As BOOKGASM grows in popularity and nears its one-year anniversary, it’s time to expand the staff. We’re in immediate need of one book reviewer who doesn’t mind getting paid anything except in free books and glory. Particularly, we’re looking for one whose tastes run toward all types of thrillers and general literary fiction (and if you like other genres, too, even better).

If that’s you – and you fit the rest of the qualifications below – e-mail me a couple of sample book reviews (old, new, whatever) and tell me a little about yourself and what kind of things you like to read. We’ve got a few titles waiting for whomever gets the “job.”

You must be:
1. Able to read
2. Able to write
3. Able to read a book and write a review within a fair deadline
4. Able to e-mail that review

Fire away!

UPDATE: The position is filled, but keep checking back for future opportunities!

Starting June 1, Dynamite Entertainment is offering comics readers a may-as-well-be-free sneak peek at its hotly anticipated BATTLESTAR GALACTICA monthly series, based upon the Sci-Fi Channel’s ratings scorcher.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #0 (yep, zero) will be sold for a mere 25 cents in comic shops everywhere, under variant covers. Personally, we don’t know why anyone would pick a drawn cover over the one at right, featuring a photo of the may-as-well-be-nude Tricia Helfer, unquestionably the series’ sexiest Cylon. The issue also will provide readers an advance look at Dynamite’s future comics revival of THE LONE RANGER.

As they did with last year’s RED SONJA, Dynamite will be going the quarter route once again in August to promote its launch of a HIGHLANDER title, based upon the inexplicably popular Christopher Lambert films.

Sometimes it’s just so pleasant to get a mystery that revels in its own competence. No flashy literary gimmicks, no eccentric characters, no prurient interests – just a decent, straightforward tale of murder and criminal detection. Or in Peter Robinson’s PIECE OF MY HEART, two tales of murder rolled into one case spanning 36 years.

The first murder takes place at giant rock concert in Yorkshire in September of 1969. While Led Zeppelin take the stage, a young girl is murdered. Her body is found by the concert cleanup crew, and Det. Insp. Stanley Chadwick is called in to investigate. This story is told in parallel with another murder that goes down in the same general area, albeit in the fall of 2005. A music journalist is found with his head bashed in by a poker, and this case will be handled by Det. Chief Insp. Alan Banks.

Obviously, the two cases are linked by the reader, but it takes quite some time for the authorities to make the connection, and it’s done through good, solid policework. Robinson is especially adept at depicting late ’60s England, the cultural revolution that was slowly taking place and the older, more authoritarian generation alienated by the youth, the drugs and the music. Ah, the ’60s. It’s great to see references to bands like Hawkwind, Fairport Convention and even Jan Dukes De Grey!

Inexorably, Banks – for whom this is novel number 16 – pieces together enough facts to connect the two murders and must go on a quest to interview police and suspects from long ago in order to help solve his own case. Robinson moves the parallel stories along with a swinging pace, relying on natural dialogue, slick characterization and some intriguing musical atmosphere to draw you in and have you care about Banks and the other members of his investigative team. If you’re looking for a quality mystery, and you remember the 1960s at all, you’ll definitely enjoy this one. –Mark Rose

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If I start liking somewhat unethical lawyer characters like those in Paul Levine’s THE DEEP BLUE ALIBI and now William Lashner’s MARKED MAN, I’m going to have to revise my Hierarchy of Despisement™ to move reporters to the bottom of the list instead of legal beagles. It is true that Lashner’s series protagonist, Victor Carl, certainly has an illicit and devious mind, but he also has that clichéd heart of gold and a relentless drive just not to get results, but the right result.

In the opening, Carl wakes up after a wild night on the town to discover that he has a new beautiful heart-and-flowers tattoo emblazoned on his chest (hence the title) and sporting the unknown-to-him name of “Chantal Adair.” Who is Chantal and how did this happen? Well, alcohol consumption might answer that second question. But the first can only be answered by a full-scale investigation which Carl undertakes. However, he’s soon distracted by a request from a dying Greek woman who only wants to see her criminal son one more time before she passes. Carl then discovers that the woman’s son participated in an ages-old heist of a local Philadelphia art museum that managed to score an authentic painting by Rembrandt. And you know these cases are going to be connected, don’t you?

Lashner writes in the first-person, allowing him to present Carl as a cynical, jaded ironist who sometimes has pertinent things to say. I bookmarked half a dozen pages to use here but as an example of Carl’s thinking, this one is especially apropros: “There’s a line that you pass, Joey told me, it’s hard to see, a bit blurry, but there for sure. On one side of the line, all the dreams in your life are still possible. On the other side they’ve become fantasies you only pretend to believe, because having nothing to believe is too close to death. Fool’s dreams, Joey called them, sad little lies. There’s that line, and the four of them, they had blown past that line years before, never looking back.”

This is the underlying motivation behind some of the choices that Carl makes, choices he might have wanted to give a second thought to making, if you get my drift.

Dialogue here is brisk and realistic, and keeps the book moving at an action-film pace. A couple of the characters are just completely outrageous, though, including the antique buyer Lavender Hill and the gratuitously repellent and unlikely ultimate perpetrator. Carl’s best interactions come with Monica Adair, Chantal’s sister, who also is searching for the mysterious Chantal. Their teamwork would be welcome to explore in a future installment, although the final disposition of Monica seems way too off-base to accept.

Anyway, MARKED MAN has great Philadelphia/New Jersey flavor, and while it doesn’t have a lot of art gallery atmosphere, that world does serve as an important cog in the plot. Victor Carl is one of those larger-than-life bon vivants who has a welcome streak of insecurity, giving him a nice factor of likability. This is an action thriller, with a little bit of clever courtroom antics thrown in, and it should appeal to a broad audience of mystery lovers. –Mark Rose

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Given the line’s stellar track record, I never thought I’d say this about an offering from Hard Case Crime: Eh.

An unabridged reprint of his 1986 novel, Madison Smartt Bell’s STRAIGHT CUT is a little more literary than the usual get-it-done language that has become a Hard Case signature, but it’s not necessarily to its benefit. This first-person narrative is told by Tracy Bateman, a Kierkegaard-reading film editor recently ditched by his wife. He’s called in by an old friend for a freelance editing job in Italy. The pay is double than what he’d expect, so Tracy suspects his pal Kevin has a surprise in store for him. All his instincts tell him not to go; he does anyway.

