In IRON RIVER, picking up after the events of T. Jefferson Parker’s THE RENEGADES, we find hero Charlie Hood teamed up with an ATF task force dealing with illegal gun sales. The title refers to the gun shops that populate the Mexican border, and how easily guns can be smuggled and sold.

Things take a turn for the worse early on when an innocent bystander is killed during a shootout. It turns out the victim is the son of a Mexican cartel leader, so of course, there is to be retribution, in the form of snatching one of the members of the task force. But as the story progress, this seems to not be as important as it should, feeling like a reason to populate the pages with grotesque scenes.

But that is only one of the plots snaking through the story. The more interesting one deals with a gun maker named Ron, who has developed a new type and has made a deal to produce them for a cartel. This part of the novel is what kept my interest, since he has to deal with not only convincing the cartel he can come up with the guns, but also has to deal with his own personal demons, in that he is part of a family business that won’t let him branch out.

The problem is that this storyline is a subplot that builds to the end, but without full closure. Then there is the most confusing storyline of all, about a man who seems to know a lot about Charlie Hood, even though he is sitting in a hospital for the bulk of the book. It just never delivers and moments really feel forced.

On the whole, IRON RIVER flies by, but after it’s all said and done, you may be like, “Meh, that was it?” It does not feel like a cohesive story, but more like one part of a televised serial drama that you might watch once and instantly forget. Parker’s writing will keep most readers’ attention; I just wish he had something that brought it all together.

The whole issue of illegal weapons and their proliferation is a fine subject to work with. The problem is, once you take it away, there really is nothing else there to engage you. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• L.A. OUTLAWS by T. Jefferson Parker
• THE RENEGADES by T. Jefferson Parker

NECESSARY AS BLOOD is Deborah Crombie’s 13th novel featuring Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, but it is far from an unlucky outing. Her masterful mix of thorough policing and the convoluted family life of Kincaid, James and their two boys is always a joy to read, bouncing from the rough-and-tumble of a London that seems to get more brutish by the day, to the playful romping of a loving and intimate clan.

And this book’s central tale is about family: an extended one of Bangladeshi immigrants trying to make their way in a sometimes difficult and expensive land, and the tragedy of Sandra Gilles; her husband, Nasir Malik; and their very young daughter, Charlotte. One day, Sandra simply disappears from view and is never heard from again.

Months later, Malik is found murdered in a nearby park. There is no one left from Charlotte’s little family, and in this particular case, the extended family that has an interest in raising Charlotte is comprised of violent racists who certainly will not treat a mixed-race child with love and care. Surely the missing woman and the murdered man are somehow connected, but that will take heavy police work, and Kincaid and James get down to the business of solving the case.

This is a traditional Crombie story: well-written, super-strong and filled with fascinating characters, able description and flowing prose. The author manages to get that perfect mix of police acting professionally and as human beings, and one feels their rage against the system, as well as their commitment to getting the job done right and the culprits put away. It’s another solid addition to the Crombie canon, and is highly recommended. —Mark Rose

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• WATER LIKE A STONE by Deborah Crombie
• WHERE MEMORIES LIE by Deborah Crombie

Joe Hill’s sophomore novel, HORNS, is a thriller of psychological and supernatural suspense. Its protagonist is Ignatius Perrish, who wakes up one day to discover horns growing from temples. They’re not a hallucination, which would’ve be natural, given the rape and murder of his beloved, Merrin Williams. He was the only suspect in that crime, but never charged or tried. Everyone has abandoned him since. Everyone except for the devil inside. We have two copies to give away.

To enter:
1. E-mail us your name and mailing address (U.S. only; no P.O. boxes) with “Me so horny” as the subject line, to editor at bookgasm dot com.
2. Await Friday, Feb. 12, when we announce the randomly chosen winners.
3. Or, just buy it at Amazon.

Robin Hobb’s DRAGON KEEPER: VOLUME ONE OF THE RAIN WILDS CHRONICLES involves an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, as a band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons’ uncertain ancestral memories. Here’s the first chapter.

It was supposed to be spring. Damn cold for spring. Damn cold to be sleeping out on the deck instead of inside the deckhouse. Last night,with the rum in him and a belt of distant stars twinkling through an opening in the rain forest canopy, it had seemed like a fine idea.The night hadn’t seemed so chilly, and the insects had been chirring in the treetops and the night birds calling to one an¬other while the bats squeaked and darted out in the open air over the river. It had seemed a fine night to lie back on the deck of his barge and look up at the wide world all around him and savor the river and the Rain Wilds and his proper place in the world.Tarman had rocked him gently and all had been right.

In the iron¬gray dawn, with dew settled on his skin and clothes and every joint in his body stiff,it seemed a damn¬fool prank more suited to a boy of twelve than a riverman of close to thirty years. He sat up slowly and blew out a long breath that steamed in the chill dawn air. He followed it with a heartfelt belch of last night’s rum. Then, grumbling under his breath, he lurched to his feet and looked around. Morning. Yes. He walked to the railing and made water over the side as he considered the day. Far above his head, in the treetops of the forest canopy, day birds were awake and calling to one another. But under the trees at the edge of the river, dawn and daylight were tenuous things. Light seeped down, filtered by thousands of new leaves and divested of its warmth before it reached him. As the sun traveled higher, it would shine down on the open river and send fingers under the trees and through the canopy. But not yet. Not for hours.

Leftrin stretched, rolling his shoulders. His shirt clung to his skin unpleasantly. Well, he deserved to be uncomfortable. If any of his crew had been so stupid as to fall asleep out on the deck, that’s what he would have told them. But they hadn’t been. All eleven of his men slumbered on in the narrow, tiered bunks that lined the aft wall of the deckhouse. His own more spacious bunk had gone empty. Stupid.

It was too early to be awake. The fire in the galley stove was still banked; no hot water simmered for tea, no flatcakes bubbled on the grill. And yet here he was, wide awake, and of a mind to take a walk back under the trees. It was a strange impulse, one he had no conscious rationale for, and yet he recognized it for the kind of itch it was. It came, he knew, from the unremembered dreams of the night before. He reached for them, but the tattered shreds became threads of cobweb in his mind’s grasp, and then were gone. Still, he’d follow their lingering inspiration. He’d never lost out by paying attention to those impulses, and almost inevitably regretted it the few times he’d ignored them.

He went into the deckhouse, past his sleeping crew and through the little galley and forward to his cabin. He exchanged his deck shoes for his shore boots. The knee boots of greased bullhide were nearly worn through; the acidic waters of the Rain Wild River were not kind to footwear, clothing, wood, or skin. But his boots would survive another trip or two ashore, and as a result, his skin would, too. He caught up his jacket from its hook and slung it about his shoulders and walked aft past the crew. He kicked the foot of the tillerman’s bunk. Swarge’s head jolted up and the man stared at him blearily.

“I’m going ashore, going to stretch my legs. Probably be back by breakfast.”

“Aye,” Swarge said, the only acceptable reply and close to the full extent of Swarge’s conversational skills. Leftrin grunted an affirmation and left the deckhouse.

The evening before, they had nosed the barge up onto a marshy bank and tied it off to a big leaning tree there. Leftrin swung down from the blunt-nosed bow of the barge onto mud-coated reeds. The barge’s painted eyes stared off into the dimness under the trees.

Ten days ago, a warm wind and massive rainstorms had swelled the Rain Wild River, sending the waters rushing up above their normal banks and over the low shores. In the last two days, the waters had receded, but the plant life along the river was still recovering from being underwater for several days of silt-laden flooding. The reeds were coated with filth, and most of the grasses were flattened beneath their burdens of mud. Isolated pockets of water dotted the low bank. As Leftrin strode along, his feet sank and water seeped up to fill in his tracks.

He wasn’t sure where he was going or why. He let his whim guide him as he ventured away from the riverbank into the deeper shade beneath the vine-draped trees. There, the signs of the recent flooding were even more apparent. Driftwood snags were wedged among the tree trunks. Tangles of muddy foliage and torn webs of vines were festooned about the trees and bushes. Fresh deposits of river silt covered the deep moss and low-growing plants. The gigantic trunks of the enormous trees that held up the roof of the Rain Wilds were impervious to most floods, but the undergrowth that rioted in their shade was not. In some places, the current had carved a path through the underbrush; in others, the slime and sludge of the flood burdened the foliage so heavily that the brush bent in muddied hummocks.

Where he could, Leftrin slogged in the paths that the river current had gouged through the brush. When the mud became too soft, he pushed through the grimy undergrowth. He was soon wet and filthy. A branch he pushed aside sprang back, slapping him across the brow and spattering his face with mud. He hastily wiped the stinging stuff from his skin. Like many a riverman, his arms and face had been toughened by exposure to the acidic waters of the Rain Wild River. It gave his face a leathery, weathered look, a startling contrast to his gray eyes. He privately believed that this was why he had so few of the growths and less of the scaliness that afflicted most of his Rain Wild brethren. Not that he considered himself a thing of beauty or even a handsome man. The wandering thought made him grin ruefully. He pushed it from his mind and a dangling branch away from his face and forced his way deeper.

There came a moment when he stopped suddenly. Some sensory clue he could not pin down, some scent on the air or some glimpse he had not consciously registered told him he was near. He stood very still and slowly scanned the area all around him. His eyes went past it, and then the hair on the back of his neck stood up as he swiveled his gaze back suddenly. There. Mud-laden vegetation draped over it, and the river’s raging flood had coated it in muck, but a single streak of gray showed through. A wizardwood log.

It was not a huge one, not as big as he had heard that they could be. Its diameter was perhaps two-thirds of his height, and he was not a tall man. But it was big enough, he thought. Big enough to make him very wealthy. He glanced back over his shoulder, but the undergrowth that blocked his view of the river and his moored barge would also shield him from spying eyes. He doubted that any of his crew would be curious enough to follow him. They’d been asleep when he left, and no doubt were still abed. The secret trove was his alone.

He pushed his way through the vegetation until he could touch the log. It was dead. He had known that even before he had touched it. When he was a boy, he’d been down to the Crowned Rooster chamber. He’d seen Tintaglia’s log before she had hatched from it, and he had known the crawly sensation it had wakened in him. The dragon in this log had died and would never hatch. It didn’t much matter to him if it had died while the log still rested on the banks of the cocooning beach, or if the tumbling it had taken in the flood had killed it. The dragon inside it was dead, the wizardwood was salvageable, and he was the only one who knew where it was. And by his great good fortune, he was one of the few who knew how best to use it.

Back in the days when the Khuprus family had made part of its vast fortune from working wizardwood, back before anyone had ever known or admitted what the “wood” really was, his mother’s brothers had been wizardwood workers. He’d been just a lad, wandering in and out of the low building where his uncles’ saws bit slowly through the iron-hard stuff. He’d been nine when his father had decided he was old enough to come and work on the barge with him. He’d taken up his rightful trade as a bargeman, and he learned his trade from the deck up. And then, when he had just turned twenty-two, his father had died and the barge had come to him. He’d been a riverman for most of his life. But from his mother’s side, he had the tools of the wizardwood trade, and the knowledge of how to use them.

He made a circuit of the log. It was heavy going. The floodwaters had wedged it between two trees. One end of it had been jammed deep into mud while the other pointed up at an angle and was wreathed in forest-flood debris. He thought of tearing the stuff clear so he could have a good look at it and then decided to leave it camouflaged. He made a quick trip back to the barge, moving stealthily as he took a coil of line from the locker, and then returned hastily to secure his find. It was dirty work but when he had finished he was satisfied that even if the river rose again, his treasure would stay put.

As he slogged back to his barge, he noticed the heavy felt sock inside his boot becoming damp. His foot began to sting. He increased his pace, cursing to himself. He’d have to buy new boots at the next stop. Parroton was one of the smallest and newest settlements on the Rain Wild River. Everything there was expensive, and bullhide boots imported from Chalced would be difficult to find. He’d be at the mercy of whoever had a pair to sell. A moment later, a sour smile twisted his mouth. Here he had discovered a log worth more than ten years of barge work, and he was quibbling with himself over how much he was going to have to pay for a new pair of boots. Once the log was sawn into lengths and discreetly sold off, he’d never have to worry about money again.

His mind was busy with logistics. Sooner or later, he’d have to decide who he would trust to share his secret. He’d need someone else on the other end of the crosscut saw, and men to help carry the heavy planks from the log to the barge. His cousins? Probably. Blood was thicker than water, even the silty water of the Rain Wild River.

Could they be that discreet? He thought so. They’d have to be careful. There was no mistaking fresh-cut wizardwood; it had a silvery sheen to it, and an unmistakable scent. When the Rain Wild Traders had first discovered it, they had valued it solely for its ability to resist the acid water of the river. His own vessel, the Tarman, had been one of the first wizardwood ships built, its hull sheathed with wizardwood planks. Little had the Rain Wild builders suspected the magical properties the wood possessed. They had merely been using what seemed to be a trove of well-aged timber from the buried city they had discovered.

It was only when they had built large and elaborate ships, ships that could ply not just the river but the salt waters of the coast, that they had discovered the full powers of the stuff. The figureheads of those ships had startled everyone when, generations after the ships had been built, they had begun to come to life. The speaking and moving figureheads were a wonder to all. There were not many liveships, and they were jealously guarded possessions. None of them was ever sold outside the Traders’ alliance. Only a Bingtown Trader could buy a liveship, and only liveships could travel safely up the Rain Wild River. The hulls of ordinary ships gave way quickly to the acid waters of the river. What better way could exist to protect the secret cities of the Rain Wilds and their inhabitants?

Then had come the far more recent discovery of exactly what wizardwood was. The immense logs in the Crowned Rooster chamber had not been wood; rather, they had been the protective cocoons of dragons, dragged into the shelter of the city to preserve them during an ancient volcanic eruption. No one liked to speak of what that really meant. Tintaglia the dragon had emerged alive from her cocoon. Of those other “logs” that had been sawed into timber for ships, how many had contained viable dragons? No one spoke of that. Not even the liveships willingly discussed the dragons that they might have been. On that topic, even the dragon Tintaglia had been silent. Nonetheless, Leftrin suspected that if anyone learned of the log he had found, it would be confiscated. He couldn’t allow it to become common knowledge in Trehaug or Bingtown, and Sa save him if the dragon herself heard of it. So, he would do all that he could to keep the discovery private.

