Founders College Book Sale

I went to the Founders College Book Sale today and was lucky enough to find a bunch of cool older mystery books (and a couple of other books too). Here's my take:

• Darker than Amber by John D. MacDonald
  
• The Turquoise Lament by John D. MacDonald
  
• Pale Gray for Guilt by John D. MacDonald
  
• Soft Touch by John D. MacDonald
  
• The Long Lavender Look by John D. MacDonald
  
• The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald
  
• A Tan and Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald
  
• You Live Once by John D. MacDonald
  
• The Last One Left by John D. MacDonald
  
• Sleeping Beauty by Ross Macdonald
  
• The Book of Bourbon: And other Fine American Whiskeys by Gary Regan
  
• Archangel by Robert Harris

All that for about $8.00.

Summer 2008 reading

A bit late on this, I know, but I'm about to start posting some more detailed reading notes from summer 2009, so I thought I'd clear some of this really old stuff out of the "to be posted" pile.

Here goes:

Clancy, Tom. The sum of all fears. New York: Putnam, 1991. 798pp.

Last summer I read A Clear and Present Danger and it was starting to show some of the signs for Clancy's patented literary bloat. This summer, it's The Sum of all Fears and the bloat has pretty well set in. Overall, it's a solid novel, telling the story of Jack Ryan's involvement in some pretty exciting standard Clancy thriller elements like terrorists, submarine tactics, lost nukes, scheming politicians and incompetent and naive liberals. Mostly pretty good stuff, exciting and involving. However, at nearly 800 pages, the book is easily 200 pages too long. Whole sub-plots could have been removed with no difference to the story. The big, explosive climactic event happens around page 600 with 200 pages to go but should have happened at page 200 with 400 to go.


Turtledove, Harry. End of the beginning. New York: Roc, 2006. 519pp.

Last summer's cottage reading included the first part of this two part series, Days of Infamy. Like with Tom Clancy, summer reading always seems to include a Harry Turtledove novel for me. They're quick and easy to read, light but very involving. The large cast of characters and multiple viewpoints make for quick and lively reading. This one is no different.

To quickly set the stage, Japan invaded Pearl Harbor in December 1941 rather than just attacking the American base there. Days of Infamy told the story of the invasion and initial stages of the occupation. End of the Beginning picks up where Days of Infamy leaves off, following the same diverse cast of characters, both American and Japanese, over the next couple of years, until the US bounces back and re-invades.

A bit slow-starting, I did ultimately enjoy the novel. It does a good job of showing the brutality of the Japanese Imperial forces in WWII, something that's certainly not as well known as Nazi brutality. POW camps and comfort women brothels are among the aspects that are well portrayed. If Turtledove's narrative seems somewhat boilerplate, well, that's the nature of what he does. He churns them out pretty quickly, all using the same basic plan. Knowing what to expect, he doesn't disappoint. On the other hand, I do often wish he would be a bit more ambitious.


Now for some super-capsule reviews:


Clapton, Eric. Eric Clapton: The autobiography. New York: Broadway, 2008. 344pp.

Entertaining, frank and surprisingly humble autobiography of guitar hero Eric Clapton. I enjoyed this one a lot, as would anyone interested in guitar players or the classic rock period.


Smith, Scott. The ruins.New York: Vintage, 2007. 509pp.

Good and creepy, a high quality horror novel with a great ending.


Hill, Joe. Heart-shaped box. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. 354pp.

Very good first novel by Stephen King's son. A quick read with some good characters.


Hassel, Sven. Comrades of war. London: Cassel, 2004. 362pp.

War is hell. Dirty, messy, ugly, violent, not for the faint-hearted, not Hollywood at all, this is a provocative read from a controversial author. Supposedly based on his real experiences in WWII, Hassel stretches credibility quite a bit, but much of it rings true.


Latimer, Jonathan. Soloman's Vineyard. London: Xanadu Blue Murder, 1990. 160pp.

A good period hardboiled noir novel. Snappy dialogue, dangerous dames, perverse plotline, at least for the 1940s when it was written. It's all there.


Slaughter, Karen. Triptych. New York: Dell, 2007. 480 pp.