As it turns out – albeit many, many chapters later than I would have liked – Kevin indeed has a duplicitous intention in bringing Tracy halfway around the world, and it involves a suitcase full of heroin and his estranged wife. With so much history between the two friends, they speak kind of an inside-joke shorthand that makes this tale difficult to fully access, and Bell isn’t up for filling in the blanks. So we’re not always sure what’s gone on and what’s going on between them, so by the anticlimactic end, you wonder what the point even was.

STRAIGHT CUT is not bad on the whole, but at times it’s definitely boring. Though I learned a lot about the process of editing film and the jargon they speak, it sure didn’t advance the narrative. Nor did the 50-odd pages in the middle during which Tracy does little but skip from town to town, shacking up in hotels and finding nearby cafés for sustenance. Bell may have brought visions of the Italian countryside to life, but the main story just lies there.

And where there is no buildup, there is no payoff. The STRAIGHT dope on this suggests it’s for Hard Case completists only. I suppose a disappointing Hard Case is akin to bad sex: At least you had it, but you could have better. –Rod Lott

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Grant Morrison’s SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY: VOLUME TWO is a tricky beast, telling the middle of four of the seven heroes’ individual stories. (For those who came in late: Read our review of the first volume here so we don’t have to rehash.)

The story of Klarion the Witchboy gets better, now that he’s brought into our world (at least I think it’s our world, even if his uncanny resemblance to SNL’s Chris Kattan (see Exhibit A) continues to creep me out. There doesn’t appear to be much story for Shining Knight, but each page of his is a wonder to look at, even when it gets into horrific gore. Girl magician Zatanna’s tale grows absolutely stale, but luckily her deal will be wrapped up in VOLUME THREE. As with VOLUME ONE, the best pages belong to The Guardian, the newspaper hero, but even his narrative hits a bit of an inactive roadblock.

It all alternates from great to baffling, and that’s the problem. If the stories really do thread together to form a whole – from this point, all I can gather is that it has something to do with giant spiders and a talking baby – Morrison might have done us all a favor by letting us in just a little bit as to what the hell is going on. You can only withhold the cake for so long without throwing us some crumbs. This should have been released as one big book rather than four separate trades; I can only assume the wait between the monthly issues was equally as frustrating. –Rod Lott

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Ah, the spy genre! Is there anything more fun to read?

As much as I love Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, they won’t be covered here today, for the simple reason that I’ve read them all before and wanted to get to other spy paperbacks that have been collecting dust. Oh, I’ll probably re-read CASINO ROYALE once the movie comes out (just so I can say, “Hey, that wasn’t in the book!”), but this week’s column is filled with five different kinds of spies – three work for fictitious agencies, while the other two are grounded in reality.

STRIKE FORCE TERROR – There is nothing like the palette-cleansing of a Nick Carter novel. They are easy and breezy and can be read in about three hours.

What happens when you are sent on a mission to save somebody and they don’t want to go? This is the case for “killmaster” Nick Carter in 1972’s STRIKE FORCE TERROR. He is sent to Turkey, where he meets up with a British female agent, and they have to serve as doubles for the chief of police and his secretary/mistress. It seems a British scientist has been set up for a crime he did not commit – the reason being, once he is taken to a remote prison near the Russian border, he will be kidnapped and taken to Siberia for work at a slave labor camp.

The funny thing about this Nick Carter story is that it’s actually one of the more believable ones! Trust me, there are some real lulus out there, i.e. making men into sharks. STRIKE FORCE TERROR is mainly all build-up with Nick and his Brit counterpart, first disguising themselves as criminologists, before the Turkish Secret Police get wise. A pretty lame interrogation scene takes place, and once they arrive at the prison, Sir Albert the scientist does not want to go because the Russians will kill his family if he does not comply. So, of course, Sir Albert pulls a double-cross by getting Nick arrested and beaten, while Al is whisked away to the USSR. Once Nick escapes, he heads off to Russia to save the day. Like I’ve stated before, reading so many of these novels (this makes 12), you pretty much know by now Nick Carter saves the day, no matter what the odds, so don’t tell me I spoiled anything.

THE DESTROYER #14: JUDGMENT DAY – The cover of Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy’s THE DESTROYER #14: JUDGMENT DAY proudly proclaims it is part of “America’s best-selling action series.” After reading this book, it’s not hard to agree. This is an action-oriented spy series that needs some serious investigating. Maybe we should blame that bomb of a movie that was made with Fred Ward and Joel Grey.

For those who don’t know, THE DESTROYER books are all about Remo Williams, a man who no longer exsists. Gee, where have I heard that before – cough, KNIGHT RIDER, cough. The basic plot to this 1974 adventure has a power-mad executive named Blake Corbish find out what C.U.R.E. – the super-secret agency Remo works for – actually is: an outfit with just two employees, Remo and his boss, Dr. Harold Smith. Corbish kidnaps Dr. Smith and tortures him for two days straight, to find out how to take control, with designs on becoming President of the United States. Once Corbish takes over the C.U.R.E. operations, he rides rough-shod over Remo, having him eliminate anything in his path.

I did not expect all the humor and excitement this book produced. It’s just a great read and the problem now, of course, is that I’ll have to dig around for more. This is one of the earlier novels still written by Sapir and Murphy, since ghost writers eventually took over, to the point where today no author is even listed on new installments. If there are any Remo experts out there, please leave a comment about which is the last of the real Sapir/Murphy pairings. Now, I also heard producer Robert Evans has the movie rights to the books, so let’s just hope we get something along the lines of the BOURNE movies and not a rehash of REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS…

MURDERERS’ ROW – First off, block all those memories of the Dean Martin movie of the same name. If you think the Bond movies took liberties, they pale in comparison to Hollywood’s treatment of the Matt Helm books. MURDERERS’ ROW, from 1962, is actually the fifth in the series, which are very continuity-driven. Here, Donald Hamilton’s style is unlike the others in that Helm is potrayed as a brutal man who will finish a mission no matter the costs.