It galled him that a treasure that he once could have auctioned to the highest bidder must now be disposed of quietly and privately. But there would be markets for it. Good markets. In a place as competitive as Bingtown, there were always Traders who were willing to buy goods quietly without being too curious about the source, an aspiring Trader willing to barter in illegal goods for the chance to win favor with the Satrap of Jamaillia.

But the real money, the best offers, would come from Chalcedean traders. The uneasy peace between Bingtown and Chalced was still very young. Small treaties had been signed, but major decisions regarding boundaries and trades and tariffs and rights of passage were still being negotiated. The health of the ruler of Chalced, it was rumored, was failing. Chalcedean emissaries had already attempted to book passage up the Rain Wild River. They had been turned back, but everyone knew what their mission had been: they wished to buy dragon parts—dragon blood for elixirs, dragon flesh for rejuvenation, dragon teeth for daggers, dragon scales for light and flexible armor, dragon’s pizzle for virility. Every old wives’ tale about the medicinal and magical powers of dragon parts seemed to have reached the ears of the Chalcedean nobility. And each noble seemed more eager than the last to win his duke’s favor by supplying him with an antidote to whatever debilitating disease was slowly whittling him away. They had no way of knowing that Tintaglia had hatched from the last wizardwood log the Rain Wilders possessed; there were no embryonic dragons to be slaughtered and shipped off to Chalced. Just as well. Personally, Leftrin shared the opinion of most Traders: that the sooner the Duke of Chalced was in his grave, the better for trade and humanity. But he also shared the pragmatic view that, until then, one might as well make a profit off the diseased old warmonger.

If Leftrin chose that path, he need do no more than find a way to get the ponderously heavy log intact to Chalced. Surely the remains of the half-formed dragon inside it would fetch an amazing price there. Just get the cocoon to Chalced. If he said it quickly, it almost sounded simple, as if it would not involve hoists and pulleys just to move it from where it was wedged and load it on his barge. To say nothing of keeping such a cargo hidden, and also arranging secret transport from the mouth of the Rain Wild River north to Chalced. His river barge could never make such a trip. But if he could arrange it, and if he was neither robbed nor murdered on the trip north or on his way home, then he could emerge from his adventure as a very wealthy man.

He limped faster. The stinging inside his boot had become a burning. A few blisters he could live with; an open wound would quickly ulcerate and hobble him for weeks.

As he emerged from the undergrowth into the relatively open space alongside the river, he smelled the smoke of the galley stove and heard the voices of his crew. He could smell flatcakes cooking and coffee brewing. Time to be aboard and away before any of them wondered what their captain had been up to on his morning stroll. Some thoughtful soul had tossed a rope ladder down the bow for him. Probably Swarge. The tillerman always was two thoughts ahead of the rest of the crew. On the bow, silent, hulking Eider was perched on the railing, smoking his morning pipe. He nodded to his captain and blew a smoke ring by way of greeting. If he was curious as to where Leftrin had been or why, he gave no sign of it.

Leftrin was still pondering the best way to convert the wizardwood log into wealth as he set his muddy foot on the first rung of the ladder. The painted gaze of Tarman’s gleaming black eyes met his own, and he froze. A radical new thought was born in his mind. Keep it. Keep it, and use it for myself and my ship. For several long moments, as he paused on the ladder, the possibilities unfolded in his mind like flowers opening to the early dawn light.

He patted the side of his barge. “I might, old man. I just might.”

Then he climbed the rest of the way up to his deck, pulled off his leaking boot, and flung it back into the river for it to devour.

Preview it online

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Finally, here’s a stunt book whose stunt I wouldn’t mind doing myself. Every day, for 365 days, Aussie EMPIRE magazine critic Michael Adams watched at least one bad movie, in hopes of finding a flick worthy of the dubious honor as cinema’s all-time stinker. His efforts are chronicled in SHOWGIRLS, TEEN WOLVES, AND ASTRO ZOMBIES: A FILM CRITIC’S YEAR-LONG QUEST TO FIND THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE.

Mining the bottom 100 on the IMDB and taking recommendations from well-versed industry folks like John Landis, Joe Dante and a couple of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 vets, Adams assembled a list, grouped them into niche batches, and let a bingo game determine what he’d watch next.

With chapters divided up into months, Adams recalls all the pain and suffering that followed. For the most part, each film is discussed briefly, with many as short as a paragraph and some as little as a sentence, often leaving you want to hear a bit more about a particularly hideous feature.

The movie-a-day concept has been done before (such as in Bryan Senn’s all-horror A YEAR OF FEAR, which I have not read), but what Adams brings to it that’s unique is, whenever possible, getting the skinny straight from the source, talking to those responsible for the atrocities. Among those sharing what the hell they were thinking are BABY GENIUSES‘ Bob Clark, HOWLING II’s Philippe Mora and HOUSE OF THE DEAD’s Uwe Boll.

Of less interest is the personal narrative Adams weaves into it, such as his wife losing her job and his attempts at landing a TV gig. No offense, but I just wanted to read about bad movies. With some exceptions, such as his comments on DA HIP HOP WITCH, the book isn’t what I’d deem funny, but more along the lines of friendly. (And with the author being Australian, it’s odd to see words like “po-faced” and “pilloried” bandied about.)

Adams’ big mistake is approaching the book as if it would be read by newbies to the world of lower-echelon cinema, whereas those most interested in it are likely to be fans of bad movies already, who don’t need to be told Ed Wood’s backstory again. It’s like he’s preaching to the choir.

With its share of plusses and minuses, SHOWGIRLS, TEEN WOLVES, AND ASTRO ZOMBIES left me feeling iffy toward it. To borrow an oft-employed phrase from Adams, it wasn’t terrible. —Rod Lott

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By the time I cracked John Langan’s MR. GAUNT AND OTHER UNEASY ENCOUNTERS, Halloween had already passed, and the ghosts and ghouls were retiring in preparation for the Super Bowl of feasts — all except Langans’ little beasties. The book is a collection of five ghostly tales, for which he did a beautiful job of reanimating classic creatures into a fresh, bumpy arm full of goose flesh.

The first encounter, “On Skua Island,” begins with a gathering of friends around the dinner table in an old house on the cape, as a storm blows in off the ocean on a cold February night. I was like a guest of the house as the eight moved with their drinks from the table to the comfy, fire-lit living room. They entertain each other discussing classic horror tales, their origins and how they tapped basic human fears. Dracula, mummies and zombies banter back and forth as movie adaptations and the creative quirks put forth into each manifestation are discussed.

One rather mute guest, having been all but silent and solitary during his visit to the cape, begins to relate a story which unveils an island called Skua, members of Britain’s MI-5 and a stone burial column with ancient Viking writing that he was called upon to decipher. The rest of the story involves the digging and finding of an ancient Viking princess buried and cursed. Trained men go missing as the teller relates his eventual escape.

“Mr. Gaunt,” the book’s namesake and my favorite tale from the grouping, begins with the audio tapings of a recently deceased father and his warning/confessions of his youth. This is a well-crafted read, but so as not to ruin the fun, I’ll just tell you black magic and skeletons are involved. Langan’s skeletons are not the bone-rattling weaklings of the past, but ominous and chilling, even if completely surpassed by the evil of a dark sorcerer whose self-serving nature and power are truly wicked and spine-tingling. What a wonderful read on a dark night with a glass of fine scotch.

“Tutorial” is a tale involving a gifted writer who doesn’t see the need to follow the rules of structure as laid out in Strunk and White. Mr. Williamson admits he has little use for the little beige book and finds himself slipping through the rabbit hole and into the hands of a secret organization of scribes designed to safeguard the most precious of things: “There is nothing outside the text … everything is textual, everything is words, can you think without language.” That’s a very interesting question and premise, as Williamson finds himself being bent to the will of the underground organization: Conform or cease your writing completely. There is no other way, and they’ll be watching.

You’re also treated to a short story involving a couple on the run from a wild pack of werewolf-type beings in a post-apocalyptic world. This is one of my favorite settings, more than likely due to my adolescent years and the threat of the Red Menace and nuclear holocaust. And the final, longest story features Dennis and his discovery of a discarded sculpture, which ends up possessing his body and soul, eventually tearing him asunder.

There is one more pleasing nugget in the compilation: story notes. Langan has included them at the end of the book. He writes, “I’m one of those people who flips to the back of the book to read the story notes, the afterword, first. I’ve always loved the glimpse such things provide into the writer’s world. If you’re someone who feels the same way, here you go. If not, no hard feelings.”

These are simply enjoyable. I actually chose to savor his notes like a morsel; to be eaten after the main course was consumed. The odd writings and re-imagining of things scary was pleasing, and the reason and rhyme behind those ideas intriguing. Enjoy. —Bart Brunscheen

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In A.E. Moorat’s QUEEN VICTORIA: DEMON HUNTER, demons stalk the crown, and political ambitions have unleashed ravening hordes of zombies even within the nobility itself. Can the queen dedicate her life to saving her country when her heart belongs elsewhere? With lashings of glistening entrails, decapitations, zombies and foul demons, this novel promises a fresh understanding of a remarkable woman, a legendary monarch and quite possibly the best demon hunter the world has ever seen.

We have two copies to give away, going to:
• Julia Nelson of Diamond Bar, Calif.
• Marc Kelly of Silver Spring, Md.

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Here be dragons! Namely Robin Hobb’s DRAGON KEEPER: VOLUME ONE OF THE RAIN WILDS CHRONICLES. The fantasy novel involves an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, as a band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons’ uncertain ancestral memories.

We have two copies to give away, going to:
• Tina Jan of Auburndale, Mass.
• Tabitha Dempsey of Oklahoma City, Okla.

Buy it at Amazon.

Steven F. Havill’s RACE FOR THE DYING is less of a mystery and more of a character novel, about the life of a doctor sent to the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest in the 1890s. Dr. Thomas Parks arrives in the fictional town of Port McKinney, Wash., ready to start his new life as a medical practitioner. He is assured that the clinic where he is to work is state-of-the-art, and his salary is frankly astronomical.

Shortly after arrival, he suffers a horrible accident, which temporarily confines him to a wheelchair. In this damaged state, he slowly begins to understand that not all is what in seems in Port McKinney: that the practice has its sketchy aspects, that the clinic is nothing more than a way station to a real hospital 30 miles away, and that some of the town’s residents certainly could be described as notorious.

What separates this from your average mystery is that there’s no whodunit or detective aspect. We are solidly in Dr. Parks’ corner from the outset, and we tumble to the danger right along with him. Sometimes, we grasp at the same straws of rationalization that he does, and sometimes we realize we’re in dangerous waters well over our heads.

I tore through this book, thoroughly enjoying the character of Parks and the somewhat less well-drawn surrounding characters. Even though it’s not a classic detective tale, the story is fully involving, action is well-described, and the setting of Port McKinney and its inhabitants would make a very suitable environ for any potential sequel. Note that this book is not a part of Havill’s Posadas County mystery series, nor of his Sheriff Bill Gastner series. It’s a new direction, and a good one. —Mark Rose

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This week, it’s a mixed bag of material, all from authors I’ve covered before. We have the return of the lawyer who can do no wrong; a Gold Medal writer trying out his new set of spurs; and finally, an early adventure from a character whose series is slowly drawing to a close. Also, for those who come here for the covers, that first one is a personal favorite. I mean, hotsie-totsie!

PERRY MASON SOLVES THE CASE OF THE DARING DIVORCEE by Erle Stanley Gardner — Sometimes I wish I could go back into time to the 1970s and pick up every mystery paperback, because I just love the photo covers from that time. Perry Mason books are a mixed bag; they are so plentiful that to come across a dud is no surprise. This 1964 one is not stellar Mason by any stretch, since it’s one of those books that not only shows its age, but falters because of it.

A woman wants Mason to be her divorce attorney, but leaves his office before she even has a meeting, leaving her purse behind. Then Perry gets a strange phone call from a a fellow attorney who is to represent the husband, which throws Perry since he never accepted the woman’s case. When she never comes back for her bag, the real fun starts.

In the purse is not only a large sum of money, but a gun that has been fired twice. This leads Perry to the Las Vegas home of Adelle Hastings, to whom the bag and gun belong, but she never set foot into his office. Come to find out, she is actually the third woman to have been married to Mr. Hastings. And then we find out Adelle’s husband has been shot dead with two bullets.

Again, this is not the strongest Mason. There’s a lot of misdirection for readers, and items like answering machines are all the rage. The case itself is pretty open and shut, once more information is given out about the dead husband. Of course, it all comes down to greed and money. You’re better off looking for a better Mason title or just pick up one of Gardner’s Cool & Lam mysteries. Those never disappoint.

LONGARM AND THE BLUE NORTHER by Tabor Evans — This 1981 title is the second LONGARM book that I have ghostwritten by Harry Whittington, the king of the paperbacks, so expectations were set high, and this story does not disappoint. It’s very obvious that this could have easily been changed to a modern setting, since the bulk of the story comes off noir-like. But don’t worry, Western fans: There is plenty of horses and gunfights to keep it in that genre.

U.S. Marshal Custis Long — aka Longarm — is given an assignments his boss promises is a simple job: heading to Colorado and find out who is cutting the barbed wire that surrounds government land, and feeding their cattle on the government dime. Of course, this job is not simple once Longarm makes it to that area, especially when he is fired upon by a young woman named Mozelle Lobatos, whose family does not take too kindly to strangers. Yes, it’s a cliché, but I can deal with it.

Mozelle explains that she is a bad shot and was aiming for something else. She and Longarm head into town, where the real trouble kicks in. First, we come across a young actress named Amber, who is being attacked by the town troublemaker. Longarm takes it upon himself to be the white knight on the horse. Then, there’s the local lawman, who does not appreciate Longarm coming into town.

This being a Whittington Western, there are more problems a-brewing — namely, the actress is in a loveless marriage. I’m truly only scratching the surface of the story. Whittington peppers the book with a murder, a ROMEO AND JULIET-like subplot and an evil mastermind who wants all this land for himself. This LONGARM is literally packed with action from start to finish. It’s well worth seeking out, even if you don’t care for horse operas.

JACK: SECRET HISTORIES by F. Paul Wilson — Normally, young-adult fiction is not what you would expect in this column. Now, I’ve covered some of the YOUNG BOND adventures, and, like those, these are treats for longtime fans of the main series.

This 2008 book finds Wilson writing about the future Repairman Jack as a teen, with his whole family still intact. Fans of the series know full well that the death of Jack’s mother — which is discussed in the first book, THE TOMB — is what set him on his career. But before all that, Jack was a normal kid with some close friends. Two, to be exact, who pop up later in GROUND ZERO.

