Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane

 I don’t often review individual books here. Much of that has to do with the number of books I read each year, which would turn the blog into a review site and that’s not why I’m here. Every so often a book compels me to draw attention to it alone. Dennis Lehane’s latest, Small Mercies, is such a book.

 

Small Mercies takes place during the lead up to the Boston busing riots in 1974. I’ll not say much about what happens; that’s for you to do if you choose to read the book. Suffice to say the core story concerns the disappearance of seventeen-year-old Jules Fennessy on the eve of the first busing protests, and her mother’s (Mary Pat) attempts to find her.

 

Small Mercies uses the busing protests much the same as Lehane used the Boston police strike for the backdrop of his 2008 novel The Given Day, though the scope here is much smaller. This is an examination of race relations, neighborhoods, and families, using South Boston as the stage.

 

The core takeaway is not to judge anyone unless evaluating them in their totality. Mary Pat Fennessy is blind to her own racism, which makes it even worse and harder to work around. She is also a devoted mother, in her way, and that way is how parents raised kids in South Boston, which is recommended in no book ever. Small Mercies focuses on her changes as she learns who her real friends are and how neighborhood dynamics can fracture not only friendships but family relationships.

 

The culture in which Mary Pat grew up is fiercely loyal and devoted to the neighborhood. People shovel each other’s walks and spread rock salt around as needed regardless of whose piece of sidewalk it will keep from freezing. Old women are helped across streets and into their walk-up apartments with their groceries. This is the standard and everyone accepts it.

 

In this story, the busing edict is an infringement on their neighborhood’s rights. To them it’s less about desegregation than resentment over forcing them to send their kids somewhere they do not want them to go. Fears for the children’s safety are cited - and may be legitimate - though it is clear Black families are entitled to the same concerns. More than that, it’s a matter of outsiders telling them how they have to live. The wounds fester because “The people who make the rules don’t have to live by them.” True, the racial prejudice is severe, but class hatred is also a key element. Rightly or wrongly, these people feel pressed between two forces, neither of which has their interests at heart.

 

As close as the people are, the book makes clear the neighborhood is always paramount; the nail that sticks up will be hammered down with a vengeance. Mary Pat runs into this as she asks uncomfortable questions about her daughter’s disappearance, and through that experience comes to see a little of the other side in this dispute. Both her actions are disloyalties akin to neighborhood treason.

 

No one combines complex characters, vivid dialog, the right amount of description, and a little smart-assery as well as Lehane. It was he who said crime fiction is the social novel of our time, and in Small Mercies he sets a new standard. If I am still around in a hundred years and see Dennis Lehane is considered at least the equal of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, the only thing that would surprise me is that I’m still around in a hundred years.

 

 

May's Favorite Reads

A Man on the Moon, Andrew Chaikin. The Beloved Spouse™ and I watched the 90s HBO series To the Moon and Back a while back (in large part to get the taste of First Man out of our mouths) and that put me into the 50^th anniversary spirit. A Man on the Moon is the book that provides much of the source material for the mini-series; the producers chose well. What looked to us (or at least to a twelve-to-fifteen-year-old at the time) to be flawless missions with minor inconveniences (Apollo 13 the notable exception) were all way more dangerous and exciting than NASA let on, up through about Apollo 15, by which time they pretty well had things figured out. Chaiken conducted exhaustive interviews with astronauts, ground crews, and wives to piece together a definitive history of mankind’s greatest exploration to date.

A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane. I’d been meaning to get back to Lehane’s PI stories for quite a while, wondering how well they’d hold up after reading so much of his recent stuff. A Drink Before the War is the first Kenzie-Gennaro book, and it deserved all the fuss. Lehane observes the usual tropes in PI stories—more to the case than the PI expects when he takes it, psycho sidekick who’s available as needed, untrustworthy client—yet puts his own spin on them. If you’ve never read the books that put him on the map, this first one is a good place to start.

That’ll be the Day*, S. W. Lauden. Lauden falls into a category I call “People Whose Books I Ran Into Once in a While Before I Finally Realized I Should Read Everything They Write.” (I didn’t say the category title came trippingly to the tongue.) This novelette pulls off the estimable of writing a book in a musical universe I know nothing about and, frankly, care nothing about, and kept my aging ass up till 12:30 on a work night to finish it in one sitting. The characters are multi-tiered and believable and the action moves along without become too breakneck to be believable. Highly recommended.

(*--I read an ARC. Be ready for this one when it drops later this month.)

No One Cares

People can do a lot worse than to read Joe Clifford. Not just the books; the blog. Maybe especially the blog. (Not that the books aren’t good. Nomination for the Bill Crider Award, anyone?) True, Joe can be a depressing SOB once in a while, but never without purpose. His blog is always thought-provoking, and one can only hope he’ll get more consistent about posting them.

