MY SOUL TO TAKE is Yrsa Sigurdardóttir’s second book featuring Icelandic lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, and continues her chosen theme of having Thóra investigate two crimes at once that are related, one set in the present, and one set in the past. This time, one of her real estate clients has decided that the property he bought is haunted.

Since he is building a spiritual spa on the site, he is furious about this and wants a settlement with the sellers. When Thóra starts to sniff around, the female architect at the site is brutally beaten, raped and killed, with long pins shoved into the soles of her feet. Not long after that, the male aura reader of the resort is found trampled to death by a stallion. He has a dead fox tied to his chest, and the same pins driven into his feet.

Our protagonist is as charming and interesting as in her debut novel, LAST RITUALS. There are minor family struggles, with her young boy who is soon to become a father, and her ex-husband, Hannes, who is a thorn in her side. She’s involved now with a young German named Matthew, and he eventually visits the spa to help in the investigation.

Sigurdardóttir’s strengths are evident again in this work. She’s very good at depicting the actual process of investigation, has a knack at evoking the Icelandic countryside, and the translation this time (by Bernard Scudder and Anna Yates) is smooth and readable. But it’s the plot that kind of sticks here.

It’s needlessly complicated with multiple families and genealogical lines, some of which tend to blur together. And the brutality of all the crimes, both past and present, seems over-the-top. It’s good to have another book in the series and I will eagerly await a third, but if this your first Icelandic mystery, then start with LAST RITUALS to get the flavor. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• LAST RITUALS

Paul A. Toth’s third novel, FINALE, is full of appealing promises. But Toth seems to go out of his way to make them difficult to accept. The Raw Dog Screaming Press release presents itself as a road novel, a journey of self assessment and discovery, and an irreverent commentary on love. But Toth’s techniques become so off-putting that we find ourselves doubting his intentions as the story unfolds.

Jonathan Thomas, the novel’s narrator, receives a strange, threatening letter signed with the initials M. W. He’s certain the letter was sent by Mary Whitcomb, an ex-girlfriend. So he immediately resurrects “The Wanderer,” his persona prior to married life with Rosie in Northern California, and drives to San Diego to confront Mary.

Once located, Mary denies sending the letter. So Jonathan embarks on a trek from one end of California to the other, in search of his previous lovers, positive that the correspondence came from one of them.

Toth counts down the chapters of the novel from eight to zero, as Jonathan reunites with these old girlfriends and their quirky personalities and lifestyles. But convinced as well that his journey has opened a “personal fault line,” Toth has Jonathan separate each descending chapter with internal “Earthquake” chapters — a sort of reflective, free-verse poem — rising in magnitude from 1.0 to 8.0.

Tracing one’s personal history through former relationships is hardly a new idea (Nick Hornby’s HIGH FIDELITY is just one recent example), but we go along with it here, thanks mostly to Jonathan’s narrative voice. It’s predominately deadpan, but brimming over with insightful, often culturally hip observations of his former lovers, the various minor characters he meets, and the contrasting landscape and scenery along his California journey.

But Toth can’t leave well enough alone. The earthquake motif, odd to begin with, becomes downright intrusive. And those interceding poems quickly become incomprehensible and irritating. Then, as the chapters near zero and the quakes rise in strength, Toth introduces the notion that the letter and everything that follows has been a scheme carried out by Jonathan’s former lovers and masterminded by one particular woman whose presence and influence lurks periodically through the story. It’s nearly impossible to believe, as is the impressionistic rebirth and summation that sees Jonathan through chapter zero.
 
Toth is undeniably talented, and has all the makings of a notable force in contemporary fiction. But he needs to keep his cleverness in check and follow his FINALE with less pretentious, more subtle works. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Raw Dog Screaming Press.
 

Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

With Marvel Comics celebrating seven decades in business, it’s been putting out a series of one-shots focused on its earlier characters, featuring a brand-new story with yesteryear reprints in the back, all sporting its original Timely Comics shield. One of them is THE HUMAN TORCH COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1, featuring the original Torch — not Johnny Storm. Scott Snyder and Scott Wegener provide a terrific throwback tale tinged with racial overtones, while the backup story from 1940 has the Torch meeting Toro, the Flaming Torch Kid, at a circus. You can tell the story is old just from its first page, with lines like “The Torch is attracted by the gay colored tents” and “Can’t say — but it’s mighty queer!” And that’s all part of its charm.

Another in the birthday series is SUB-MARINER COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1. Roy Thomas and Mitch Breitweiser’s anchoring piece featuring Prince Namor is moody and noir-ish, while Mark Schultz and Al Williamson’s “Vergeltungswaffe!” leans more toward the character’s fantasy origins, being set underwater. Closing out the fin-footed fun is Bill Everett’s debut of the Sub-Mariner from 1939’s first issue of MARVEL COMICS. Boy, is it ever primitive, and boy, do I like it. Namor’s never been among my favorite superheroes — partly because I can’t figure out if he’s really that or a supervillain — but this is a nice little trio of tales, each very different.

Like the clown princes of comics, Scott Gray and Roger Langridge tear THE FANTASTIC FOUR’s villainous dragon character of Fin Fang Foom a new one in the one-shot FIN FANG FOUR RETURN! #1. The pair has turned the creature into comic relief before in MARVEL MONSTERS, but here are a half-dozen more stories, also starring fellow monsters Gorgilla, Googam and Elektro. They get psychoanalyzed by Doc Samson; FFF works as a chef in a Chinese restaurant; Gorgilla gets the CURIOUS GEORGE treatment; Googam gets adopted; Elektro gets arrested; and FFF saves Christmas. Self-deprecating fun all around, and the kind of thing comics companies should do more of.

Given that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: THE SHORT HALLOWEEN #1 one-shot is written by none other than SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE players Bill Hader and Seth Meyers, you’d think it’d be funny, but it’s really not. Then again, it doesn’t appear to be designed to be joke-driven. But it’s certainly amusing, based upon its premise, with a drunk Halloween celebrant dressed as Spidey constantly confused for the real deal, and vice versa, on a night when The Furious Five unleashes a not-so-well-planned reign of terror. Sometimes celebrity writers are brought on just for their name value, but Hader and Meyers adequately display genuine love for the material. Kevin Maguire drew the fine art. —Rod Lott

Warren Fahy wears his inspirations for FRAGMENT on his sleeve — or, rather, in his acknowledgments. Among them are Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Michael Crichton, and there’s a great big helping of each to be found in his debut novel, which mixes sci-fi, horror and adventure into a semi-pleasing package that’ll make a great movie someday. It’s clearly designed with that in mind.

The Trident is a ship carrying 40 people across the globe’s oceans, for a reality show called SEALIFE. A storm has thrown it a little off course, but within range of a distress signal from an uncharted island. The reason is evident once they land: The South Pacific locale is filled with deadly creatures unlike the world has ever seen. Some enchanted evening.

Most notably, there’s a “spiger,” which is a six-legged mix of a spider and a tiger. But let’s not forget the disk-ants — those tiny, circular bugs that go from walking to spinning on their sides; the monsters that look like mutated rats; the mega-mantis; the “shrimpanzees”; the giant wasps that eat honeybees like Skittles.

Don’t get too attached to any of the characters, although it’s obvious from the get-go that this botanist Nell Duckworth is going to stick around. Despite her puking a lot, she makes for a headstrong heroine, smarter than many — oh, hell, all — of her male colleagues, especially when it comes to grace under pressure.

I don’t think 50 pages have even passed when the SEALIFE crew lands on this Henders Island, and the bugaboos begin to prove their higher level on the foodchain. That’s both to the novel’s benefit and its detriment — benefit because the reader doesn’t have to wait for things to get moving; detriment because once it gets moving, it pretty much does so in a circle for the next 300 pages: dire situation > fatal attack > repeat.

Back on land, one Dr. Geoffrey Binswanger lectures — and I do mean lectures — on sexual reproduction of the animal kingdom. He has no connection to the ill-fated Trident crew for quite some time, but you know that won’t last forever, and sure enough, his unorthodox theories make him a natural expert to help examine these freaks of nature and find out just from whence they came.

The answer isn’t as interesting as one would hope; in fact, it’s more than a little silly. I’m not even sure the question required resolution. As a viewer of many AIP films pitting man against monster, “it just is” is perfectly acceptable for this kind of mindless fare — and it is mindless, no matter how many scientific terms Fahy throws into the mix.

No stranger to this genre of popular fiction, I was ready and willing to suspend my disbelief for FRAGMENT’s MOREAU-like monstrosities, but not for the fact that a show like SEALIFE would be the second-highest-rated show on cable TV, so much so that it’s broadcast live. I’m also wondering what parents would dare name their child Ham Pound.

Those criticisms aside, FRAGMENT is a serviceable, if predictable thriller, most effective when the blood is spilled, which is often. I don’t think Fahy is the heir apparent to Crichton’s vacated throne, but I do think his first effort is better than more than half of those who try in the same field.

Let’s face it: Those beasts he’s invented are unsettling. It’s no wonder he’s included illustrations of them throughout the pages, as if he didn’t trust our imagination to quite match what he intended. And he’s right. —Rod Lott

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“With a sharp crunch, the attacker sank translucent teeth into Glyn’s ribs and bit off the top of the Englishman’s body at the solar plexus.”

Over in Japan, FAUST is considered a “mook” — that’s a magazine and a book — speaking to the disaffected otaku culture, with a mix of cutting-edge fiction and manga. You can see what you’re missing out on with Del Rey’s FAUST: VOLUME TWO, the sophomore edition of the translated anthology. (VOLUME ONE came out last year.)

It opens with “Magical Girl Risuka” by NISIOISIN, which is a pen name, not a brand of ramen. (Strangely, many Japanese authors hide behind these cryptic monikers; others here include VOFAN, x6suke and TAGRO.) The story is a quasi-Lovecraft tribute about a boy who witnesses four people throw themselves in front a moving subway at once, and the titular girl who has the powers to alter time.

Kouhei Kadono’s “Jagdtiger (PorscheLaufwerk)” is an odd, military tale about a new kind of robotic weapon for war, while Otsuichi provides the collection’s best piece in “Where the Wind Blows,” in which objects from years in the future — photographs, newspapers, letters, a cell phone — mysteriously show up at his home.

From Yûya Satô, “Gray-Colored Diet Coke” is a mere excerpt, but long enough for me, being a disturbing, depressing look at the life of a 19-year-old with no idea what to do with his life, beyond hearing stories from his grandfather about killing and raping in the war.

Kozy Watanabe’s “H People” is a brief fantasy about a recluse and the pizza-delivery girl who has sex with him, complete with an out-of-nowhere ending. Speaking of sex, Tatsuhiko Takimoto provides an essay about whether or not to visit a well-known, high-class brothel called Soapland, in “Tatsuhiko Takimoto’s Guru Guru Counseling Session.”

Other essays examine how otaku became big business in Japan; the ins and outs of translating fiction from Japanese into English; and the creators’ feelings of FAUST crossing the oceans to our shores.

Of more appeal to the casual reader will be FAUST’s section of manga in the back. The first three stories are little more than illustrated tone poems, until Katsuhiro Otomo and Katsuya Terada comically run down all the “Old Dudes” they’ve seen on the streets, and Ueda Hajime contributes “Iron Man Military Unit,” about a young soldier more than a little bitter at being the only virgin in his platoon.

This collection’s contents aren’t for everyone, but those with even an inkling of interest toward the Far East should give it a fair chance. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Here’s another column of novels that have been made into films, including another stab at one of the Dortmunder books, Michael Caine with a machine gun, and a certified classic with the late, great Charles Bronson and a very young Jeff Goldblum. (This is actually the fourth book I’ve covered that became a Bronson vehicle. Can you tell I’m a fan of his films?) All are on DVD, I believe (one as an import-only), so for those to lazy to read, you have that option. But as we already know, the books are always superior to the films … especially this first one.

BANK SHOT by Donald E. Westlake — George C. Scott is not who I think of when I think Dortmunder. Robert Redford was not a great choice, either. Talk about a botch job of turning this 1972 book into the 1974 film, with whole parts ignored and others added that just fall flat.

But we are not here for my movie critiques. Westlake’s novel is another caper with that lovable crook Dortmunder and his crew. We find our hero working a door-to-door scam selling encyclopedias, until his latest mark makes a phone call, sending Dortmunder out the door faster than a jackrabbit.

That’s just set up to show he is waiting for the right score. This time, the job is not only to rob a bank, but to actually steal a whole bank — lock, stock and barrel. Kelp has a nephew who was once in the FBI and has an idea for Dortmunder and his crew: to steal from a bank that is using a trailer as a temporary location while its new bank is being built. Every Thursday, the bank is loaded to the gills with money that has to stay overnight.

Dortmunder is totally iffy about the whole prospect, until his men brilliantly point out the bank is really just a mobile home on blocks. Why not steal the whole thing with a tractor-trailer? This being the comedic side of Westlake, you can expect problems and hilarity to ensue, which they do.

Some portions are a bit dated, with one of the crew members being called Herman X, a black radical. All in all, it’s a quick ride into the world of Dortmunder, with the whole robbery taking place so fast, you think you missed it. Of course, even when the job goes perfect, there are those moments that can only happen to Dortmunder. The final payoff is really funny.

Again, George C. Scott — what were the filmmakers thinking? Sure, he can do some comedy, but this was just a mistake on the level of Martin Lawrence proportions. The best thing to come out of the movie was the super-cool Jack Davis artwork that adorns the cover.

SEVEN DAYS TO A KILLING by Clive Egleton — I’m going with this 1973 book’s original title instead of its movie title, THE BLACK WINDMILL. Nothing against the 1974 film, though.

What would you do if your son was kidnapped from school? “Anything possible” should be your answer. That is exactly what happens to David Tarrant, a British Army officer who gets a call saying that his child has been taken and held ransom for half a million dollars in diamonds. Tarrant is flustered since he can’t easily access that type of money, so when he contacts his superiors about what has happened, he’s made out to be some sort of a defector who will take the money and run.

It’s never directly said to Tarrant himself, but all the higher-ups believe that he’s part of a scheme the whole time, especially when the payoff is set in Paris, with Tarrant as the courier. It’s at this point Tarrant understands he can’t even rely on his own people for help, despite them hearing the disturbing phone calls of the torture happening to the boy.

It all builds to the climax that, to be honest, the cover sort of gives away. With the reveal of who the brains behind the operation really was, it’s a pretty taut thriller that never lets the reader think for a moment that everything will end up in a shiny, happy way. Blood will be spilled, and trust me, it’s thrown at the window.

Egleton is one of those writers who has totally slipped through the cracks — not in the sense his books are out-of-print, but more that people just don’t mention the spy-like thrillers he has written that are just great crowd-pleasers. It’s pretty hard to read the book and not think of Michael Caine, who played Tarrant in the film directed by Don Siegel, who also made two other pretty darn good crime films right before this one: DIRTY HARRY and CHARLEY VARRICK.

DEATH WISH by Brian Garfield — Here’s a bit of shocker for fans of the 1974 Charles Bronson film: The 1972 book’s body count is not that high. And there is no actual shooting until very late in the story.

CPA Paul Benjamin is a bleeding-heart liberal and proud of it. But that all changes when his wife and daughter are mugged, sending his daughter into a state of shock, then later causing the death of his wife. Paul’s world is rocked by these events, so his company sends him off to the Southwest to not only get away, but deal with a high-paying client. Once in that area, he thinks about getting a gun and taking vengeance on those who prey upon people like his family.