SECRET HISTORIES deals with this trio of teens discovering a dead body in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, leading them to find a mysterious box that only Jack can open. We are introduced to some supernatural characters who will become central to the Repairman Jack series, including an old woman and a Vietnam vet who might have the power to heal by touch. But it’s more about Jack as a teen, learning new skills, and reading pulps and comics.

And then there are all the great references to the time this takes place. Anyone who grew up in the 1980s is going to get a great laugh about the computers, Atari games and what was on Jack’s stereo. The main mystery is somewhat tied to the Otherness, while Jack finds out about his father’s actions in Korea and how the triads try to keep that all very secret.

This is a perfect introduction for teens. After they tackle this book and the sequel, SECRET CIRCLES, they may want to move onto the much larger series. The mystery does a fine job for its intended YA audience, but there are more than enough winks and nods to longtime fans to enjoy it, too. They will enjoy all the groundwork that Wilson lays down, knowing full well what’s to come for young Jack. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ERLE STANLEY GARDNER:
• BATS FLY AT DUSK by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE BIGGER THEY COME by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASE OF THE HESITANT HOSTESS by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASE OF THE WAYLAID WOLF by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASEBOOK OF SIDNEY ZOOM by Erle Stanley Gardner
• CROWS CAN’T COUNT by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE DANGER ZONE AND OTHER STORIES by Erle Stanley Gardner
• FISH OR CUT BAIT by Erle Stanley Gardner
• FOOLS DIE ON FRIDAY by Erle Stanley Gardner
• GOLD COMES IN BRICKS by Erle Stanley Gardner
• PERRY MASON SOLVES THE CASE OF THE PHANTOM FORTUNE by Erle Stanley Gardner
• SOME SLIPS DON’T SHOW by Erle Stanley Gardner
• SOME WOMEN WON’T WAIT by Erle Stanley Gardner
• TRY ANYTHING ONCE by Erle Stanley Gardner

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF HARRY WHITTINGTON:
• THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. #2: THE DOOMSDAY AFFAIR by Harry Whittington
• TO FIND CORA / LIKE MINK LIKE MURDER / BODY AND PASSION by Harry Whittington
• YOU’LL DIE NEXT! by Harry Whittington

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

Like the recently passed J.D. Salinger, Lewis Carroll was an author who shunned publicity and sought privacy. While it may have made his life easier to live, all the secrecy can be damaging to one’s reputation, especially if you’re no longer around to defend yourself.

Carroll has had it harder than most, notably demonized as a pedophile. Long a fan since devouring his stories in her childhood, London journalist Jenny Woolf set out to find the truth — or as much that could be determined — in her biography of the legendary writer, THE MYSTERY OF LEWIS CARROLL: DISCOVERING THE WHIMSICAL, THOUGHTFUL, AND SOMETIMES LONELY MAN WHO CREATED ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

With 10 brothers and sisters, Carroll had no shortage of support throughout his years, right up to his death in 1898. But it’s his non-familial relationships that, understandably, remain under society’s microscope. Woolf finds that while many women were taken with Carroll’s charm, it’s likely that he died a virgin, as rumored, or at least found his limited sexual experiences so shameful, that he chose celibacy at great length.

Perhaps that’s why his interest in young girls — we’re talking not yet “age of consent” here — has set so many tongues a-wagging. Woolf spends a great deal of time discussing his interest in photography, particularly shooting friends’ children scantily clad or even nude. While Woolf notes that this was normal for the times, the creepiness is tough to shake.

His most famous object of affection, of course, is Alice Liddell, for whom he wrote ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, and even that relationship became fractured, as Woolf investigates. What’s more interesting are the Freudian analyses of ALICE she presents from others, such as the interpretation that a shrinking and growing Alice represented Carroll’s erection, or that “going down the rabbit hole” was his thinly veiled desire to penetrate Liddell.

Even if not all of the mystique is solved, THE MYSTERY OF LEWIS CARROLL at least clears up some misconceptions, putting a mild spit-polish on the author’s rep (as there’s no evidence he diddled kids). I’d place Woolf’s work on par with Rebecca Loncraine’s recent L. Frank Baum bio, THE REAL WIZARD OF OZ: neither definitive nor mandatory, but certainly smart and stimulating enough. —Rod Lott

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All hail Nancy! Ernie Bushmiller’s creation had her heyday on the funny pages, but it was her comic-book misadventures that ingratiated the character to me. Thus, Drawn & Quaterly’s NANCY, VOLUME 1: THE JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY is pure pleasure.

“But, wait,” you ask, “who’s this Stanley character? You said Bushmiller!” I answer: Stanley scripted the comics for Bushmiller, who kept at it in the newspapers. The resulting Dell comic ran for several years in the 1950s, with five complete issues comprising this hardcover collection. All that’s missing, sadly, are reproductions of the covers.

Happily, everything else rules. In the strip, Nancy always struck me as — I’ll be blunt — kind of a bitch. In the comics, Stanley gets to tell stories, whereas Bushmiller had to settle for telling jokes. With pages instead of mere panels, the character is developed. She’s likable, even lovable, and any mischief comes from misplaced intentions, rather than malicious intent.

As a slightly chubby, not-so-cute girl, Nancy’s obviously not the most popular kid in school. She lives with her hot aunt, Fritzi, and her so-to-speak sidekick is Sluggo, a bald kid who’s so poor, he lives in a shack whose walls aren’t completely enclosed. It’s more than a little surprising to see a character like this in a children’s humor comic, who skips school because he’s ashamed of his clothes, and is so hungry, he’ll take a bite out of a book.

In the first story, we’re introduced to a new character, Oona Goosepimple, who looks a little like Wednesday Addams and, appropriately enough, lives in a spooky, backwards house with monstrous family members. It’s a strange element that never would’ve worked for the strip, but plays out well here, sowing the seeds for Stanley’s later work on MELVIN MONSTER.

Another highlight finds Nancy trying to luck into some money to go to the movies. Her lack of funds is a recurring theme in the stories, as is her efforts to weasel out of doing chores. Sluggo also gets his share of the spotlight, too, inadverently outsmarting a burglar and becoming a de facto bank president.

One unintentional creepy moment arrives when Nancy is mistaken for a TV personality, and a boy asks her, “Can I touch you, Nancy? For a penny?” But all the other laughs in the book are on purpose, and if you doubt Stanley’s gift for timing, check out the story about the stray cat. Artist Dan Gormley rises to the challenge when the tabby goes into attack mode; I dare you not to smile.

As with D&Q’s MELVIN MONSTER collection from Stanley, the covers and endpapers have been designed, exquisitely, by Seth. It’s not that this treasure needed to be any more special, but I’ll take it. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• MELVIN MONSTER, VOLUME 1: THE JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY by John Stanley

Sometimes you read a book that is well-done and tightly constructed, but after all is said and done, you still feel as though you’re missing the point. Aifric Campbell’s THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER is that sort of novel. Or maybe I’m just not part of its target audience.

Jay Hamilton is a psychotherapist who uses some of his cases as the basis for his writing career. We watch as he deals with his patients and get looks at what he writes about them. The story also deals with his brother, a mathematical genius who worked as a professor in California, but who was murdered by — as the book calls them — “rent boys,” or, in English parlance, male prostitutes.

Campbell does not shy away one bit from Robert’s lifestyle, which is told in graphic detail. A reporter named Dana Flynn has been looking into Robert’s life for a book she is working on, and that’s the primary focus of the novel, which jumps around throughout in not only time frames, but locations, which lost me a few times.

There are portions where we see Jay as a young man, confronting his brother about his lifestyle, to be followed by one of Jay’s patients who has issues with childlessness and grabs a kid for her own and might expose the doc’s use of his case studies for his fiction writing.

I can’t really call SEMANTICS a must-read, but it’s definitely an interesting one. Just know going in that a lot of issues it raises are left dangling. —Bruce Grossman

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Jordan Marsh has a new goal in life: to restore an historical Victorian home in the sleepy Northwest town of Port Chatham, Wash. She’s trying to leave her past behind — namely, a messy marriage with a cheating husband, which ended with him being murdered. She remains under suspicion of the crime by the LAPD, and she feels her every move being watched as she begins her new life.

She’s also being watched by two ghosts. Yes, ghosts. They are the sisters Hattie and Charlotte Longren, who used to live in the house back in the 1890s. Hattie was brutally murdered on the site, and the spirits have now decided that Jordan will be the perfect person to solve that long-ago mystery. Who killed Hattie Longren? The answer can be found in P.J. Alderman’s HAUNTING JORDAN.

Mixing the supernatural with the mystery is not unusual, but it is unusual to see it done well. Cherie Priest is a master of this genre, but her work has a much darker edge. In contrast, Alderman goes for the slightly wacky, charming approach, and pulls it off brilliantly. Her main character’s interactions with the ghosts are believable, moving swiftly from disbelief to comic frustration to an empathic desire to find Hattie’s killer.

The intertwining stories, the murder mystery from the 1890s, the death of Jordan’s husband, and her present-day adventures in the town all pull the reader along. We’re rooting for Jordan and her new friends, we root for Hattie Longren in her story as she fights stifling convention and rules of etiquette of the late 1800s, and we cheer at the eventual outcome. This is all good fun, and I’d love to see Alderman continue the series in the town and with the presence of all those raucous ghosts. —Mark Rose

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Whereas many love their Western movies, my love for the Old West lay in the comics. I can’t get enough that genre in four-color, and the weirder, the better. I feel like Image made OUTLAW TERRITORY: VOLUME 1 just for me, and not only because I’ve never seen a copy anywhere else other than the one that was placed in my hands at the register.

It’s a collection of 30 stories, written and illustrated by people I’ve (mostly) never heard of. No matter, because it has all the elements I love about Western comics: gunfights, whores and … well, gunfights and whores.

None of the tales stuck out for me to merit singling out, which I’ll take as a sign of consistency for the anthology, rather than one of being unremarkable. The only thing that fits the bill there is the rather lazy lettering job throughout. Maybe it’s just me, but the last font I’d go with for gritty stories of cowboys and Indians is one that resembles that of THE SIMPSONS. For that, Thomas Mauer deserves to have his face plastered on a wanted poster.

Speaking of wanted, that promised VOLUME 2 is looking mighty fine right about now … —Rod Lott

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

THE BOY WHO COULDN’T SLEEP AND NEVER HAD TO by DC Pierson — This is a debut novel about the typical high school experience: the homework, the awkwardness and the mutant creatures from another galaxy. When Darren Bennett meets Eric Lederer, there’s an instant connection. They share a love of drawing, the bottom rung on the cruel high school social ladder and a pathological fear of girls. Then Eric reveals a secret: He doesn’t sleep. Ever. When word leaks out about Eric’s condition, he and Darren find themselves on the run. Is it the government trying to tap into Eric’s mind, or something far darker? It could be that not sleeping is only part of what Eric’s capable of, and the truth is both better and worse than they could ever imagine.

CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE JESUS JERK by Tony DuShane — Gabe is a teenage Jehovah’s Witness convinced God will kill him at Armageddon for masturbating. He’s not alone: There’s Peter, who writes swear words in the margins of his papers; Jin, the Korean kid who subsists on Ho Hos and Doritos; and Camille, who follows Gabe around, trying to be his girlfriend. There’s also Gabe’s mom, who sleeps 16 hours a day, and his dad, an elder who decides the fate of sinners. Luckily for Gabe, there is Uncle Jeff, who used to tour with Santana and now gives him the only valuable girl advice he ever receives. It’s hard when school days are spent dodging questions about your weird religion and weekends mean preaching house to house. Life looks dreary until Gabe falls for Camille’s beautiful older sister and begins to see her as the answer to his frustrations.

POINT OMEGA by Don DeLillo — Richard Elster was a scholar — an outsider — when he was called to a meeting with government war planners, asked to apply “ideas and principles to such matters as troop deployment and counterinsurgency.” We see Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, “somewhere south of nowhere,” in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker, Jim Finley, intent on documenting his experience. Finley wants to persuade Elster to make a one-take film, Elster its single character. Weeks later, Elster’s daughter Jessica visits, an “otherworldly” woman from New York. The three of them talk, train their binoculars on the landscape and build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event throws everything into question.

THINGS WE DIDN’T SEE COMING by Steven Amsterdam — These stories follow the narrator over three decades as he tries to survive in a world that is becoming increasingly savage as cataclysmic events unfold one after another. In the first story, “What We Know Now” — set in the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognizable — we meet the then-9-year-old narrator fleeing the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown. The remaining stories capture the strange circumstances he encounters in the no-longer-simple act of survival; trying to protect squatters against floods in a place where the rain never stops, being harassed by a man sick with a virulent flu, enduring a job interview with an unstable assessor who has access to all his thoughts, taking the gravely ill on adventure tours.

THE MAN OF MY LIFE by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán — Spain’s most famous detective, Pepe Carvalho, is back in Barcelona and is swiftly embroiled in a murderous scandal amid the murky politics of 21st-century Catalonia. When the son of a rich financier is murdered, Carvalho is called upon to investigate his mysterious death. In his quest for the killer, Carvalho infiltrates the world of satanism and religious sects.

RESCUING OLIVIA by Julie Compton — Anders Erickson has fallen for Olivia, who likes to live in the moment and doesn’t want to talk about her past. That’s fine with him, until a car runs their motorcycle off the road and causes an accident that puts her in a coma. Olivia’s estranged father blames Anders and denies his pleas to see her. When she mysteriously disappears from the hospital and Anders tries to learn what happened, her father stops at nothing to prevent him from discovering the truth. But Anders refuses to accept that she’s gone for good. Determined to find answers, he sets out on a dangerous path that exposes Olivia’s traumatic past and places him squarely in the way of her father’s plans.

REBELS & TRAITORS by Lindsey Davis — Set against the terrible struggle of the English Civil War, this novel is the story of how this turbulent era effected everyone, from rich to poor, and the hopes and dreams that carried them through years of deprivation, bloodshed and terror. When Gideon Jukes and Juliana Lovell, who are on opposites sides of the struggle, meet during one of the era’s most crucial events, their mutual attraction brings the comfort and companionship for which they both have yearned. But the flowering of radical thought collapses; its failure leads to endless plots and strange alliances. And shadows from the past threaten them individually and together in their hard-won peace.

