I’m back in the reading saddle, so to speak, with this column. I’ve been slacking in tackling my TBR pile, so let’s kick things off with three troublemakers, be they the main character in a foreign import, or a comic strip spy who seems to never to get a day off.
THE GOODBYE KISS by Massimo Carlotto — A while back, I read a great collection of Italian crime short stories called CRIMINI, where one author’s work really stood head and shoulders above all others. I figured it was finally time to track down one of Carlotto’s full novels. The best comparison that can be made to this 2000 work is that it comes off as an even darker Jim Thompson. It makes the Lou Ford character in THE KILLER INSIDE ME look like a Boy Scout.
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This week is all about those hip private eyes, two of which have been covered before and define cool, while the third one really fits the title of this column to a T. So let’s get settled in for some good-old-fashioned detecting with plenty of dames and a little kitty litter.
DEATH HAS THREE LIVES by Brett Halliday — When Mike Shayne puts his foot into it, to put it nicely, he really puts his foot into it. Case in point: Mike turns up to his secretary’s apartment, which is about to become ground zero to a major shit storm. First, Lucy Hamilton, Mike’s secretary, is hiding an ex in her bedroom who was just shot. And Mike has no idea.
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Following up last year’s column of books to give for friends and relatives, I present another list of great reads that is sure to please the people in your lives. I’ll focus on a few titles that might have slipped you by. Not below but also recommended are Darwyn Cooke’s fantastic THE OUTFIT and the Otto Penzler-edited THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF BLACK MASK STORIES. And if none of these titles will do, just get a Kindle or an Amazon gift card.
WEDNESDAY COMICS — This 2010 book is big. I’m talking “barely fits into my shelves” big. This collection reprints the entirety of an idea DC did in the summer of 2009, where they serialized a variety of titles weekly in a newspaper format. It’s an idea that worked perfectly.
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Nothing but law-abiding citizens featured this week, be they cops, investigators or lawyers. This trio of crime busters is always on the right side of the law, even if one likes to bend it a bit. But there is one thing I think we can all agree upon: I was darn adorable in my policeman costume back in the day.
THE CON MAN by Ed McBain — Nothing like a return to the original LAW & ORDER crowd with the boys of the 87th Precinct, and this 1957 number is the fourth in the series. McBain really found his groove with this one, again running two concurrent storylines for his cops.
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Happy Halloween, everyone! This week, I’m finally tackling two “monster” books I’ve been meaning to read since the start of this column, while the third book is from an English gent who loves crabs. But, sadly, the book I’m covering deals with bats. Let’s kick things off with an old-school pulp author of note.
THE MONSTER MEN by Edgar Rice Burroughs — This is all you really need to know about this novel: Frankenstein plus Tarzan equals MONSTER MEN. That pretty much sums it up. Professor Maxon is disposing of his latest failed experiment, but we are not told what that is until a few chapters later.
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