From here on out, Paul gets deeper into the idea of being a vigilante. When he comes back home, he first uses a roll of quarters in a sock to protect himself, which slowly morphs into a .38 revolver. Again, the body count is by no measure like the film or its four sequels, but Garfield’s book is a peek into a man who has not given up on his love for his city, even as he becomes a one-man wrecking crew. The story continues in the follow-up DEATH SENTENCE.

Next time: a few quick reads. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS DONALD E. WESTLAKE:
• HOPSCOTCH by Brian Garfield

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS DONALD E. WESTLAKE:
• ASK THE PARROT by Richard Stark
• THE AX by Donald E. Westlake
• COPS AND ROBBERS by Donald E. Westlake
• THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake
• DIRTY MONEY by Richard Stark
• THE HOT ROCK by Donald E. Westlake
• THE HUNTER by Richard Stark
• I KNOW A TRICK WORTH TWO OF THAT by Donald E. Westlake
• THE JUGGER by Donald E. Westlake
• KILLING TIME by Donald E. Westlake
• KILLTOWN by Richard Stark
• LEMONS NEVER LIE by Richard Stark
• THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE by Richard Stark
• THE MOURNER by Donald E. Westlake
• THE OUTFIT by Richard Stark
• PITY HIM AFTERWARDS by Donald E. Westlake
• POINT BLANK by Richard Stark
• THE SCORE by Donald E. Westlake
• SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY by Donald E. Westlake
• THE SOUR LEMON SCORE by Richard Stark
• THE SPY IN THE OINTMENT by Donald E. Westlake
• 361 by Donald E. Westlake
• WHAT’S SO FUNNY? by Donald E. Westlake
• WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN? by Donald E. Westlake

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must be one of the most difficult authors to imitate in style. Thousands have tried, but few have ever been able to capture his measured, lilting Victorian sentences — every word carefully chosen, intense drama hidden beneath the chasteness of a very careful prose, a pause in the direction that modern editors would never allow today.

So when the Conan Doyle estate, Daniel Stashower (the author of a Doyle biography), and Leslie S. Klinger (the editor of THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES) all praise author Lyndsay Faye’s DUST AND SHADOW: AN ACCOUNT OF THE RIPPER KILLINGS BY DR. JOHN H. WATSON for its perfect pastiche of Doyle’s style, and her capturing of the inimitable characters Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes, the reader takes note.

And they are quite right. I have read the Holmes canon (four novels, 56 short stories) four times, and from Faye’s first paragraph, I was thoroughly hooked. While her dialogue may sometimes sound a little too ebullient coming from Holmes’ mouth, the descriptive text and the Watsonian narration just read so smoothly, it is a joy to encounter my old detecting friends once again. This time, Holmes and Watson are on the trail of the Whitechapel murderer — or, as we know him today, Jack the Ripper.

I am not competent enough to comment on the historical aspect of Jack the Ripper, but I know there is an immense number of Ripperiana experts out there who may or may not appreciate the involvement of Holmes in this case. Because you see, he does solve the case, and it may not be the person you expect.

In any event, whether you’re a Holmes fan or interested in Jack the Ripper, this is a must-have addition to your collection. It’s a stunning debut from someone who seems to be able to channel Doyle, and I hope she adds many more stories to the legend. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Hoping to capitalize on what the success of THE STRAIN, the collaboration with film director Guillermo del Toro, Harper has brought back Chuck Hogan’s 1998 medical thriller, THE BLOOD ARTISTS, in mass-market paperback. But the intervening11 years have not been kind to the novel, making it rather predicable and ordinary.

By the year 2010, clean, uninfected blood is a rare and valuable commodity. Virologists Peter Maryk and Stephen Pearse are working to synthesize blood for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (a stricter, more encompassing off-shoot of the actual CDC as we know it), but their work is interrupted with the news of an outbreak of a particularly dangerous virus in a remote village in Africa. They arrive there and attempt to understand and contain the virus before it spreads. But when their efforts fail, Maryk take command and bombs the entire village, its inhabitants and — they hope — the virus as well.

Six years later, the team successfully completes its synthetic blood, based in large part on Maryk’s unique immunity characteristics, and wins the Nobel Prize. But then the virus they thought they had destroyed in Africa reappears in South Carolina. This time, however, the virus seems to have a sort of agenda and almost an intelligence of its own. And once again, Maryk and Pearse set off to isolate, contain and eventually destroy the virus before it overtakes the entire continent and eventually the planet.
 
Even post-dating his story into what originally seemed like the distant future, Hogan couldn’t foresee the many popular fiction and nonfiction stories that would make his basic premise so familiar. But works like Stephen King’s THE STAND; the true-story detailing of the Ebola virus, THE HOT ZONE; and, most notably, the popular Dustin Hoffman film OUTBREAK (whose opening scenes are an almost exact replica of the first chapter of Hogan’s book), along with numerous other popular medical thrillers, have long since made readers aware of how viruses work and what must be done to battle them.
 
Also working against the novel is the irritating, back-and-forth shift between Pearse’s first-person narration and the third-person tracing of Maryk, the lack of any truly sympathetic protagonist, and far too much mind-numbing medical jargon (both real and imagined) on almost every page.
 
Ironically, the fleeting premise of the lack of clean blood in the future, how untainted blood becomes as precious as gold or diamonds, and the efforts to create a newer, more resilient kind of blood are the lone memorable elements of Hogan’s story. But he dismisses this in favor of his team’s race against the killer virus.
 
If nothing else, reading THE BLOOD ARTISTS today proves that Hogan was a good partner to enlist for the vampire-tinged virus of the del Toro project. But unless evil-virus stories are your specialty, you can forgo this reissue and go right to THE STRAIN. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

Preview it online.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE STRAIN by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

She’s back, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar!

A PLAGUE OF SECRETS by John Lescroart — The first victim is Dylan Vogler, a charming ex-convict who manages the Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. When his body is found, inspectors discover that his knapsack is filled with high-grade marijuana. It soon becomes clear that San Francisco’s A-list flocked to Bay Beans West not only for their caffeine fix. But how much did Maya Townshend — the beautiful socialite niece of the city’s mayor, and the absentee owner of the shop — know about what was going on inside her business? And how intimate had she really been with Dylan, her old college friend?

THE SHORE by Robert Dunbar — As a winter storm tightens its grip on the small shore town of Edgeharbor, the residents are frightened of much more than pounding waves and bitter winds. A series of horrible murders has the town cowering in fear. Mangled victims bear the marks of savage claws, and strange, bloody footprints mar the beach. A young policewoman and a mysterious stranger are all that stand between this isolated community and an ancient, monstrous evil.

FALL by Colin McAdam — Awkward Noel thinks he’s been allowed into the inner circle of his elite boarding school when he discovers his senior-year roommate is to be handsome, athletic Julius. Julius, in turn, cares only for the fleeting joys of teenage life: sneaking out to parties, playing pranks with friends, and spending the night with his girfriend, Fall. Always an outsider, Noel develops an unhealthy fascination with Julius, and his crush on Fall begins to border on a dangerous obsession. When Fall disappears close to winter break, Julius and Noel are forced to face their own inner desires — a confrontation that ushers the two boys out of the innocence of adolescence and into adulthood.

SADOMASOCHISM FOR ACCOUNTANTS by Rosy Barnes — Paula is still smarting from being called boring by Alan, her longtime boyfriend. Then he leaves her for Belinda, the egotistic would-be partner of accountancy firm Smith, Smith-Brown and Smith. Her mother suggests she spice up her life, so Paula joins the local fetish club. Luda the transvestite is not fooled when Paula enters Club Liscious. Her off-the-shoulder dress cannot turn her into a thrill-seeking member of the Liscious elite. “She” decides to have nothing to do with the newcomer.
Over the next few weeks, the club-goers’ suspicion turns to friendship, and “boring” Paula recruits Luda, gentle Dominatrix Gretchen, and bossy SlaveBoy to help her win Alan back. Meanwhile, Alan’s new fiancée, Belinda, locked in a bitter battle for a promotion with her paraplegic colleague, starts working on Alan’s own lack of ambition.

CITY OF SOULS by Vicki Pettersson — In Sin City, a little girl suffers from a strange and terrible malady. If she dies, the Light will die along with her. Warrior/avenger Joanna Archer has survived countless otherworldly terrors — and has found her rightful place among the agents battling the all-pervasive evil of Shadow, even as she struggles against the darkness within herself. A war is raging for Las Vegas — one that catapults Joanna into a new world hidden from mortal sight. In this lethally seductive alternate dimension the lines blur between good and evil, love and hate, and here lies the last hope for the Light. But Joanna’s price of admission is a piece of her own soul — and the odds of her escaping are slim … to none.

RUBICON by Lawrence Alexander — Hoping to escape the political spotlight, California Sen. Bobby Hart declined a presidential run. But while in Germany, the idealistic young politician discovers terrifying evidence of a conspiracy to destroy democracy in America: an unthinkable plot codenamed Rubicon. Someone important is going to die, though Hart doesn’t know who, why or when. Only two things are clear: It will happen some time before the upcoming election, and once it does, there will be no turning back. Caught in a desperate race against death and time, Hart must now expose an insidious nightmare that threatens every man, woman and child in America.

Buy them at Amazon.

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Not only has Max Allan Collins penned the novelization for Stephen Sommers’ summer blockbuster G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, but he’s also gotten the chance to play around further with the property, simultaneously delivering an original prequel novel in G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND.

Consider it an origin story — not of the high-tech, desert-based international organization known as G.I. Joe, which remains a secret to 99 percent of the population — but of two of its core members: Conrad “Duke” Hauser and Wallace “Ripcord” Weems. Good pals, they’re “mere” members of the U.S. military before being drafted by Gen. Hawk to join G.I. Joe’s elite team. Already included among its members are highly trained specialists like the lovely Scarlett, the gung-ho Gung-Ho and the masked, mute ninja known as Snake Eyes.

An immediate threat to the world occurs when an arms dealer approaches the president of San Sebastiao with an opportunity to buy new pulse-weapon technology. He’s either going to sell it to this South American government, or to the drug lords they vow to fight. In so many words, Prez Vicente tells the dealer to go to hell, and not long after, the leader gets a taste of the business end of said pulse weapon. Oops!

Once news of Vicente’s assassination spread, it’s up to G.I. Joe to put a stop to the weaponry being used by the wrong hands, of course, and damned if I didn’t get a slight charge every time Snake Eyes is depicted silently slithering his way into one ambush or another. Because ninjas are cool.

With Collins at the helm of a tie-in, you can expect it to be more than pure product — an honest-to-God story. That’s the case here, delivering several action set pieces as he demonstrates why each and every G.I. Joe member is worthy of the “Real America Hero” tag. His soldiers chew Double Bubble and hum the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE theme — how much more patriotic can one get?

The one thing that bothered me was the dialogue of Ripcord, an African-American. Most of it is jokey and playa-smooth, in the manner of so many characters onscreen today. I’m going to assume Collins was just sticking to the character as written for the film, but still, it’s an annoyance.

Luckily, there aren’t any others of note. The story moves fast, with economy and ease, and much of it provides the pure-joy jolt of many a men’s adventure series, with hotheads and their hardware, but stripped of the technical terms that would render it gun porn.

Don’t misunderstand: ABOVE & BEYOND isn’t to be held to the same level of the author’s original novels of crime and mystery, but it’s certainly a nice seasonal diversion while you’re awaiting his next one. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MAX ALLAN COLLINS:
• THE BABY BLUE RIP-OFF by Max Allan Collins
• BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane
• BYLINE: MICKEY SPILLANE edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers Jr.
• DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY GOES TO WAR by Max Allan Collins
• THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• THE GOLIATH BONE by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
• A KILLING IN COMICS by Max Allan Collins
• THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
• QUARRY’S LIST by Max Allan Collins
• RED SKY IN MORNING by Patrick Culhane
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins
• TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of America’s moon landing this summer, it’s important to remember the contributions of all it took to get us there. And I’m talking waaay back, like the late 19th century and early 20th century, when early astronomers ended up shaking up preconceived notions as telescopes grew bigger and more powerful.

Marcia Bartusiak’s THE DAY WE FOUND THE UNIVERSE is a perfect way to get schooled. The title comes from Edwin Hubble’s controversial 1925 assertion that the Milky Way wasn’t the only galaxy around, and that the overall universe was infinitely greater than previously thought. Those stars they saw that shimmered strangely? They weren’t stars at all, but entire galaxies.

Hubble’s story serves as the crux for UNIVERSE, but his isn’t the only one. In fact, what makes Bartusiak’s book more interesting is that it begins as sort of a mini-biography for several other notables, like the wealthy and obstinate James Lick; Mars-maniacal Percival Lowell; and James Keeler, who disproved the idea that Saturn’s rings were solid.

These are real people, interesting and flawed. For example, Vesto Slipher seemed to be more interested in the garden growth of his squash than astronomical matters, while George Ellery Hale had nervous breakdowns and hallucinated that an elf instructed him how to live. Harlow Shapley studied ants around the observatory and even set up “speed traps” to see how fast they traveled, and no less a unique personality than Albert Einstein plays a role in these proceedings.

That’s a lot of men, but that only scratches the surface of the players Bartusiak profiles. Most times, it verges on impossible to keep them all straight, probably because none (Einstein excepted) enjoy the name recognition that Hubble does today. Ultimately, who’s who doesn’t matter so much, as their individual contributions aren’t as important as to the eventual puzzle they pieced together.

As more of a space nut than an astronomy scholar — a huge difference there — UNIVERSE worked well as a true-life narrative digging deep into the worlds far beyond our own. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

There’s a real poignancy to the work of J.T. Yost, whose OLD MAN WINTER AND OTHER SORDID TALES has deservedly been honored with a 2009 Xeric Award. The 56-page paperback is comprised of five stories, all but one of which give a grim, but completely honest, view of humanity.

It’s anchored by the title story, the longest of the bunch, in which an elderly man occasionally ventures from his lonely apartment to interact with the few people who will give him the time of day. He’s in mourning over the death of his wife, but insists on clutching to the illusion that she still exists. In one heartbreaker of a panel, he’s shown sleeping in bed, with the ashtray she once used situated on the pillow next to him.

Free of dialogue, “All Is Forgiven …” shows the measures taken by an animal researcher when his significant other dumps him via a “Dear John” letter. In “Logging Sanjay,” both the lone humorous and autobiographical piece of the collection, Yost relates of a high school prank taken a little too far, and finally fesses up to his involvement.

“Roadtrip” is brilliant, telling a dual narrative in the life of a little girl and a small cow, with each panel illustrating the juxtaposition between them. For example, the girl is introduced as an infant, feeding at her mother’s breast; the cow, sucking on its mother’s teat. The girl is placed in the backseat of her parents’ car; the cow is forced into the back of a truck to take it to slaughter. The girl is stripped of her clothes at nighttime; the cow is stripped of its skin. And so on, until the two inevitably meet — one as meat. It’s incredibly clever and powerful, all the more so without words.

Finally, there’s another mirrored narrative story in a circus-centered bit that shows how one man and one elephant joined the circus, under entirely different circumstances. All five pieces introduce Yost as a remarkable new talent — in both story and pen — using comics to tell challenging, thoughtful tales. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Birdcage Bottom Books.

All the news that’s fit to capsulize!

‘ELECTRIC’ COMPANY
ELECTRIC LITERATURE is a new, bimonthly literary fiction magazine featuring “five great stories that grab you.” It’s available as a paperback or an e-book, even readable on the iPhone and Kindle. Contributing to the debut issue are Michael Cunningham, Jim Shepard, T Cooper, Lydia Millet and Diana Wagman. If nothing else, I sure dig that cover!