A little backstory first: In the first novel, DEATH OF A CITIZEN, we are introduced to Helm, who lives a very happy married life until one day, someone from his past shows up to bring him back into the spy game. Witnessing how brutal her husband was in his previous life (think A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE), Matt’s wife leaves him at the end.

But this story deals with Matt – code name “Eric” – being assigned the task of beating up a fellow agent so she can continue on a mission. But all things go to hell right away. As he roughs her up, she suddenly dies, causing Matt to stumble his way into the mission himself, one of a missing scientist who needs to be brought back dead or alive. Matt uses the cover of a Chicago underworld type, which only causes more problems.

When push comes to shove, Matt Helm will kill someone without batting an eye. I still kick myself for not grabbing all the early Helm books when I had the chance. Helm is so anti-Bond, it’s not even funny. If you do read these, just imagine Dean Martin actually pulling off some of the stuff mentioned and you’ll see how not pretty it is. I don’t think Dean Martin would have been filmed gutting a woman like a fish.

ASSIGNMENT BURMA GIRL – Of all the spy series out there – and there are plenty – this one does not get the respect it deserves. Edward S. Aarons may not be a household name, but he has written some top-notch stuff that is extremely easy to find in most used book shops. Unlike other spy series that have many books in the series, all the ASSIGNMENT books were written by Aarons himself. Probably the biggest selling point I can give is that he does something a lot of spy novelists don’t do: character development. You actually feel like these people exist; they’re not some one-dimenionsal types just to move the story along.

All of them star Sam Durell (aka The Cajun), who actually works for a real government agency: the CIA, to be exact. In 1961’s ASSIGNMENT BURMA GIRL, he’s called upon to track down a husband of a wealthy women with powerful connections. It seems he was in Burma trying to find the grave of his wife’s brother. At least that’s what the husband believes. He’s captured by a fanatical leader called Major Mong and thrown into a tiger cage.

While in Burma, Durrell runs into a former colleague who now runs a quasi-legal airline service, and all the while, someone tries to stop any progress in Sam’s search. Here comes a minor spoiler, but one you would have figured out really early on: Major Mong is really the brother that was thought to be dead. This is not the type of book where it’s action piece after action piece. It’s more in the vein of another great Patrick McGoohan show, SECRET AGENT MAN. For those who want an intelligent spy story, look to the ASSIGNMENTS, and think of Durell as a precursor to Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.

AN EXPENSIVE PLACE TO DIE – There is no one better at writing Cold War-era, anonymous-spy fiction than Len Deighton, plain and simple. AN EXPENSIVE PLACE TO DIE is not part of the Harry Palmer books that were made into the Michael Caine films. This is a completely different kind of British spy – one with no name – and his task is to gain the trust of Datt, a Frenchman with high influence and a shady business – that of running a house where all kinds of bizarre sexual perversions are filled.

This house previously was part of Trevanian’s THE LOO SANCTION, but here, it’s the major thrust (pun not intended). It turns out Datt is recording and filming the goings-on inside the house for his own benefit. The agent gains access by befriending a French artist who has an “in” with Datt. While there, the agent is drugged with LSD and is forced to tell all his secrets. Too bad none of them speak English, except for a women named Maria, who translates only what she wants them to know.

From there, the agent is playing a dangerous game of deceiving the French police while also protecting his own interests. He’s put under major strain when one of the police informants who worked there is killed by one of the customers. I know this seems daunting and a bit confusing, but I found this 1967 Deighton thriller unlike any others, in that it deals more with the gray area of spying, that it can’t always be black and white and sometimes the bad guys do get away with it. I highly recommend it if you can find it.

Next time, Modesty and her U.N.C.L.E. go to BERLIN. –Bruce Grossman

MISS EARLIER INSTALLMENTS OF ‘BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS’? REGASM THESE:
• #5: Cheese ‘n’ Sleaze
• #4: A Rabbi, a Priest, a Pusher, a Queen
• #3: Smells Like Hi-Karate
• #2: My Name Is Erle
• #1: Debut

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• GRANDMASTER by Warren Murphy
• NIGHT WALKER by Donald Hamilton

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“What you pimpin’ this week, Ms. Book Whore?” you ask.

“Plenty,” she says. “You bring your money, big boy?”

You nod. She replies, “Good. Because you’re gonna need it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Your eyebrow raises in anticipaton.

“Yeah,” she says. “I can’t remember a day where the goods were as hot and plentiful as today. I’m talking, of course, about new books by Dean Koontz, Jeffery Deaver and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child all being released on the same day.”

“Oh.”

“You bet,” she says. “Koontz has THE HUSBAND, which sounds every bit as fast-paced as last year’s VELOCITY. This one’s about a kidnapping. Deaver has THE COLD MOON, another entry in his quadraplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme series, and Preston and Child return to tie up the loose ends from last summer’s DANCE OF DEATH with THE BOOK OF THE DEAD.”

You nod in agreement.

“But that’s not all. Preston and Child are among the big names in THRILLER: STORIES TO KEEP YOU UP ALL NIGHT, which looks to be the suspense anthology of the year. And for more thrills, there’s Marv Wolfman’s novelization for the new movie SUPERMAN RETURNS, and Greg Rucka has PERFECT DARK: INITIAL VECTOR, an original novel based on the Xbox 360 game.”

“Wow, they make books out of video games nowadays? That’s scary.”

“Scary, huh?” the Book Whore asks – purely rhetorical, of course. “For scares, how about CANDLES BURNING, the late Michael McDowell’s unfinished novel, finished by Tabitha King, or David Seltzer’s novelization of his own script for THE OMEN, now back in print in time for the remake. Oh, and hey, are you up for a takedown?”

“And how! I was wondering when you wer–”

“Brad Thor’s TAKEDOWN, that is. It’s a terrorist thriller about a Navy SEAL. You know, someone who could wipe the floor with you.”

“That’s not very nice, Whore,” you say, before remembering something. “Wait a sec, I read about that one on BOOKGASM. They said it was pretty crazy, in a good way.”