CONSPIRATA by Robert Harris — On the eve of Marcus Cicero’s inauguration as consul of Rome, the grisly death of a boy sends ripples of fear through a city already wracked by civil unrest, crime and debauchery of every kind. Felled by a hammer, his throat slit and his organs removed, the young slave appears to have been offered as a human sacrifice, forbidden as an abomination in the Roman Republic. For Cicero, the ill forebodings of this hideous murder only increase his frustrations and the dangers he already faces as Rome’s leader: elected by the people but despised by the heads of the two rival camps, the patricians and populists.

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Leave it to Ray Garton to conjure up a villain whose sole purpose is to widen his victim’s urethra, like Freddy Krueger with a urology degree.

In SCISSORS, Stuart is haunted by the memory of a childhood incident in which that very surgical procedure was done to him by one Dr. Furgeson. However, at the urging of Stuart’s mean-as-fire mother, it was not performed under the most ideal of conditions, beginning with a hypodermic needle being plunged painfully into the head of his penis.

Guys, are your legs crossed yet?

Decades later, Stuart sees glimpses of Dr. Furgeson outside his window, and hears the little “snick-snick-snick” of his scissors. But with Stuart’s pee hole having been enlarged already, what on earth could he want? Why, the good doc wants to do the same to Stuart’s son, James.

Still smarting from the dissolution of his parents’ marriage, James is a rebellious sort of kid, but Stuart seeks to protect him and his junk anyway. Sound, um, different? It is, but just wait until you get to the twist. Yes, Stuart goes after Dr. Furgeson in the third act, but it’s how he goes after them that’ll catch you off-guard.

It’s so bizarre that SCISSORS retains somewhat of an edge, even with its faults. There are a few, primarily in too much talk between Stuart’s ex-wife and current girlfriend. Garton holds his cards too close for too long, as well; as a result, you’ll be more than halfway through the novel before you’re quite sure just what it’s all about.

It’s about the strangest thing you’ll read this quarter, that’s what. And its unpredictable nature redeems the deficiencies enough to land on this side of a recommendation. Those who’ve read Garton before know to expect something that revels in outrageousness. Same here, but usually, his mold gells better. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BESTIAL by Ray Garton
• LIVE GIRLS by Ray Garton
• THE LOVELIEST DEAD by Ray Garton
• NIGHT LIFE by Ray Garton
• RAVENOUS by Ray Garton
• SERPENT GIRL by Ray Garton
• SLIVERS OF BONE by Ray Garton

Outside, as I type this, freezing rain gently pelts my windowpane — the lone soundtrack to an otherwise silent snowfall. It’s the perfect environment to read and enjoy John Porcellino’s MAP OF MY HEART: THE BEST OF KING-CAT COMICS & STORIES, 1996-2002: sparse, unassuming, real.

This marks Porcellino’s second collection of his acclaimed zine for Drawn & Quarterly, which also published 2007’s seminal KING-CAT CLASSIX. Whereas that one focused on KING-CAT’s first 50 issues, MAP culls from #51-#61. In other words, it’s more of the same, but when that same is some sort of magic, I’ll happily await the rabbit to emerge from the hat, as if every time were the first.

He works in a style of cartooning that’s almost like anti-cartooning — uncomplicated panels with little detail, just enough to get by. I’m assuming he has no formal art training, which isn’t a slam against him. Quite the opposite. In crafting drawings so simple, so bare, the focus is on the moment. And since his subjects are often emotional, stemming from real life, they achieve a raw power.

MAP’s autobiographical tales find Porcellino either sharing family stories from his past, or his struggles of the present. And while the former are captivating in their own right, it’s the latter that shows him at his most vulnerable, perhaps because there’s no great passage of time to serve as a filter or buffer.

For example, in the midst of these issues, Porcellino was battling a rare health problem, which helped tear a rift in his marriage, eventually leading to divorce. The finest piece in the book, 2001’s “Introduction to the Night Sky,” recalls that time. On a fall night, he and a friend go out to a field to observe the Russian space station Mir passing overhead, and suddenly, Porcellino opens up to him:

“Jon … she’s going to leave me … One time — it was right after she first came to Denver … we were at Target buying stuff … I was standing there, looking at something and when I glanced up — she was gone … She’d just been there a moment earlier … and suddenly she was gone … I searched everywhere for her … up and down every aisle and suddenly this terrible feeling came over me — what if she was really gone? What if she just disappeared like that? What would I do? What if her coming to Denver — our whole life together — what if it had just been a dream? And there I was — waking up in the toaster aisle at Target … totally alone?”

And then he pauses, and something unrelated occurs, and consider your heart duly tugged. That’s as honest and naked as graphic narratives get.

It’s not all despair and disillusionment, either, folks, so don’t expect MAP to be a wrist-slitter. The school-aged sequences are (mostly) filled with folly, and sporadic Top 40 lists (even if they rarely reach that number) and short essays keep things light, even when bookened by more spiritual, Zen Buddhist stuff.

Porcellino annotates the contents with endnotes that shed further light on what he was doing and how he was feeling at the time, particularly in relation to his oft-crippling OCD. And it ends with several pages of sketches of his cat, Maisie, so beloved that she has dozens of alternate names. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• KING-CAT CLASSIX: THE BEST OF KING-CAT COMICS AND STORIES by John Porcellino

On Feb. 16, Russian author Alexey Pehov unleashes SHADOW PROWLER, a fantasy novel — kicking off a trilogy, naturally — that marks his first work to be published in English. Fans of NIGHT WATCH, take note.

Buy it at Amazon.

In A.E. Moorat’s QUEEN VICTORIA: DEMON HUNTER, demons stalk the crown, and political ambitions have unleashed ravening hordes of zombies even within the nobility itself. Can the queen dedicate her life to saving her country when her heart belongs elsewhere? With lashings of glistening entrails, decapitations, zombies and foul demons, this novel promises a fresh understanding of a remarkable woman, a legendary monarch and quite possibly the best demon hunter the world has ever seen. We have two copies to give away.

To enter:
1. E-mail us your name and mailing address (U.S. only; no P.O. boxes) with “Victoria’s secret” as the subject line, to editor at bookgasm dot com.
2. Await Friday, Feb. 5, when we announce the randomly chosen winners.
3. Or, just buy it at Amazon.

Here be dragons! Namely Robin Hobb’s DRAGON KEEPER: VOLUME ONE OF THE RAIN WILDS CHRONICLES. The fantasy novel involves an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, as a band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons’ uncertain ancestral memories. We have two copies to give away.

To enter:
1. E-mail us your name and mailing address (U.S. only; no P.O. boxes) with “Hobb nobbin’” as the subject line, to editor at bookgasm dot com.
2. Await Friday, Feb. 5, when we announce the randomly chosen winners.
3. Or, just buy it at Amazon.

Michael Palmer, who established himself as an author of popular medical thrillers like THE FIRST PATIENT and THE SECOND OPINION, tires to expand his fictional base somewhat in his latest novel, THE LAST SURGEON. But medicine and doctors still figure prominently here, and the overall results are a mixed success.

Jillian Coates is not convinced that the recent death of her sister, Belle, a nurse at the Charlotte Medical Center, was a suicide, as evidence at the scene and investigating authorities are convinced. So she undertakes an inquiry herself, which leads her to Dr. Nick Garrity, a former military officer suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Garrity is devoting himself relentlessly to the work of a local mobile medical clinic — a personal mission of his. Years ago, a friend, Lt .Umberto Vasquez, disappeared mysteriously. Garrity is not convinced that Vasquez is dead. Together, Jillian and Garrity discover a far-flung link between the death of her sister and the disappearance of his friend.

In the meantime, hired assassin Franz Koller — who, in reality, killed Jillian’s sister — is at work at another of his assigned “non-kills,” his term for a murder that he commits, but has it appear like a suicide or an unfortunate accident. His latest victims are all medical practitioners, and his assignments are coming from a shadowy presence identified as Jericho.

Koller is aware of Jullian’s efforts to discover the truth of her sister’s death, so he keeps a close watch on her and Garrity. Their paths eventually collide in a covert plot that might involve government authorized brain-washing and terrorism.
 
To his credit, Palmer tries to avoid the usual, by-the-numbers, serial-killer-on-the-loose formula by making Koller a hired killer rather than a lone psychopath. But Koller is as good as — and as fond of his work as — any of the too-numerous Hannibal Lecter knock-offs in thrillers these days. The chapters where he converses with his trapped victims before killing them can’t help but sound similar to other such scenes. And while Palmer tries also to construct a plot unlike any of his own or other serial-killer stories, he ends up with a narrative so tedious that we are still not certain what exactly is going on by the middle of the novel.

All of this is not helped by his herky-jerky, stop-and-start pacing. Obviously, he is trying to carry on separate plot lines that are destined to converge. But they take far too long to find each other, as is the case with his main characters and their eventual uncovering of the conspiracy at hand.
 
Palmer’s fans, as well as those readers who like some medical authenticity with their thrillers, will find much to their liking in THE LAST SURGEON. And, again, the author is to be commended for trying something different. But he misfires too many times for this latest work to be the breakthrough perhaps for which he and his publisher were longing. —Alan Cranis

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William Kent Krueger’s HEAVEN’S KEEP is an example of the contemporary Western crime novel: filled with evocative descriptions of complicatedly beautiful, but sometimes sparse landscape; hard-edged, self-sufficient men with puppy-dog hearts; and an honest, American Indian spirituality that neither condescends to New Age fripperies nor wallows in a utopian nostalgia for the past. Most of all, it’s a good story.

In his ninth series appearance, Cork O’Connor is devastated to learn that his wife’s plane has apparently gone down over a remote area of wilderness. A blizzard is hampering search efforts, and the outlook is grim. The first part of the book flows like a TV episode of WITHOUT A TRACE, with the hours gone missing rising quickly, and the searchers’ emotions roller-coasting between hope and despair.

It’s the second part where the mystery deepens, and O’Connor finds reason to believe that the plane did not go down by accident, but that it was deliberately ditched. Murder. And the culprits are still free, and still interested in keeping their crime a secret.

The tale is intriguing, the search exciting, and fans of Krueger’s O’Connor character will certainly enjoy it. I found certain plot elements to be a bit too far-fetched, which did slightly affect my enthusiasm, so proceed cautiously. But if you appreciate the Western states setting, this is definitely a decent read. —Mark Rose

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Horror master Peter Straub returns Feb. 9 with A DARK MATTER, about a secret ritual among collegians in the 1960s that turns out to haunt its attendants to the present day, finding themselves face to face with the evil they unleashed.

Want to win a signed first edition of the novel? Enter Straub’s Facebook contest.

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Miss ThrillerFest 2009? The next best thing to having been there is catching up on this batch of videos, in which authors like James Rollins, Andrew Gross and Steve Martini discuss gruesome death scenes, favorite bad guys, Hannibal Lecter and more:

DOORS OPEN is something altogether different from Ian Rankin, the celebrated Scottish crime fiction author. Different than the dark, probing obsessions of his renowned — and recently retired — John Rebus series. Different too from the far-flung espionage of the early novels he wrote under his pen name, John Harvey. It’s the story of a heist where some successful, everyday citizens dip their inexperienced fingers in crime and live through the highs and lows that happen as a result.

Mike Mackenzie is a wealthy bachelor who made his fortune early in life as a software mogul. Now he’s retired, and dreadfully bored. His friend Allan Cruickshank is also bored, both with his banking career and his long, drawn-out divorce. What they share along with their boredom is a love of fine art, and one afternoon, they meet at an auction in their Edinburgh hometown and connect with their mutual friend, art professor Robert Gissing.

Gissing shares his personal frustration that so many pieces of fine art stay hidden from the public in the corporate offices or private apartments of corporate executives. What’s worse, in his opinion, are the hundreds of works that are stored in museum warehouses, due to lack of sufficient exhibition space. He suggests his personal plan to lift — or, rather, “liberate” — several such paintings from the Edinburgh National Gallery.

Who would ever know they were missing? Especially if they were replaced with skillfully painted copies. And Gissing knows just the forger for the task. Before long, the three friends decide to take the professor’s plan to heart, so they enlist the forger and decide to pull off the heist during “Doors Open Day,” a sort of citywide, open-house event.
 
As Mike and Allan plan the details, it soon becomes apparent that they need additional help to pull it off. A chance encounter with Charles “Chib” Calloway, a local crime boss, provides that help. He is a former schoolmate of Mike’s, and has recently learned the surprising value of those paintings he so long ignored. Chib agrees to lend a couple of his gunmen to give needed muscle to the plan.

Doors Open Day finally rolls around, and the heist is pulled off without a hitch. But soon, the entire situation starts to unravel, thanks to the restless questioning of a police detective and an increasing series of second-guessing, double-crosses and some good-old-fashioned greed.

The overall tone here is noticeably lighter than most of Rankin’s previous works, and at times feels almost like an homage to the late Donald E. Westlake — a master of such plots. This is especially true when Rankin introduces such characters as a Scandinavian Hells Angel member named Hate, who is sent to collect an unpaid debt from Chib. Or in the sections involving the forger, a slightly anarchistic art student inspired as much by his love of pot and caffeine as his love of art, and his long-suffering but devoted girlfriend.

But whereas Westlake would keep humor consistent throughout such a story, making it more of what we would lovingly call “a caper,” Rankin presents the tale with a subtle undercurrent of paranoia and the threat of violence. This may be new territory for him, but he quickly gets comfortable with it, and readers will find themselves as tangled up with the characters and events as readily as with any of his previous novels.

Think of DOORS OPEN as the Rankin equivalent of a lighter-proof whiskey — an analogy that Rankin himself might appreciate: It’s a bit sweeter on the tongue, and may take a few more swigs and a little more time to get that buzz you were expecting. But you’ll get there. And then you’ll find yourself smiling with a nice, warm glow, and hoping for a few more shots before the evening is through. —Alan Cranis

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BLOOD HUNT by Ian Rankin
• EXIT MUSIC by Ian Rankin
• THE NAMING OF THE DEAD by Ian Rankin

In the future, you can out your life via a replica while you lie in comfort, manipulating it via mere thought — seeing what it sees, feeling what it feels. Yes, that’s James Cameron’s AVATAR. But it’s also Jonathan Mostow’s SURROGATES, a Bruce Willis vehicle that’s better than its tepid box office last fall would suggest.

Based on the excellent graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, SURROGATES imagines that mass-produced robot stand-ins have caught on so well, violent crime has plunged 99 percent. That 1 percent takes a terrifying turn when two surrogates are murdered in an act that also offs their owners, reclining supposedly safely at home.