99% DON’T VISIT THIS SITE
ReadingGroupGuides.com surveyed book clubs about online social and book networking websites, and how their book-buying habits have changed in the last 12 months, if any. The full report is available, including such highlights as:
• 83% of groups read both hardcovers and paperbacks.
• 15% read paperbacks exclusively.
• 65.6% are interested in having authors join their discussions.
• 72% would like an online site where they could see what other groups are reading.
• 54% are on Goodreads.
• 53% are on Facebook.

GET ‘FRESH’
Leisure Books and RUE MORGUE magazine are looking for the next great horror author in their “Fresh Blood” writing contest for unpublished authors. Horror manuscripts between 80,000 and 90,000 words are sought by Sept. 30. Readers will vote on their favorites, with the winning entry to be published by Leisure in 2011.

WHAT, NO ‘CUJO’ COMICS?
Del Rey will publish a comics series based on Stephen King and Peter Straub’s 1984 bestseller THE TALISMAN. A special “issue #0″ will serve as a prequel, to be published this fall, or in a limited edition at next month’s San Diego Comic-Con International.

NYC HAS NEVER BEEN SO THRILLING!
ThrillerFest is set to invade New York City on July 8-11, and it’s open to the public. Set to attend include such authors as David Morrell, Lisa Gardner, Steve Berry, Eric Van Lustbader, Lee Child, R.L. Stine, Jon Land, David Hewson, M.J. Rose, Douglas Clegg, James Rollins, Andrew Gross, Shane Briant, Joseph Finder, Jeffery Deaver, John Lescroart, Douglas Preston, F. Paul Wilson, Karin Slaughter, Brad Meltzer, Sean Chercover and many more.

ARNO KNOWS
Dubbing itself “a new kind of publisher,” Arno Books allows readers to vote on queries submitted by writers, putting readers in charge of what they wish to read. The books then are sold as DRM-free PDF e-books. “Arno Books is not one of those cheesy self-publishing sites,” said owner Arno. “We actually edit books.”

WHO WANTS HOT LINKS?
• Clickwheel offers a free download of the graphic collection 2000 AD ORIGINS #1, featuring such characters as Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors and many more.
• Underland Press debuts a new “wovel” — short for “web novel” — with Simon Drax’s EXIT VECTOR, which promises wars, plagues and disasters Weekly installments are published each Monday, with readers voting on how the story then will take shape.
• Sci-fi/fantasy giant Tor has launched The Tor Store, a “publisher-agnostic, blogger-driven bookstore,” selling titles from a wide span of publishers.
• Shared Worlds asked some of speculative fiction’s top authors what their favorite real-life fantastic cities are. Answering were Elizabeth Hand, Ursula K. LeGuin, China Miéville, Michael Moorcock and Nalo Hopkinson.
• Penguin Group USA has launched a new online series called FROM THE PUBLISHER’S OFFICE, where visitors can watch and listen to a variety of original video and audio programming, as well as read long-form excerpts and participate in monthly author chats. PROJECT PARANORMAL, dedicated to behind-the-scenes looks at popular paranormal fantasy authors and their novels, is part of it.

XXX-CERPT
When legendary singer Michael Jackson died last week, his fans remembered his many hit songs. But a couple of us here were reminded of the ultra-bizarre, tell-all book we read in 1997 called MICHAEL JACKSON WAS MY LOVER: THE SECRET DIARY OF JORDIE CHANDLER by Victor M. Gutierrez. We’ll just apologize in advance for this one:

“Related Jordie, ‘Michael invited me to take a hot bath. While I was taking off my shirt, Michael took me in his arms and began to kiss me, then took off my pants. When I was in only my underwear, he pulled them down and took them off with his teeth. He looked at my penis and told me it was very large for my age. I noticed that he had very little pubic hair, and that his penis was circumcised.’ Jordie burst out in laughter, saying to Jackson, ‘You look like a cow!’ He was referring to Jackson’s testicles, which were covered with pink and brown stains. … Jordie’s attorneys asked him to document his description of Jackson’s genitalia. Jordie stated: ‘His body oil stink. He has brown patches on his ass.’”

TRAILER PARK
To promote his art book SEDUCTIVE ESPIONAGE: THE WORLD OF YUKI 7, Kevin Dart made a super-slick, animated trailer for a film called A KISS FROM TOKYO, just one of the fictional female superspy Yuki’s 007-esque adventures.

—Rod Lott

Buy them at Amazon.

I have some good news and bad news for Repairman Jack fans out there. First, the bad news: In the introduction to the Gauntlet Press edition of GROUND ZERO, author F. Paul Wilson states there are only two more Repairman Jack books coming, with it all culminating in the long-promised, revised and reissued version of NIGHTWORLD.

As with the novels that have followed HARBINGERS, these stories are no longer self-contained, but telling a much larger tale while putting Jack through yet another adventure. This latest is definitely one for his longtime fans, since Wilson ties up a few loose ends while also laying the ground work of what is to come. It shares some of the ideas from the earlier CONSPIRACIES, since the major plot touches on the events of 9/11, and their connection to “the otherness.”

Using 9/11 is a touchy subject and a bold choice for Wilson to infuse into his mythology, but it fits the story well. However, it is a small part of the story after a quick fast-forward to the current year, where Jack’s past is about to make an unexpected appearance in a huge way.

Two of his childhood friends need his help desperately. A woman has been hit by a car and left a message for her brother, that if anything should happen to her, to look for “our Jack.” The brother is not sure what to make of it, and even when he contacts Jack, he is under the belief Jack is some appliance mechanic.

It’s not until they come face to face that it all comes rushing back to Jack of who this man is: Eddie, one of his best friends from his youth. Eddie’s sister, Weezy, has gone missing and needs Jack’s help. It does not take long for Jack to figure out where Weezy is. Jack also discovers she has become a 9/11 truther, as well as someone who knows about The Secret History.

From this point on, the book really delves into the mythology of the series, with characters from BLOODLINE and BY THE SWORD making appearances in subtle ways. We see the progress of a certain pregnant girl and her benefactor, while a member of the kicker movement plays a very vital role.

Not only has Weezy stumbled upon a real conspiracy, but all traces of it have been quietly erased. While plenty of action takes place, it’s balanced out by the larger story that slowly builds, especially when it goes all the way back to Jack’s youth and the people who populated his neighborhood. Some major questions are answered for longtime fans, mainly dealing with appearance of a certain woman who always seems to pop back into his life, while a certain enemy has not only started the beginning of the end, with the Twin Towers integral to his grand scheme.

Minus the opening page, the whole of the story is told over a week’s time. GROUND ZERO is not only packed with action and revelations, but told so well that fans will want the next two books now. Wilson has really started pulling out all the stops now for this series, with one portion — be it very brief — setting the record straight on something I’ve suspected: that Wilson himself is a fan of John D, MacDonald and the Travis McGee series. Jack himself states that he is just like McGee in some ways with his clients, with the big difference that McGee’s clients are way more eloquent. It gave this reviewer a nice little chuckle.

Wilson’s writing has never been sharper, with the story really focused on the main problem at hand, all leading to a climax where even Jack seems to be powerless with what he has to face. It’s truly going to make his fans giddy. In other words, this book is not the one to start with, folks — not even close. It’d be like starting to watch LOST on season four. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Gauntlet Press.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• AFTERSHOCK & OTHERS: 19 ODDITIES by F. Paul Wilson
• ALL THE RAGE by F. Paul Wilson
• BLOODLINE by F. Paul Wilson
• F. PAUL WILSON’S THE KEEP by F. Paul Wilson and Matthew Smith
• HOSTS by F. Paul Wilson
• LEGACIES by F. Paul Wilson

Let’s start off with the fact that I love mysteries about stamp collecting, and in fact, collect any fictional work that involves the hobby or postal matters as its main subject. So, I was very excited to learn that Alan Bradley’s THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE involves a stamp-related murder.

And I was overjoyed to meet his precocious protagonist, 11-year-old Flavia de Luce. Remarkably, Bradley writes very well in first-person as the de Luce girl, and while she is certainly a remarkable prodigy in chemistry and science, there is an air of childish reality about her as well that is pleasing.

One day, the de Luce family discover a dead bird on its porch, with its bill piercing a Penny Black, the world’s first postage stamp, printed by Great Britain in 1840. Flavia’s father is a stamp collector, but the horror that he displays seems overblown if he is just reacting to stamp desecration. But he is not; he knows it’s a warning. And soon, Flavia discovers a strange man literally dying with his last breath in the garden. From here, the tale gets very involved indeed, as Flavia’s father is charged with murdering the man, and Flavia investigates in order to clear his name.

The early investigatory antics of the girl are the real jewel here, and the book soars when she is at the center of the action. But the middle of the novel is taken up by a long and rambling account by Flavia’s father of his school days and how those are what lie behind the crime. This secondhand flashback is awkward and separates the reader from the book’s natural flow. It’s almost as if this part was written first for a different book, and then it was incorporated and reconstituted with the presence of Flavia. Anyway, after this section, Flavia turns once again into the detective and nimbly solves the crime, although at great danger to herself.

One other drawback is the strange convolutions of some of the plot devices. An example will suffice. Jack snipes are not found in England at the time when the dead one shows up on the de Luce’s doorsteps. It turns out that a jack snipe is used because the nickname of Flavia’s father is Jacko. The person who issues the warning had to smuggle a dead jack snipe in a pie(!) from Norway to England, just for the sake of the warning. Not to mention he then has to find a very particular plate variety of the not-necessarily-cheap Penny Black and ruin it permanently. Really, a call would have done.

But perhaps some of that fantastical twistiness is what appeals to the Crime Writers’ Association as it gave its Debut Dagger Award to Bradley for this novel. It is a good mystery with strong detection and a marvelous central character. The overall plot is believable, but it’s some of the details in the development that tend to rub the wrong way,such as the father not voicing his suspicions 30 years ago when the stamp at the center of this entire affair is supposedly destroyed.

There is room for improvement, and it is to be hoped that Bradley does so in his second Flavia de Luce novel, which he is working on now. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

Nick Horrigan just left his job and is having problems sleeping, so when he wakes up one fateful night just as a SWAT team bursts into his apartment, you know that Gregg Hurwitz’s TRUST NO ONE is going to feel like a speeding bullet. The reason for the rude awakening is due to a terrorist’s demand that he can only meet with Nick, which is a shock to him, since he is totally clueless when shown photos of this terrorist.

Nevertheless, he’s dragged off into a helicopter and taken to where the bad guy is planning on blowing up a nuclear reactor. It’s only when Nick comes face to face with this person that he is told the truth: The reason he was chosen was because of his deceased stepfather, Frank, a former Secret Service agent. In reality, this man is not a terrorist, but one of Frank’s associates. And he has been holding onto some information that only Nick can be given.

The story flashes back to Nick’s youth, as he gets closer to Frank slowly over time, to the point the two bond, until Frank becomes paranoid. One fateful night, when Nick sneaks out of the house, he returns he to find his stepfather shot up, and Frank dies in his hands. Nick thinks that local cops are just giving lip service to an investigation, which is nothing when Nick receives a call to go outside and is forced not return to this house for more than 17 years … especially when two men show evidence that Nick’s fingerprints were all over the deadly weapon.

Back in the present day, the would-be terrorist gives Nick a key and no other information, forcing him to look into this matter and figure out what the hell it has to do with Frank’s murder. The story moves at such a clip, with Nick becoming more paranoid as it progresses, only able to rely on the help of an ex-girlfriend and a homeless man named Homer.

The plot and Hurwitz’s writing will keep readers glued. The only problem I found was that I figured out the endgame, with still plenty of pages to go, so it might feel a bit too obvious for some mystery readers. Still, TRUST NO ONE — part edge-of-seat thriller and part political conspiracy — kept my attention throughout. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE CRIME WRITER by Gregg Hurwitz
• LAST SHOT by Gregg Hurwitz

Rona Sharon is the author of ROYAL BLOOD, a historical tale of lust and violence in the treacherous Tudor Court, with a vampire twist. Speaking of, the Tel Aviv-based writer discusses the emergence of the monsters in — and present dominance of — our popular culture.

As popular themes go, vampires may very well win the prize of “most commonly resurrected.” You may love them, hate them or are trying very hard to ignore them, but surely you have wondered at least once what made the damned princes of darkness so bloody interesting.

If you prefer “real-world” storylines and are observing the phenomenon as a baffled bystander, you might be interested to know that thousands of years before achieving mass popularity in movies such as UNDERWORLD and TWILIGHT, and TV series like TRUE BLOOD, vampires had manifested in pagan mythology, monotheistic demonology and spiritual rituals.

Throughout history, vampire myths appeared in nearly every culture. From the ancient Middle East (Mesopotamia, Judea, Egypt), these archetypical baddies invaded Europe, where they found fertile soil in Slavic paganism, and also materialized in Africa, Asia and the Aztec Empire.

Curiously, the earliest vampires were females — violent dark goddesses like the Sumerian Lilitu, the Egyptian Sekhmet and the Indian Kali, all possessing immense supernatural forces. These vampiric goddesses had both the powers to create and to destroy, to give birth and to devour.

In the Dark Ages, tales of vampires sparked public hysteria. Corpses were exhumed and stabbed. It had taken the vampire various reincarnations, through the Hebrew Talmud, Arabian Nights, Boccaccio’s IL DECAMERON and eclectic poetry to reemerge as the suave ageless nobleman.

This 19th-century “makeover” was a direct outcome of the violent volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1815. The Judgment Day atmosphere caused by dark skies and a frosty summer inspired Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, as well as plays and operas starring the alluring vampire lord.

From this point on, the revenants’ star was on the rise and shining ever so brightly with each literary, musical or theatrical piece conceived (oftentimes as a result of consuming laudanum) in their honor. Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe and Alexandre Dumas, to name a few, contributed to their eternal fame, but it was the Irish novelist Bram Stoker’s DRACULA that had the mightiest impact on the imagination and cast the glory of the bloodthirsty count and his court in perpetuity.

Evidently, the public’s fascination with vampires is not an original fad. The vampire is the most popular fiction character of all times. What is it about vampires exactly that appeals to so many people? And why, being familiar with this totally fictitious half-man, half-monster icon, people are still happy to spend their time on movies, books and TV series that feature vampires?

Entertainment and escapism come to mind. As much as we are riveted by “real-world” plots, sometimes the brain needs to zone out in fantasyland. This explanation is plausible, but it fails to prove why the vampire in particular outperforms any other fantastical creature.

We should keep in mind that the vampire has only recently assumed the role of the compelling, gothic, martyred, seductive, gorgeous, off-limits, struggling, sympathetic, romantic outcast in love with a human. The slick hunk in black leather pants, driving a sports car in a metropolis by night, was not the bloodcurdling image that had haunted the graveyards of our ancestors.

Granted, the spooky effect has value. Sexologists believe that scary moments stimulate the libido and, therefore, couples may bond effectively having watched a horror movie together. However, while this theory is bound to stick in your memory, it does not offer sufficient evidence, either.

Vampires, whether pale and beautiful or ghoulishly foul, have always been identified with death, blood-drinking and sex, feeding on emotions such as love, guilt, dread, desire, pity and sadism.

Far be it from me to undertake psychoanalyzing why we are obsessed with death, blood and sex. In my capacity as a historical novelist, I choose to explore the mysteries of the human psyche through stories in the hopes of understanding why we were put on this earth and how we may improve our lot in life. Ironically, as I study the tapestry of man’s fleeting existence, I see how the fruits of one generation’s labor — art, science, architecture, etc. — are reaped by its successors.

Now, a vampire — omnipotent, never-aging and immortal — may travel the centuries unscathed, unconstrained by a deadline in his pursuit of enlightenment and happiness. Would he or she be a cheerful voyager or one cursed with loneliness? Then there is the future to consider. What if the world and/or mankind are doomed to a cataclysmic end? Would anyone care to witness that?