Yikes. This is one violent and intense thriller. A solid cast of characters, tons of action, good suspense, lots of twists and turns. I look forward to sequels -- and must more Slaughterific summer reading. Yes, the aptly named Karen Slaughter is the perfect summer thriller reading.

Depp, Daniel. Loser's town. Toronto: Penguin, 2009. 339pp.

I must admit I had pretty low expectations for this one. In fact, very low.

Daniel Depp, you see, is the half brother of Johnny. The prospect of reading a novel, not by a Hollywood star but by a relative of a Hollywood star certainly set off the alarm bells.

Serves me right for jumping to such conclusions. Depp's Loser's Town is terrific. It's basically a Hollywood hardboiled PI noir, set amongst the fakes and phonies of the film industry. The potential series character, David Spandau, is well drawn and believable -- a tough guy, smart, heart-broken and sensitive, has a lot of potential. The voice is strong and assured. I look forward to futher novels in the series, not because it mentions that another is coming, but because you have to believe that Depp won't be allowed to leave it at one.

The plot is appropriately convoluted but not improbable at all. It's dark enough by the end to keep even the most cynical reader happy.

Good stuff. Give it a try.

(Uncorrected proof supplied by publisher.)

Malmont, Paul. The Chinatown death cloud peril. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 367pp.

Now this is a cool book! A phantasmagorical postmodern pastiche-orama, a 1930s pulp plot involving 1930s pulp authors as the main protagonists!

Walter Gibson (Maxwell Grant/The Shadow) and Lester Dent (Kenneth Robeson/Doc Savage) are the main ones, with significant contributions from L. Ron Hubbard, Chester Himes, John W. Campbell, Orson Welles, H.P. Lovecraft, Cornell Woolrich, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Stan Lee, “Otis Driftwood” (I'm not giving that one away...), Blackstone the Magician, even Joe Kavalier gets a mention and Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster get a cameo! And that's not including the ones I don't recognize!

Crammed full of colourful action sequences, daring escapes, dastardly villains with evil plots, weird science, zombies, magicians and evil, cruel editors, it's actually a bit short on plot sanity and cohesion, but it's definitely long on atmosphere and good old pulpy fun. I can't recommend this novel enough. I really enjoyed it, despite a few first novel failings.
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Shubin, Seymour. Witness to myself. New York: Hard Case, 2006. 250pp.

So, this kid possibly commits a crime at 16 while on vacation with his parents, an assault on a young girl, but didn't stick around long enough to tell if the girl lived. Years pass, he becomes a successful lawyer but he still doesn't know what happened all those years ago. So, he researches the crime, to see if anything was in the papers in the small town where it happened. And from there it commences, he draws attention to himself, he attracts a weird stalker and it all comes to a head and not how you think, either.

A bit of departure from straight noir, as nobody is really a stone criminal but nevertheless I found this novel to be pretty entertaining. It's one of the first of the Hard Case Crime novels that I've read that was not a classic reprint but an original novel. In fact, it's a bit disconcerting when the guy does most of his research on the web (although he does end up at the town library), it almost seems a bit unnatural for modern technology to impinge on the noir genre.

In any case, Shubin is a classic noir author so I guess it all evens out. I recommend this book heartily. It's not a classic but it's got enough twists and turns to keep anyone happy.

Server, Lee.Over my dead body: The sensational age of the American paperback: 1945-1955. San Francisco, 1994. 108pp.

A pretty cool book, basically a quick overview of the first great age of the paperback novel. A bit of an uneasy balance between a serious study and history and being an art book, to the extent that it doesn't function that well as either. If you take it as a kind of taster book, leading to a search for a more serious art book and history of paperbacks, then it is quite successful. There's certainly enough cover art from the paperback era to whet my appetite for more. And the history part is also certainly going to lead me to more resources as well. The book covers a multitude of genres from hard boiled mystery to romance, so each section doesn't get too much coverage. On the other hand, it's certainl pointed out a bunch of authors for me to keep an eye out for, such as Henry Kane, Harry Whittington, Irving Shulman and Hal Elson.

Bruen, Ken and Jason Starr. Bust. New York: Hard Case, 2006. 254pp.

Wow, I gotta find a way to read more of these Hard Case Crime novels. So far, I've read three (first two here and here) and they've all been absolutely fantastic. This one, Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, is the first of their original novels I've read, the other two being classic reprints.