FBI agents Greer (Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) are called in to investigate, and to be honest, the trail isn’t exactly cold, given that there’s a crazed anti-surrogate movement headed by a dreadlocke, compound-living man who calls himself Prophet (Ving Rhames).

Despite the core similarity to AVATAR, the movie SURROGATES really reminds one of is I, ROBOT, once the murder mystery gets going. Hell, both even feature James Cromwell in virtually the same role! But whereas that Will Smith blockbuster was dreadful in everything but effects, SURROGATES musters enough pizazz in a lean, mean 89 minutes — with credits — that it merits a recommendation.

It’s not action on a grand scale, but it sure delivers the goods greater than Mostow’s last time at bat, with the disappointing TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES. His stylistic changes in bringing the book to life are interesting. For example, whereas Venditti and Weldele’s work was almost monochromatic, there isn’t a color on the palette Mostow doesn’t use, and candy-coat at that.

That’s reflective of society’s superficial nature, which is the movie’s true target, after technology. With that comes the decision to cast surrogates in plastic, Barbie-like features. In the graphic novel, you couldn’t tell the difference between humans and surrogates, but here, it’s obvious at every turn, which dilutes some of the suspense.

Still, the fact that there’s some there makes the flick fun for an overnight rental. —Rod Lott

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OTHER RECENT BOOKS 2 FILM REVIEWS:
• BOOKS 2 FILM >> Bored to Death
• BOOKS 2 FILM >> Sherlock Holmes Double Features
• BOOKS 2 FILM >> The Last Lullaby

For anyone who eagerly awaits the next installment of a thriller series immediately after finishing the latest one, I recommend THE LINEUP: THE WORLD’S GREATEST CRIME WRITERS TELL THE INSIDE STORY OF THEIR GREATEST DETECTIVES.

Otto Penzler’s collection is unique, and not only because it genesis lay in a fundraising project for his Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. It offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the creation of 21 series characters, in the words of those who brought them into this world. Whether you’re someone who leans toward Harry Bosch, John Rebus or Bob Lee Swagger, there’s something here for you.

Obviously, you’ll be drawn to those whose stories you already follow. Lee Child discusses how termination from his lucrative TV job forced him to write the first Jack Reacher novel, KILLING FLOOR, using what he gleaned from years of soap-opera work to craft his ex-military cop longhand on legal pads.

In a back-and-forth conversation, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Rhyme recall how their after-hours tour of a museum sparked THE RELIC, and how the idea of the albino Agent Pendergast was presented jokingly, yet stuck. I feel like I’ve read David Morrell’s entry before, probably because he again praises Stirling Silliphant, but it’s still interesting to read his reaction to watching his FIRST BLOOD hero Rambo become neutered in Sylvester Stallone’s movie adaptation, only to be pleasantly surprised to see his true intentions realized decades later with 2008’s RAMBO.

It’s more than a little bittersweet to read Robert B. Parker’s take on Boston P.I. Spenser, of course, but surprising to see Jeffery Deaver detail Lincoln Rhyme’s genesis in a short story, rather than a nonfiction piece. Ridley Pearson does this somewhat, making his Lou Boldt character the subject of a Q&A.

With contributions from Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, Laura Lippman, Anne Perry, Ken Bruen and more, THE LINEUP contains piece after piece as entertaining as the authors’ novels. —Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF PULPS edited by Otto Penzler
• DEAD MAN’S HAND: CRIME FICTION AT THE POKER TABLE edited by Otto Penzler
• MURDER AT THE FOUL LINE edited by Otto Penzler
• MURDER IN THE ROUGH edited by Otto Penzler
• PULP FICTION: THE CRIMEFIGHTERS edited by Otto Penzler
• THE VAMPIRE ARCHIVES: THE MOST COMPLETE VOLUME OF VAMPIRE TALES EVER PUBLISHED edited by Otto Penzler

It’s another collection of some of my favorite brainless reading. If there were ever books I knew going in that not only would deliver in mindless fun, but also be read in no time, it’s definitely the three paperbacks below. Let that soak in before the super-duper spy surprise at the end. Here’s a hint: Sam Jackson is a much better choice than David Hasselhoff.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. #7: THE RADIOACTIVE CAMEL AFFAIR by Peter Leslie — I think this might be the last MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. book I own, since my source for these closed a few years ago. That’s kinda sad, because these tie-ins come off as bigger-budget versions of the TV series.

This 1966 installment takes its sweet time to kick in to any sort of high gear. I mean, a third of the book goes by before we get any real action to speak of. Napoleon Solo is sent to desert regions of Africa to track down some stolen Uranium-235, which is being transported by camel, hence the title. Leslie follows a basic approach of your typical agent in danger and about to meet his maker, until being saved by the bell. Then the villain is a sort of low-rent Bond baddie bent on world domination.

Still, AFFAIR flies by at such a clip that once the guns are blazing, you can forgive the tedious build-up. But that does not mean that this novel is some sort of home run in spy thrillers — far from it. It’s a nice diversion with characters you know from the show, so it’s not like you are getting any real development of Solo and Illya. The plot is no great feat, but it’s a bit more believable than usual. And for the record, this is one of the better books in the series, because there are some true stinkers floating around.

PLEASURE ISLAND by Nick Carter — Already the benefits of Brad Mengel’s SERIAL VIGILANTES OF PAPERBACK FICTION is paying off, since I went through all my Nick Carter books to find authors usually featured here. This 1981 entry is Robert J. Randisi’s ghostwritten entry into the world of spy fiction, and it delivers like a poker hand.

This Killmaster adventure is firmly placed in the real-world side of the series. There are no giant monsters, evil lairs or any other type of 007 rip-off. It also deals with something that is barely mentioned in the rest of the series: Nick Carter’s age. The story starts off four years in the past, where Nick is dealing with agents in the midst of training, both of whom are central to the larger plot to come.

That deals with Nick being called upon as backup for a mission that really doesn’t require an agent like him, but he goes along, only to find out that the two agents in charge were those young trainees. Also, Nick has found himself under the shooting eye of a person called the Specialist, who is known to have killed more than 20 agents so far.

There is some information being auctioned off by the owner of an island where a resort has been built. Nothing really new there — it seems these books are populated by rich men who own islands. It becomes very apparent to Nick that these two agents in charge are in way over their heads, so he takes it upon himself to snag the vital info. His in is that the island owner is a major poker player, so if you are not a fan of poker at all, don’t read the book, as the game is crucial to the whole of the plot.

Randisi knows the audience he is writing for and does not disappoint one bit. It’s such a pleasure to see him try another genre besides Westerns. Again, as most people know, Nick comes out of it all in the end. It’s just the way Randisi keeps it all grounded that makes it such a fun read.

THE DESTROYER #130: WASTE NOT, WANT NOT by James Mullaney — Yes, it’s another adventure involving America’s favorite assassin, Remo Williams. This 2003 book was written by fan favorite Jim Mullaney, who soon would be part of the reboot with series creator Warren Murphy. But long before that ill-fated venture, Mullaney was sole writer on the series for quite some time.

During his run, he kept all his stories somewhat connected, in that characters would come back here and there — not so much to throw new readers for a loop, but just enough to make you want to seek out the earlier adventures. This one’s targets are garbage and a version of Jonestown, now called Jamestown.

Remo and Chiun are sent to a small South American country all because of a new device called the Vaporizer, which supposedly makes garbage disappear like a puff of smoke. Of course, Dr. Harold Smith can’t believe it and wants to know it’s for real. Before he can, our Sinanju odd couple is in Korea, since Remo has finally attained the title of Master of Sinanju, which makes Chiun a bit bitter since he doesn’t want to be put out to pasture, as the rules apply. But Remo won’t hear it and drags Chiun along on this new assignment, and they run into some Russians who tried to lure them for work before. This makes for some fun, since one Russian has “I love the USA” tattooed on his head.

Mullaney’s style is totally reminiscent of DESTROYER’s original team of Murphy and Richard Sapir, with the humor and satire you’ve come to expect in full force, plus a great villain behind the whole scheme. My only problem is that I have only two other Mullaney novels. I really need to remedy that situation.

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: NICK FURY: AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. VOLUME 2 by Jim Steranko — The prize piece of my comic collecting is worth every penny I paid. Long before I was reading spy thrillers — be it Nick Carter, James Bond or even Remo Williams  — my tastes were shaped by that eyepatch-wearing super-spy of the Marvel universe. And this 2009 collection collects the cream of the crop: the bulk of one Jim Steranko’s tenure on that title.

Words like “cinematic” come to mind when you read this collection. I remember coming across copies of old, beat-up NICK FURY titles and just being blown away by its look. There was no one doing what Steranko was doing, that’s for sure. I know everyone likes to lavish praise onto Will Eisner for creating a new look for comics and breaking all the rules, but it was Steranko who took all that and turned it up to 11.

This MASTERWORKS entry collects the issues that were not only written, but also drawn by Steranko. No more finishing the work of Jack Kirby — it was all Steranko and, wow, does it show.

Nick Fury is the man in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division), whose enemies usually consisted of Hydra, A.I.M. and the Yellow Claw, all of whom make appearances in these pages. Plus, you get Captain America guest-starring in a few of the stories, with cameos from Reed Richards and Ben Grimm of The Fantastic Four. Once the book moves into the Nick Fury solo comic, Steranko really goes full force with his cinematic approach, especially in the first issue, where the opening has no text at all as Fury enters some secret base in silence.

Here is a major selling point for those who have the old trade paperback from 2000: a six-page Steranko introduction, where he goes into great detail about his process, how Stan Lee did not understand his methods, and how films like RIFIFI influenced that first solo issue. The people who put together these MASTERWORKS books should be commended in giving the due this title so deserves. My only request is to put out VOLUME THREE sooner than later so I can have the whole run.

And if anyone knows Steranko, please tell him “thank you” for putting me on the spy kick at such a young age. I just wish there was a way we could bulk-erase the memory of that awful TV-movie that starred the Hoff. Talk about miscasting. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF NICK CARTER:
• CODE NAME: WEREWOLF by Nick Carter
• DEADLY DOUBLES by Nick Carter
• DEATH MESSAGE: OIL 74-2 by Nick Carter
• DEEP SEA DEATH by Nick Carter
• THE GOLDEN BULL by Nick Carter
• HIDE AND GO DIE by Nick Carter
• ICE TRAP TERROR by Nick Carter
• THE KOREAN KILL by Nick Carter
• MACAO by Nick Carter
• THE OMEGA TERROR by Nick Carter
• REVENGE OF THE GENERALS by Nick Carter
• STRIKE FORCE TERROR by Nick Carter
• TARGET: DOOMSDAY ISLAND by Nick Carter

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE DESTROYER SERIES:
• 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 #32: KILLER CHROMOSOMES by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #33: VOODOO DIE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #38: BAY CITY BLAST by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #39: MISSING LINK by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #41: FIRING LINE by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
• THE DESTROYER #42: TIMBER LINE by Warren Murphy and William Joy
• THE DESTROYER #45: SPOILS OF WAR by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #46: NEXT OF KIN by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #48: PROFIT MOTIVE by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #49: SKIN DEEP by Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #52: FOOL’S GOLD by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #55: MASTER’S CHALLENGE by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #56: ENCOUNTER GROUP by Warren Murphy and Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #67: LOOK INTO MY EYES by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
• THE DESTROYER #78: BLUE SMOKE AND MIRRORS by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #89: DARK HORSE by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #104: ANGRY WHITE MAILMEN by Will Murray
• THE DESTROYER #145: DRAGON BONES by Tim Somheil
• THE NEW DESTROYER: CHOKE HOLD by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney
• THE NEW DESTROYER: DEAD RECKONING by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney
• THE NEW DESTROYER: GUARDIAN ANGEL by Warren Murphy and James Mullaney

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. SERIES:
• THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. #2: THE DOOMSDAY AFFAIR by Harry Whittington
• THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. #3: THE COPENHAGEN AFFAIR by John Oram
• THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. #6: THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR by David McDaniel

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF WARREN MURPHY:
• GRANDMASTER by Warren Murphy
• TRACE: GETTING UP WITH FLEAS by Warren Murphy

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROBERT J. RANDISI:
• DOUBLE THE BOUNTY by Robert J. Randisi
• GALLOWS by Robert J. Randisi
• THE LAWMAN by Robert J. Randisi
• LONE STAR LAW edited by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #16: BUCKSKINS AND SIX-GUNS by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #23: THE RIVERBOAT GANG by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #44: THE SCARLET GUN by Robert J. Randisi
• THE GUNSMITH #85: WINNER TAKE ALL by J.R. Roberts
• THE GUNSMITH #128: THE CALIENTE GOLD ROBBERY by Robert J. Randisi
• THE PICASSO FLOP by Vince Van Patten and Robert J. Randisi
• SHELTER #2: HANGING MOON by Robert J. Randisi

I’m a big fan of Vincent Price, but not of the comic book series that bares his name, VINCENT PRICE PRESENTS. The horror anthology from Bluewater Comics has collected its first four issues in a trade paperback that’s bound to attract the curious, and disappoint just as many.

The late actor appears on most of the covers, and in villainous character for the first two stories, yet there’s no real reason for him to be here, other than a selling point. In the first piece, he’s a father of a young boy to whom he gives an order — one involving their, um, robotic dog. In the second, he’s an advertising exec whose vehicle bumps another car. Instead of stopping, he flees the scene, which will have cosmic repercussions, of course.

The third tale involves an author-cum-cabbie, while the fourth and final uses Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” as a them for a rather predictable high school-set story. Among all, the writing is competent, but unremarkable; the art suffers in comparison, ranging from good to amateurish.

The cover material is one-of-a-kind, and I don’t mean that in a nice way: It feels and smells like rubber — unappealing both to the reader’s nose and fingertips. —Rod Lott

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The best way to describe Joel Jenkins’ off-the-wall THE NUCLEAR SUITCASE would be to imagine the Osmond Brothers as cold-blooded killers. That’s how this off-the-wall novel reads.

We are to believe the members of a popular sibling rock group are not only brothers, but trained spies and mercenary types. They’re not the only musicians who can handle guns and have nerves of steel, however. We are also treated to a female pop musician who can handle an SIG Sauer like a microphone. (Yeah, that’s who we want handling guns: Miley Cyrus.)

I understand what Jenkins is trying to do with this novel: Come up with some sort of postmodern pulp hero in what I’m assuming is a tribute to THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI, which may be the last time they tried to combine rock and pulp heroes in one persona. The action is pretty much what you’d expect, with plenty of gun porn and ridiculous settings.