Vampire symbolism is tied in heavily with the awareness of the powers of darkness, chaos and the occult — ancient mysteries that add a chilling dimension to the rich layers of history and cast a question mark on the future. Doomsday prophecies made for an absorbing read as I was doing research back in 2007 for ROYAL BLOOD, my Tudor Vampires novel. Here’s an example:

“Awake, ye drunkards, and weep … For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion … Sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand … And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.” —Book of Joel

The vampire — a human lookalike possessed of superior abilities, as well as frailties, dependent on man for sustenance, multifaceted and obscure — remains an enigmatic figure. Friend or foe? Through him, we get to experience latent fancies and scenes in which the secrets of creation are unraveled. Thank heavens for fiction, I say. The world, I predict, has not seen the last of the vampire crazes. The undead are here to stay, our prolific imagination will undoubtedly continue to produce them, and even the most discriminating realist may yet cross over to the dark side. —Rona Sharon

Buy it at Amazon.

People who have read this column for a while will notice something: I rarely cover books that are more than 400 pages. That is done for one simple reason: Those bricks of books better deliver or I’d seriously be pissed off at wasting my time trying to plow through them. It’s not that I don’t like reading really long tomes — hey, I enjoy Charles Dickens — but it’s a daunting task to start one, especially if you have to slog your way through them … which hopefully is not the case with the three I chose. Consider them potential summer reading, since everyone is always looking for a nice, long read to enjoy while on the beach or by the pool.

THE MATARESE CIRCLE by Robert Ludlum — This 1979 novel has been on my radar for a while, thanks to David Cronenberg, who is writing and directing a movie version. Plus, it’s considered one of the best Ludlum books out there. It’s more than 500 pages, but I flew through it in no time. I thought it would go by slow, but no, not at all!

The plot slowly develops and builds to the climax, where there are some true surprises. The story opens with two killings of high-profile government officials in both the U.S. and Russian governments. In the U.S., it’s the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both killings have trademarks of long-term spies Brandon Scofield and Vasili Taleniekov, but neither one is responsible.

Taleniekov is told by his former boss about a secret society that has been dormant, but when it was originally in power, it was an assassin-for-hire operation. Now, it has an even more sinister purpose. It’s called the Matarese, and it never really went away, laying down a foundation for world domination. To go further with what the Matarese has planned would ruin the whole story, but it’s a biggie.

Most of the first third has Taleniekov trying to persuade Scofield to trust him and that it’s imperative they meet. Scofield is such a hard-bitten spy, he thinks he is being set up. Even when Taleniekov saves Scofield in one of the many action pieces, he is still not sure. They come to trust one another to a point. This book does not all of sudden make them the best of friends, skipping off together; it’s a very strained relationship.

I need to point out most reviews of MATARESE give away the big surprise. That’s something I try not to do, since what would be the point of reading the book then? Telling people that Ludlum is a good writer is about as pointless as bringing sand to the beach; his books have never gone out-of-print and people will even grab “his” new ones, even though he is dead. This really is perfect summer reading, since it slowly grabs the reader, who won’t put it down until it’s all said and done.

My concern is how this will translate into a movie, since there is so much material, and it’s also set in the late ’70s/early ’80s, when Russia was still a major powerhouse, and relationships between them and the U.S. were not as friendly. That is a major point of this story. While reading, it was hard not to think of Denzel Washington, who reportedly will be playing Scofield in the film.

QUEST by Richard Ben Sapir — As one of the co-creators of THE DESTROYER series, Sapir did not write many other books. He passed away in 1987, the same year this rare solo effort was published. Long before Dan Brown gave us THE DA VINCI CODE, Sapir did his own telling of the search for the Holy Grail.

The story deals with a search for a jewel-encrusted salt cellar that happens to be built around the grail itself. No one knows that fact except for its real owner, the Queen of England. But this object was stolen back in the mid-1940s, only to turn up in the hands of a Ohio businessman who is trying to sell it off. His trouble gets him killed, with his daughter Claire getting swindled out of the item by a corrupt art dealer.

Everyone is after this item, mainly for the jewel stones that adorn it — we are talking a goose-egg-sized ruby and six sapphires. Claire is determined to get back what she thinks is hers and hers alone, slowly doing research about this salt cellar. Throw in the help of an NYC detective with an eye for jewelry, and a British agent who knows full well that this cellar is more than just a pure ornament, under direct orders from the crown to retrieve it by hook or by crook. Things go from bad to worse as bodies start turning up dead.

For my tastes, the story goes on way too long for its own good. Sapir could have easily trimmed this one down to a more reasonable length. It’s more than 450 pages, and trust me, by the time you hit 350, you just want it to tie up already. That’s kinda of a shame since Sapir’s DESTROYER writing is so lean and fast. I mean, QUEST itself is a fine read, but it’s just too unwieldy for its own good. But for die-hard DESTROYER fans who want to see Sapir branch out, take a chance.

KILLING FLOOR by Lee Child — It seems that Child is a favorite with some of my fellow reviewers, so I figured it was about time to finally read one of his novels. This 1997 one is actually the first in his Jack Reacher series.

A stranger in town is arrested for a crime he did not commit. This is how Child introduces Reacher to the world — not in those words, mind you, but it’s a cliché that has been done to death. But Reacher takes it in stride, knowing full well he is innocent and has a pretty much airtight alibi.

See, Reacher was on a bus from Florida when the murder happened. But this being a small town in Georgia, you can guess what the local sheriff is like; Boss Hog and Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane probably come to mind. Once Reacher is cleared of the murder, thanks to a policewoman, he becomes involved in the investigation, due to the events of his time waiting to be cleared. Then there’s the sudden murder of a husband and wife, and the revelation of who the original dead body was.

Some of Child’s writing comes off a bit “men’s adventure,” mainly in Reacher’s inner monologues when he is about to take action, right before a bit of violence. Still, it’s well-placed and the plot moves along swiftly. One of the problems is that it’s very obvious who one of the big baddies is. Sure, there are some surprises to come, but for me, it was a bit of a strike against it. That’s a minor quibble, since the rest of the book kept me glued, which, for a column like this, is a major victory.

The story is packed with action and has a nice buildup, never lagging at any moment. Just be prepared to suspend disbelief at certain points, those being the action-hero moments you see in movies. I’ll definitely check out other books in the series at some point.

Next time: I hope Criterion will reissue them.—Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF LEE CHILD:
• BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE by Lee Child
• GONE TOMORROW by Lee Child
• THE HARD WAY by Lee Child
• NOTHING TO LOSE by Lee Child

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF RICHARD SAPIR:
• THE BEST OF THE DESTROYER by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
• THE DESTROYER #5: DR. QUAKE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #6: DEATH THERAPY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #9: MURDER’S SHIELD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #10: TERROR SQUAD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #11: KILL OR CURE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #13: ACID ROCK by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #14: JUDGMENT DAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #15: MURDER WARD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #17: LAST WAR DANCE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #18: FUNNY MONEY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #19: HOLY TERROR by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #22: BRAIN DRAIN by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #23: CHILD’S PLAY by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #24: KING’S CURSE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #26: IN ENEMY HANDS by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #30: MUGGER BLOOD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #48: PROFIT MOTIVE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #52: FOOL’S GOLD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #67: LOOK INTO MY EYES by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy

Vish Puri is the head of India’s Most Private Investigations Ltd., where confidentiality is the watchword, and the success rate is 100 percent, in Tarquin Hall’s THE CASE OF THE MISSING SERVANT. Supported by a strong and indomitable cast of women — including his fascinating secretary Elizabeth Rani and his iron-willed Mummy — the company also features a group of delightful assistants nicknamed Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream. It’s kind of like the Indian A-Team as they solve crimes and do background checks, in this endearing first effort in what will hopefully be a series.

Puri disdains comparisons with Sherlock Holmes, but he still considers himself an astute master of the arts of deductive reasoning. But when a man is accused of murdering a servant, and the servant girl has gone missing, all of his powers will be put to the test. The family that employed the girl knew nothing about her but her first name, Mary. And now Puri must find this Mary — last name and origin unknown, no photograph available — in a land that contains one-sixth of the world’s entire population.

Puri’s really a charming character, unable to resist sweets and fatty foods, even though his wife and doctor harass him about it. He takes the fact of being shot at all in stride, dealing with the strict caste system and the ever-present corruption as best he can, working to make a difference in the lives of those around him.

Hall, who is best known for his nonfiction, especially SALAAM BRICK LANE: A YEAR IN THE NEW EAST END, has a silky smooth style, ripe with colorful descriptions and honest dialogue. Puri’s investigative style is logical, thorough and gets results, and the antics of the various sidekicks add to the overall effect, making the team at Most Private Investigations almost a family.

A minor annoyance for some might be the overuse of Indian terminology. The book includes a 14-page glossary which, while informative (did you know “chuddies” is an Indian term for underpants?), provides information on a lot of words used in the story that just seemed unnecessary to include (did Hall really need to mention chuddies at all, as it’s a complete throwaway used only once?).

With that caveat out of the way, it does strike one that Hall has written a novel about today’s India — all the good and bad, the beauty and chaos mixed together — and he’s provided an entertaining character so we can see this country through his eyes. I definitely would look forward to another book in the series. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

All the problems of DC’s 1960s “The War That Time Forgot” series from STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES — repetition, repetition, repetition — are not present in DC’s current reboot, THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT: VOLUME ONE.

Whereas the original stories were the same thing over and over again — World War II soldiers fighting dinosaurs — Bruce Jones’ update aims for an action-driven plot steeped in its own teasing mythology, à la TV’s LOST.

As this six-issue collection opens just prior to Japan’s invasion of Pearl Harbor, Lt. Carson of the U.S. Air Force narrowly misses being shot down by a Japanese plane, yet is sideswiped by … a pterodactyl!?! Next thing he knows, he wakes up on an island, with his plane nowhere in sight. Standing before him are a Davy Crockett-esque man who calls himself Tomahawk and a red-haired Indian named Firehair.

Other characters from various periods of time populate the island as well: World War I German fighter pilot Enemy Ace, the Viking Prince, the Golden Gladiator, the G.I. Robot and sleek, sexy woman-from-the-future Akisha. If you recognize some of those names from obscure DC titles of yesteryear, that’s part of what makes WAR so fun, throwing characters who normally don’t belong together into the same sci-fi tale.

Although there are attacks aplenty, the dinosaurs are almost secondary, with the mystery of the inescapable island and its purpose being the real hook. Unlike LOST, answers come pretty quickly, including a huge, game-changing twist I never saw coming. Art by Al Barrionuevo and Jimmy Palmiotti is terrific, recalling more those AIP Edgar Rice Burroughs flicks of the ’70s and less of its source material. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT: VOLUME 1

Few movies have fascinated me as much as 1958’s THE FLY. It chilled me in childhood and enthralls me as an adult, so having an entire book devoted to the film — and becoming a definitive resource on such — greatly appeals to me. Unfortunately, THE FLY AT FIFTY: THE CREATION AND LEGACY OF A CLASSIC SCIENCE FICTION FILM isn’t it.

Instead, Diane Kachmar and David Goudsward’s work appears — how to put this nicely? — too fanboyish, with not enough meat to it. It is more about facts and figures thrown together than actually written. I was alternately pleased by it and frustrated with it, in roughly equal measure.

While it does dish some behind-the-scenes detail about the movie’s making, it’s brief, scattershot and not well-organized. It also assumes the reader is readily familiar with the plot and story points; while some of that is to be expected, this book is too shorthand in that department. On the flipside, it’s overly detailed in other areas. For example, do you care about what dates each VHS and DVD release came out? What cities star David Hedison has appeared in for conventions? Where he celebrated his 80th birthday? When his mother died?

While that biographical chapter on Hedison annoys, the Q&A with him that immediately follows is entertaining and even charming, even though it repeats some of the information presented earlier, including from his own introduction. Each cast member then gets his own bio entry, which is fine when you consider the likes of co-stars Vincent Price, Patricia Owens and Herbert Marshall, but close to pointless when it includes that one woman who played “arts matron at the ballet” and some guy who played the waiter who “brings a telephone” into one scene. In that manner, THE FLY AT FIFTY is like one of those hardback cinema reference works put out by McFarland Publishing, only without the super-ridiculous price tags: too anal, too academic.

Information on the sequels is comparatively scant, but sweet. Another welcome inclusion is George Langelaan’s original short story, which first appeared in PLAYBOY. If you haven’t read it before, you should. Since it’s also available elsewhere, it’s not enough to quite merit a purchase of this particular tome, but it helps. —Rod Lott

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My guess is that most BOOKGASM readers have heard of The Shadow, the hero pulp crime fighter who is frequently thought of as the first of his kind — you know, rich guy who roots out evil by disguising himself and adopting an odd but catchy nom de vigilante, like … oh, say, Batman, for instance. But before The Shadow’s first magazine adventure in 1931 came Zorro’s first appearance in 1919 and The Scarlet Pimpernel’s print debut in 1905.

Which brings us to another of those pulp masked action heroes: The Spider. He was Richard Wentworth during the day, another of those indolent millionaire playboys who seemed to be two for a nickel during the Depression. His gal pal was Nita Van Sloan and together they busted more insidious crime than J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson.

Girasol Collectables, a publisher in Canada, has been producing first-rate reproductions of pulp magazines for years, but they recently got into putting out two-fers without the bells and whistles. Their Spider reprints give you two Spider novels for around 15 bucks. The books are the size of a real pulp, but unlike The Shadow and Doc Savage reprints currently on the market from Sanctum Books, contain no historical essays. They don’t even include the names of the authors or cover artists.

The novels were originally published as written by “Grant Stockbridge,” but several pulpsmiths were the real authors. Most of the books were written by Norvell Page, as were the two in this edition: THE CORPSE CARGO AND SLAVES OF THE RING.

If I’ve made The Spider sound like just another version of the same old masked, slouch-hatted, caped, .45-carrying crime buster, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. These stories are different — kinkier and far more violent than those of Wentworth’s more family-friendly rivals. Good and bad guys drop like flies in these yarns.

In 1934’s THE CORPSE CARGO, a band of land pirates led by the sadistic Captain Kidd rob trains by shooting electricity through the cars and killing everyone onboard: “Wentworth got hold of a paper and by the light of a pocket flashlight he read the shrieking black headlines. TRAIN WRECKS KILL 1,000; PENNSY FLIER CRASHES IN TUBE; 2ND SMASH IN GRAND CENTRAL; FIVE MAIL PLANES CRACK UP. ‘And the loot will run into millions,’ he said. ‘Millions—and a thousand witnesses killed. Captain Kidd—does—right—well.’”

What I like best about that paragraph is the lack of pulp-fiction exclamation points, as if The Spider is appalled at the needless slaughter, but not terribly surprised. The surprise comes when he finds out that Captain Kidd is a woman.

In 1942’s SLAVES OF THE RING, a criminal madman known only as The Brain has corrupted absolutely the political ring of a certain state — no name given. The Spider and Nita, who plays a larger than usual role in the story, have to save the lives of a crusading newspaper publisher and his daughter, convince the governor that he’ll be killed by his bosses if he doesn’t reveal their identities first, solve the murder of an honest U.S. Senator, and bust a statewide siege by the police, and all without the aid of the federal government, which is never even mentioned. The “state” is an obvious stand-in for some small European country that has been conquered by a fascist power.

Forgive me, but I enjoy The Spider stories a lot more than I do those about The Shadow. They’re wilder, goofier, more action-filled — hell, just pulpier. Plus, Nita Van Sloan is hotter than Margot Lane. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE SPIDER:
• THE SPIDER: ROBOT TITANS OF GOTHAM by Norvell Page
• THE SPIDER: THE DEVIL’S PAYMASTER by Grant Stockbridge

She’s back, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar!