“Speak of the devil,” she says, eyeing the guy who just walked in. “It’s Rod Lott, Mr. BOOKGASM himself. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, my lovely and talented wife has her first novel out today, THE STORK REALITY,” Rod answers with no shame. “You heard of it? By Malena Lott?”

“Isn’t that chick lit?” she hisses. “You don’t cover that on your site! It’s against your rules!”

“That’s true, and I won’t be. I just wanted to see it on the shelves. I’m very proud of her and it’s quite exciting,” Rod replies.

Ms. Book Whore dismisses him with a meow and a whip-crack. Rod shrugs his shoulders and walks away.

“Anything else?” you ask. “Like, isn’t this the part where you kill me?”

“Indeed, fool,” she says, grabbing a Mitch Albom book from the shelf and reading aloud from it, boring you to death, killing you instantly.

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Reissued by Penguin to take advantage of the Kurt Russell film POSEIDON is Paul Gallico’s 1969 thriller THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, the basis for both the current remake and the Oscar-winning 1972 Irwin Allen spectacle. The new film immediately capsized at the box office, but the novel – which, I’ll admit, I didn’t realize even existed – lives on (and with an awesome cover utilizing poster art from Allen’s film and its ultra-cool logo).

After introducing us to little more than a dozen on 500 passengers aboard a Christmas voyage of the S.S. Poseidon, Gallico doesn’t waste any time getting things moving. By page 27, this ship has flipped! A seaquake triggers a rock slip, sending forth a giant wave that does to the cruise liner what is thought to be impossible: turn it upside-down. Most of the crew and passengers are killed instantly, but those few who survive would rather not go down toward an icy grave once a final lurch arrives to sink the craft, so they gamely brave their way up toward Poseidon’s hull, where they hope to be rescued.

At first disoriented by the topsy-turvy obstacle course the ship’s interior has become – simple flights of stairs now serve no useful purpose – the survivors encounter more troubled spots along the way, which will test their might, tax their bodies and strip them of all their clothes. (Gallico seems to delight in numerous descriptions of the women having to shed their party dresses and unhook their bras.)

Sometimes the scenarios can be difficult to envision, as Gallico digs into details a bit too much. But if you discard your need for spatial acclimatization, you can easily go along for the ride. This is a fine, old-fashioned adventure; I may have handpicked the first person whose death we witness, but the second was a total surprise. The author’s word usage may be dated, but that’s to your benefit when it contains such phrases as “like a Midway cooch grinder.” I’m more bothered an out-of-nowhere rape scene – made even more awkward by its victim’s reaction – and racist statements of one character that Gallico doesn’t necessarily go out of his way to discount.

Near the end, the book becomes less about thrills and more about emotions, but that doesn’t make it any less readable. Gallico’s ADVENTURE is an adventure as promised, an aged but still fully functioning novel about a disaster that isn’t a disaster at all. –Rod Lott

“He felt her lips searching his face for his mouth and when they found it, they were soft, smelling and tasting of sugar biscuits and sticky with apricot jam. But with the hungry pleading touch with which they fastened upon his, she simultaneously gave him her life and her death. In the next moment they were joined.”

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If you’re looking for a book that soundly illustrates how money and power corrupt and screw up your kids, may I suggest Jennifer Saginor’s memoir PLAYGROUND: A CHILDHOOD LOST INSIDE THE PLAYBOY MANSION?

The eldest daughter of Hugh Hefner’s personal “physician” – one famously termed “Dr. Feelgood” for wholly appropriate reasons – Saginor virtually grew up inside the anything-goes party palace of the world’s most famous porn publisher. A product of a broken home when Mom gets jealous of all the Playmates, Jennifer finds solace in the free arcade games and endless supply of snacks.

But that changes as she gets older. Forever watching her father treat the centerfolds and centerfold wannabes as mere objects – “I’d bet you could fit a lot of cocks inside that mouth” is his idea of a good pickup line (because it works) – she inherits a vastly skewed image of what a woman is supposed to be, do and think. Since Dad plies the day’s conquest with painkillers and other pharmaceuticals, Jennifer also turns to self-medication and sexperimentation, drunkenly losing her virginity to a guy she doesn’t know and later finding she prefers the company of other women.

This all is sad, and Dr. Saginor undoubtedly earns the title of Worst Father Ever, but the time this pattern of behavior is established, PLAYGROUND operates on a loop: drink, drugs, sex, repeat. The effect of reading about it is almost as numbing as actually doing it. That it’s all written in present tense is an annoyance, and for someone who was wasted so much of her youth, Saginor apparently harbors a crystal-clear memory as to what pop song was playing on what radio station for any given night (either that or a well-worn copy of Joel Whitburn’s THE BILLBOARD BOOK OF TOP 40 HITS next to her word processor).

PLAYGROUND would be more interesting if Saginor had let the story be less about herself and incorporate more about the famous stars and starlets with whom she hung out. For example, as a child, she remembers playing hide-and-seek in the mansion with Dorothy Stratten a few days before the Playmate of the Year was murdered by her estranged husband, or walking in on John Belushi riding a floppy-breasted Playmate when she was six years old. These type of anecdotes are more revealing and interesting, but they’re glossed over in favor of yet another mention of when Saginor skipped school or swiped some Xanax. I wanted more about bunnies, not a dead horse. –Rod Lott

“She pulls her jeans off along with her lavender satin G-string. She continues to kiss me and I am so aroused that there is no stopping the inevitable. She spreads her legs wider, pushing my hand toward her wetness, and I giggle like a nervous schoolgirl. ‘I’m so wet, if you don’t go down on me I’m going to have to go upstairs and get my vibrator,’ she warns, chuckling.”

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Imagine if Cathy Guisewite got breast cancer. Then imagine that she hired a seventh-grade girl to illustrate the comic strip in her place. Then take away all the jokes. The end result will be something not unlike Miriam Engelberg’s CANCER MADE ME A SHALLOWER PERSON: A MEMOIR IN COMICS.

Full disclosure before I continue with this review: I’m probably not the target audience. I’m a man. I don’t have breast cancer. And I have a high standard for “comic” literature.