The basic plot is that our intrepid heroes, the Gantlet Brothers, have to track down a list of all the locations of nuclear devices that are hidden in suitcases, but the story takes way too long to introduce us to this key plot point. Most readers might give up after all the talk of them playing their kick-ass tunes while gunning down Russians.

The problem is that it just left me cold, to the point I put the book down more than a few times, due to lagging interest. Maybe if Jenkins trimmed down the story a bit, I’d be more inclined to tell people to read this. As of right now, I’d suggest taking a pass and picking up some real old-school men’s adventure, which can be read in less time and fewer pages. —Bruce Grossman

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Good superhero fiction is hard to come by. Last year, two anthologies of do-gooder short stories both underwhelmed, as did full novels by the likes of Austin Grossman the year before. Like an underdog — or perhaps Underdog — A THOUSAND FACES: THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SUPERHUMAN FICTION is better than all of them, coming out of nowhere.

Edited by Frank Byrns, the ninth issue contains 13 stories and, like many indie-fiction “magazines” these days, comes packaged as a trade paperback, rather than stapled paper. Among the highlights is the first tale, “Mister Brass and the Red Horror of Frankenstein,” by Joshua M. Reynolds. It reminded me of the TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN anthologies, where established characters of others’ creations intermingle — in this case, Victor Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau and groups from the pen of H.P. Lovecraft and Sax Rohmer.

Jason Stout’s “To Sleep … Perchance” examines the romantic element of sacrifice, between a man who never sleeps and a woman who does little else, because her dreams are packed with prescient visions. Meanwhile, Chad Boudreau wonders what would happen if a convenience store was robbed while its super-powered employee was on duty, in “Friday, 3 a.m.”

Other pieces alternate between straightforward caped adventures right out of the comics and more introspective works in which that which makes the subjects special is used only as a diving board. More often than not, the contents soar. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon or A Thousand Faces.

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

BLOOD TIES by Kay Hooper — The elite Special Crimes Unit, the FBI’s most controversial and effective team, is a group of mavericks and misfits trained to use their unique psychic abilities to hunt the worst monsters imaginable: human ones. Led by the enigmatic Noah Bishop, the SCU has earned a reputation for pitting their skills and cunning against killers that other cops fear. But this time Bishop and his agents face an enemy who has them in his sights, a trained sniper with a deadly plan — and more than one ace up his sleeve. It starts with a series of grisly murders across three states, a trail of blood leading, finally, to the small Tennessee town of Serenade. There, two more brutal killings lure the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap.

NOCTURNE by Harrison Gradwell Slater — Amid the lush tonal landscapes of Chopin, a killer stalks unseen. Just when her life in New York seems to be unraveling, Artemisia Talbot receives a commission to photograph Chopin’s Paris. In the City of Light, she discovers unconditional love with the young American musicologist Matthew Pierce. Artemisia accompanies him to Warsaw, where he purchases a diary that describes Chopin’s ill-fated love affair with little Marynia, a talented pianist and watercolorist. But the diary also holds some disturbing parallels to contemporary events, and the brilliance of Artemisia’s surroundings in Paris, Warsaw and Nohant obscures the grim reality that she is being followed by an obsessive killer bent on revenge.

DRAGON KEEPER: VOLUME ONE OF THE RAIN WILDS CHRONICLES by Robin Hobb — To ensure the safe passage of neglected dragons, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. Among them are two women who share a deep kinship with the dragons: Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them. Embarking on an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, the band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River — an extraordinary odyssey that will teach them lessons about themselves and one another, as they experience hardships, betrayals and joys beyond their wildest dreams.

THE DAKOTA CIPHER by William Dietrich — Ethan Gage wants to enjoy the fruits of victory after helping Napoleon win the Battle of Marengo. But an ill-advised tryst with Bonaparte’s married sister has made that impossible. And the fantastic schemes of the wild Norwegian Magnus Bloodhammer soon have Ethan dodging hostile Indians on America’s frontier. With President Thomas Jefferson’s blessings, Ethan and Magnus embark upon an expedition into the western wilderness, keeping their eyes open for woolly mammoths. But another prize secretly impels them: the mythical hammer of the Norse god Thor, allegedly carried to North America more than a century before Columbus. Across a landscape no white man has ever traversed, Gage’s skills will be tested as never before, as he braves unimaginable peril en route to the most incredible discovery of all time.

BLACK RAIN by Graham Brown — Covert government operative Danielle Laidlaw leads an expedition into the deepest reaches of the Amazon in search of a legendary Mayan city. Assisted by a renowned university professor and protected by a mercenary named Hawker, her team journeys into the rain forest unaware that they are replacements for a group that vanished weeks before, and that the treasure they are seeking is no mere artifact but a breakthrough discovery that could transform the world. Shadowed by a ruthless billionaire, threatened by a violent indigenous tribe, and stalked by an unseen enemy that leaves battered corpses in its wake, the group desperately seeks the connection between the deadly reality of the Mayan legend, the nomadic tribe that haunts them and the chilling secret buried beneath the ancient ruins.

WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo — You may have read DeLillo’s National Book Award-winning 1985 novel before, but never quite like this. For this 25th anniversary deluxe edition, Penguin Classics has given it a graphic makeover with new covers and flaps designed by indie cartoonist Michael Cho that’s right in line with the postmodern classic’s paranoia theme. Sadly, the Gladney family’s run-in with an “airborne toxic event” may be even more relevant today than when this groundbreaking literary satire was first published.

Buy them at Amazon.

Hard Case Crime has no reason to worry, but Heavy Metal Pulp is a welcome new brand to crime fiction. Coming from the minds behind HEAVY METAL, however, that crime comes complete with a big, fat dose of sex and sci-fi, and illustrated like the fantasy magazine to boot. First out of the gate for the label is PLEASURE MODEL: NETHERWORLD BOOK 1 by Christopher Rowley.

Set in the latter half of this century, the novel begins with dominatrix Angela Bricken cleaning up after servicing a client, Gen. Manuel Sangacha. He’s retired, having headed up a black-ops unit. Angela doesn’t know this, but certainly could guess after men storm in with guns and take him out, as she cowers in hiding.

It’s left up to homicide detectives Rook Venner and Lindi MacEar to investigate the scene. They find no sign of Angela; the only human there is Plesur, a buxom blond bimbo harvested in a lab for the pure pleasure of serving as a sex object. Accordingly, her breasts are huge and her brain like a blueberry. She speaks like a 3-year-old, but presumably screws like she’s 21.

Fearing Plesur would be raped by his fellow officers, Rook takes her home, and it takes every bit of willpower for him not to succumb to her sexual advances. Fornication quickly is pushed toward the back of his mind when his house explodes. They escape, barely, given a moment’s warning by a mystery man’s phone call, and immediately go on the run, as Rook tries to figure out not only why Sangacha was murdered, but why Plesur is being targeted, too. Turns out, a whorehouse makes for an excellent hiding spot.

The downside to this stew of action and ass is that it doesn’t answer all of Rook’s questions, which speaks to the BOOK 1 portion of the subtitle, one presumes. With military gunships, snipers and — best of all — invisible assassination squads all after our hero, PLEASURE MODEL moves fast. Switch off the gray matter and speed along with it.

The quick trip is aided by the illustrations of Justin Norman, gracing practically every page, presented in letterbox-sized panels that don’t overpower the prose, but give you just enough of a visual punch to keep the cinematic flavor of the thing spiced. That’s easy to do when your story is like MINORITY REPORT with a Realdoll plopped in its chewy center. —Rod Lott

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“Setting himself between her legs, Rook started slow, came quickly, restarted with barely a moment’s hesitation, and took his time on the second go-round. Soozie’s hands held tight to his ass, as she kissed him and bit his neck in equal measure, arching her back, crying out. He let himself go and the floor poured out of his veins, shaking everything within him and leaving him spent and, for the moment, oblivious. … Rook found the stimulation more than he could resist. His hands cupped her firm, round breasts. She raised a leg and straddled him. She was wet, ready, and he slid in with a single smooth flexion of her hips.”

CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT is Earl Emerson’s latest Thomas Black thriller, but readers new to the author or the character need not be afraid; the book stands on its own, pleasantly devoid of hindering references to past storylines. Readers are introduced — or reintroduced, as the case may be — to Black immediately after a bomb goes off in a local high school gymnasium, targeting state Senate candidate James Maddox.

The first chapters follow Black’s confused and tortuous recovery, as he tries to piece together the facts of the past few weeks of his life. Upon each awakening, he must come face to face with the fact that his wife is dead, killed only weeks earlier by an unexplained plane crash that also killed his opponent.

Sound like a series of strange coincidences? It is, and at first, I was skeptical. But Emerson’s clear grasp of Black, combined with a skilled maintenance of the character’s voice, carry the reader safely through the twists and turns to come. As Black slips deeper and deeper into a world of conspiracy theories, each presented by a half-crazed, alcoholic, ex-CIA operative named Bert, the reader is left to piece together what information is available through Black’s incoherent memories of the plane crash, the bombing and the events surrounding both.

Bert’s ramblings are at times lucid, at times so far-fetched as to be impossible, keeping both Black and the reader in a state of confusion. Did his wife really die in the plane crash? Was the plane crash really an accident, or was it murder? Is the FBI investigating or covering up? How far can Black push before someone pushes back?

For those worried about a confusing or complicated storyline told completely through the eyes of a recovering bomb victim, rest assured. After a few chapters of coma-recovery babble, Black slips easily and almost imperceptibly into a chronological history of the events of the crash. Before you know it, the story has come back around to the bombing, picking up where it started and continuing on without hesitation.

Emerson’s writing is fast-paced, but never so much so that events become unbelievable or hard to follow. When developing backstory threatens to slow the plot, subtle but important allusions to future events keep things moving. A few of the plot twists stretch credibility about as far as it can go, but these are balanced the carefully thought-out and well-executed details of the rest of the story, making the work an entertaining and captivating story of murder, conspiracy and political cover-ups. —Kerry Serini

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Okay, it’s official: The Punisher is my favorite character in comics, and if he weren’t there already, then PUNISHER: FRANK CASTLE — SIX HOURS TO KILL would’ve pushed him there.

Written by novelist Duane Swierczynski, SIX HOURS TO KILL gives Frank Castle exactly six hours to live when he’s injected with a time-release toxin, D.O.A.-style, by bad guys who want him to off another bad guy for them. If he does, they’ll give him the antidote. But The Punisher is someone who works on his own terms, so he figures, “fuck it,” and decides to use his last minutes on Earth to get rid of the people he wants.

Since he’s in Philadelphia, he pulls his Philly file, and begins to lay waste on a Russian mobster, an arsonist, an adult filmmaker — anyone who’s been on his to-do list in the City of Brotherly Love. Meanwhile, the political machine who wanted to hire him in the first place works the gears to get rid of him sooner than later, calling in a well-armed neighborhood gang. There’s also a beefy military hero who still thinks he’s in Vietnam, making Frank’s final hours more unpleasant than need be.

It’s an all-out, hard-R crime tale that’s dripping in black humor and red blood, illustrated by Michel Lacombe, who does not hold back. Following the five-issue story, the book kindly offers a parting one-shot in “Force of Nature,” a sea-stranded story involving a drug pusher, a pimp, a mob moneyman … and one very big whale. Covers for all but “Force” are provided by the mighty Dave Johnson, who does the best graphic work outside of FABLES‘ James Jean.

My enthusiasm extends to PUNISHER: FRANK CASTLE — WELCOME TO THE BAYOU, a Southern-fried adventure from novelist Victor Gischler and artist Goran Parlov, who draws humans getting chomped in half by alligators like no other. In this darkly comic tale, Castle is on his way to deliver a no-good gangsta when he believes a group of good-looking young people he saw at the redneck gas station has gone missing, possibly at the hands of said rednecks.

For whatever reason, Frank checks it out, and sure enough, the hillbilly family that runs the place has the girls in a cage and the guys strung up over the swamp, where hungry gators wait below. Forgetting about the guy in his trunk, Frank tries to save them, but keeps running afoul of the spookiest, scariest, sleaziest and scuzziest backwater dregs this side of DELIVERANCE. The climax comes in the form of a hulking, hooded giant who would be right at home in a Rob Zombie film.

BAYOU is both horrifying and hilarious, as Gischler doesn’t dare pull back on the reins. Same goes for the collection’s one-off tale, also from his savage pen, “Little Black Book,” in which Castle poses as a high-class hooker’s chauffeur/bodyguard in order to get his hands on a drug-addled, high-living record exec whose murder squads killed a New Jersey police captain and his family — something that hits a little too close to home for our antihero.

Members of the Frank Castle faithful also should think about picking up the inferior, but still all kinds of kick-ass PUNISHER: DARK REIGN, a five-issue story arc from writer Rick Remender and artist Jerome Opeña in which The Punisher sets out to kill evil politician Norman Osborn — aka the former Green Goblin — but is immediately thwarted by superhero The Sentry.

A battle later, Frank is saved by a guardian angel — a high-tech helper named Henry, who comes to serve as Frank’s surrogate Microchip, his late pal. More foes are in store for Frank, including the Shaolin Scientist Squad and a supernatural enemy known as The Hood.

At one chapter break, Remender cheats. We see Frank facing certain death by gunmen who begin firing at him, at point-blank range. It ends there on a cliffhanger. Next chapter opens, and the guys are all dead, but not Frank. Huh? Wha’ happened?

Oh, well, at least there’s two-fisted action, from jumping down elevator shafts to harpooning bad dudes in the chest with bombs. It’s a fun story, even though I’m not totally onboard with adding mystical elements to the tale. But, ah, the sweet, sweet sound of “BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA …” —Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• GO-GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE by Victor Gischler
• SHOTGUN OPERA by Victor Gischler
• VAMPIRE A GO-GO by Victor Gischler

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI:
• THE BLONDE by Duane Swierczynski
• LEVEL 26: DARK ORIGINS by Anthony E. Zuiker with Duane Swierczynski
• SEVERANCE PACKAGE by Duane Swierczynski
• THE WHEELMAN by Duane Swierczynski

Mark Edward Hill’s THE HAUNTING OF SAM CABOT is the first title I’ve read from the small California publisher Damnation Books, and you know what? It’s pretty good. What’s better news is that Damnation just started up last September with 25 titles and intends to publish 12 new ones every three months. If it can maintain this level of quality and readability, we’re in for one helluva ride.