THE DOOMSDAY KEY by James Rollins — Three murders on three continents bear a horrifying connection: All the victims are marked by a Druidic pagan cross burned into their flesh. The bizarre murders thrust Cmdr. Gray Pierce and Sigma Force into a race against time to solve a riddle going back centuries, to a ghastly crime against humanity hidden within a cryptic medieval codex. Aided by two women from his past — one his ex-lover, the other his new partner — Gray must piece together the horrifying truth. But the revelations come at a high cost, and to save the future, Gray will have to sacrifice one of the women at his side. That alone might not be enough, as the true path to salvation is revealed in a dark prophecy of doom.

NAME TO A FACE by Robert Goddard — Tim Harding has come to Cornwall at the behest of a friend to facilitate the purchase of a much-coveted antique ring. Hayley Winter has come there for reasons of her own … and a centuries-old mystery is about to come crashing down around them both. A decade before, a woman matching Hayley’s description died in a suspicious diving accident — at the side of the man giving Harding his orders. Now the ring, said to have been cut off the finger of a drowned British naval commander in 1707, is at the center of a many-tendrilled puzzle. For Harding, one misstep and a handful of coincidences ignite a search through dozens of lives, back into English history and the age of the Black Death, to find Hayley, her true identity and the most shocking secret of all.

THE TIGER WARRIOR by David Gibbins — Two ancient cultures, a lost treasure from the distant past: what powerful secrets does it conceal — and how far will some go to possess them? The trail starts in the Roman ruins and leads to a shipwreck off the coast of Egypt. Soon the world’s top marine archaeologist, Jack Howard, and his team of scientific experts and ex-Special Forces adventurers are pushing their way through the mysterious jungles of India, following in the footsteps of a legendary band of missing Roman legionnaires. Meanwhile, at a remote lake in Kyrgyzstan, a beautiful woman has found evidence of a secret knowledge that has cost the lives of countless seekers through the centuries. And what Jack uncovers will lead him to dig not only into the ancient past but into his own family history.

THE LEGAL LIMIT by Martin Clark — Gates Hunt is a compulsive felon, serving a stiff penitentiary sentence for selling cocaine. His brother, Mason, however, has escaped their bitter, impoverished upbringing to become the commonwealth’s attorney for their rural hometown in Virginia, where he enjoys a contented life with his wife and spitfire daughter. But Mason’s idyll is abruptly pierced by a wicked tragedy, and soon afterward trouble finds him again when he is forced to confront a brutal secret he and his brother had both sworn to take with them to the grave, a secret that threatens everyone and everything he holds dear.

RELENTLESS by Dean Koontz — Bestselling novelist Cullen “Cubby” Greenwich is a lucky man and he knows it. His wife, Penny, a children’s book author and illustrator, is the love of his life. Together they have a brilliant six-year-old, Milo, affectionately dubbed “Spooky,” and a non-collie named Lassie. So Cubby knows he shouldn’t let one bad review of his otherwise triumphant new book get to him — even if it is penned by the much-feared, seldom-seen critic, Shearman Waxx. Ignore Waxx is just what Cubby intends to do. Until he happens to learn where the great man is taking his lunch. Cubby just wants to get a look at the mysterious recluse whose mere opinion can make or break a career — or a life. But Shearman Waxx isn’t what Cubby expects; and neither is the escalating terror that follows what seemed to be an innocent encounter.

TRUST ME by Jeff Abbott — Luke Dantry’s nightly task working for his stepfather’s Washington think tank: Go undercover from the anonymous safety of his computer and infiltrate Web-based, home-grown terrorist networks, cataloging the screen names and details of a motley collection of rage-filled, mentally suspect and mostly impotent loners he comes to call the Black Road. Now and then, he encounters someone who may have the capability to make good on his threats, but Luke figures that the vast majority of his targets are simply frustrated malcontents. When Luke is kidnapped at gunpoint, without warning, and left for dead in an isolated cabin deep in the woods, he realizes it must be related to his work.

Buy them at Amazon.

Nearly a year after the debut issue, SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #2 is finally available, with another 130-ish pages of mostly all-new material, perfect-bound and edited by the ever-reliable Marvin Kaye.

It begins with Kim Newman’s reviews of a handful of Sherlock Holmes-oriented books, which are welcome, but many of the titles are several years old. With so many new titles published every season, it’d be nice to see those covered instead. Holmes’ landlady Mrs. Martha Hudson returns with a faux advice column that’s more annoying than anything, especially with the inclusion of recipes.

Carole Buggé follows with an essay on radio adaptations of Holmes stories. It’s certainly informative, and if I had the patience to listen to audio plays, I’d definitely use it for reference. Then we come to the meat of the mag: the fiction section.

All of the fiction is centered around mystery and detection, although not necessarily featuring the great detective himself. Darrell Schweitzer’s “The Adventure of the Hanoverian Vampires” is one that does, and it’s an amusing little tale narrated by a cat. Gary Lovisi’s “A Study in Evil” is another, in which Holmes has been arrested for murder, which he doesn’t deny. Arthur Conan Doyle is repped by another reprint, “The Musgrave Ritual.”

In “A Reputation for Murder,” M.J. Elliott certainly hits that Sherlockian spirit with her girl-detective protagonist. David Waxman’s “Tough as Diamonds” is fine enough, but there’s no real suspense or problem-solving in its story of a missing dog. Ron Goulart’s “The Mystery of the Flying Man” is a little too muddled to be effective, but Marc Bilgrey hits “You See, but You Forget” out of the proverbial park, with a story of revenge on a landlord whose negligence results in the death of an elderly tenant. Bilgrey also contributes this issue’s lone cartoon; it’d be fun to see more of these sprinkled throughout the pages, rather than the Victorian-era clip art.

On the copyright page, Wildside Press promises SHMM to be a quarterly publication. I’ll believe that when I see it, but whenever I see a third issue, I’ll welcome it. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MARVIN KAYE:
• DON’T OPEN THIS BOOK! edited by Marvin Kaye
• THE FAIR FOLK edited by Marvin Kaye
• FORBIDDEN PLANETS edited by Marvin Kaye
• THE GHOST QUARTET edited by Marvin Kaye
• SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #1 edited by Marvin Kaye
• THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN edited by Marvin Kaye

With WHO KILLED ART DECO?, his second work of fiction in so many years, former GONG SHOW host Chuck Barris branches out in this parody of mystery writing. It’s not a straight-out spoof, but there are plenty of elements inside to show he must have devoured the works of certain authors.

Actually, you could call this two stories in one, since the first half of the book is taken up with a family drama that carries to the end, while the second part focuses on a rookie private investigator. The novel opens with a brief history of the Deco family and its patriarch, Arthur Deco Sr., a man who is very set in the way things should be. He is also racist, homophobic and a bully.

He beleives his son, Art Jr., should fall into line, cut his hair and get a real job. Art Jr. lives in New York City, having quit a prestigious law firm and just bums around, living off his trust fund. He makes friends with another layabout, Eddie Cotten. These two are inseparable to the point that while on a trip, they discover they are both gay — a huge black mark in the eyes of Art Sr. — so Art Jr. keeps this secret as long as he can.

Eddie has the same problem with his own parents — his father, a former bookie who probably would kill his own son if he knew. As years go by, it seems that Art Jr. and Eddie would live together forever, until Art takes up with a new man, leaving Eddie high and dry in the worst way, cleaning out their bank account.

Cue the discovery of Art Jr. dead in his apartment, made to look like a suicide. The cops are forced by their captain to close the case as such, much to their chagrin. Jimmy Netts relates his history of how he ended up as a detective after years of being a podiatrist, with Art Sr. becoming his first client. Art Sr. knows full well his son did not have the guts to kill himself; the prime suspect in his eyes is Eddie.

Barris seems to have fun coming up with these characters, leaving the mystery as a frame to populate with these people, especially since the outcome is bit of a fizzle. Barris does not go down the obvious route — more in line with the reader left asking, “Really?” Still, it’s what takes place before the final part that will keep them entertained.

Hopefully, Barris has another mystery in him. He just needs to work on a real grabber of an ending, even though Netts’ original idea of how it went down is pretty humorous to the point that it’s ludicrous. But maybe that was the point, since some authors think the more unbelievable, the better. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BIG QUESTION by Chuck Barris

DUSK: VOL. 1 is an indie vampire graphic novel that is more akin to say, TWILIGHT or BUFFY than, oh, say, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. It’s about a spunky vampire-sycophant who drinks blood and gains some self-esteem and works for them as an assassin. I think.

I say “I think” because DUSK — which is very well-written by David Doub, mind you — falls prey to the curse of indie comics: bad, indecipherable artwork. Black-and-white inks fill every page, at times too much, with blocky figures doing some sort of motion, but we’re not sure what. And I can’t fault author Doub: When you’re doing this off your own dime, you gotta work with what you can afford.

But, that just even begs this question even more: As talented a writer Doub is, why not just turn this into a novel? A collection of short stories?

Would I pick up DUSK: VOL 2? I don’t think so. But would I pick up a collection of stories featuring these characters? You bet. —Louis Fowler

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Neil Gaiman, Robin Williams and Ron Moore are among those who pay tribute to legendary sci-fi scribe Harlan Ellison in Erik Nelson’s documentary HARLAN ELLISON: DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH. But its real star is Ellison himself, “the dark prince of American letters.” The film features more than “25 years of exclusive video footage that captures Ellison at his most irritating and inspiring, curmudgeonly and lovable. See Ellison rant about the idiocies of fandom, confess to mailing a dead gopher to a publishing house, recall his tortuous childhood, and speak about the joy (and misery) of writing.” We have two copies to give away, in the form of iTunes digital downloads.

To enter:
1. E-mail us your name and e-mail address (U.S. residents only; e-mail must link to existing iTunes account) with “Do not piss off Harlan Ellison” as the subject line, to editor at bookgasm dot com.
2. Await Friday, July 17 when we announce the randomly chosen winners.
3. Or, just buy it at iTunes or Amazon.

The thing about Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels is that while they are light reads, they are also nourishing in a way that only the best blockbusters are. I’m not talking Simon West or Stephen Sommers, but guys like James Cameron or the BOURNE movies by Paul Greengrass. They have a brain, a heart, and they engage you without asking you to check your brain at the door the way you would with a James Patterson or Dan Brown novel. If you don’t want to be engaged by your fiction … man, I don’t know what to tell you. Try hard drugs — it’s the same effect and often more interesting an experience.

The setup for TURN COAT — the 11th of a projected 20 — is so simple that I love it: A big-time warden named Morgan, a sort of police officer for wizards, collapses onto maverick wizard Dresden’s doorstep and gasps, “Help me. The wardens are after me.”

Isn’t that just an awesome hook?

Now, the thing is, I hate fantasy.* I can’t get past all the songs in the LORD OF THE RINGS books. I gag at the word “destiny.” I don’t feel threatened or interested in a poorly defined dark lord of darkness and evil (Sauron was a giant eye, people; Sauraman was a far more interesting villain in the movies), and realistically, the little guy does not save the day as much as fantasy writers copying Tolkien would like you to believe. All that bores me and makes me want to reach for a razor.

Butcher is different. “Destiny” is never uttered in Dresden’s world — at least not about our hero. He’s not some nameless nobody; he packs serious power and is respected by the right people, so you can expect him to be a hero. What makes the series genius is that Harry has our problems: He worries about his relationships, he has bills to pay, and the politics of his world might get his head chopped off or he’ll die some other horrible death.

Okay, that last one isn’t so common, but you get the idea.

In TURN COAT, Harry has to get proactive and figure out who framed Morgan for murder. It’s important because this person is also the long-rumored traitor of the White Council, the guys who are the bosses of wizards. Butcher has always danced a delicate line between noir and fantasy with these books, and while he doesn’t always succeed at mixing the two, at least there’s an honest-to-God mystery in this one.

Granted, you’ll figure out the killer as soon as he’s introduced, if you’re paying attention. The culprit might as well have had a glowing Vegas billboard pointed at him, screaming, “TRAITOR! MURDERER! GET THE BASTARD!” Still, I admire the effort, and it feels more like a P.I. novel than these books have felt in a long while, and I love that Butcher references Hercule Poiroit at the end.

Figuring out the mystery might have been easy, but Butcher is a smart writer, and it doesn’t end there; the ramifications of a traitor being revealed opens up a whole new can of worms, and the White Council** wants to keep the fact that there’s a traitor hush-hush because they would appear weak in the supernatural world. For them, pride is more important than protecting their own.

I love the world he sets up; it’s rich and complicated (seriously, Wikipedia is your friend with these books), and often feels real. It’s a pity that a great city like Chicago gets the short shrift, though, as it often just feels like Big Urban City, USA, the way Butcher writes it. A big component of any P.I. series is making the setting a living and breathing part of the cast, but it’s one of the most noticeable flaws in this series.

He makes up for it with how big the world he created for Harry is, however; it’s like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. He also uses real mythology very well; here, an ancient, Native American evil spirit called a skinwalker is stalking Harry, and Butcher handles the mythology of such a beast with deft cleverness.

Which brings me to the action: Wow. I love Butcher’s action scenes. They’re big and epic and he handles them with the expertise of a director like James Cameron. It’s big when it needs to be, personal when it needs to be, and brutal when it needs to be. Logically, you know Harry will always survive, but you often don’t know how he possibly could.

But the only reason you should care about the action is because Butcher writes such great characters. He often compares Dresden to Peter Parker, and it shows. He’s a smart-ass who will always go the distance, even if it breaks him in every way possible. Butcher’s characterization is so good that when Harry says goodbye to a woman he might be in love with, before going off to fight a battle he might not come back from, it’s emotional and hits the reader hard because Butcher earns it. The people in his books are often three-dimensional. Sure, his villains are often evil just because, but he makes up for it by making everyone else not totally good or bad, and often just out for themselves.

Butcher is a great burger at a nice diner: fulfilling and tasty, and you don’t hate yourself for it the next morning as you digest it. —Cameron Hughes

*I’ll hunt anyone down that starts whining to me about Harry Potter. Shut. Up. Same with George R.R. Martin.

**If the dreadful TV series did anything right, it was renaming The White Council into the High Council so it no longer sounded like a Klan meeting.

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE DRESDEN FILES: STORM FRONT — VOLUME ONE: THE GATHERING STORM by Jim Butcher and Mark Powers
• THE DRESDEN FILES: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE by Jim Butcher
• PROVEN GUILTY by Jim Butcher
• SMALL FAVOR by Jim Butcher
• SPIDER-MAN: THE DARKEST HOURS by Jim Butcher
• WHITE NIGHT by Jim Butcher

THE BONE FACTORY, Nate Kenyon’s third novel, finds the author taking greater risks with narrative structure and relying less on supernatural elements and gore shock effects. Although uneven at times, the results are exciting, and this is his best work to date.

A large hydropower plant is about to open in the small northern town of Jackson, near Quebec City. That’s good news for David Pierce, a research engineer who has been unemployed for most of the past year. So, shortly after his interview with the Jackson plant manager, David gets a call that the job is his, and he is overjoyed.

The new job means relocation from his New York home. Fortunately, the plant management has promised to move David — plus his wife, Helen; and their 4-year-old daughter, Jessica — into a remote but spacious house near a vast wooded forest near the plant. Although a bit anxious, David and Helen hope the new beginning will be especially good for little Jessica, who has suffered from frequent and disturbing nightmares. They later learn that these nightmares are actually visions of events yet to happen.