In her introduction, Engelberg name-checks Harvey Pekar, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Mary Fleener and Lynda Barry. The big difference is that Pekar knows he can’t draw, so he hires true comic artists to do the work, while the others are legitimate artists – Barry’s art is primitive, to be sure, but its power is in the storytelling and craft. Engelberg, on the other hand, is apparently someone who believes she can draw, and has convinced her publisher of this, but she can’t. Which wouldn’t be a problem if this were the riotously funny, emotionally raw comics memoir I was expecting from the title.

Instead, it’s surprisingly vanilla; a sad but safe read for those whose lives are deeply affected by Meredith Viera replacing Katie Couric on TODAY. There are opportunities for great jokes, such as her annoyance with Dina, the overly cheerful, fundamentalist Christian lab tech with a sock puppet named Cheer-Up Kitty, but you’ve already written a funnier sequence in your head than what Engelberg gives us. Perhaps she doesn’t want to offend potential readers who are just like Dina, and that, as well as her inability to set up and deliver a truly effective joke, is the book’s downfall, not to mention the vast superiority of similarly themed books, notably Brian Fies’ Eisner Award-winning MOM’S CANCER.

I’m sure this book might be an entertaining, inspirational read for those in its target (whose only experience with comics is the aforementioned Guisewite), but for readers like me, it’s Amateur Hour at the Cancer Comics Café. –Brian Winkeler

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This week’s FRIDAY AFTERNOON REGASM is later than usual (if three weeks can be called “usual”) because our estemeed editor Rod had yardwork duties over at the old BOOKGAM HQ. But since it’s the start of a holiday weekend, you didn’t even notice, did you? Nope, you were too busy sitting at your demoralizing cubicle playing Snood on silent mode and forwarding YouTube links to all your friends. Or perhaps you had a “doctor’s appointment” and had to leave early, because that bar area at Chili’s fills up fast this time of year.

MONDAY >> 5.22.06
Ahhh, Monday. It was such an idyllic time. There was neither the coarseness or vulgarity of Wednesday nor the insouciant egotism of Thursday. These days nowadays can’t hold a candle to reviews such as my own look at Christopher Moore’s A DIRTY JOB, which in turn takes a look at the plight of Grim Reaper apprentices struggling with the day-to-day travails of single parenthood. Apparently, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

That review would be enough for most days, but this party was just getting started for Monday. We also got the good news that Henry Selick would be bringing Neil Gaiman’s wonderful CORALINE to the big screen, and to top it off, Monday brought down the house with Rod Lott’s incisive review of Joseph Finder’s KILLER INSTINCT.

The title of that book brings up a bone I have to pick with the publishing industry as a whole: The titles of books are really starting to suck. There’s a lowest-common-denominator factor at work here, so please, for the love of Evangeline Lilly’s breasts, let’s not just pander to impulse-buying trends and mix it up a little, people. The solution is simple: From now on, books everywhere will be arranged alphabetically by title. The BLOOD HUNTs and KILLER INSTINCTs will be lost in the crowd, while more imaginative titling will be rewarded.

As a side note, keep and eye out for my new thrillers: XYLOPHONE PASSIONS and ZEPPELIN MURDER.

TUESDAY >> 5.23.06
Though obviously not up to Monday’s caliber, Tuesday didn’t screw things up too terribly. The BOOK WHORE cashed in for Matthew Pearl’s THE POE SHADOW, shilled for THE BIG BOOM by Dominic Stansberry and got down and dirty in favor of THE DETECTION COLLECTION, edited by Simon Brett.

Speaking of lowest-common-denominator, BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS went all out this week, digging up a book called THE MAN FROM S.T.U.D. IN THE ORGY AT MADAME DRACULA’S that was actually published. Is this how far we’ve fallen as a society? Good thing wholesome books like Aaron Marc Stein’s SNARE ANDALUCIAN are around to teach us valuable lessons like:
· Don’t follow a “super-chick” too closely into somewhere that’s not your bedroom.
· Don’t trust Spaniards.

Also in the BBB&B mix was KISS HER GOODBYE by Wade Miller, proving yet again that nihilism and detectives go together like chocolate and a knee to the groin.

In other news, the BOOKGASM forums are open! Now you, too, can give your small, jealous opinions the credibility of being published on the Internet! Use as much or as little punctuation as you’d like!!!!! Also emoticons and questionibel spellling !!

WEDNESDAY >> 5.24.06
BOOKS 2 FILM deconstructed Harry Alan Towers’ 1965 translation of Agatha Christie’s murderlicious AND THEN THERE WERE NONE to the big screen as TEN LITTLE INDIANS. That Christie chick wrote some pretty influential stuff, and though Mr. Lott says the 1945 film adaptation is the best one, I think Whoopi Goldberg could give it a run for its money with SISTER ACT 3: AND THEN THERE WERE NUNS.

If that imagery wasn’t horrible enough, check out the review of David Wellington’s web-novel-turned-real-novel MONSTER ISLAND. The monsters in question are zombies, by the way; I got halfway through it before coming to the sad realizations that:
a) Neither MOTHRA nor its twin pop-star priestesses would be making an appearance, and
b) Reading a half a novel on your computer screen can blind you.

THURSDAY >> 5.25.06
BOOKGASM proved once again that it’s the cream of the literary-weblog-with-a-saucy-name crop with a Q&A with THE DEVIL IS A GENTLEMAN’s J.C. Hallman. A word of warning to future interviewees: We cannot be influenced by flattery or bribery. It is safe to say, however, that Mr. Hallman is among the greatest nonfiction writers of the past century. He discusses not only his adoration of BOOKGASM, but also the etiquette of Satanic dungeon-crawling, his aversion to snake-handling and techniques for escaping a mob of Scientologists.

If the war of terror has given us anything, it’s international espionage thrillers. Proving this point is Brad Thor’s TAKEDOWN, which, according to Lott, is “the best midget thriller since MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III.” Take that, Danny DeVito.

