths of RFK and MLK. Picking up immediately after the JFK assassination at the end of Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand follows our characters cleaning up after the killing that has shaken the country to its core and they struggle to define their roles in the history being made. Pete Bondurant dedicates himself to staying useful and to mending his fraying relationship to the Mob and the CIA, dreaming of rekindling his Anti-Communist glory days that led up to the Cuban crisis, while Ward Littell uses all the skills he's learned from Kemper Boyd, dangerously juggling alliances with everyone from the Mob, Howard Hughes, the FBI, and the Civil Rights movement, and at the same time feeling increasing guilt with his role in a rising number of conspiracies. Debuting into this mess is Wayne Tedrow Jr., a Las Vegas cop struggling to avoid following in his racist father's footsteps, but tragic circumstances allow him to embrace the darkness within. And looming over everything is J. Edgar Hoover, the Emperor Palpatine of the Ellroy galaxy, increasingly unhinged, crafting conspiracies from behind a desk, wire-tapping every room in the country, struggling to make the country great again.

One of the things that made me fall in love with Ellroy's work is his ability to pull together an immense encyclopedia of material and, through the use of some black magic, craft these tight tales and characters that are engaging and fully memorable. And though his past five masterpieces that I've read haven't been short, this is the first of his work that I actually think is too long. And Ellroy takes his prose-style to the extreme here and that doesn't help. It's exhausting and many times tedious, and there are whole parts that I don't think were all that necessary; the Vietnam storyline in particular didn't really amount to much or affect much of anything. I wish that Ellroy spent less time on that and more time really fleshing out the character arcs, which weren't as finely tuned as in his previous novels. I wanted to feel the conflict in Ward Littell more as he feels the pull of the Left even though he tries so hard to be part of the Right. His story could've been the most fascinating. I wanted to further explore Wayne Junior's acceptance and rationalization of his racism. While all of these ideas were great, I just wish they were fleshed out more.

But the book is still an Ellroy book and like most of his work, it's an epic that stands out in a crowded field of fiction. There are times when the declarative sentence style really shines, as in a chapter where Littell witnesses firsthand the horrors that haunt the civil rights movement. It was also great catching up with old characters from previous books, or witnessing infamous history from a different perspective, like the JFK assassination clean-up, Sonny Liston's alleged Outfit ties, the plots to discredit Dr. King, or the recruitment of both Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray. There were times when the book hovered around an A-, but alas I have to settle on a B-. Hopefully the next book I read from him is back to the A-quality I've come to expect!

GRADE: B-

A WIND OF KNIVES by Ed Kurtz

He wished for his guns, but decided his hate would have to do.

While the country is neck-deep in civil war, unassuming Texas rancher Daniel Hays wakes up to find his loyal ranch-hand and lover Steven castrated and lynched, hanging from a juniper tree. Daniel gathers his guns and his horse Oscar and sets out to reap vengeance on those responsible.

Based on that summary, you might expect this novella to be a Death Wish-style Western actioner where Daniel tracks each man down one by one and we get episodes of violent, cathartic retribution in graphic detail. But I was pleasantly surprised that this was much more brooding and contemplative, and more about studying the nature of revenge, and how much of an ineffective effort it can be. It shows how muddled it can be, how it rarely goes the way many would expect, but shows how through it all, Daniel keeps going out of a sense of duty; it's something he simply has to do. Another thing that I really enjoyed was the little hint of what might be some magical realism, which really added great texture to this tale. I'm lowering the score a bit though because the ending felt like a bit of a rushed cop-out and a let-down.

"I hope you get your revenge. A man can't be right when there's somebody livin' that oughtn't be."

GRADE: B

THE WINTER BOX by Tim Waggoner

A winter storm that has trapped everyone in their homes for the night. An unhappily married couple struggling to keep up appearances to each other even though they both know it's been a futile effort for years. Biting cold that seems to get worse by the minute. And an unassuming box that might hold more than just relationship memorabilia.

The stage is well set as the book begins; the atmosphere quickly and effectively developed. I loved the idea of telling what is essentially a simple story of a couple trying to save their marriage, and wrapping it in the trappings of a creepy horror tale. And I think it fits well in the DarkFuse line-up, with much of the book reminiscent of some of Greg F. Gifune's atmospheric work. But, the plot development here just didn't feel fully-conceived. I didn't get the sense that there was anything special about this anniversary night in particular that makes the time right for these events to happen, and I also didn't really understand what the importance of the winter box was as a plot point, although I understood it's thematic significance. All of the good ideas and concepts are there but it seemed like the second half of the book needed to be revisited to make it tighter, stronger, and more fully realized. And with that, this book's solid ending would have even more of an emotional pay-off. There's some good stuff in this one, enough for me to enjoy it, but it didn't feel fully accomplished.

