The output of Jeffrey Thomas has rekindled my love of sci-fi with his twisted takes on the future of social relations in the face of disturbing technological advances. Often times, his novels and short stories are nightmarish glimpses into a future world that pretty much make William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick mere shrinking reflections in the rearview mirror. This is the guy who fans of those authors should be reading.

His latest, DEADSTOCK, is like H.P. Lovecraft writing the novelization of CHINATOWN, if that film were directed by David Cronenberg. It’s a monster-encrusted foray into a world of body modification, animal modification and doll modification, all leading to monstrous Godification underneath the city of Punktown, which is an Earth colony on the planet Oasis – a sprawling, crime-filled dystopia where different races mingle and often become intertwined in each other’s bullshit.

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HarperCollins is reprinting Lawrence Block’s classic mystery series featuring professional burglar and rare bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr, and THE BURGLAR IN THE LIBRARY shows Bernie at his best, nicking up to a fancy bed and breakfast in order to nick a rare signed association copy of Raymond Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP.

Bernie has found out about the book with a bit of literary research, and he is sure the owners of the B&B don’t know what they have. On his first night there, he spots the book and is determined to steal it. But then a dead body shows up. And then another. And so on.

As the corpses mount, Bernie and all the inhabitants of the inn realize that they are cut off from civilization. Snow is falling at the rate of two feet a day, phone lines are out, and the one bridge from the inn’s grounds to the main road has been destroyed. It’s turning into a very bad and deadly parody of an old school English murder mystery.

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Our monthly depressing look at the search terms that bring pervs to BOOKGASM!

All the news that’s fit to capsulize!

FLY AIR HOFF!
David Hasselhoff has a book out. It’s an autobiography called DON’T HASSEL THE HOFF. Don’t care? What if I told you publisher St. Martin’s celebrates said release with your very own printable David Hasselhoff paper airplane? Yeah, I thought so!

SHE MUST BE STOPPED!
For anyone else who has long suspected that Amazon’s “#1 reviewer” Harriet Klausner doesn’t even read the books she reviews, this Dayton Daily News article is a must-read.

HINT: GET YOUR DRINK ON!
Need a step-by-step guide on how to write the great American novel? This amusing video short from Morris Hill Pictures tells you how.

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Those boys from LORD OF THE FLIES had it easy, compared to the cast of felonious characters comprising Rob Hedden’s THE CONDEMNED. It’s a novelization to the upcoming WWE Films action movie starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, and if the flick is anything like the book, I’m already in line.

A not-too-implausible semi-satire on the increasingly boundary-pushing state of reality television, THE CONDEMNED is about a revolutionary Internet pay-per-view show that plucks 10 death row inmates from their respective prisons and plops them on to an island for a fight-to-the-finish brawl in which only one will be left standing. The time bombs on their ankle bracelets make sure of that.

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

The only series I read regularly are those that offer worlds I want to visit. This may be because before I began reading mysteries regularly, I read science fiction. World-building is critical in sci-fi and fantasy.

And it is in mystery fiction, too. Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie. John Dickson Carr. Indelible worlds. Or Mr. and Mrs. North. Craig Rice’s various detectives working out of Chicago. Hammett, Chandler, Chester Himes’ Harlem novels.

And Bill Crider’s small-town Texas series, the latest of which is MURDER AMONG THE OWLS. This time, Sheriff Dan Rhodes has to decide whether Helen Harris’ death was accidental or criminal. At certain points in his investigation, his deputies are his biggest hindrance to solving what is now clearly a crime. Wizards they’re not.

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Over in Florida, author Gary Williams has managed to create an Internet buzz and build a loyal fanbase without the benefit of a high-dollar marketing budget, much less a publisher. He did this by … well, here, let him tell you about it.

BOOKGASM: For those unfamiliar, how would you describe what your novels are all about? To whom would they appeal?

WILLIAMS: The first three books – FISH OF SOULS, GROUNDSWELL and THE GOD TOOLS - are supernatural thrillers. My upcoming novel, HALF-RED SKULL is a pure thriller. I will admit my work carries a distinctive horror flavor, which I attribute to my love of early Stephen King novels.

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Guess whose insurance rates are about to skyrocket? Josh Michaels, the protagonist of Simon Wood’s thriller ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN. Mere paragraphs from page one, Josh’s car is forced off the road – and into a river – by an SUV. As Josh frantically tries to escape and swim to safety, he notices the SUV driver standing by the side of the road, doing nothing but watching him struggle and giving him the thumbs-down sign.