Sam Cabot and his wife and young son are strangely attracted to the Farnham House —as the ad says, “A Great Fixer-Upper.” You know that dilapidated old place that exists in your town, or maybe at the edges of your mind? The one everybody says is haunted? That’s the Farnham House.

But the Cabots are looking for a place to begin a new life, and this part of Maine seems just right. They recognize the house’s problems, but want to buy it. And yet, they draw away until the current owner/caretaker, known as Carlisle, takes them into the basement and son Sam sees the huge boiler, which he calls “Hulk.” Carlisle makes them an offer that raises questions just as it cements their desire for the place: He tells them that he will repair the monstrous boiler himself or pay for a new one.

So the Cabots move in and Carlisle rides to the house on his bicycle every day to work in the basement. Even in foul weather, he refuses to allow the family to drive him home, and someone tells Sam that the old man is actually still living there. Sam sees something at the bottom of the old, disused well, and when he drops a bucket down to water level, whatever is down there grabs and yanks on the rope. There are reminders of a possible AMITYVILLE/DeFeo disaster.

Hall is a nice hand at building suspense with remarkable subtlety. He’s good at dropping hints that something is wrong — more wrong than either Sam or we know — even when little is going on that would normally spook anyone. Here he echoes H.P. Lovecraft, one of the masters:

“There are things that live at the very fringes of the universe, terrible yet true things that mortal man must never delve too deeply into, lest he risk lunacy.”

THE HAUNTING OF SAM CABOT is a novella of, I’d approximate, around 40,000 words, but it more than makes up in creepiness what it lacks in word count. The characters are likable, but deeply troubled, and the story’s reveal surprised me right down to my socks. And then, Hall topped it.

I hope everyone responsible can keep it up. We could all use a little more damnation in our lives. —Doug Bentin

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When Great Britain was under threat of night bombings during World War II, “black-outs” were ordered by the government. Not even streetlights were allowed to be illuminated, as enemy plans would fly low and slow, forcing families to stay indoors. What little light was on inside homes had to be screened in.

What to do during those hours? THE BLACK-OUT BOOK: 500 FAMILY GAMES AND PUZZLES FOR WARTIME ENTERTAINMENT reprints about 200 pages’ worth of the pencil-ready pastimes in which residents would engage in order to pass the time safely and without crushing boredom.

As Mike Brown notes in his introduction, such books by Evelyn August (a pseudonym for then-married couple Sydney and Muriel Box) became highly prized by collectors and traded on schoolyards like baseball cards. Today’s kids wouldn’t have any interest in activities so quaint and, well, non-electrical.

THE BLACK-OUT BOOK collects some of August’s wartime-effort work. There are brainteasers, riddles, cartoons, poems, astronomy lessons, limericks, trivia, quotes, word games and other miscellany, all as presented originally, with vintage illustrations and fonts. August’s style is buttoned-up British as ever, which makes the book radiate with a slight time-capsule charm.

The book is meant to be more of a curio of a historical era, rather than one to actively work. For more old-school fun, I also recommend the recent reissue of the 1920s’ THE BAFFLE BOOK. —Rod Lott

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Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

It’s about time we get to see our black leather-bedecked heroine again, as FEARLESS DAWN #2 finally rears her lovely head. Steve Mannion’s inspired creation continues its gleeful romp through the conventions of cartoon absurdity as Dawn and muscular hero Number Seven are turned into crazed, zombie-like creatures by a Nazi combat drug, and then do battle with that “master race,” all in eye-popping visuals that would do Tex Avery proud. Not only does Mannion have a tangible blast through both words and pictures, but Asylum Press gives it a 100% classy presentation, on paper slicker than the big boys, yet for less money. They have my undying love.

With Del Rey Comics’ THE TALISMAN: THE ROAD OF TRIALS #3, we’re really starting to get into the meat of the Stephen King/Peter Straub adaptation, as scripted by Robin Furth. For one thing, this is the first issue that takes place entirely in The Territories, that interdimensional fantasyland where young Jack Sawyer is to retrieve the titular object in order to save his dying mom. The world goes medieval on him, to say the least, as events include a tragic death (resulting in a truly sick panel from Tony Shasteen) and a chase through the forest, where some cool tree monster appears. Shasteen is interviewed about his creative process in a closing extra, which is more interesting than the previous issues’ commentary from Furth.

Marvel’s next big event has arrived this month with SIEGE, in a supposed “seven years in the making!” To whet your appetite, the publisher offers a freebie in ORIGINS OF SIEGE #1. A prologue by Brian Michael Bendis and Lucio Parrillo is a conversation between evil Norman Osborn and mischievous Loki, hatching a world takeover plan that plays out in the four-issue limited series (and various other titles). A preview of SIEGE #1 is included, as it was already in the one-shot SIEGE: THE CABAL. You also get a dozen single-page origins by Fred Van Lente of Captain America, Sentry, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man and others. And the “and more” promised on the cover? That amounts to nothing but ads, true believers. Hey, at least it’s free, right? —Rod Lott

Former FBI agent Noah Boyd makes his novel debut with THE BRICKLAYER, the first in a series of thrillers featuring Steve Vail. Fired from the FBI, Vail is a tough guy who hates authority almost as much as he loves catching killers. The suits can’t control him. Criminals can’t outsmart him. His quiet existence is turned upside down when a former FBI colleague, Kate Bannon, shows up at his house, asking him to come back for one more case.

We have two copies to give away, going to:
• Sarah Emmerson of Westminster, Calif.
• Steve Gibson of Virginia Beach, Va.

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Wildside Press’ SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE is many things — fun, nice-looking, great value for your money — but not regular. Yet issue #3 arrived alongside Hollywood’s blockbuster take, just as the public appetite for all things Holmes is whetted, so hopefully it may attract more readers. It deserves to.

As with previous issues, the periodical — actually a sturdy paperback — opens with nonfiction features that make the mag feel like a club. Lenny Picker provides a terrific article on some Holmes screen adaptations, with particular attention paid to BBC’s MURDER ROOMS series, which was added to my wish list immediately.

Gary Lovisi follows with a delightful look at some notable Holmes pastiches in paperback, pretty much all of which are sadly out-of-print. Bob Byrne then compares Nero Wolfe to Holmes in an essay, and landlady Mrs. Hudson’s advice column — the weakest link in SHMM — is shuttered for a recipe column, but I’m afraid the change is no better.

This issue’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reprint is “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” my favorite Holmes story. Since it’s likely that a majority of readers have already read it, too, I wish it would’ve been dressed up with art, either in the style of Sidney Paget’s Victorian-era STRAND illustrations or that original work itself.

New fiction begins with Bruce I. Kilstein’s “Watson’s Wound,” in which the story behind Watson’s war injury is told, and Holmes thinks that something about it doesn’t quite ring the right way. This story is a great example of expanding upon Holmes’ established universe. Kim Newman’s lengthy “A Volume in Vermillion” is next, written from the perspective of Holmes villain Sebastian Moran.

In pieces unrelated to Holmes — but no stranger to mystery — include Stan Trybulski’s table-turning “Tough Guys Don’t Pay”; Hal Charles’ father/daughter whodunit, “Vacation from Crime”; Jean Pavia’s near-diabolical “Workout,” featuring one of the most pathetic protagonists you’ll encounter all year; and Peter King’s wry, sublime parody of TV’s AVENGERS, in “Mayhem in St Margaret Meade.”

A couple of cartoons dot the pages as filler, but there could be many more. With so few publications daring to showcase short stories these days, the Marvin Kaye-edited SHMM is one of the most reliable, and I love how the covers utilize poster art from the old Holmes films, to place you in the right frame of mind: that of inexpensive, but intelligent escape. —Rod Lott

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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
• SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #2 edited by Marvin Kaye
• THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN edited by Marvin Kaye

Four-color fun is what this column is all about, with one artist taking center stage: the late, great Jack Kirby. Now, I’m not one to shell out big money for hardcover collections, but Kirby is a good reason to part with some greenbacks, and these four books from DC Comics show the master at work in various types. (The chances of me buying a FANTASTIC FOUR OMNIBUS is still a long way away.)

JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOLUME ONE and VOLUME TWO — Back in the day when I was still hitting my local comic shop on a weekly basis, DC had the bright idea of reissuing some of these titles in paperback. The problem — and, boy, was it a major disappointment — was that all the art was in grayscale. I like black-and-white comics, and the DC SHOWCASE line has been a godsend — but these titles were meant to be seen in glorious color, which these 2007 hardcovers not only nail, but do so on old-school comic-book paper.

There is no way to talk about Kirby’s tenure at DC without talking about his creation of the Fourth World and The New Gods. These characters are still being used in various forms in SUPERMAN titles and even the cartoon series. These two books — in a series of four — collect all the titles that made up this new world. That includes, SUPERMAN’S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN; THE FOREVER PEOPLE, which seems like Kirby’s version of 1960s hippies; THE NEW GODS, which focuses on Orion and Darkseid; and MR. MIRACLE, the escape artist who can never die.

These first two volumes do a fantastic job of the stories’ placement and, of course, all that truly great Kirby art to fixate on. I mean, what else could you ask for? How about introductions by Grant Morrison and Walt Simonson. Both men talk about the influence of Kirby, with Morrison totally regretting the one chance he had to meet the man, but figuring there would be another time. Sadly, that would not come to be.

Then there are the afterwords, both written by Mark Evanier, a man who knew Kirby better than most. So what you have here is Kirby greatness, with a guest-star role by none other than Don Rickles. There is one minor little problem: Kirby’s vampires can’t compare to Gene Colan’s.

JACK KIRBY’S THE LOSERS — This 2009 release was the book that started me picking up these Kirby titles, since I’m just a sucker for a good war title. SGT. ROCK, THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, ENEMY ACE and THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT are, for me, fun reading in the DC Universe. They’re like a comfy blanket, and THE LOSERS don’t disappoint one iota.

It is not only a war comic, but one on which Kirby was none too pleased to work. This collection is his complete 12-issue run, where he wrote and did all the artwork. The Losers were a group of four — Capt. Storm, Johnny Cloud, Gunner and Sarge — who are sent on never-ending suicide missions, with them jumping around wars as though they were crossing a street. I mean, one issue they are in Europe and then the next, in the middle of the Pacific. No rhyme or reason is given as to why these are the only men for the jobs, but they take them since that is what they signed up for.

There are two artists who do World War II comics justice: One is Kirby, and the other is Joe Kubert, of course. Kubert contributed a few covers that are included in this book, so it’s all a win-win for readers. You also get great Kirby pin-ups of various WWII artifacts, like tanks, planes, guns, uniforms and the like. Then there are the various pencil pages that are interspersed throughout. Neil Gaiman nails it in his introduction when he writes that Kirby’s run on THE LOSERS was pure magic.

JACK KIRBY’S THE DEMON — Etrigan! Wait, you mean that doesn’t work in real life? Damn. For those unfamiliar, that is the word that changes Jason Blood into THE DEMON — a title that was pure Kirby weirdness.

In his introduction to this 2008 collection, Mark Evanier explains how this title came to be. At the time, the DC editor wanted a weird type of monster book. Boy, howdy, did Kirby deliver in spades. It’s also explained that Kirby was only supposed to come up with the character and design, but let other artists to do the real work. Well, he soon became a one-man machine, doing it all on top of all the other books he was doing. THE DEMON came out as the same time as his Fourth World titles.

From the start, the whole story of The Demon is told from back in the days of Merlin to the then-current time when these books came out. Of course, the stories inside are all in the supernatural bent, with tales of evil little wizard children to a Phantom of the Opera type, all told in that fantastic Kirby style. The complete 16-issue run is included and it has probably some of my favorite artwork, like the splash page for #9 is personal favorite.

This title also has something all the other books don’t have: a definitive ending. That’s just a shame since Jason Blood and Etrigan are characters that should never have stopped. If you’re a fan of whacked-out Kirby artwork and monster books, this one is a must-purchase.

Thank you, DC, for these books. I actually have the others of these reprints on order … well, except for one. I’m not really a fan of Kirby’s version of The Sandman. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BEST OF SIMON AND KIRBY by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby

I like gimmick themes in mystery novels. When done well (J.F. Englert, Antoine Bello), they merge our love of mystery with another hobby or avocation, providing double the fun. Thus, Shelley Freydont’s SERIAL KILLER SUDOKU, the third sudoku-themed work featuring Katie McDonald, meshes another murder in this New Hampshire community with our love for numerical puzzles, even offering up 12 puzzles for our entertainment.

McDonald and the town are horrified to find Henny Dougan dead with his throat garroted behind the café. She then receives a sudoku puzzle via e-mail, with the initials “HD” highlighted. Is it a prank, some kind of sick joke? It is not.

The police chief begins his investigation, only to be run down on the street by a pickup truck. As he struggles to regain his health in the hospital, McDonald goes off on her own, detecting and getting into the usual scrapes and dangerous situations.

Freydont’s characters are all interesting in their own way, well-defined and distinct from each other. Her dialogue is strong. I also enjoyed the way she treats the two 14-year-olds in the book, one being her protégé Harry and the other a remarkable, hard-edged Goth girl who goes by the name of Wynter.

Unfortunately, the ending seems rushed and the killer’s motivations a little skewed. There is perhaps a bit too much hand-holding and protectiveness, especially in the way the chief and another gentleman treat McDonald’s involvement in the case, but overall, this is a thoroughly enjoyable mystery perfect for the sudoku worker in your life. —Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• SUDDEN DEATH SUDOKU by Shelley Freydont

The title THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF THE WORLD’S BEST CRIME STORIES begs the question: Is this intended to be editor Maxim Jakubowski’s declaring of the best crime stories in the world? Or rather, the best crime stories from around the world?

The answer, in its attempt to attract your attention, is the latter (and good luck to anyone bold enough to take on the former). Crime fiction, as most of us know it, is mostly from English-based countries. And while some renowned works reach us from overseas, we remain somewhat provincial in our knowledge of crime fiction from other parts of the world. But as Jakubowski reminds us in his Introduction, “Crime is, sadly, universal.”

But many foreign authors remain unknown to us due to lack of both sufficient translations and more so because of unadventurous publishers. Jakubowski attempts to resolve the problem with this collection, but succeeds only partially. Most of the shortcomings are due to the format. There is a woeful absence of any biographical and bibliographical information on all of the authors included here.

You would think that an anthology whose purpose is to bring foreign writers to our attention would at least include a listing of their recommended works available in translation. Then, too, the lack of the country of origin appearing along with the title and author of each story is just plain irritating, causing you to constantly page back to the table of contents. (For example, what country would you think a story with a title like “A Really Shitty Day” comes from? Answer: Sweden.)
 