But as David and his family settle in, there are other things happening with the plant’s opening. An inspector from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is concerned about some environmental anomalies in the local water used by the plant, so he sends some samples for extensive lab analysis in Washington, D.C. At the same time, a psychotherapist is concerned about one of her clients, a Vietnam veteran currently working as a guard for the plant while it is locked down during the winter. The guard is plagued by paranoid dreams of his war experiences, and is suddenly absent from his therapy sessions.

And most disturbing of all are the recent reports of murder and mutilations of local residents, and a girl about Jessica’s age who wandered into the woods near the Pierce residence and disappeared. It all strikes home when Jessica dreams of a huge and threatening “blue man” hiding in the woods.
 
While David is the focal point for most of the story, Kenyon shifts the perspective to Helen, Jessica and several other characters populating the novel. It’s a treacherous technique that tempts confusion or distraction, but for the most part, Kenyon keeps the shifts brief and manages to rake up the suspense as all the diverse characters play out their roles and converge toward the conclusion.
 
The horror here, of course, comes from the grizzly murders and the shadowy perpetrator who haunts Jessica’s dreams. But there are also a great deal of shudder-provoking moments as a result of the environmental damage created by the plant management and their short-sighted greed. And when David discovers that his new job is putting his family in danger, there is an added thriller characteristic, complete with a race to avoid further killings.
 
Yet precious little is made of Jessica’s ability to envision future events. And what with everything else happening, her ability almost seems superfluous. But this is the kind of irritant that bothers you only after you’ve finished reading the entire book. And you will finish it.
 
It’s wonderful to experience a novelist taking risks and improving with each new book. Here’s hoping that Kenyon continues that way. If so, he’s certain to become a writer worth following in the coming years. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BLOODSTONE by Nate Kenyon
• THE REACH by Nate Kenyon

After starring in such beloved fright films as CAPTAIN KRONOS — VAMPIRE HUNTER and FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, British actor has made the leap to horror novels as well. That effort is WORST NIGHTMARES, one of the best of its genre in many years. Here, Briant talks to BOOKGASM about its genesis.

BOOKGASM: What precipitated your move into fiction, especially since you’re still a working actor?

BRIANT: My father was a novelist, so maybe it was always in my genes. I always wanted to write. Even when I was 5 years old and couldn’t read, I scribbled in a blank exercise book until I had covered every page. Then I told my mother I had finished my first book!

BOOKGASM: And why this dark, bleak story? Where did it come from?

BRIANT: Well, I don’t see it as bleak. Dark, sure. But dark is often interesting. And remember, it’s a thriller, so most thrillers have very dark characters. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SEVEN are both dark, but fascinated me. I wanted to go even further. I hope I’ve achieved this.

BOOKGASM: Were there any nightmare scenarios that you thought up but perhaps found too gruesome to include?

BRIANT: The only thing that would hold me back is bad taste. So, for instance, I wouldn’t go to any nightmare scenarios that Jewish people had about concentration camps.

BOOKGASM: Creatively, what do you get out of writing that you don’t get from acting? And vice versa?

BRIANT: Acting is purely interpretive. Writing is creative and an original art form. That’s why I love it. As an actor, one has to take direction, so one’s choice is limited. The same happens with a screenplay: A director/producer tells you what to do. With a novel, when you have a publisher like Roger Cooper at Vanguard, and a guide such as Georgina Levitt — the associate publisher who looks after me — I can let myself literally fly. It’s great!

BOOKGASM: As one who’s worked with so many onscreen talents, to whom would you entrust to bring WORST NIGHTMARES to the screen, in terms of a director and actors?

BRIANT: Martin Scorsese would be a dream. Also Sam Mendes. Or the Coen brothers! Wow! As key actors, I’d love James Spader and Robert Downey Jr. Also Alex O’Loughlin from the MOONLIGHT TV series.

BOOKGASM: What do you have planned for your next novel?

BRIANT: The sequel! It’s proving to be the best project to date, which is unusual. Anyone who enjoyed and was drawn to WORST NIGHTMARES will want to know what happened next. So I’m writing it now. I am in Paris for the central section of the book. Again, it’s very dark and scary, but will surprise everyone. That’s my hope. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with CAPITOL REFLECTIONS’ Jonathan Javitt
• Q&A with SKELETON CREEK’s Patrick Carman
• Q&A with SHADOWS IN THE MIST’s Brian Moreland

For those who like to read screenplays, this contest’s for you. AWAY WE GO is written by the husband-and-wife team of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, and now the basis for the new Sam Mendes film, starring John Kransinski, Maya Rudolph, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Maggie Gyllenhall, Josh Hamilton, Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan. Think of those faces and voices as you read the screenplay from Vintage Books.

Thanks to Word of Mouth, we have three copies to give away, and away they’re going to:
• Ryan Bonneville of Arlington, Va.
• Henry Javitz of Canton, Ohio
• Adam Shechter of Brooklyn, N.Y.

buy it at Amazon.

THE FATE OF KATHERINE CARR, the latest from the prolific and much-praised author/editor Thomas H. Cook, is one of those books that academics love to hold up as examples of how a mystery can be as literary as any work of mainstream musings. But unlike similar examples by, say, George Pelecanos, Donald Woodrell or a few other noteworthy authors, Cook’s latest has several serious deficiencies. For one thing, nothing much happens.

The narrator is George Gates, a former travel writer who specialized in the odd, off-the-beaten-path attractions of the world with slightly notorious reputations. But then his 8-year-old son was murdered and the killer never found. And the death of his son resulted in the death of George’s curiosity, so he fills his time writing puff pieces for the local town newspaper about trivial events and personalities.

One evening, at his favorite bar, George is approached by Arlo McBride, a retired missing-persons detective who is familiar with George’s previous writings. Arlo tells him of one particular, unsolved case that he has never forgotten: Katherine Carr, a young local poet who suddenly vanished without so much as a clue.

George decides to look a little deeper into the case, and is introduced to Katherine’s closest friend, who presents him with some poems she wrote, and, in particular, a story she wrote, but never published. He is immediately intrigued, as the story is about a woman named Katherine Carr who seems to be stalked by an unknown man. George examines the various locations and local residents mentioned in the story, all in the hopes of discovering some undisclosed fact about whatever happened to Katherine.

Cook drenches his novel in several high-concept literary techniques. Right from the opening pages, we see that George’s entire story is told to a fellow traveler on a boat making its way down some mysterious, tropical river. So it is a story “told in quotation marks,” as a literature professor might point out. Then there is the story-within-the-story where Katherine writes about herself, which allows for several occasions of speculation about whether fiction is closer to reality than reality itself.

And finally, George shares his experience of Katherine’s story — both as written and as he examines it — with a woman named Alice, who, we learn, suffers from progeria, a rare disease that ages the body much faster than normal. So Alice might look to be in her 80s, but in reality, she is only 12 years old. And her living an entire life in far less time than normal is yet another occasion for deep pondering about existence.
 
All well and fine, and there are several passages of truly gripping prose, especially when George recalls any of the numerous places he’s visited before he lost his son. But for all his musing and speculations, George discovers nothing really significant about what really happened to Katherine Carr by the final chapters of the novel than he did at the beginning. He has plenty of opportunities to wonder about those who seemingly get away with committing crimes, and those who seemingly drop out of life without a clue as to if they are still alive or not. But by the close, he doesn’t know what to do with whatever it was he might have learned from his experience.
 
Thus, reading Cook’s book is a sometimes intriguing, but ultimately hollow experience. Oh, there are bound to be plenty of readers who feel that reality seldom offers tidy endings where all is revealed and resolved. And while they will find much to admire in works like this, it leave the rest of us who follow crime and mystery fiction longing for a lot less philosophical depth and a bit more gut-level action. —Alan Cranis

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As a rule of thumb, anthropomorphic animals aren’t my thing. That’s because — much more often than not — the device is used to be cute. But anyone who’s seen the work of uni-named writer/artist Jason knows that “cute” isn’t in his vocabulary. He’s the anti-cute, and LOW MOON is the best work I’ve seen from him yet.

The Fantagraphics hardcover collects five oddball tales, all told in four-panel pages with a majority of the cast being upright-walking, English-speaking dogs. There’s no apparent point for them being canines, since their stories are all-human. Yet the work wouldn’t have nearly the same punch with mere people.

I don’t care that “Emily Says Hello” is illustrated fiction, because it deserves to be on any year-end list of 2009’s finest crime stories, no matter what the format. In it, a hitman is routinely hired by a woman to bump off guys in return for increasingly sexual favors. Before he can grab a boob or receive a blowjob, the guy must play her tape-recorded proof of each mission’s success. Each piece of aural evidence ends with the same phrase, “Emily says hello,” followed by the blam of a bullet entering — one presumes — some poor sap’s head. The ending is sudden, shocking and remarkably poetic.

The second story, “Low Moon,” is Jason’s HIGH NOON — a Western in which every cliché of the genre is deftly parodied. The town sheriff is visibly unnerved when an old enemy re-emerges, meaning a showdown is inevitable. But it doesn’t involve guns — this war is to be waged on the chessboard.

Coming in the middle is “&,” a pas de deux of sorts, with one narrative playing out on all the left-hand pages, and another playing out on all the right-hand pages, eventually intersecting on the final page. On the left, a man becomes a thief — and a rather bumbling one at that — to get $10,000 to pay for his dying mother’s operation. On the right, another man is head over heels in love with a woman engaged to another. So he kills her fiancé. And then she falls for someone else, so he offs that guy, too, and so on, and so on, until he gets his chance. It’s rather brilliant.

Similar in feel and funny is “Proto Film Noir,” which reads like a James M. Cain parody, as a wife and her lover plot to kill her husband. They do, but the bastard keeps coming back to life, so they kill and kill again.

Finally, there’s “You Are Here.” In it, a wife and mother of one is kidnapped by an alien who takes off in a rocket to outer space. Her shocked hubby vows to their only son to get her back, so he begins building a rocketship. Twenty years later, he’s still building, but a vow’s a vow. It’s more than a little heartbreaking to see the motherless boy grow into a fractured family of his own, and a lot more heartbreaking when Mom’s fate is revealed.

One and all, these are excellently told tales from a unique talent. —Rod Lott

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When’s the last time you saw a kids’ educational book with a still from a hard-R flick like 30 DAYS OF NIGHT? Boys and girls, I give you HAMMOND UNDERCOVER: VAMPIRES. Much like the offerings from DK Publishing (only with poorer clipping paths), it’s an oversized, fully illustrated guide to the fact and fiction behind a single subject — in this case, vampires. Duh.

Obviously, the book touches upon the real-life Vlad the Impaler, Bram Stoker’s DRACULA, and legends and lore from the world over. But less expectedly, Dawn Martin’s text also turns its eye to bloodsuckers of the animal kingdom, like bats, mosquitos and leeches.

On the pop-culture side of things, some of UNDERCOVER’s choices are questionable. I can understand the inclusion of Stephenie Meyer’s TWILIGHT series, but is it deserving of its own double-page spread when other entertainments holding arguably more influence over the genre get much less? Admittedly, the book has a thin idea of what merits classic status — of all the vampire films ever made, a sidebar on five that “stand out” includes THE LOST BOYS. On the opposite page, five more are listed as “Movies of Note,” but this opportunity to redeem itself is lost once QUEEN OF THE DAMNED appears.

I’m being picky, and yes, this book was written for someone three decades my junior. That intended pre-teen audience is likely to greet its pages with eager thumbs. The text is written and organized for Internet-savvy minds, so it certainly knows what it’s doing in introducing that audience to fanged fiends.

Let’s just hope its readers grow up with better taste in cinema. —Rod Lott

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The themes of personal responsibility, retribution and the life-changing decisions involved in being a man in today’s society that have long been part of the novels of George Pelecanos, especially in his previous two works, THE NIGHT GARDENER and THE TURNAROUND. But these themes find their best and most effective expression in his latest novel, THE WAY HOME.

Like all of his excellent books, it is at its core a crime novel, but more concerned with the lingering effects of crime on its characters than with the actual execution. And, again, like all of his efforts, it demonstrates how crime fiction can be literate without losing site of suspense and the other characteristics that attract us to the genre.

Christopher Flynn has learned life’s lessons the hard way. After a string of petty crimes, the young man is arrested after fleeing an assault incident and is sentenced to serve time in the Pine Ridge prison facility for youths in Maryland, just outside of his Washington, D.C. hometown. He immediately fronts a tough exterior and assures his parents, “I know how to jail.” But as the months pass, Chris reflects on the paths he’s chosen and, following the death of a fellow inmate, slowly tries to straighten himself out.

Upon his release, Chris goes to work at Flynn’s Floors, the carpet purchase and instillation business founded and operated by his father, Thomas. Chris has long been a source of intense disappointment to his dad, but Thomas slowly gets use to his son’s efforts to finally live a responsible life and do honest work.

Then, one day, while laying carpet in a house handled by a local realtor, Chris and his partner, Ben, a former Pine Ridge inmate, discover a bag full of cash hidden under the floorboards. Ben is immediately tempted, but Chris convinces him to leave the money where they found it and forget about it. But later, with a head full of booze and weed, Ben reveals the location of the hidden cash to another former inmate, Lawrence.
 
Lawrence steals the cash. When the two men who originally stole and hid the money come to claim it and find it missing, they follow a trail that leads them to Chris and Ben. And again, Chris is faced with decisions that test his loyalty to his friends, his family and his future.
 
The long backstory of Chris, the relationship with his father, and his time spent in prison dominates most of the novel’s first quarter. But its telling is so assured, confident and involving that we hardly notice how much time it takes. So by the time he discovers the stolen cash, we intimately sense the conflicts he faces. The same is true for Ben, Thomas and all of the other characters who orbit around Chris’ life.
 
But Pelecanos hasn’t forgotten his suspense chops. From the moment the stolen cash is mistakenly traced back to Chris and Ben, the tension mounts and eventually moves toward a confrontation that, while inevitable, is played out with several unexpected twists.

While the story also contains some anticipated graphic violence, it is a noticeably restrained and subtle work, even for Pelecanos. The usual masculine swagger and celebration of cars, music, fashion and the D.C. locales are all here, but downplayed a bit. Even his amazingly ability with urban dialogue and descriptions are used minimally but efficiently.

Perhaps the best news is that the overt sermons and preaching of morals that marred THE TURNAROUND are here demonstrated entirely through the actions of Chris and the other major characters. They are no less urgent, but far more memorable as we follow their results. THE WAY HOME may not yet be the breakthough work that Pelecanos fans have hoped for, but it is still essential reading, and one that remains with you long after the last page. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE TURNAROUND by George Pelecanos

Although similar to the recent DRAGON’S DREAM book, MAGNETIC STORM expands on the work of artist Roger Dean, plus his similarly minded brother, Martyn. Roger is best-known for some iconic prog-rock album covers of the 1970s, but as this shows, he did a lot more than just that, even if it was all in the same, fanged-fonted vein.

For example, publishing. I had no idea Roger had ventured too far beyond painting for LPs, but here are covers for books by H. Rider Haggard and collections of Dan Dare adventures, among others, all in the brothers’ unmistakable fantasy style. Similarly, the work for Jeff Wayne’s WAR OF THE WORLDS prog musical is top-notch, what with the tripod robots.

Roger’s fascination with pod-like cities must be in the genes, because here, Martyn’s designs for personal pods are shown in detail. These allow one (or two) to escape from the world and retreat inside for solitary video, audio or other activities of stimulation.