GRADE: B-

THE LAST KIND WORDS by Tom Piccirilli

Tom Piccirilli is already one of my favorite authors even though this is actually the first novel I've read by him. I've read and loved a handful of his great novellas in the past year and have been infatuated with his sensitive but uncompromising writing. Tommy Pic doesn't disappoint in the full-length novel form either! Here, we follow the Rands, a family of Long Island thieves and burglars that go back generations who's strong bond has fallen apart after Collie, the oldest son, goes on an inexplicable killing spree that lands him on death row, and after the youngest son, Terrier, decides to abandon the family and go off on his own. But now after five years, Terry has returned and must confront this broken family that he deserted years before.

The characters pulled me in almost immediately, each one clearly drawn and familiar; each one deserving enough of their own novel. But the focus here is on Terry, a man haunted by the the potential legacy of the Rand name. Will he fall victim to severe Alzheimer's like his grandfather Shepherd, fall into the underneath and go mad-dog like his brother Collie, or will he simply just live the rest of his days in a house full of stolen junk; a faded, washed-up and lonely thief, breaking in to and creeping around in other homes at night, witnessing the lives of people happier than he is, and pining for his lost love? These questions haunt Terry throughout the novel as he knows that these are real possibilities. The themes Piccirilli tackles here are very similar to the one he explored in the last novella I read by him, All You Despise, the theme that the pull of family bond and obligation is almost impossible to explain, but can affect someone for the rest of their life. Both this novel and All You Despise can be seen as companion pieces, where Piccirilli tries to investigate why the power of family can be so strong and crippling. The novel is about family: longing for it, hating it, or simply just stuck with it whether you want to be or not.

GRADE: A

THE OUTLAW ALBUM: STORIES by Daniel Woodrell

I enjoyed this story collection by respected author Daniel Woodrell but it unfortunately suffers from the thing that threatens to plague many collections: the stories might not be very consistent in quality. There were several tales that really stood out, will definitely appeal to fans of his work, and really encompassed the themes Woodrell tackles throughout the whole collection. "Florianne" and "Uncle," two great tales of rural revenge, as well as "Black Step" and "Night Stand," two stunning sketches of PTSD in veterans, were very impressive, but many of the other stories were simply not that memorable. Also, many of the characters in this collection don't engage and stick with you the way other Woodrell creations do, like Shug or Glenda in The Death of Sweet Mister, or Ree in Winter's Bone. Fans of the author's poetic prose and the way he conjures environment and atmosphere should give this a go though!

Her chest had been cut away from her first, both sides, but she fell sick in other parts too, and the sick didn't rest; it prowled her body, salting her with ruin you couldn't see in her face for a good long while. Now the ruin just stares out at me, all the time, from those eyes that know about hope and that body that can't offer any.

GRADE: C+

THE HEAVENLY TABLE by Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock's new novel can be equally frustrating and rewarding. Especially if you go into it expecting certain things based on the book blurb summary given by the publisher. I really enjoyed Pollock's writing in this one, just as tough and bold as we've come to expect in his work, but this time it has an added dose of black-humored wit that helped support the more pulp-y tone this book carried. Another thing that Pollock fans will expect are colorful, memorable characters, which this book has in spades. And that unfortunately leads to one aspect where the book falters, and that's in its pacing. The thing that's good to know before getting into the book is that it quickly jumps back and forth between a large cast of characters and Pollock spends a lot of time (one could argue unnecessarily) developing backstory for everyone, which really weakens the pace, to the point where a few times in the book I was wondering where he was going with all of this.

But once I got the hang of it all, it finally clicked to me that Pollock was creating a tapestry of this disparate cast of characters all dealing with the immense change that was happening around them in 1917, when the book is set. Whether it be the looming presence of the Great War across the sea in strange, faraway lands called Germany and France, to the growing popularity of automobiles, the introduction of indoor plumbing, or the breakdown of outlaw legend in the face of hard reality, every character here must come face to face with this change and decide either to move with it and embrace it, or to reject it. I wouldn't recommend this one to everyone, especially with its focus on so many seemingly secondary characters, but if you don't mind that, then give it a go. It's surely not as good as the author's first two books, but it's still a worthy addition to his work.

*I reviewed an Advance Copy of this through Netgalley in exchange for an honest opinion*

GRADE: B-

THE DEEPENING SHADE: NEW AND COLLECTED STORIES by Jake Hinkson

I've really enjoyed almost every book that Jake Hinkson has written and this collection of short and flash fiction is no exception. It exhibits all of the elements that Hinkson's fans have come to expect: classic noir material, assured and succinct writing, examinations of the dark side of religion, and flawed characters who aren't heroes but yet demand our attention and our empathy. The best stories in the collection, like "The Theologians," is classic Hinkson, combining all of these elements into a great tale. It also features another Hinkson trait, a knack for engaging dialogue. Other great stories in the collection are "The Serpent Box," an atmospheric revenge story about a family of Pentecostal snake handlers, "Casual Encounters," about an on-a-whim Craigslist ad that leads to destruction, and "Night Terrors," about a man who, after waking up to his one-night-stand shrieking in her sleep, begins to regret his night of passion, but when the morning comes, he will surely regret it even more.

This was published by All Due Respect, a publisher who's books I've been recently discovering and who specializes in material that I definitely gravitate towards: "low-life literature," in their words! I'll be exploring more of their books soon.

GRADE: B+