FRIDAY >> 5.26.06
Louis Fowler kicked off the (mercifully) last day of the workweek with a dissection of Morgan Spurlock’s DON’T EAT THIS BOOK: FAST FOOD AND THE SUPERSIZING OF AMERICA. Now I’m no doctor, but I find this book a blatant slander of the hardworking folks in the food-service industry. If a 6,000-calorie-a-day diet was good enough for Marlon Brando, then, by L. Ron, it’s good enough for us. Take your Commie diatribes somewhere else, comrade.

And Mr. Lott found issues with DC Comics novelizations again. Devin Grayson’s DC UNIVERSE: INHERITANCE – much like its precursor, LAST SONS – carries on the unfortunate idea of comics readers and book readers being separate species. That said, there’s something to be said for continued support of this series; I think it could go somewhere interesting, but more work – and more Ambush Bug – is needed.

That’s it for the week that was on BOOKGASM. Have a great holiday weekend and remember, just because Monday is a federal holiday for bank employees and mailmen, it’s not for us! So check back for the same ol’ same ol’, won’t you? –Ryun Patterson

The second in a new series of original novels featuring established DC Comics superheroes, Devin Grayson’s DC UNIVERSE: INHERITANCE focuses on Batman, Green Arrow and Aquaman, reuniting and patching old wounds with their erstwhile, all-growed-up sidekicks Nightwing, Arsenal and Tempest (formerly known as Teen Titans Robin, Speedy and Aqualad, respectively).

This sextet assembles for a bit of non-Justice League business at Batman’s request, when the teenage son of a visiting Quarac (read: Iraq) politician to Gotham City is almost assassinated. The near-deadly deed is traced to Deathstroke (with a name like that, of course he’s a villain), who’s been hired to off the poor kid. Though all the heroes take part in the hunt, this is really Green Arrow and Nightwing’s game, as they take center stage.

Grayson – a comics scribe for NIGHTWING – has a workable plot that’s tailor-made for these heroes, but every time you get sucked in, the action keeps getting interrupted by lengthy backstory and origin tales of the three sidekicks. Likely, anyone inherently interested in reading INHERITANCE is going to know the background of these characters anyway, although it does allow for other characters like Green Lantern and Black Canary to put in cameos. INHERITANCE has the same strengths and weaknesses as the previous entry (DC UNIVERSE: LAST SONS by Alan Grant), which is to say it remains true to the characters as we know them, but can’t quite sustain momentum for its 325-odd pages. Still, it’s a hair better than LAST SONS, with more interesting players and better dialogue. While you’re waiting in line this summer for SUPERMAN RETURNS, this’ll certainly help pass the time enjoyably. –Rod Lott

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At first glance, SUPER SIZE ME director Morgan Spurlock’s first book, DON’T EAT THIS BOOK: FAST FOOD AND THE SUPERSIZING OF AMERICA – now in paperback – reeks of the corpse of a dead horse that’s been beaten one too many times. And really, with any other pundit, this would be immensely grating, but Spurlock is so engagingly likable that you overlook that fact. Hell, he seems like a houseguest that you’re actually sad to see go.

A textbook-like extension of his celebrated, Oscar-nominated documentary, DON’T EAT THIS BOOK delves deeper into the McDonald’s conspiracy to make us fatter, with shockingly scary results – the anecdote from a cremator that burning human fat smells like a McDonald’s restaurant is particularly off-putting – but always mixed with Spurlock’s easily accessable, wonderfully self-deprecating banter that reminds you of that cool teacher in high school who made learning actually fun.

The only real problem with Spurlock’s writing is that at times, some of it feels like filler; one too many personal anecdotes from his (in)famous experiment reiterate the same point over and over again. You kind of want to scream, “Okay, I get it, McDonald’s made you not want to screw your vegetarian girlfriend!” Yes, these instances are very few and in-between, but highly noticeable and even skip-worthy.

In the end, though, the book does fulfill its agenda, like the film, and does a great job of making you question not only the McDonald’s food you put into your body, but your whole shitty diet in general. It sure as hell did for me. –Louis Fowler

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In Brad Thor’s TAKEDOWN, we have a real rah-rah America-vs.-terrorists thriller that’s plausible enough for today’s times, but escapist enough for you to forget about all our nation’s foreign policy ills as you digest this on the beach this summer, drinking piña coladas and contracting skin cancer.

After PLAGUEMAKER, this is the second novel I’ve read this year involving terrorists planning a horrific attack on our nation during the Fourth of July weekend. (Is no holiday sacred?) In this book, however, they actually succeed, which it what kicks off the near-non-stop action. The hero for the duration of your ride is Scot Harvath, a former Navy SEAL who now spends his time thwarting threats to U.S. soil from abroad, as part of a covert, counterterrorist agency called the Apex Project – think CTU, but off-the-grid. He and his pals skip all over New York City hunting down suspected al-Qaeda members, and one of the plot’s masterminds is a Scottish dwarf known as “the Troll” (Warwick Davis, call your agent now).

For over-the-top thrills (I’d expect nothing less from someone named Brad Thor), TAKEDOWN would be difficult to beat. Thor throws in motorcycles, subways, booby traps and one particularly brutal torture session that had me crossing my legs and wincing. It’s not exactly what I would call original – there’s a nifty interrogation strategy lifted directly from the second season of 24, not to mention an awakward encounter that directly recalls the face-in-crotch scene from ROMANCING THE STONE – but its premise plays out like an all-cylinders-go DIE HARD sequel … and one I’d gladly pay to see come opening weekend.

Plus, for every fault, there’s a true redeeming aspect. Too many characters to keep track of? Take solace in instantly quotable, un-PC lines like “Where do you keep your falafel mitts, asshole?” Goes on for maybe 50 more pages than it needs to? Then you’d miss the midget riding his dog in the heat of battle. Let me repeat that: the midget riding his dog in the heat of battle. TAKEDOWN served as my first experience with Thor’s work, and the kick-to-the-testes ending all but guarantees it won’t be my last. –Rod Lott

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Any American who’s attended mainstream church services knows all about hymnal singing, water dunking and wafer eating. But what goes down when Satanists and Scientologists meet? J.C. Hallman’s new non-fiction book THE DEVIL IS A GENTLEMAN: EXPLORING AMERICA’S RELIGIOUS FRINGE – read our review here – explores this very topic, as Hallman researched firsthand.

