Going through 51 weeks’ worth of reviews, one thought struck me above all others: “Geez, we covered a ton of books this year.” You’d think that’d make it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, but no. These books below stuck out for a reason – click any of the links to read our original reviews.

Best in Fiction
For those of you among the BOOKGASM faithful, this should come as no surprise: Paul Malmont’s THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL made our summer, and nothing else came close before or since. Paying tribute to pulp fiction in a literary style, Malmont excites while eliciting emotion – no easy task – and emerges with the year’s best made-up read, ironically about real-life writers most would think unworthy of such a showcase. Their loss, your gain. We simply cannot wait for Malmont’s next.

Runners-up: James Morrow’s criminally ignored bizarro fantasy THE LAST WITCHFINDER, Hard Case Crime’s one-two punch of Seymour Shubin’s WITNESS TO MYSELF and Max Allan Collins’ THE LAST QUARRY, David L. Robbins’ inexplicably overlooked thriller THE ASSASSINS GALLERY, Joseph Wambaugh’s welcome return with HOLLYWOOD STATION, Christopher Fowler’s addictive whodunit TEN SECOND STAIRCASE and Scott Smith’s horrific (in a bloody good way) THE RUINS.

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THE TERROR by Dan Simmons – Take a true-life Arctic expedition gone horribly, fatally wrong; fictionalize it with a supernatural element and an epic scope; and you’ve got the latest from Simmons, returning to horror after a long hiatus that’s seen him concentrating on sci-fi. Early reviews peg this as a cross between Stephen King’s fright-filled novels and Patrick O’Brian’s nautical adventures. Though it will be cold in January, this has the potential to chill you even more. (Jan. 7)

DEEP STORM by Lincoln Child – Child’s third solo outing finds him firmly entrenched in thrillerville, with an outbreak on an oil rig, an undersea habitat and a little something called Atlantis. As stated many times before, I’ll gladly read anything this man writes. (Jan. 30)

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Because that pesky thing known as “making a living” prevents me from reading all day long, I can’t always get to everything I want. Such as these unlucky 13 novels, in no particular order other than their left-to-right position on my shelf, on which they sit, mocking me with their uncracked spines:

• THE MASK OF ATREUS by A.J. Hartley
• IN DREAMS by Shane Christopher
• SHADOWS BEND by David Barbour and Richard Raleigh
• LISEY’S STORY by Stephen King
• THREE DAYS TO NEVER by Tim Powers
• THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM EATERS by Gordon Dahlquist
• THE PALE BLUE EYE by Louis Bayard
• THE LOST VAN GOGH by A.J. Zerries
• THE POE SHADOW by Daniel Pearl
• THE SWARM by Frank Schatzing
• SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS by Marisha Pessl
• THE THIRTEENTH TALE by Diane Setterfield
• DEMON THEORY by Stephen Graham Jones
–Rod Lott

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In this – 2006’s final monthly round-up of search terms that bring new pervs people to BOOKGASM – a list of the usual suspects. But look! Toward the bottom (no pun intended), newcomer Shannon Tweed, queen of the erotic thriller. We welcome you, Shannon, with open arms. (No, seriously. Give us a call. We’ll spring for cab fare.)

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2006 was a solid year for science fiction. The biggest story of the year, in my opinion, is Pyr’s rise to prominence as a high-quality sci-fi imprint. Pyr has managed to round up a stable of authors and titles that represents the cutting edge of sci-fi and backs it up with promotion and marketing that pretty much outdoes the other imprints out there. Bravo, Pyr. Here’s hoping for an even greater 2007. With that groveling out of the way, here’s the rundown of the five best sci-fi books I read this year:

5. INFOQUAKE by David Louis Edelman / CROSSOVER by Joel Shepherd (tie) – This pair of books is a great example of what Pyr is doing right. INFOQUAKE is a tech-heavy exercise in scientific speculation that combines economics, high technology and business mechanics into an all-too-human story of greed, loss and redemption. CROSSOVER isn’t satisfied with being just another hot-chick-android-assassin book and goes for some heavy-duty characterization (not unlike what’s been going on in TV’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) that makes the kicking ass that much more tremendous.

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1. IF I DID IT by Paul Reubens – In this thrilling and highly controversial book, the former PEE-WEE’S PLAYHOUSE star takes a speculative look at the way events might have unfolded on July 26, 1991, if he really had been guilty of invading his own private manzone in a Sarasota, Fla., adult movie theater.