Collins Design’s hardcover release is a reissue, originally published in 1984. The drawback is it kind of smells that old, too, as if 25 years of cigarette smoke have permeated its pages. Must be the stock. Anyway, should the crystalline stage designs of Yes stoke your fires of fancy, MAGNETIC STORM is something to which you’ll be attracted. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• DRAGON’S DREAM by Roger Dean

In the past, I’ve covered a variety of spy fiction, be it the brainless fun with lots of things that go boom, or the heady, well-plotted type where there action is only a small part of the story. This week, I present three different takes on the matter, including an author who would have turned 100 this month, a return of a personal favorite and a debut novel from a man best-known for a detective series. But it seems he had the spy bug in him first.

JOURNEY INTO FEAR by Eric Ambler — This 1940 book is considered one of Ambler’s best. Some people would give the edge to A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS, which shares one of FEAR’s characters. For those unfamiliar with the author’s work, the best way to describe his stories are Hitchcockian, in the sense that Alfred Hitchcock was a fan and used Ambler’s template of a man way out of his element, thrust into the world of espionage and intrigue.

The book takes place right at the start of World War II, which most people think will be a lot like the first one, not realizing the massive scope and true destruction to come. A British engineer named Graham has just concluded talks with the Turkish government to ally itself with Britain. Trouble starts right away for Graham, with attempts made on his person, to the point that he relies on the help of a Turkish colonel.

The colonel promises to help him out, putting him on a ship where he vouches for all the passengers. The problem is that Graham recognizes one of them as one of the people who tried to kill him. The story moves into a cat-and-mouse game, with Graham at center stage. All of the action takes place while at sea, with Graham trying his hardest to convince anyone that he is in dire straits. He has to rely on some of his fellow passengers, who comprise a rogue’s gallery — including pimps, secret agents, a political French couple and a German spy master with his hired goon — with the story building to what for the time would be the big-budget climax.

Ambler’s writing is of its time, but still pretty relevant. His style is slowly paced, but engaging for readers today, which is a pleasure for a novel close to 70 years old. A bit of serendipity is that I also got my hands on the original movie version with Joseph Cotten in the role of Graham, but I understand that I would have been lost if I did not first read the book.

SPY STORY by Len Deighton — This 1974 book is a bit of a conundrum, since some think it’s a continuation of the Nameless Spy/Harry Palmer series. But while reading the book, some details don’t gel with what we have been presented with before. We also have a name for our spy this time out: Pat Armstrong, who is just coming off a six-week trip on a sub doing research on the Soviets in the Arctic Circle.

Once his time is up, Armstrong goes back to his old apartment, only to find that it seems someone else is not only living there, but living his life, with his clothes being slightly altered, as well as family photographs. Armstrong is pretty much out of the spy life, since he now works for the Studies Center, where the main order of business is running military strategy programs on computers — a bit of war-game theory.

The story slowly builds into the crux of the matter: The British are about to receive another Russian defector. Deighton paces the book so well that it’s more of an enigma for Armstrong, as well as the reader, with Armstrong making discoveries of a rogue operation being run to take in this defector. Armstrong is forced into the position of getting back into the spy game.

Things really go into high gear when Armstrong is taken on a trip to the Arctic Circle for the big climax of this operation, where the whole truth is revealed, with our working-class spies still just pawns in a much larger picture. Deighton mapped out a truly fantastic Cold War tale, but it is not for newbies of his writing, though, since some characters from previous books make appearances. No matter what, it’s a fantastic read that starts off slowly, only to deliver the goods at the end.

THE DARK TUNNEL by Ross Macdonald — Originally credited to his real name, Kenneth Millar, this is the 1944 debut novel of Macdonald, who came up with a iconic figure in his Lew Archer books. The story is very much of the time it was written, right in the middle of World War II, with the idea of sleeper spies in the country alive and well.

Robert Branch is a university professor in the Midwest. Early on, he relates a story of his time in Germany before the war broke out and how he fell for a woman with whom he has been trying to keep in touch ever since, only to find out she has been offered a position at the university. But as much as this is good news for Branch, something happens that enters him into the world of espionage: the death of one of his good friends.

The police believe it to be suicide, but Branch is not sure and thinks it has to be enemy agents. Add to this that the woman he has not seen in more than six years turns up with a fiancé in tow, all leading to another death, this time with all the fingers being pointed at Branch.

There is a fantastic chase sequence in the woods, where Branch tries to find a weapon to protect himself, with his purchase being made from a deaf mute. That is just a tad bizarre for bizarre’s sake. As much as Branch pleads his innocence, the cops still arrest him, but Macdonald throws a curve ball or two. That is when the book shows its age, with depictions of certain characters’ proclivities, to put it nicely. I don’t want to ruin that nugget of information, since it’s key to what follows, but just remember this was the 1940s, where terms were thrown around like grass seed.

I’ve got to say this had to be the fastest I’ve ever read one of Macdonald’s books. It literally flies by. But be forewarned: This is not the mature style that he would find later in his career, but he is not aping anyone else’s style — just trying to find his footing in the world of writing. It’s a shame he did not continue in the spy genre. I’ll just have to make do with those Archer books and some of his non-series entries still waiting to be read. If you come across a copy of THE DARK TUNNEL, grab it with out a worry. Even though it was his first attempt, it’s still better than some of the dreck people rave about.

Next time: These authors are not green. —Bruce Grossman

Buy them at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ERIC AMBLER:
• THE LEVANTER by Eric Ambler

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF LEN DEIGHTON:
• THE BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN by Len Deighton
• AN EXPENSIVE PLACE TO DIE by Len Deighton
• FUNERAL IN BERLIN by Len Deighton
• HORSE UNDER WATER by Len Deighton
• ONLY WHEN I LARF by Len Deighton

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROSS MACDONALD:
• THE ARCHER FILES by Ross Macdonald
• BLACK MONEY by Ross Macdonald
• BLUE CITY by Ross Macdonald
• THE BLUE HAMMER by Ross Macdonald
• THE DOOMSTERS by Ross Macdonald
• THE GALTON CASE by Ross Macdonald
• THE INSTANT ENEMY by Ross Macdonald
• THE MOVING TARGET by Ross Macdonald
• THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE by Ross Macdonald

We all know the A-listers of Old West bad men and their pursuers: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock — one bloodstain after another. Less familiar but no less fascinating are the reprobates whose stories are told by five-time Spur Award winner Loren D. Estleman in THE BRANCH AND THE SCAFFOLD: THE TRUE STORY OF THE WEST’S LEGENDARY HANGING JUDGE, about Isaac Parker of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Parker believed that executions should be public — not to provide entertainment, but to teach a moral lesson. Murderers and rapists should receive in a public display the wages of their sins. With hangman George Maledon as the man with the rope, and deputies of the caliber of “The Three Guardsmen” — Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas —the Hanging Judge was ready to get to work.

Parker’s men are described by the characteristics they lack: “I don’t want drunks and gamblers like that preening man Hickok, or bush-whackers like the gang in Dodge City. Such men are timid when they become separated from the pack. Pin that star on men of swift judgment and good instincts.”

Work for Parker was made up of holding court six days a week, for up to 10 hours a day. In 21 years as the judge presiding over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, Parker sentenced 156 men and four women to death by hanging. Only 79 eventually dangled from one of the six nooses — “Parker’s Tears” — for which Maledon cared.

Estleman introduces us to Parker and his wife, who baked cakes for the prisoners, but the bulk of the book is taken up by stories of pursuit and capture. The main attractions are Ned Christie, Cherokee Bill and Belle Starr. About Starr, Estleman writes: “Most of what was written about the West was rubbish, and more rubbish was written about Myra Belle Shirley from Arkansas than about Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Buffalo Bill Cody combined. The process by which a lank-limbed, crab-ridden consort of bushwhackers with a face like a log butt made the long climb from the brothels of Carthage, Missouri, to be coronated the Bandit Queen of the Border said more about the hacks who performed the ceremony than it did about their subject.”

Estleman is not a romancer. About Cherokee Bill’s traveling companions he writes: “Cherokee Bill had slain a man at a dance over some little, and ‘lit a shuck’ toward the outlaw life with the Cooks, as stupid a pair of brothers as had ever taken to the outlaw trail, although he’d admired the viciousness of their dedication.”

But it isn’t just the villains who lead a hard life. Manhunting was not romantic, and it sure as hell wasn’t comfortable. “No matter how reliable a man’s umbrella, when it rained he got wet. At times he seemed to be hauling the downpour with him, as if it came from a nozzle that followed his progress, a moving spout surrounded by dry. When he camped he made a shelter of the slicker with cottonwood branches, wrung out his socks, and slept until he was awakened by his own misery.”

The prose is a wonderfully readable combination of Estleman’s poetics and Mark Twain-like sarcasm. For instance, murderer and thief Bill Dalton is called a “reformed politician.”

And the book’s title? Well, if you’re hanged from a branch, you’re the victim of vigilantes, and that’s bad. If you’re hanged from a scaffold, then the law got you, and that’s good. Just a distinction to keep in mind when you find a rope around your neck and you’re looking for something uplifting. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• AMERICAN DETECTIVE by Loren D. Estleman
• FRAMES by Loren D. Estleman
• PEEPER by Loren D. Estleman

I was apprehensive when starting the graphic novel CHICKEN WITH PLUMS, Marjane Satrapi’s follow-up to her best-selling (and movie-inspiring) PERSEPOLIS. Not only did the title come across confusing and possibly trite, but few cartoonists have avoided the dreaded sophomore slump when releasing material after such an auspicious debut.

Luckily, I needn’t have worried, because Satrapi has created a narrative that, while not containing the emotional power of her first work, in some ways improves upon it with a depth of storytelling that keeps the reader engaged throughout.

The focus of the story is Satrapi’s great-uncle, Nasser Ali Khan, who, in 1958, chose to lay in bed and die. Spoiler alert: After 8 days, he does indeed die, but not before we’re treated to a multilayered chronology of his life and the various happenings which has led him to his chosen fate.

So, yeah, it’s not the feel-good story of the year, but Satrapi fills the panels with big emotions from characters illustrated with incredible visual economy. The story takes occasional detours into humor as well, especially when portraying how the American lifestyle eventually turns Nasser’s California-based grandchildren into morbidly obese candidates for THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW.

The most remarkable aspect of CHICKEN WITH PLUMS is Satrapi’s ability to create a fully fleshed character from a man who died 11 years prior to her birth. With this simple tale, she proves that she’s an artist and storyteller whose best work could easily be yet to come. —Brian Winkeler

Buy it at Amazon.

She’s back, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar!

GARY JENNINGS’ APOCALYPSE 2012 by Robert Gleason and Junius Podrug — In ancient Mexico, the “End-Time Codex” — prophesizing the world’s end in 2012 — is entombed. A young Aztec-Mayan slave tells us its story. Gifted in math and astronomy, Coyotl rises to king’s counselor in Tula, a golden city of milk and honey ruled by the brilliant god-king, Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent of lore. Gathering artists, scientists and craftsmen, this legendary ruler builds a city that will awe humanity for one thousand years. But he also faces war, catastrophic drought, betrayal and the rise of an evil death-cult religion. Instituting the infamous “Blood Covenant,” its priests drag thousands of people a year atop temple-pyramids and rip their hearts beating from their chests. To stop them Quetzalcoatl must defy the flames of bloody civil war.

THE YEAR OF DISAPPEARANCES by Susan Hubbard — Ariella Montero is no stranger to the dark side of life. Half-human, half-vampire, she spent her first 13 years in exile from both societies. When her best friend was murdered, Ari ran away to begin a new life in Florida. But, one by one, the people and things she cares most about keep disappearing. And Ari may be next. She can hypnotize, she can read minds, and she can make herself invisible, but can she escape her stalkers? Ari’s special talents are severely tested as she moves on — from a vampire community in the Sunshine State to college in Georgia to the primeval maze of the Okefenokee Swamp. In contending with the politics of vampire and human cultures, Ari comes face-to-face with zombies that are infiltrating America, as well as demons and shadows that haunt us all.

DISMANTLED by Jennifer McMahon — Henry, Tess, Winnie and Suz banded together in college to form a group they called the Compassionate Dismantlers. Following the first rule of their manifesto — “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart” — these daring misfits spend the summer after graduation in a remote cabin in the Vermont woods committing acts of meaningful vandalism and plotting elaborate, often dangerous, pranks. But everything changes when one particularly twisted experiment ends in Suz’s death and the others decide to cover it up. Nearly a decade later, Henry and Tess are living just an hour’s drive from the old cabin. Each is desperate to move on, but their guilt isn’t ready to let them go. When a victim of their past pranks commits suicide, it sets off a chain of eerie events that threatens to engulf Henry, Tess and their inquisitive 9-year-old daughter, Emma.

FAR NORTH by Marcel Theroux — Out on the far northern border of a failed state, Makepeace — sheriff and perhaps the last citizen — patrols the city ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair. Into this cold land comes shocking evidence that life might be flourishing elsewhere: a refugee from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human society and take to the road, armed with rough humor and an unlikely ration of optimism. What he finds is a world unraveling, stockaded villages enforcing an uncertain justice, and hidden work camps laboring to harness the little-understood technologies of a vanished civilization.

PANIC IN LEVEL 4: CANNIBALS, KILLER VIRUSES, AND OTHER JOURNEYS TO THE EDGE OF SCIENCE by Richard Preston — PANIC IN LEVEL 4 is a tour through the eerie universe of Preston, filled with incredible characters and mysteries that refuse to leave one’s mind. Here are dramatic true stories, including the phenomenon of “self-cannibals,” who suffer from a rare genetic condition that forces them to compulsively chew their own flesh; the search for the unknown host of Ebola virus, an organism hidden somewhere in African rain forests; and the brilliant Russian brothers — “one mathematician divided between two bodies” —who built a supercomputer in their apartment from mail-order parts in an attempt to find hidden order in the number pi.

Buy them at Amazon.

Vampire hunter Laura Caxton is back again! That’s right: David Wellington, one of the brighter lights on the horror fiction scene these days, has brought back the seasoned police detective and vampire slayer from his previous three novels (13 BULLETS, 99 COFFINS, and VAMPIRE ZERO) for a fourth go-round in 23 HOURS. But there are plenty of new challenges for Caxton, and plenty of breakneck action to please fans of Wellington’s previous works.

We find Caxton inside the Marcy State Correctional Institution as the novel begins, having been arrested and tried for the kidnapping and torture of an informant from a previous case. A former cop is a potential target for hardcore inmates, and before the end of page 3, Caxton is the center of a cafeteria riot and brought before a hardened inmate who wants to make Caxton her slave.

But Caxton still has her fighting skills, and manages to break free. When order is restored, the sadistic prison warden confines Caxton to the Secure Housing Unit, an area where inmates are stripped of all rights and privacy. Meanwhile, Caxton’s former fellow officers — including her police photographer girlfriend, Clara Hsu — are investigating the scene of recent murders by vampires. Clara and the other officers know they need Caxton’s help, but are at a loss to figure out how she could guide them from prison. Against the warning of her superior, Clara visits Caxton at Marcy State and tries to brief her on the latest series of vampire attacks.

Not long after the visit, Caxton senses something is terribly wrong inside the prison. And her fears are confirmed as she discovers that her nemesis, Justinia Malvern — the world’s oldest living vampire — has infiltrated the penitentiary. In short order, prison orderlies are made into “half-deads,” indentured servants existing in withering corpses. The warden, in fact, assisted Malvern’s invasion of the prison when the elder vampire promised the terminally ill man eternal life as one of her brood.

But what’s worse, Caxton learns that Clara never left the prison grounds, and is being held hostage by Malvern and the warden. And Caxton is told that she has 23 hours to surrender to Malvern, or Clara will be killed.
 
Wellington knows that pacing is essential to a story like this, and he deliver the goods. The action and various confrontations are nonstop and enhanced with all the requisite violence and suspense needed to keep the pages turning. Indeed, 23 HOURS feels like a classic piece of pulp fiction. But amazingly, Wellington never insults his readers’ intelligence with outrageous plot twists or coincidences. Then, when we think we know how things will be resolved, Wellington fools our expectations with an ending that not only works, but leaves us wanting more.