The author of the acclaimed – yet criminally underread – THE CHESS ARTIST: GENIUS, OBSESSION, AND THE WORLD’S OLDEST GAME, journalist Hallman sheds a little more light on his subjects in this quick Q&A with BOOKGASM.

BOOKGASM: How did you select which religious fringes to cover, and were there any that had to be cut for whatever reason?

HALLMAN: First off, let me say thanks to BOOKGASM and its readers. Literary weblogs are performing a very important function right now in the whole business of books, and I’m flattered to have been granted this forum. It’s nice to know there’s an audience out there that isn’t concerned, first and foremost, with bottom lines.

The thing with writing about religion, I think, is that it’s impossible to be comprehensive. You can read and write your whole life and barely scratch the surface of the subject. When I began to compile a list of groups to investigate, I followed a couple of rules: They had to speak to something inherently American, and they had to have emerged in the 20th century. Now, I broke these rules to some extent, but what was more important than the basic facts of any particular group was coming up with a collection that was, at least on some level, representative of something. You can’t be comprehensive, but you can at least aspire to representation. I went with a couple Christian groups, a couple Pagan groups, a few that seemed to have sprung out of nothing at all, and Atheism to round things out. Together, they made a portrait that felt accurate to me.

No group was cut, but I did abandon the investigation of a couple – snake handlers and the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship – because I felt I already had a fair handle on the Christian side of things. If you’re in the ring with the Christian Wrestling Federation, do you have to take up a serpent, too, to understand the Christian fringe?

BOOKGASM: You remark several times about being spooked, but at any point, did your “fight or flight” instinct kick in and tell you, “I should not be here. I should not be doing this”?

HALLMAN: There were definitely a few moments when things felt sketchy – such as sneaking onto the razed foundation of the house where the Heaven’s Gate members killed themselves, or finding myself in a Satanic dungeon in remote Canada – but the only time I really felt like I was doing something I didn’t want to do was in Scientology. I was attending L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday celebration in Los Angeles. It wasn’t that it scared me; it was just kind of gross. It was religion as the Oscars, and that ceremony had just taken place not that far away. About halfway through the celebration, I wanted to leave – I wasn’t interested, it wasn’t moving in any way – so I did. That’s how I ended the Scientology section of the book.

BOOKGASM: What do you think it is that people find attractive about these groups that you and I and the majority of our nation sees as utterly strange?

HALLMAN: It’s pretty easy to take pot shots at groups like this. They’re routinely mocked. And they are pretty strange, there’s no doubt about it. But one of the jobs I sort of set for myself in this book, one of the ideas I had, was that I would spend at least a little time in each chapter trying to portray ceremonies or observances in such a way that you, as the reader, would get a sense of just this question. What’s attractive about them? How do these people understand themselves? Sometimes it’s the very otherness of a religion that draws people.

THE DEVIL IS A GENTLEMAN spends a good amount of time on the life and work of William James, whose THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE answered this question for a different century. One of the things that James said is that people are drawn to the religions that are in keeping with their “personal susceptibilities.” If you feel left out of culture, you’ll find a religion that speaks to that. The utter strangeness of a belief is precisely the thing that folks like this respond to – they don’t join in spite of it, but because of it. People come in varieties – that’s why there are a variety of religions. I kept that idea in mind throughout the work on this book.

BOOKGASM: Have you been harassed by any of the more suspect groups since the book came out?

HALLMAN: Not yet, but the book’s just coming out. Check back with me in a couple months – if I don’t respond, call my editor. He knows what to do.

BOOKGASM: What’s next from you?

HALLMAN: I’m working on an article about Pleistocene rewilding for Harper’s Magazine. It’s possible that a book may spin off from that.

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The current surge in zombie fiction continues with David Wellington’s ambitious novel MONSTER ISLAND. The difference is it gives the “more brains” genre some actual brains.

Originally published as a web serial, Wellington’s first in a zombie trilogy (to be followed by MONSTER NATION and MONSTER PLANET) details the plight of a former U.N. weapons inspector named Dekalb. Several years after the zombie epidemic has decimated much of the Western hemisphere, he and his daughter take refuge in Somalia. But when the village leader requires AIDS medication that may only be available at the U.N. headquarters, Dekalb secures his daughter’s safety by going home again, with the aid of several heavily armed Somalian schoolgirls, trained to introduce rapid-fire bullets to zombie skull from a sniper’s distance.

So it’s like escape to New York, where they’re greeted by a teeming mass of the hungry undead. And if that’s all there was to MONSTER ISLAND, it would be like every other story you think of when you hear “zombie.” But Wellington also alternates that narrative with one of Gary, a former doctor who froze himself before he turned zombie, and thus, has retained all his thinking and communications faculties. He acts like a human, yet looks like one of them. Where do you go when you don’t easily fit in to either side of a war?

And there are mummies. While I think that matter of cross-pollination alone is genius, Wellington really should be commended for not settling for aping George Romero movies. Though that obviously provided the template (as it has for all things zombie ever since), Wellington isn’t in it just for the gore, which would get old fast. He infuses this pulse-pounder with pathos and other realistic emotions that carry a weight of plausability –not to mention flashes of wit (”You could cut the irony with a spork”) – bringing it far above the level of just an average, everyday effort. The man holds a master’s degree in creative writing, and it clearly shows in his prose, to where the damn thing – dare I say it? – even flirts with being literary.

I’ve admired Wellington’s short stories in such collections as THE UNDEAD and BRAINCHILD, but standing out on his own, he proves himself the real deal. Horror fans – and even non-horror fans who can’t resist cat-and-mouse adventure – will be marooned happily on this ISLAND. I, for one, look forward to seeing where the trilogy goes from here. –Rod Lott

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Agatha Christie’s classic AND THEN THERE WERE NONE has been adapted for the screen many times, but none more swingin’ than schlockmeister Harry Alan Towers’ 1965 production of TEN LITTLE INDIANS.