 

Joe’s been re-examining things lately, and on March 15 he reminded me of something I’d forgotten in a post titled “Dennis Lehane’s Note.” Regular readers know how I feel about Lehane and his work, so I perked up right away. What Joe mentioned wasn’t news to be, but it was a worthy reminder:

One of my favorite bits of advice re: writing comes from Dennis Lehane, who carries a little reminder in his wallet: No one cares. Yeah, that can be depressing to some. To me (and Dennis) it’s freedom: No one cares. You can do whatever the fuck you want.

I typed up no one cares and taped it to my monitor next to the desk placard The Sole Heir bought me that reads, “If you were in my novel you’d be dead by now.” Joe’s right. It’s not depressing. It’s liberating.

It occurred to me several years ago why more people don’t buy my books: they don’t need them. Not just my books. Anyone’s. My personal library has hundreds of books. It’s smaller than many writers I know, but still substantial compared to the general public. I looked at those shelves one day and realized that, as a man in my early 60s, I never need to buy another book. I have enough books I’d love to re-read that I could live happily going through my library from one end to the other and starting over. I buy new books because I want to, not because I need them.

Sure, there is a handful of people that I’ll read whatever they publish. And a couple I wish would break their self-imposed hiatuses and write something new because they were in that handful but haven’t put out anything lately. (I’m looking at you, John McFetridge and Declan Burke.) I’m not actively seeking new authors, though I occasionally stumble onto someone in social media and check them out.

I’m a writer, and if that’s how I feel about books, imagine how the average reader feels. Lehane’s right: No one cares.

I’m okay with that. It means I can take a few months off to get my head back together after what The Beloved Spouse calls The Chaos™ disrupted large chunks of my personal and family life. It means if I want to re-boot the Penns River series and switch out a bunch of characters, I can. If I decide to write the next novel more as a loosely-connected series of vignettes with the same cast and location instead of a through-written novel, I can. You know why? Because no one cares.

Except me. I’m the guy who has to live with the book every day for twelve to eighteen months. It needs to be what I want it to be.

Down & Out Books has been great. Very supportive and patient, but they don’t really care. It’s not like they came to me when I suggested what I might do for the next book and said, “Whoa, take a deep breath. That’s a money-making franchise you’re fucking with here.” Maybe a new approach will get me over the hump. Maybe it won’t. No one knows. So what the hell. Roll with it.

This is something writers don’t want to hear, that no one cares, no one needs our books. Sorry. I like writing and I’d almost certainly write something even if Down & Out cut me loose. (Note to Eric and Lance: Not that I’m interested in finding out. Just saying.) The Beloved Spouse loves me. The Sole Heir loves me. My mother loves me. My ex-wife’s dog loves me. None of them care a bit about my writing except for how it affects me; they care about me. If writing makes me happy, they’ll want me to do it. If it doesn’t make me happy anymore, they’ll be good if I stop. It’s liberating and exhilarating to know the only person I have to please when I sit at the keyboard or with a pad of paper in my hand is me. You know why I get to feel like that?

no one (else) cares.

The Given Day

I don’t usually post about individual books. Lots of people can dissect a book better than I and I’ll leave them to it. What I am qualified to write about are books that affect me in such a way I have to take a deeper look, bot at the book and myself. I read two of them almost back-to-back over the past few weeks.

First is Dennis Lehane’s masterpiece, The Given Day, describing the events leading up to the Boston police strike of 1919 as seen through the eyes of Boston cops and a fugitive African-American. The book covers the molasses explosion, the 1918 World Series players’ strike, race relations, labor strife, terrorism, income inequality, class warfare, and immigrant antagonism. You know, all the things that made—and continue to make—this country great.

There is no living writer I hold in higher esteem that Dennis Lehane, and I’m not sure there is any writer, living or dead, I’d rather read. To me, reading a Lehane novel is an event. They’re not all equally good—no one ever has or will meet that standard—and they’re not all equally weighty. What Lehane does better than anyone else is speak to me. He shares many of my sympathies and sensibilities and isn’t afraid to let them show in his fiction. What makes him special is how he can express those sensibilities and never stoop to proselytizing.

What is it about this book? It’s much longer than what I usually read. I don’t think I have an attention span that demands short novels, but most writers who can’t tell their story in 300 – 350 pages would have been better off doing so. (Much as I love his writing, James Ellroy’s books could often stand having a machete taken to them, American Tabloid the notable exception.) The Given Day comes in at twice that and I was sorry when it ended.