Newcomers to Wellington or his vampire hunter series won’t be seriously disadvantaged if they decide to start with this latest entry. There is enough background provided to fill in new reader without slowing things down. But you’ll want to immediately grab hold of the preceding novels to find out how Caxton and Malvern got to this point.

For the initiates, it’s simply enough to say, again, that Caxton is back. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• MONSTER ISLAND by David Wellington

Rapscallion is probably one of the better catch-all words to describe Bob Moore, author of DON’T CALL ME A CROOK!: A SCOTSMAN’S TALE OF WORLD TRAVEL, WHISKY, AND CRIME. First of all, the man on the cover is not Moore. Secondly, Moore’s not the writer’s name at all, which we learn in the introduction provided by his granddaughter.

This biography originally came out in 1935 as a history of Moore up until that point, setting his life story straight … and what a story! This is the kind of nonfiction which just has to be read to be believed. Not only does it feel like some old pulp story, but seems like a predecessor to Jim Thompson’s THE GRIFTERS. It is filled with such great exploits, you’ll be dumbfounded by how he got away with some of his stunts.

Moore discusses his upbringing in Glasgow, Scotland, and how at the start of WWI, he rushed off to join the military for adventure. Since he was only 16 at the time, he was not allowed in, but tried again, this time in the Royal Air Force, where he greased planes and never saw one bit of action. After the war, he hitched a boat ride to California, where the crime bug bit him when he was offered $100 from some businessman to carry a package off the train. Moore took it upon himself to open the package, discovering a cache of diamonds. So he took that package and headed back to Chicago to cash in.

Throughout the book, Moore follows the same path of coming into money, then going right out and blowing it all, only to be left high and dry until he finds another way for easy money. In his travels, he married a woman, only to send her back to Glasgow, because he was not the family type. From there, Moore ran a few scams involving sneaking people into the States, and driving for bootleggers. His writing is such a fun ride that even though you know this guy is such a crook, you can’t help but admire how he pulls it all off.

The second half deals with Moore being hired as a engineer for a wealthy family on their yacht. This section screams of the roaring ’20s from the view of someone looking from the outside in. Moore seems to come across as a troublemaker wherever he goes, instigating problems along the way, but never taking the blame himself. Along the way, we witness more of his shenanigans.

Closing out the book are his exploits in China, where he worked as an engineer and made friends with a man named Mitchell, who seems to be cut from the same cloth as Moore. What is really funny are the moments where Moore is played for a fool, and he thinks it’s just wrong. He gets upset when someone just like him steals from him.

Dissident Books has come across a lost classic with DON’T CALL ME A CROOK! It’s one that should have never fallen out of print, since it could have influenced countless others. This is the type of bio that should not only be exposed to a wider audience, but given to every pulp-loving reader out there, since no fiction writer could ever come up with such a lovable rake as Moore. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

For those who like to read screenplays, this contest’s for you. AWAY WE GO is written by the husband-and-wife team of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, and now the basis for the new Sam Mendes film, starring John Kransinski, Maya Rudolph, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Maggie Gyllenhall, Josh Hamilton, Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan. Think of those faces and voices as you read the screenplay from Vintage Books. Thanks to Word of Mouth, we have three copies to give away.

To enter:
1. E-mail us your name and mailing address (U.S. only; no P.O. boxes) with “Jim is cheating on Pam” as the subject line, to editor at bookgasm dot com.
2. Await Friday, June 19 when we announce the randomly chosen winners.
3. Or, just buy it at Amazon.

THE MEMORY COLLECTOR is the second novel to feature Meg Gardiner’s forensic psychiatrist, Jo Beckett, following last year’s impressive debut in THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB. Here, Gardiner promptly removes her protagonist from her usual professional circumstances, racks up the suspense to full-blast and produces a superb, high-octane, white-knuckle thriller.

Beckett’s specialty is the psychological autopsy; that is, an examination into a person’s life to determine if a death was natural, accidental, suicide or homicide. Or, as she likes to say, she’s a deadshrinker instead of a headshrinker. But one evening, she responds to a call from airport security in the vicinity. They need an immediate evaluation on a man named Ian Kanan who started acting erratic and near-violent as his plane landed in San Francisco from London.

After some initial questioning, Beckett orders an MRI, and the results confirm her suspicions: Kanan has anteretrograde amnesia – the kind that destroys newly formed memories. That means Kanan knows who and what he is, but can’t remember what happened to him as recent as five minutes ago.

Beckett tires to determine what caused this condition, but Kanan is cagey and will only admit that he has been poisoned, or contaminated, as he says it. Then, while Beckett confers with other doctors and the police, Kanan escapes from the hospital.
 
As Beckett investigates and interviews those close to or associated with Kanan, she learns that Kanan was a security agent working for an exclusive firm developing nanotechnology products. One such product, developed for national defense, was stolen from a lab in Africa, and he was dispatched to retrieve it. Exposure to the product caused his short-term memory loss, yet Kanan has pieced together enough details and is either carrying out his mission or seeking revenge on those who damaged him.

But the deeper Beckett probes, the more dangers she uncovers. Among them, the product that literally rewired Kanan’s brain is highly unstable and, if not properly handled, could endanger the entire city population.

Gardiner opens the novel with two chapters of seemingly unrelated events in opposite corners of the world. It feels slightly disorienting, but the events and characters involved are intriguing enough to carry us on to Beckett’s appearance at the start of the third chapter. From that moment on, the pace kicks into overdrive and hardly lets up as we follow Kanan on his confused quest and Beckett in her search to discover what it all means.
 
Along the way, Gardiner spices things up with plenty of action, deceptions and double-to-triple crossings, and evocative settings all across her San Francisco location. Beckett hardly has time to catch her breath — or enjoy the company of her new boyfriend — before she is thrust back into the race to find Kanan and the product that caused all the trouble.
 
The nanotechnology element, which distinguishes the story from just another chase after someone with no memory, might have been a major problem. But Gardiner wisely spaces out the detailing of the dangerous product over the course of several chapters. And those details, when introduced, are layman enough for all of us to understand and fear.
 
Gardiner has frequently been compared to such popular thriller authors as Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver and several others. But with THE MEMORY COLLECTOR, she easily joins their ranks as an equal and, in terms of character depth, pacing and sheer page-turning entertainment, surpasses most of them and leaves them eating her dust.
 
It’s the kind of novel that, once started, makes you eternally grateful for voicemail, but might also challenge your ability to function with as little sleep as possible. Yeah, it’s that good! —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• CHINA LAKE by Meg Gardiner
• THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB by Meg Gardiner

A couple in the midst of sexual congress has their hearts ripped out by a surge of magic, and Chicago’s finest private detective/wizard Harry Dresden is called to help police investigate, in Jim Butcher’s THE DRESDEN FILES: STORM FRONT — VOLUME ONE: THE GATHERING STORM, a graphic-novel adaptation of Butcher’s first Dresden book, STORM FRONT.

Problem is, the magic act requires such a high amount of energy that Dresden is expected of being the only person in the city who could pull it off. So while he’s trying to figure out who’s behind it — and it ain’t the vampire madam, he finds out — he’s pursued by White Council wizards and otherworldly demons who want him to pay for it.

This hardcover collects four issues, but those are only part of the story, so know going in that this edition ends on a cliffhanger. It also includes a shorter story, “Restoration,” which serves as a prequel chapter; if you’ve already read Dabel Brothers’ Free Comic Book Day edition this year, you’ve already read it.

Mark Powers adapts Butcher’s novel, making it lean and mean, and thus, highlighting the best parts of Butcher’s story without having also to have its bloat. Ardian Syaf again provides the slick art, and Rick Ketcham’s inks are an improvement over the previous DRESDEN comic collection, WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE DRESDEN FILES: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE by Jim Butcher
• PROVEN GUILTY by Jim Butcher
• SMALL FAVOR by Jim Butcher
• SPIDER-MAN: THE DARKEST HOURS by Jim Butcher
• WHITE NIGHT by Jim Butcher

GRAPHIC CLASSICS: SCIENCE FICTION CLASSICS is the 17th volume in the series which adapts classic lit to comics. It’s also the first printed entirely in color.

A new adaptation of H.G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS anchors this collection, which also includes Jules Verne’s “In the Year 2889,” Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Disintegration Machine,” Lord Dunsany’s “The Bureau d’Echange de Maux” and E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.”

These tales are brought to life by artists Roger Langridge, Johnny Ryan, Hunt Emerson and others, as you’ll see on the half-dozen examples below.

Buy it at Graphic Classics.

Before it was a movie, New York City subway hostage drama THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 was a 1973 novel by John Godey. With Tony Scott’s remake starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta hitting theaters today, the book finally has been reissued.

Thanks to Word of Mouth, we have three copies to give away, and we’re also throwing in a PELHAM T-shirt and water bottle so you’ll be properly PELHAM-ed out for the summer season, and they’re going to:
• Wayland Williams of New York, N.Y.
• Daniel Richardson of Fargo, N.D.
• Randy Marvin of Marlow, N.H.

Buy it at Amazon.

In case you haven’t heard, the publishing world is afraid of becoming extinct at the hands of an all-wired world. To combat this, select titles are incorporating the Internet as an interactive element to see if the two can’t make for a unique, storytelling experience.

Patrick Carman’s SKELETON CREEK was one, and the upcoming Anthony Zuiker/Duane Swierczynski “digi-novel” LEVEL 26: DARK ORIGINS is another. Entering this experimental fray is PERSONAL EFFECTS: DARK ART, a collaboration between podcast writer J.C. Hutchins and alternate-reality game designer Jordan Weisman.

The book is structured as a first-person narrative of Zack Taylor, an art therapist at Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital, where all the true nuts are sent. One of them is Martin Grace, who is accused of brutally killing a dozen people, and yet he is blind. He claims his crimes were carried out by a shadowy force he calls “the Dark Man,” immediately lending the novel a burst of supernatural suspense.

Martin is the typical, cunning, sneering, smarter-than-thou villain, for whom Zack proves no match in their initial meeting. Offsite, Zack gets haunted by an “Invisible Man,” when — at his grandmother’s funeral, no less — a relative he never met shows up and is ordered out by Zack’s D.A. father. The reason? This guy may be the one who killed Zack’s mother many years ago by pushing her down the stairs.

With this professional/personal imbalance in which the former is far more interesting than the latter, yet given the narrower focus, PERSONAL EFFECTS reminded me of Leopoldo Gout’s disappointing GHOST RADIO. (And the opening-chapter illustrations further drive that connection home.)

Of course, there’s much more to the tale than what appears on the printed page. Pasted inside the front cover is a file folder full of stuff, including Martin’s driver’s license, crime scene photos, vital records and other documents, supposedly containing clues the reader can follow, presumably as Zack does.

The text contains phone numbers which you can call, and character names are to be Googled to reveal further information. But here’s the problem with that: It’s difficult to search the protagonist’s name when it’s shared with our 12th president of the United States. I entered four other characters’ names and came up with nothing, beyond a person website of one of the authors.

At least the phone numbers work, but they don’t appear to serve the story. For example, call Zack’s voicemail — 212-629-1951 — and tell me it doesn’t take you out of the narrative, rather than suck you in. Who leaves messages like that? Nobody. That’s not intrigue; it’s inane.

It all leaves me with a bad taste. The novel itself is surely competent, but nothing special. Perhaps the “peekaboo” multimedia elements yield greater satisfaction, but what if I can’t find them all? How much work should be required to do so? What am I missing? —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Akashic’s long-running city-based crime series gets back on track with PORTLAND NOIR, thanks to the fantastic picks of editor Kevin Sampsell. He’s the man behind Future Tense Books and has a bit of fun in his introduction, winning me over in the first few sentences by name-dropping Ken Kesey and Gus Van Sant when describing what people must think of his city.

Speaking of Portland, Sampsell doesn’t look at it with rose-colored glasses, and is more than willing to point out its problems, which is what makes this collection such a great read. Like previous anthologies in the series, the book is split into a few themed sections: “Bloodlines,” “Crooks & Cops” and “Desolation City.”

“Bloodlines” opens with Karen Karbo’s “The Clown and The Bard.” From the start, we know there is most likely a dead body. Our narrator tells about his pretentious ex-girlfriend, and how he made up a story of going off to Prague. It’s a humorous tale of jealousy and Eastern European mail-order brides. Luciana Lopez’s “Julia Now” tells of a couple moving into their new home where they discover a photo and strange note which drives the female lead to find out the truth about the old married couple who lived there for so long, and then can’t deal with the fact of the end results. In Ariel Gore’s “Water Under the Bridge,” a woman has to deal with an ex-girlfriend who keeps insisting to help her out because they are family. This plays so well in that we are just given one side of all the events until the reveal.

The self-explanatory “Crooks & Cops” section has some of the best stories in the collection, starting off with Jonathan Selwood’s brutal “The Wrong House,” which deals with a junkie who becomes a burglar and makes a tragic mistake of going to just one more home. Let’s just say drug dealers are none too happy when someone breaks into a stash house. “Baby, I’m Here” by Monica Drake revolves around a group of junkies, with one just getting out of a state rehab, only for old issues to arise when visiting a pal who ended up in the hospital. You see their lives will never improve and just continue in a vicious circle.

“Coffee, Black” by Bill Cameron deals with a retired cop hired to look into who is breaking Starbucks windows. The story comes off like coffee wars between all these shops, until the detective discovers the real reasons, thanks to some showboating. There is a first in this collection — a comic strip — in the lost-dog tale “Gone Doggy Gone,” while Jess Walter’s “Virgo” is about a stalker who tries to explain his side of the story.

Closing out this section is another highlight in “The Red Room” by Chris A. Bolton, which takes place in Powell’s bookstore. For those who have never been to or heard of this place, imagine a giant department store filled with nothing but floors of books. The main character is a not a detective, but someone who tries to help out the less unfortunate by answering ads on Craigslist. But this time, he gets himself way too deep when he discovers his simple payoff is a bigger hassle than expected.

As the title should suggest, the section “Desolation City” deals with the seedier element of Portland, such as at a skate park in Just Hocking’s “Burnside Forever,” where a man who lives out of a van tries to play protector to a young girl. Gigi Little’s “Shanghaied” explains that sometimes the stories you hear about the crazy homeless turn out to be more than true, with disastrous results. This, we find out when the narrator doesn’t take the advice to avoid crazy women who ask for change or pretty jewelry.

Megan Kruse gives us a character piece in “Lila,” which tells the story of a lesbian who falls for a young prostitute, who herself falls into that lifestyle so she can get closer. Finishing up the collection is “People Are Strange,” by Kimberly Warner-Cohen, dealing with a woman searching for her kidnapped sister, who was taken when they were both 4. Well, at least that is what Warner-Cohen wants you to think, until the truth is revealed.

I’m really hoping that with PORTLAND NOIR, Akashic is back into the swing of things, since it sticks to the actual themes of the series: noir and crime. Yes, you can make an argument that some stories don’t fall directly into that category, but at least this group of authors tries, with interesting results that will keep readers glued to their pieces. My suggestion to Akashic is to spend more time mining local talent, rather than trying to cover as many places as possible. There are plenty of gem writers spread across this country. —Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• BALTIMORE NOIR edited by Laura Lippman
• LAS VEGAS NOIR edited by Jarret Keene and Todd James Pierce
• MANHATTAN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS edited by Lawrence Block
• ROME NOIR edited by Chiara Stangalino and Maxim Jakubowski
• TRINIDAD NOIR edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini and Jeanne Mason