Christie’s amazingly influential premise is directly ported onto screen as 10 strangers – a doctor, a judge, an actress, a singer, etc. – are summoned to a weekend in the mountaintop mansion of one Mr. U.N. Owen, a host, as it turns out, none of them know. They’re awaiting his arrival when a recording of his voice (a disembodied Christopher Lee) accuses each of them of having commited murder of an innocent, which is why they’ve been invited. Their punishment is getting murdered in turn, as they’re trapped in the estate until Monday.

Not long after they notice the presence of the “Ten Little Indians” nursery rhyme all over the rooms, one of them dies, and in the exact manner as the rhyme’s first couplet. Just who is this Mr. Owen? Why is he doing this? And will they be able to find out before there are none of them left? If you’ve neither read the story nor seen any of its filmed versions before, you won’t know the answers. But you’ll have fun being stumped.

That’s why I think NONE’s rep as one of the greatest mystery novels of all time – if not the greatest – is well-deserved. Its plot is simply ingenious as its multiple twists are unforeseen. It would be hard to screw up an adaptation of the book, because the book is the blueprint, from which INDIANS rarely strays.

Where it does are in its period touches. Only in the ’60s would teen idol Fabian be cast, making some of the strangest facial expressions the screen wouldn’t see the likes of until MY LEFT FOOT. Only in the ’60s would the lead roles be given to featherweight actors like Hugh O’Brian and former Bond girl Shirley Eaton (whom, though she disrobes twice, I preferred in gold paint). Only in the ’60s would it be given such a jazzy, loungey score (by Malcolm Lockyer, and I want an MP3). And only in the ’60s would it be given a William Castle-esque gimmick in the form of a “Whodunit Break,” a minute-long intermission during which a clock countdowns the seconds, shows you clues and invites you to figure out the solution beforehand.

With such a large cast (at least initially), INDIANS does a good job of introducing you to each character three separate times, so you know who’s who before the guest list starts to narrow. What is more amazing is that Christie similarly introduced her characters excellently, but without the benefit of visual backup the screen affords. She knew how to craft a mystery, which may explain why Hollywood has tapped it half a dozen times officially (its premise has been ripped off countless times since, in films as varied as CLUE, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and, more recently, IDENTITY).

But INDIANS is inferior compared to the first and best adaptation, 1945’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, directed by René Clair. As its characters also have little to do but sit around and die – by choking, stabbing, poison, etc. – you’d think the movie would get easier to figure out, but it’s quite the opposite. Having seen it just prior to reading the book, I didn’t have a clue; I was hooked and anxious for the reveal, and the movie knew it, taking its diabolically sweet-ass time to play its tricks.

However, don’t let that dissuade you from seeing INDIANS. In fact, both it and the original are worth a rental (if not a purchase for mystery film fans), and Christie’s book is downright essential. –Rod Lott

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The forums are open! The forums are open! And in case you weren’t paying attention, the forums are open!

As of today, the BOOKGASM discussion forums/message boards/whateveryouwannacallthem are up, operational and waiting for you at eyeballforums.com. Use them to discuss books and comics, whether reviewed here or not; to post strange and interesting book covers; to gossip; to bitch; to rant; to rave. Before you ask “What’s the ‘eyeball’ all about?,” BOOKGASM is part of the Eyeball Media Group of cool websites, which also includes Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity, Daily Starlet, Joe Bartender, All Things Damaged and the new Guerilla Cinema.

For now, the comments on that site will remain open, but I’ll likely close them down in the near future and just have all discussion take place in the forums. Besides, I’m tired of deleting 400 spam comments a day about penis enlargement, online casinos, prescription drugs and porn cartoons.

Column number five and what better way to mark this moment by reviewing three books that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time but kept putting off? This week, I’ve dug deep to bring you one really out-of-date thriller, an “erotic” mystery and just some really bad spy fiction that’s heavy on the sex. Now that I used the word “sex,” I know you’re anxious for me not to waste any more time…

SNARE ANDALUCIAN – Sometimes you have to learn the hard way that some books just don’t age that well. I’m not talking about plot or story, but slang and language used. Aaron Marc Stein’s SNARE ANDALUCIAN is filled with terms so very much of their time in 1968. All girls are referred to as “chicks,” guys are “cats” and the police are, of course, “fuzz.” But that’s not all the awful slang; I don’t think a paragraph went by without “dig” being dropped.

The basic plot is that Matt follows a “super chick” down the wrong alley, which gets him mixed up with some unsavory types, like a corrupt Spainard who is into blackmail and stolen identities. Matt, who is portrayed as some everyday buisnessman, comes off like James Bond-lite, and is thrown into all kinds of situations that would make certain spy thrillers jealous. If you have ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST, then you know the type of story, except without the mistaken-identity angle. Throughout SNARE, I was just amazed at how easily Matt finds the bad guys and bests them. This book is just not set in any kind of reality, except for that mystical kind you see in films like DIE HARD. On a whole, this book – if written today – would be one of those guilty pleasures you pick up in an airport. The cover promised so much, yet delivered so little.

KISS HER GOODBYE – From Wade Miller, author of the great Hard Case Crime release BRANDED WOMAN, comes 1956’s KISS HER GOODBYE. Yes, folks, it’s another case of two authors operating under one fictitious name. This is a tale of a brother-sister relationship with a small dash of crime thrown in.

The best way to describe this tale is to imagine Scarlett Johansson with the mind of a 10-year-old, and that pretty much sums up Emily Darnell, the sister half of the duo – a girl who is incredibly attractive to all that see her, but can’t comprehend what men want from her. When she is touched in the wrong type of way, she gets extremely violent, like taking a rake to a boy’s neck or stabbing her principal in the hand with scissors. Yeah, that’s the kind of sister Ed Darnell has to take care of: a real bundle of fun.

Ed and Emily have been moving from town to town over the last five years, before settling into Jimmock at an old auto court that’s seen better days. Ed is extremely protective of Emily to the point that she is pretty much confined to her room. As he goes job hunting in town, he gets hired by a distribution company by a seemingly nice man by the name of Cory. Ed thinks things are going great, ’til the day Cory meets Emily and becomes smitten with her.

Things don’t work out for the brother and sister in this novel, but the real problem is it just did not age well at all. I saw the ending coming a mile away. Hell, the cover gives away a huge plot point! But don’t get me wrong: I really liked the book and, for its