What readers most often overlook in a book like this is how funny it is. There are laugh out loud sections, and countless examples of the kind of situational and interpersonal humor that occur in daily life. It’s what keeps the book—and daily life—from being a slog from one bad situation to another.

Fiction is the art of telling truth through lies, and there is no greater example than The Given Day. None of the things that happen to his protagonists are documented, yet none strain the reader’s credulity. The most outrageous things, the things that might hint at shark-jumping, are all provably true. On January 15, 1919 in the North End neighborhood of Boston a large molasses storage tank did explode and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph, killing 21 and injuring 150. The Harvard football team was armed and sent to defend a bridge during the police strike, where they shot at protesters attempting to cross the bridge into the wealthier sections of the city. Several people were killed. These are facts.

It’s the made up stuff one can most easily believe. Their actions are born of human interaction, frailty, and vice. People are caught up in situations beyond them, overextend their power, and make mistakes that seem like good ideas at the time.

Ten years since The Given Day’s publication there’s something else that makes my hair stand on end: It’s now 100 years since the book begins, 99 since the strike, and it’s frightening and depressing to see how much has not changed. Immigrants are seen as threats, their goodness or badness of the individuals be damned. The unspoken policy of making every man feel secure so long as he can comfortably believe someone else is lower than he is. The almost pathological need for those at the top to keep everyone else in their places, the fiction of the American Dream be damned. It was a time of anarchist terror in Boston, and the predecessor of the FBI was only too happy to claim terrorists had blown the molasses tank, never retracting the argument after the explosion was proven to be the result of commercial negligence.

The Given Day is a reminder that those who come to great power and wealth in this country—the two are often sides of the same coin—did not reach those stations through philanthropy. They rose through ruthless ambition and did everything they could to pull the ladder up behind them. There are too many examples today to doubt this was the case a hundred years, and no reason to doubt it was the same a hundred years before that; it has always been so. The Given Day is a highly entertaining book that also takes the time to remind us that eternal vigilance, and maybe even a willingness to raise some hell, are all that separates the American idea of capitalism from feudalism on a given day.

February's Favorite Reads

White Jazz, James Ellroy. My trip through the LA Quartet is complete and I’m a better person for it. Ellroy’s novels are flawed in general—American Tabloid the notable exception—by overcomplicated plots. White Jazz avoid this for the most part, but the ending is still a somewhat frantic wrapping up of loose ends. The best written of the quartet, Ellroy is in full control of the style and voice he’d use to such advantage in Tabloid. He’s an acquired taste and not for everyone, but no other writer makes me revel in the excesses of his prose like Ellroy.

The Given Day, Dennis Lehane. Maybe the best book I’ve ever read. This or The Grapes of Wrath. I read The Given Day when it first came out and loved it. It’s even more powerful ten years later after having watched recent American history play out. True, Lehane had the benefit of 90 years’ hindsight when he wrote the book and wears his heart on his sleeve, but the way he weaves facts and fiction makes points about the eternal struggle of the haves and have nots few others can. I’ll have more to say on this after I’ve had some time to digest it.

All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire, Jonathan Abrams. Reads like Connie Fletcher’s best work, though guided and far more introspective. Abrams gained access to just about every surviving member of the cast and key members of the crew; it’s a shame Robert Colesberry and Robert Chew had passed. The nuggets here are too many to cite, and to cite too few would do the book a disservice. Besides, I don’t do spoilers. All fans of The Wire need to read this.

Psycho Sidekicks

Benoit Lelieve, writing in Dead End Follies on March 14, took aim at “Ten Non-Racial Bullshit Stereotypes [He’s] Tired of Seeing.” (Editor’s Note: If you aren’t reading Dead End Follies, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Putz.) I agree in general with the list, the differences not so motivating I feel the need to write up one of my own.

I am inclined to comment at length on one of them. Number Six, to be precise: Friendly Psychopaths, or, as they are so often depicted, the psycho sidekick.

We all know who they are. Mouse. Hawk. Bubba Rogowski. Joe Pike, though Robert Crais has taken some of the edge off Pike in more recent novels. These are the guys who’ll do the stuff the author (or publisher, or, more likely, the marketing department) is afraid to have the protagonist do, lest the readers think less of him. They also serve a valuable role in providing information the protagonist can’t get on his own, sauntering into scenes with a key piece of evidence at just the right time.

The concept is a cheat when done badly, which is too often the case. Hence Benoit’s fatigue with the archetype. When done well these characters can serve a purpose beyond authorial convenience by giving the protagonist a peer to play off of. Yes, Spenser has Susan and Patrick Kenzie has Angie, but there are things they can say and do with Hawk and Bubba they’d rather not discuss elsewhere. Topics such as, “How are we gonna kill this guy?” Angie’s okay for discussing “Should we kill this guy?” and Susan…well, Susan’s mostly a pain in the ass. I never was able to figure out why Spenser discussed anything with her.