2. NEWTON’S FOLLY by Michael Crichton – Having previously set his sights on debunking global warming, workplace sexual harassment and the humanity of the Japanese people, the bestselling author of JURASSIC PARK now has set his sights on science’s most sacred law: gravity. Set in a gritty, unnamed urban metropolis, Crichton tells the story of a former physicist-turned-homicide-detective who investigates a series of deaths in which the victims seem to have floated mysteriously off the ground and asphyxiated in the airless heights of the planet’s atmosphere. As is typically the case with most of Crichton’s novels, NEWTON’S FOLLY was simultaneously released to theaters in an adaptation starring Michael Douglas as the detective with teen singing sensation JoJo as his stewardess girlfriend.

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The year 2006 was a stunner for this reviewer. After plowing through exactly 71 books in 11 months, only some of which were for review at this site, I’ve come to believe that: a) my own coming-of-age novel has not only grown up, but left the house and had kids, and maybe it’s better to stop thinking about writing the Great American Novel and end up just hoping to find it; b) my God, there’s a lot of fucking crap published nowadays; and c) trusting book reviewers is a risky business.

I subscribe to every book review publication there is, and the print magazines have just become a joke. If you want political polemic, you can go to The New York Review of Books, but you won’t get fair reviews there. The London Review of Books is strong, but also decidedly anti-American, so be warned. The Times Literary Supplement is the best of the bunch, but it’s also a whopping $169 a year. At least Bookforum is reasonably priced, but it gets a little smarmy with the fiction. Still, that’s probably the best print magazine to get if you’re interested in books. But what about mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, horror and genre fiction? Well, for that, I hope you come to BOOKGASM.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

Since I’m never sure what “best” is supposed to mean, I’m submitting these books because they gave me great degrees of pleasure in a variety of ways:

• THE HUSBAND by Dean Koontz
• DARK HARVEST by Norman Partridge
• ASK THE PARROT by Richard Stark
• ECHO PARK by Michael Connelly
• THE CRIMES OF JORDAN WISE by Bill Pronzini
• THE DEAD LETTERS by Tom Piccirilli
• THE EMPIRE OF ICE CREAM by Jeffrey Ford
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• EVERYBODY KILLS SOMEBODY SOMETIME by Robert Randisi
• THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL by Paul Malmont –Ed Gorman

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1. STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES OF HUMAN CADAVERS by Mary Roach – Roach gives death the humor treatment as she examines all things post-mortem, including the making of a skeleton, cremation and embalming and the use of cadavers for research. While very funny and witty, she is also respectful of the dearly departed.

2. SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson – Sci-fi for readers who don’t usually do sci-fi. The mafia is in control of pizza delivery and people have alternate lives within the “Metaverse,” a sort of futuristic Internet. Inside this computer-generated world, one can always spot an Avatar that’s gained entry via a public-access terminal because it is low-res and crappy-looking. And one can always spot an Avatar that’s fallen victim to the designer drug known as Snow Crash because their brain will be fried.

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If I were to do a standard Top 10 list of the year’s best books, five of the slots would be taken up by a certain plucky little publishing house in California. So why not just cut the standard list in half and focus directly on the venerable Stark House Press, purveyor of many fine two-in-one collections of classic crime novels.

Top 5 Twofers from Stark House Press:

1. A NIGHT FOR SCREAMING / ANY WOMAN HE WANTED by Harry Whittington – This book made me such a fan of Whittington, aka the king of the paperbacks. Now I’m always on the lookout for more of his stuff in the used stores (usually to no avail), so I hope Stark House reissues some more.

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All the news that’s fit to capsulize!

We wish all our readers a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hannukah or a pleasant what-have-you! For the final week of 2006, we’ve got year-end lists galore from several of our staffers, starting on the day after Christmas and leading to the all-inclusive “best and worst of 2006″ on Friday. Pull yourself out of your eggnog stupor and come back!

The twofer MY LOVELY EXECUTIONER / AGREEMENT TO KILL is the fourth book of Peter Rabe’s writings published by Stark House Press. Rabe wins the cool points right away for being the first noir author I was exposed to – not from a mystery book or anything like that, but from his writing two episodes of a TV show I watched every morning before school as a kid: BATMAN. To find out which ones, read this book’s introduction.