The stories from the English-speaking countries — and, let’s face it, these are the ones that are likely to attract us to such a collection, and the ones we are just as likely to read first — feel mostly like a reunion of old friends. There’s a Rumpole story from John Mortimore (Great Britain), a John Rebus tale from Scottish author Ian Rankin (but listed as coming from Great Britain), and from the U.S., a Lincoln Rhyme mystery from Jeffery Deaver and even a Mike Hammer entry by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins.

It’s left to Ruth Rendell (Great Britain) to provide the sole non-series story. These selections display all the characteristics we’ve come to know, love and, yes, expect from these authors and their series stars. Rendell alone demonstrates her variety in her atmospheric near-novella, “The Strawberry Tree.”

The stories from the other countries are a grab bag of pleasant surprises and disappointments. Stories like “The Temp” by Rene Appel (Netherlands) and “Serum” by Jo Nesbo (Norway) prove the worldwide (and Jakubowski’s) attraction to tales with an unexpected twist at the end. Others, like “Table Talk, 1882” by Boris Akunin (Russia) and “A Crime for A Crime” by Giorgio Faletti (Italy) display novelistic detailing that make us long for more and longer works by these writers. Several others, however, like the aforementioned “A Really Shitty Day” by Camillia Lackberg (Sweden) and “That Fat, Sadistic Bastard” by Jose Carlos Somoza (Spain) start off strong, but then fall flat by the conclusion, or are left dangling.
 
In all, this is a somewhat uneven introduction to what the world has to offer in crime fiction. And, again, a project such as this should provide readers with information about where to go next instead of leaving us with so many dead ends. Still, being a generous sampling of 36 stories coming in at just under 15 bucks (typical of the long-running MAMMOTH BOOK OF series) it’s mildly recommended as a means to broaden your fiction horizons, especially if you’re willing to take on any resulting research on your own. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.
 
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• PULP FICTION edited by Maxim Jakubowski
• ROME NOIR edited by Chiara Stangalino and Maxim Jakubowski

Remember THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK, which was all the rage in the publishing world that was 1999? After sequels, cards, calendars and other products, the brand recently has branched into a series of POCKET GUIDEs — roughly 4.5″ x 3.5″ hardbacks that literally can fit into your pocket.

And why not? As written by series co-creator David Borgenicht and SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS‘ Ben H. Winters, the guides are good for a quick laugh or a few while on the go, whether that’s via commute or toilet.

One is THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO POCKET GUIDE: MEETINGS. Part of it offers practical advice, while the other part is strictly tongue-in-cheek. For example of the former, you can learn how to revive a co-worker who has fainted or how to flatter an insecure boss; for the latter, escaping a meeting via catering cart. I’m not sure as to which category “How to Discreetly Pass Gas Mid-Meeting” falls.

POCKET GUIDE: CARS is a mix of the same. For instance, parallel parking with a trailer attached is something I failed at miserably the one time I tried to it, so that would be helpful, but how to pee in your car while stuck in traffic? (Um, I’ve done that, and didn’t need any instructions.)

POCKET GUIDE: SAN FRANCISCO isn’t really a travel guidebook, but more of an excuse to lump together items dealing with driving in fog, rescuing whales and escaping from Alcatraz. The more practical books lie with POCKET GUIDE: CATS and POCKET GUIDE: DOGS, making them ideal gifts for owners of felines and canines, particularly the former. (Because let’s face it: Cat pee isn’t an easy odor to remove … which is why I will never own one.)

Each title is small in size, but packed with 100 pages nonetheless. The POCKET GUIDEs carry the visual hallmarks of the original WORST-CASE release and all its various spin-offs ever since: namely, crisp design, line illustrations and a near-NPR sense of inoffensive humor. —Rod Lott

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

SILENCER by James W. Hall — Wealthy Earl Hammond lies dead, shot just as he was to donate his ranch to the state to preserve it from developers. Spearheading the plan to save this treasure was Thorn, a reluctant heir to a secret family fortune, who now finds himself in terrible danger as well. A pair of deviant brothers, both contract killers, kidnaps him and drags him to a game preserve, surrounded by herds of exotic and very dangerous animals. He is entrapped in a sinkhole, but Frisco Hammond, the dark sheep of the family, is drawn into the investigation of his father’s murder and Thorn’s disappearance.

LULLABY by Claire Seeber — It’s every mother’s nightmare: One minute, Jess Finnegan is strolling through the Tate Museum with her new husband Mickey and their 8-month old son. The next, she is frantically searching for them — both have completely disappeared. As the police launch a massive manhunt, Jess discovers that the people closest to you are not always what they seem.

BROOKLYN KNIGHT by C.J. Henderson — Professor Piers Knight is an esteemed curator at the Brooklyn Museum and is regarded by many on the staff as a revered institution of his own if not an outright curiosity. Knight’s portfolio includes lost civilizations; arcane cultures, languages, and beliefs; and more than a little bit of the history of magic and mysticism.W hat his contemporaries don’t know is that in addition to being a scholar of all things ancient he is schooled in the uses of magical artifacts, the teachings of forgotten deities, and the threats of unseen dangers. If a mysterious object surfaces, Professor Knight makes it his job to figure it out … and make sure it stays out of dangerous hands.

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It’s easy to make comparisons to Elmore Leonard with Lou Berney’s debut novel, since GUTSHOT STRAIGHT is filled with characters and situations that you would expect from the king of crime. An ex-con just getting out of jail will remind readers of OUT OF SIGHT. But once it leaves the prison setting behind, Berney’s story comes into its own.

Although clever, Charles “Shake” Bouchon falls right back into his old life as a getaway driver when an old boss of his shows up with a simple job offer: driving a car and a briefcase to Las Vegas to deliver to a 400-pound thug nicknamed The Whale. Things go exactly as planned … in the sense that the package in the trunk is a housewife named Gina, who is about to play Shake like a toy piano.

Not to ruin things, but Gina is no ordinary housewife, and there is a good reason why she’s in the trunk, as Shake soon finds out in this comic caper that shines. Once the plot kicks in, readers will not want to stop, since Berney has created well-crafted characters who could easily populate the real world.

This is one of those novels where the plot sounds like one we’ve all read before — i.e. everyone is after a certain item — but Berney sure knows how to fill it with surprises. You have double-crosses, a Bernie Madoff type living in Panama, plenty of laughs, and what seems like a perfect set-up for a sequel.

I have to single out Berney’s decision of having The Flaming Lips’ “Turn It On” playing in a strip club. As cool as that would be to hear, you’re most likely going to get Foghat or some awful Poison song at such a joint. Berney reveals his influences ever so slightly throughout the story, throwing in pop-culture nods to things such as the current BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

GUTSHOT STRAIGHT is a pleasant surprise that hopefully will give Berney the large audience he deserves. —Bruce Grossman

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Not since the movie PINOCCHIO’S REVENGE has Carlo Collodi’s wooden puppet been put to such good use as in Van Jensen and Dusty Higgins’ graphic novel, PINOCCHIO, VAMPIRE SLAYER.

The brief, black-and-white book plays like a direct sequel to the original story … only, y’know, with vampires. One night, they descended upon the puppet’s little town, and killed his father, Geppetto. Ever since then, he’s vowed to take them all down, which is easier when your penchant for lying immediately produces wooden stakes via his ever-growing nose. Snap ‘em off, shove ‘em in, and the monsters crumble to dust.

Pinocchio gains valuable help from carpenter Master Cherry, the Blue Fairy, the ghost of Cricket, and even the Rabbits of Ill Portent. The same cannot be said for the townspeople, who don’t believe a damn word he says. Nevertheless, a hero shall rise.

With a healthy budget for Zip-a-Tone, Higgins’ art resembles that of Mike Mignola, with a slight manga edge in the action scenes and a woodcut style for flashbacks. Jensen’s script infuses the comedic horror/adventure with a Sam Raimi sensibility, making for a punchy, pleasurable reading experience … and that’s no lie. —Rod Lott

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Former FBI agent Noah Boyd makes his novel debut with THE BRICKLAYER, the first in a series of thrillers featuring Steve Vail. Fired from the FBI, Vail is a tough guy who hates authority almost as much as he loves catching killers. The suits can’t control him. Criminals can’t outsmart him. His quiet existence is turned upside down when a former FBI colleague, Kate Bannon, shows up at his house, asking him to come back for one more case. We have two copies to give away.

To enter:
1. E-mail us your name and mailing address (U.S. only; no P.O. boxes) with “Layer? I hardly know her!” as the subject line, to editor at bookgasm dot com.
2. Await Friday, Jan. 22, when we announce the randomly chosen winner.
3. Or, just buy it at Amazon.

1. Invent a time machine, throw handwritten copies of each Harry Potter book into a backpack, go back in time, kill J.K. Rowling and head immediately to the publisher that didn’t reject the manuscript for HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE.

2. Contrive to be born as the heir to a large fortune; earn a reputation as a vapid, if willowy, party monster; and appear in a poorly shot, amateur sex tape.

3. Imagine that the majority of your target audience can — on a good day — identify 12 to 18 letters of the English alphabet. (See James Patterson for the best example of this approach).

4. Write up a list of a hundred things that would be really fucked up to do while on drugs, pretend that you did all of them, and call the result “a harrowing memoir of one person’s struggle and eventual victory against the horrors of addiction.”

5. Know the location of the safe-deposit box in which you will find the only existing copy of a certain 8mm film loop starring a young Oprah Winfrey in the role of “Housewife Who Ordered Pizza.”

6. Grab a copy of your favorite Judy Blume book and imagine what it would be like if the characters were all members of a secret society of nocturnal, living corpses who retained their youthful visages through the consumption of human plasma. Write this down and start counting your money!

7. Earn a reputation as someone capable of throwing together a full-length biography just four days after a young celebrity’s shocking death.

8. Work hard and become a noted expert in a field people are interested in. Then have sex with someone famous.

9. Take what everyone considers to be a universal truth (water is wet, fire is hot, Salma Hayek making out with Christina Hendricks would cause a sex-pocalypse event so severe that only 3,947 people in the whole world would survive it) and passionately argue the opposite. Then shoot someone famous.

10. Spend a decade or so working as stand-up comedian, catch the interest of a network development executive, star in a mildly funny sitcom that gets great ratings because it immediately follows the most popular show on television, write down your old act (which — if you make it to that sweet, 100-episode syndication goal line — you’ll never need again) and sell it to the first publisher who asks (and at least one will).

11. Start writing a blog in which you mock unhappy, famous, young women with obvious personal problems for having the tremendous gall to be unhappy, famous, young women with obvious personal problems (but it’s okay because you’re totally gay and that just makes it bitchy and not misogynist). Get 10 million hits a day and then start mocking those same women on TV. A book deal will inevitably follow.

12. Undergo a gender reassignment procedure and enough plastic surgery to allow yourself to resemble — under the right conditions — a semi-attractive blonde woman. Then get involved in the right-wing conspiracy to take down a popular Democratic president. Write a manuscript that suggests that anyone to the left of Charlton Heston would happily perform a late-term abortion on the Virgin Mary as they recited the Communist Manifesto and danced the Charleston on the graves of fallen soldiers, while constantly complaining on television (on which you appear on one channel or another at least five days a week) that the left-wing media refuses to give conservatives like you a forum to express their views. Then cross your fingers and hope a national tragedy temporarily allows people to confuse your insanity for insight.

13. Do the liberal equivalent of #12. Some commenter will no doubt inform us what that is.

14. Do everything you can to make you sure you are born a 6-foot tall ectomorph with cheekbones you can cut diamonds with, come up with a vague idea for a story based loosely on your glamorous life as a supermodel, and allow a publisher the golden opportunity to hire someone else to write it for you and publish it under your name.

15. Be told at the age of 6 that you have a fatal disease and will not live to see your 12th birthday. Write a bunch of poetry about how you’re not bitter and life is worth living because it’s beautiful and all of that crap (the more commercial, the better).

16. Use your family connections to obtain an executive level job at a Fortune 500 company. Lie, cheat and betray everyone you work with until you’re named its CEO. Waste millions of your company’s money on your own lavish lifestyle while you temporarily raise its stock prices by laying off 40% of your employees. Spend five years praying that no one notices your “revolutionary” new business model is little more than an advanced Ponzi scheme. When they do finally notice, leave the company with a $175 million “golden parachute.” While you enjoy your retirement, write a manuscript about how to be successful in big business.

17. Spend six years as a reporter in a war-torn country, where you witness unimaginable crimes against humanity and document the unmitigated horror of attempted genocide. Then have your picture taken with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

18. Spend three years working at a warehouse until the Sisyphean pointlessness of your labor causes you to quit in a fit of madness. Spend six months unemployed. Finally get a job as a dishwasher at a Greek restaurant. Meet a waiter who’s charming enough to impress a regular customer who happens to own a local publishing company. Seethe with jealousy as that waiter uses his history major to snag a gig writing a book of real-life Western stories for that impressed publisher. Quit the Greek restaurant gig and return to the warehouse you quit earlier. Save up your money in order to facilitate a move to a bigger, more vibrant city. Move to bigger, more vibrant city. Stay there four months before you run out of money and have to come back. Get a job working the graveyard shift at an adult video store. Then get a phone call from your old waiter friend, who’s now working full-time for the impressed publisher as a documenter of “real” ghost stories. Have him ask you if you want to submit a resume and a writing sample to his boss. Agree. Four and a half years later, you will be able to tell people that you have published 12 and 1/2 books, maybe four or five of which are kinda worth reading.

19. Take time to research the current market and see what popular genres best suit the kind of writing at which you excel. Spend a year crafting a well-written, tautly paced novel with compelling characters and an exciting inventive plot. Send it to agents who your research suggests would be interested in handling the kind of book you’ve written. Out of the four who express interest in representing it, select the one who you think will have the best chance of getting it published. Wait two years as it is rejected by every publisher in the business. Grow despondent. Start fixating on a future in which you amount to nothing and spend the rest of your life living with your parents. Buy a shotgun. Do your best imitation of Ernest Hemingway. After your ashes have sat resting on your parents’ mantle for six months, they’ll receive word from your agent that an editor they sent the book to accidentally read it after they initially rejected it and decided it would be perfect for next year’s fall schedule.

20. Do everything mentioned in #19 except commit suicide. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s been known to work! —Allan Mott

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