And a first chapter that intriguing deserves a thumbs-up. Josh has no idea who the driver was or why he’d want him dead. To make an already stressful situation worsen, at about the same time, a woman named Bell resurfaces in his life. She was his mistress from a while back, and she’s seeking some big-time hush money to keep their secrets – about infidelity and a work-related bribe – from his wife and employer.

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When I think of Jeff Rovin, I think of joke books, trivia collections and Tom Clancy spin-offs – basically anything but horror novels. Yet here he is with CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEVIL, sort of a psychotherapist EXORCIST.

Its heroine is Sara Lynch, a shrink in the sleep town of Delwood. Her patient base is comprised of the typical mix of philanderers and in-the-closeters, save for a 16-year-old boy named Fredric. To say he’s withdrawn and outcast is an understatement – he dresses in all black and wears pancake makeup to school. And lately, he’s been really upset over something he read in the Bible.

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Saddle up, buckaroos, for some tales of the West. Pop on your favorite Ennio Morricone soundtrack – personally, I’m a huge fan of NAVAJO JOE – and sit down for a spell with some stories of the old days, complete with some actual frontier gibberish.

LUCK OF THE DRAW by Zeke Masters – Wow, do we ever reach the bottom of the Western well with this “adult” oater from 1980. The reason it’s adult is that there are a few scenes of graphic sex better suited for a Penthouse Forum letter.

This novel is concerned with card games and cheating, with a thinner-than-Kate Moss plot, but you will be so bored with the subpar writing, you won’t even care how our hero gets into these situations. His name is Faro Blake, and he’s a card shark, plain and simple. Sure, he cheats men out of their money, but only if they are bad and rich.

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Good fiction magazines aren’t easy to find – heck, even bad ones are off the radar – but look to the small press and you’re more apt to discover one. DARK WISDOM is one of them.

Published quarterly by Elder Signs Press, DARK WISDOM calls itself “the magazine of dark fiction.” Its 10th issue – the first I’ve seen –  certainly fits that bill, opening with William C. Dietz’s “Dead Men Talk a Lot,” imagining a time when we can communicate with the recently deceased via telephone.

Other stories are equally dispiriting in mood, but pretty decent in execution, like E. Sedia’s “Yakov and the Crows,” a three-page marvel about, yep, a Russian, some birds and a pitch-black ending. Similar in style is “The Generosity of Strangers,” in which Michael McBride’s thesis-writing grad student tries to save the life of a suicidal stranger over the phone.

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James Patterson catches lots of flak for pooping out a new hardcover every few months – some of them cranked out with the aid of other writers who do most of the work for least of the credit, most of them topping the bestseller lists. He seems determined to rule every area of bookstore shelves, writing thrillers, mysteries, romances and even kids’ novels.

So why, then, did I choose to read STEP ON A CRACK, a debut novel for undoubtedly his latest cash-cow franchise? Call it morbid curiosity – a desire to see what the fuss was all about. I’d had passages of Patterson read to me mockingly before, and they struck me as the most basic, perfunctory prose one could find in populist fiction. But I needed to read one on my own, because if I’m going to be a Patterson snob, at least I’d be an informed Patterson snob.

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Southern Gothics aren’t dead – just really bizarre. Witness Lucius Shepard’s SOFTSPOKEN, which starts out as a typical Gothic novel, with married couple Sanie and Jackson moving back to the old sfamily homestead, long rundown.

The reason for the move is that Jackson is studying for the bar exam, while Sanie is left to her own devices. And that’s when the weirdness begins. Sanie hears voices that she believes is a ghost of some sort, but thinks it’s her peyote-popping brother-in-law behind it. Or perhaps her sister-in-law, who is in her own world all the time, anyway.

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Well, that was quick! The five lucky BOOKGASM readers winning copies of DC UNIVERSE: TRAIL OF TIME by Jeff Mariotte and KITTY TAKES A HOLIDAY by Carrie Vaughn are:
• Dan Faust – New York City
• Matt Switliski – Clifton Heights, PA
• David Keith – Washington, IN
• Robert Davis – Kinston, NC
• Troy Knutson – Collierville, TN

Thanks for playing, everybody! Didn’t win? There’s always a next time, and remember you can always buy them at Amazon!

BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE SERIES:
• DC UNIVERSE: HELLTOWN by Dennis O’Neil
• DC UNIVERSE: INHERITANCE by Devin Grayson
• DC UNIVERSE: LAST SONS by Alan Grant
• DC UNIVERSE: TRAIL OF TIME by Jeff Mariotte
• KITTY AND THE MIDNIGHT HOUR by Carrie Vaughn

Want a little free fantasy in your life? The fine folks at Warner Books want to give five lucky BOOKGASM readers a double dose of it, with copies of the superhero adventure DC UNIVERSE: TRAIL OF TIME by Jeff Mariotte and the werewolf supernatural thriller KITTY TAKES A HOLIDAY by Carrie Vaughn.

How to win? Easy. Be among the first five people to correctly identify one additional title from each of those series, and send your answers – along with your name and mailing address – to editor@bookgasm.com. We’ll announce the winners just as soon as we find five smart ones. Hopefully, you’re one of them. (Sorry, BOOKGASM employees: You’re not eligible. Or smart.)

Buy it at Amazon.

Pulp fiction makes a dirty, dirty comeback in the premiere issue of OUT OF THE GUTTER, a new, “completely independent” magazine that promises dangerous “degenerate literature” and “hardboiled fiction,” and then spends 200 pages delivering just that.

I’m not sure why they’re calling it a magazine, since it’s a perfect-bound trade paperback on high-quality paper, but they can call it whatever they want. I don’t wish to have my ass kicked.

The layout leaves more than a bit to be desired, having an amateurish, almost sloppy quality, but any reservations are quickly dashed aside once you start reading the lead story, Victor Gischler’s “Final Tally,” which is kind of a one-man DEATH RACE 2000. J.A. Konrath’s “Punishment” also recalls a blood-drenched cult classic –  HOSTEL – but with a politically incorrect twist ending.

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I must admit, I was a bit concerned about Ian Rankin’s THE NAMING OF THE DEAD. The plot centers around the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit meeting in Scotland, the associated political turmoil and the thousands of protesters who swarmed to the site, some to give a message, some merely to disrupt and cause trouble. There’s also a sideways glance at the disgusting and shameful terrorist bombings of London’s public transport system in July of the same year. This is territory ripe for political preaching.

And there seems to be a lot of that about nowadays. Especially in serious literary fiction, we tend to see proselytizing by left-leaning authors who almost invariably choose the side of the purported victims, taking on a self-flagellating, we-must-atone-for-our-sins approach. It’s usually all very tedious and frequently has little to teach the reader.

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I have always been fascinated with rock music conspiracy theories, especially those wherein the clues are located in the songs and on the album covers, begging listeners to solve a mystery that may or may not be all in their mind. The Beatles did it with the whole “Paul is Dead” scandal, and the Stones are said to have recorded THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST as an offering to Satan.

Sure, it’s all probably BS, but the whole mystery is what makes not only searching so compelling, but causes the music to take on a new meaning at times, even turning an innocent song like, say, “Cry Baby Cry” off THE WHITE ALBUM into a creepy evocation of death.

Enter Mark Howard Jones’ THE GARDEN OF DOUBT ON THE ISLAND OF SHADOWS (say that in one breath!).

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Steve Hockensmith is on the right track with, er, ON THE WRONG TRACK, an immediate sequel to last year’s HOLMES ON THE RANGE, the Western/mystery hybrid about the two Amlingmeyer cowpoke brothers: One worships Sherlock Holmes, despite not being able to read, and the other is the relenting Watson to his older sibling’s penchant to play detective.

Appropriately, the utterly genial ON THE WRONG TRACK is set on a fancy-schmancy choo-choo train. They’ve just been made railway detectives – Old Red, jumping at the chance to play Sherlock, loves the idea, while Big Red just gives in as usual and plays along. No sooner has their maiden voyage begun that a disembodied head bounces up from beneath the train, belonging to one of the employees.

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Barbara Cleverly has created a wonderful series character in Scotland Yard Cmdr. Joe Sandilands, and he makes his fifth outing in THE BEE’S KISS, now in paperback after seeing hardcover release in 2002. Set in the period between the wars, the Commander is a tough ex-officer who’s seen fighting in the trenches, and now he trods the streets of London attempting to restore order to the world.

The Commander is called to the posh Ritz hotel to investigate the death of Dame Beatrice Jagow-Joliffe. She was brutally murdered and a valuable emerald necklace stolen. A violent cat burglar? Hardly. Sandilands assembles his team: a hard-bitten sergeant named Armitage and a surprising female constable named Westhorpe.

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