Unlike other books I’ve covered in the Stark House oeuvre, 1960’s MY LOVELY EXECUTIONER does not grab you by the throat and hit full-tilt until the story was over. No, this story is more of a slow burn for readers, as we’re slowly fed the information we need; Rabe gives it out in drips and drabs all the way to the end.

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Apparently, the comics world is big enough for two men of science turned into giant swamp creatures. Marvel introduced Man-Thing near simultaneously with DC’s eerily similar Swamp Thing, and while the latter enjoyed a long, healthy run that continues today, the Man-Thing wallowed in relative obscurity. Every now and again, he shows up to make an appearance, recently in his own absolutely dreadful movie and now the much more wonderful ESSENTIAL MAN-THING: VOL. 1 collection.

Birthed in a brief story in the first issue of SAVAGE TALES, Man-Thing was one do-gooder scientist Ted Sallis, formulating on a secret super-soldier serum in the Florida Everglades until his sexy little ho-bag turns on him. Rather than let his chemical concoction fall into criminal hands, Sallis injects himself with it and crashes into the swamp. The combo of the murky waters and the syringe contents turns him into a big, strong, mute, green monster whose fingers ooze acid. And, as his catchphrase goes, “Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!”

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Lawrence Block is one of the most prolific mystery writers around, best exemplified by his innumerable smooth short stories, collected in ENOUGH ROPE. He is also the master of three very different and very popular series characters. My own favorite is the stamp-collecting professional hit man Keller (HIT MAN, natch), but he also has tons of Matthew Scudder novels (THE SINS OF THE FATHERS) and a slew of Bernie Rhodenbarr novels. THE BURGLAR WHO THOUGHT HE WAS BOGART is seventh in this latter series – a newly reissued paperback of the 1995 original – but you don’t have to worry about reading the books in order. In fact, if you haven’t tried a Block at all, this would be a good start.

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Take a deep breath, because the full title of Gauntlet Press’ new anthology is BLOOD LINES: RICHARD MATHESON’S DRACULA, I AM LEGEND, AND OTHER VAMPIRE STORIES, and it contains all of the above. Yet if you’ve already seen the TV version of DRACULA Mr. Matheson wrote for Dan Curtis in the ’70s, you still need this book. If you’ve already read his classic I AM LEGEND novel, you still need this book. And even if you’ve already read the three short stories here … yep, you still need this book.

Why? Because this is the like the director’s cut DVD of Matheson’s bloodsucker oeuvre. And it’s the extra features that put previous barebones releases to shame. Editor Mark Dawidziak has done a superb job in assembling this one.

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Discussing books on movies … almost as good as watching them, and without the sticky floors!

A short time ago, I found myself sitting in front of my television experiencing that odd sensation the French like to call déjà vu. It happened while I was watching the 1988 remake of THE BLOB starring a fabulously mulletted Kevin Dillon and (dreamy sigh) the lovely Shawnee Smith. Despite my professional reputation as an appreciator of the horror genre, this was the first time I had actually seen the movie, which was why it seemed so strange to me that I found so much of it eerily familiar.

At first I thought this was because the film was a remake, but then I remembered that I’ve never actually seen the original Steve McQueen version or its 1972 Larry Hagman-directed sequel (BEWARE! THE BLOB), either. As far as I could remember, I was a BLOB virgin, yet as the highly entertaining movie played on, I felt that somehow I had been there before.

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Throw a noose around my neck and hoist me up to be fed to the vultures, but I think the comic book – more than the movies, more than novels – is the ideal venue to tell the Western tale. While the genre flounders in those other media, the old West is brought to life on the four-color page. MARVEL WESTERNS attests to this.

Collecting four recent one-shots, this anthology offers new stories on forgotten Marvel cowboy characters, as well as reprints some classic (at least by virtue of being old) adventures of The Rawhide Kid. But those old stories – coming from the team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – are secondary to the new stuff, which both pay tribute to and revive with excitement the gunslinging traditions of the past.

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One of this country’s greatest writers, the late George Plimpton, made his name with a series of participatory journalism books, all revolving around professional sports. Plimpton, who was more than 6 feet tall, but couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds, did all sorts of things like play golf in the PGA tour (THE BOGEY MAN), pitched baseball (OUT OF MY LEAGUE) and memorably served as a quarterback in an NFL exhibition game (PAPER LION and MAD DUCKS AND BEARS). They are all phenomenal books, and none of them could be written nowadays, because there is no way the unions and the leagues would allow it to occur.