So, what's the story? Well, it's a tried and true hard boiled plot. Man is cheating on his wife with his secretary and they plan to have her killed and get married and live happily ever after. Only this one is different. All the characters are fatally flawed, all pretty well despicable, all more than a little unhinged. So, as the headlong train wreck of the plot explodes into double cross, followed by triple cross, followed by quadruple cross, the pitch black hole humour becomes pervasive. You don't know whether to laugh or cry, and by the end it doesn't really matter too much. Tragedy? Comedy? Human nature.

Whatever -- this is one great read. I'm going to hunt down some more of the solo work by Bruen and Starr, that's for sure. Oh yeah, and some more Hard Case books too.

McBain, Ed. The gutter and the grave. New York: Hard Case, 2005. 217pp.

Another dynamite reprint from Hard Case, this one a classic Ed McBain from 1958. The Gutter and the Grave is a story about a man, Matt Cordell, done wrong by a cheatin' woman who gets another chance to be a real man and help a friend solve a petty crime. Well, the friend ends up accused of murdering his business partner, so Matt ends trying to clear his friend. Lots of gorgeous dames and tough talking ensue, a couple of surprises at the end and Cordell gets his chance to rise up from the gutter and ends up...well, read the novel to find out what happens to him.

They don't get any more hard boiled than this. At 217 pages, another short sharp shock from the fine folks at Hard Case. Next!

Westlake, Donald E. 361. New York: Hard Case Crime, 2005. 207 pp.

Hard Case Crime is a great new(ish) publishing house. They specialize in hardboiled detective & crime fiction, both publishing forgotten classics and new books. They've been around for a couple of years and have published new and classic books by such notables as Stephen King, Donald Hamilton, Ed McBain, Lawrence Block and Charles Williams and a whole bunch of others that may or may not be familiar to the mass audience. Well, I've always liked hardboiled stuff but have never had a really good guide to new and classic stuff. So, finally getting around to reading one of the books from this series was a mental event for me of the highest order. Would it live up to the hype? Would I be able to use the distinctive retro cover stylings of the line as a key to excellence?

The answer is yes. The first one I've read is 361 an early novel by Donald Westlake. Westlake, of course, is notable for many other crime and detective novels, as well as some cool fantastic fiction such as the excellent Humans.

And 361 is a good one. My kinda hardboiled. Seems this guy Ray Kelley gets out of the Navy and his father picks him up from the base. They're driving around a little later and his father gets gunned down while driving the car by a guy in another car. When our man Ray gets out of the hospital, recovered from the injuries sustained when the car crashed, he and his brother vow to figure out what really happened. They end up in New York City, tangled up with the mob, learning more family secrets than they can shake a stick at. There's violence aplenty with a few more bodies, some surprising, some not. But it's not some abstract, bloodless stuff from a shoot 'em up movie. It's personal, in your face. This is a memorable novel that will stick with you with good characters portrayed in lots of shades of grey, facing pain and tragedy and more than a few moral dilemas.

First published in 1962 and mostly unavailable since then, Hard Case has done us all a great service by reprinting this novel. It's the first for me from Hard Case, but it won't be the last.

Hamilton, Donald. Death of a citizen. Greenwich, Conn.: Gold Medal, 1960. 142pp.

Wow. This is the first of Hamilton's tough-guy hardboiled spy series featuring Matt Helm. Don't get this confused with the Matt Helm movies from the 1960's starring Dean Martin. These are no cream puff comedies. No, these are violent and brutal, dated but with a genuinely cruel edge. Well worth reading, I like this book a lot and will definately read as many of the other Matt Helm books as I can get my hands on. At 142 pages, this is a short, sharp shock, not fat or excess baggage to distract from the story. Tired of bloated contemporary novels? This is definately old school.

The story? Matt Helm is a retired WWII behind-enemy-lines operative in late 1950s Santa Fe, living the quite life with his wife and kids. Suddenly, an old fellow operative (and lover, natch) turns up at a party and Helm is dragged back into the world of cross and double-cross where nothing and no-one is as they seem. Wild-goose chases, kidnappings, murder and mayhem ensue. Helm solves his problems old school, too.