So author Mark St. Amant has done the next best thing: He half-accidentally signed up as a kicker for a semi-pro football team in Boston and then wrote a book about his experiences, titled JUST KICK IT: TALES OF AN UNDERDOG, OVER-AGE, OUT-OF-PLACE, SEMI-PRO FOOTBALL PLAYER. And if you or anyone you know has a love for football, you must buy this book, because it is a tremendous surprise in the overcrowded and heavily clichéd field of sports tomes.

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Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

When a book like NAUGHTY SPANKING STORIES FROM A TO Z, VOLUME 2 comes across my desk, I have to think, “Hey, everyone’s got a fetish. This just isn’t mine.” But for those who quiver at the thought of a paddle slapping their bare buttocks, I suppose this heavily niched anthology is right up their alley (no pun intended). Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel has organized this collection of 26 tails tales (if you don’t count the four “bonus stories” at the end) into alphabetical order, although they’re rather interchangeable. Each follows a strict code of sexual fantasy: 1) Someone gets spanked. 2) Someone gets wet. And that alone pretty much provides both the setup and the climax (literally). Thumb through this one at random and you may find a tale of reddened asscheeks between a married couple, a lesbian couple or a stripper and her clientele. Some are funny, on purpose, and some just accidental.

Edited by Robert J. Randisi, the anthology LONE STAR LAW gives major props to the Texas Rangers, and it’s completely WALKER-free. Boasting a dozen yarns from top Western writers like Elmer Kelton and James Reasoner, it begins with its only reprint: the quasi-mystery “A Job for a Ranger” by Louis L’Amour. Much of the other 11 pieces follow a standard formulaic course, but a couple of contributors realize that gunfights can be secondary to telling a compelling story. In that group are Ed Gorman, exploring guilt and a cursed weapon in “Dead Man’s Gun,” and Marcus Galloway, whose lovestruck protagonist gives chase to Bonnie and Clyde in “One Hundred and Two Days.” All in all, LONE STAR LAW makes about half its shots.

Tor reprints the late Avram Davidson’s ADVENTURES IN UNHISTORY: CONJECTURES ON THE FACTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF SEVERAL ANCIENT LEGENDS, a 1993 work in which the author examined, debunked and made considerable fun of a host of popular myths, from Sindbad the Sailor and sexy mermaids to werewolves and woolly mammoths. With lengthy paragraphs, lots of ellipses and prodigious footnotes, it’s a little too dense to digest all at once, but those who like fantasy with a touch of the professorial and a heap of the satiric should enjoy these offbeat and admittedly unique mini-lectures. They’re certainly good-humored, even when not always all that good.

I simply can’t get enough of Steve Niles’ comics. He takes well-worn conventions – and even characters – of the horror genre and completely turns them on their disembodied head. STEVE NILES’ CELLAR OF NASTINESS shows you how and why, collecting three of his celebrated one-shots, all from 2005. Its centerpiece is HYDE, his version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, and it’s a modern reworking rather than a retelling. For one thing, the Jekyll of this tale is actually two brothers, both of whom are pharmaceutical researchers; Nick Stakal provides art that demands your attention. In line with his CRYPTICS one-shot, the kiddie-oriented A VERY BIG MONSTER SHOW is sly, satirical and even Bradburyian in bent, with a Butch Addams-esque protagonist. And finally, HORRORCIDE spins four E.C.-style terror tales to varying degrees of success (mostly high), with art from Ben Templesmith, Chee and Josh Medors. Essential for Niles fans. –Rod Lott

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Is Gene Wolfe perhaps the best pure writer working today in science fiction and fantasy? Sometimes it seems so; he can do almost anything. From the depth and complexity of the various Sun series to the pared-down rocklike prose of the Latro Soldier series, he is a master of words and style, perfectly painting his imagined world and allowing us to look not just at the surface, but at the brushstrokes that make the work what it is.

The Latro series (SOLDIER OF THE MIST, SOLDIER OF ARETE) becomes a trilogy with the newest, SOLDIER OF SIDON. It features the mercenary strongman who goes by many names: Lewqys, Lucius or Latro. He is a damaged soul, for though he seems hale and hearty, he has no memory. He cannot remember his name from one day to the next, and only knows that he has a wife because others tell him so. His quest is to rediscover himself – to not only know who he is and was, but who the gods have chosen him to become.

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