Another type of psycho sidekick has sprung up relatively recently, those that are not inherently violent. My favorite example is Sean Chercover’s Gravedigger Peace, sounding board for private eye Ray Dudgeon. (Another Editor’s Note: I know Sean is doing well with his thrillers and I couldn’t be happier for him, but I hope he hasn’t given up on Ray and Gravedigger. That’s a kick-ass combination.) I’m also a big fan of Tommy Owens from Declan Hughes’s Ed Loy series, but Tommy is more of a fuck-up than a psycho. He serves the role of providing information more than does Gravedigger, but both play valuable roles as off-kilter sounding boards for their protagonists.

 

It’s been a while since I first started writing Nick Forte stories, and the only one of these sidekicks I knew at the time was Hawk, which is fine. He’s the gold standard. I wanted Forte to have a sidekick but wanted the sidekick to be more of an homage to Hawk than a rip-off. Timothy Alston Satterwhite is a man who makes his living by hurting people, yet has a unique affection for Forte and those close to him. The nickname of “Goose” wraps up the homage aspects of his character.

I was always careful not to have Goose do Forte’s dirty work. In the first book, A Small Sacrifice, Goose offers to kill a man who has to die if Forte is to live. They’re not planning a showdown; an execution is in the works. Goose talks to Forte, tells him how it will change him, and how there might not be any going back. Forte can’t bring himself to ask his friend, and then finds he lacks what he needs himself to seal the deal.

Forte’s life and moods become darker as the series progresses. Goose remains the constant, always trying to reel his friend in. It’s been a conscious decision, hoping to do something different with a character who could easily be a stereotype.

I’ve even tried to move the classic relationship in the opposite direction. In Grind Joint, Forte appears as a “guest star,” who happens to be visiting his parents when things break bad in his old home town, assuming the role of psycho sidekick to his cousin, Penns River detective Ben “Doc” Dougherty. My favorite scene between them, in which Nick escalates a confrontation his cousin had under control, ends like this:

“I’m sorry, cuz,” Nick said. Doc knew from his tone he meant it more for him than for himself. “You called the meeting. I should’ve let you run it.”

“It’s okay, Nick. You’re right about shaking their tree. I just didn’t want to put you on the line. There are things about Volkov you don’t know.”

Nick still looked to where Yuri’s car had gone. Some of the light that shone from his eyes, made him a friend to children and dogs everywhere, had disappeared. Doc couldn’t identify what replaced it, and didn’t want to.

“It’s okay, Benny,” Nick said. “There are things about me you don’t know.”

I understand Benoit’s distaste. It’s too easy to use the Friendly Psycho as a crutch. It’s also a valuable archetype in crime fiction. We just have to continue to find ways to keep it vital. I hope I’m succeeding.

Best Reads of 2016

I read 67 books in 2016; started and failed to finish nine more. Below are my ten favorites, though not necessarily released in 2016 (I think only two were). I’m not saying they were the best books. These are the ten that stuck in my mind as the best reading experiences. (Listed alphabetically by title.)

A Detailed Man, David Swinson. Often neglected in the well-deserved buzz that surrounds The Second Girl, A Detailed Man deserves attention on its own merits. The story of a burned-out cop as he decides how badly he wants to rebuild his career (or not) and the various vicissitudes of having no regular gig in a police department.

Flash Boys, Michael Lewis. The stock market may have been intended as a way to create fluid capital and bring buyers and sellers together, but the people making the big money have nothing to do with any of that. They think of it as a casino and Lewis’s book described how they filter the skim for themselves.

King Maybe, Timothy Hallinan. The first of two Junior Bender adventures this year continues the series in good form, in part by returning Junior more to his roots as a burglar who gets by more on his wits than on hardware.

LaBrava, Elmore Leonard. Among the few Leonard novels I hadn’t read, ad from his prime crime period. As good as I’d heard it would be. True, his characters and plots have a lot of similarities, but they’re similar in good ways and just different enough you don’t mind. Besides, no one reads Elmore Leonard for the plots.

The Lost Detective, Nathan Ward. Maybe the best book I’ve ever read about a writer.

The Long and Faraway Gone, Lou Berney. Deserves all the acclaim. A departure from Gutshot Straight and Whiplash River, though the elements that made both of them so good are here, as well as an added layer. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

The Martian, Andy Weir. The biggest surprise read of the year. It’s been a long time since I read a book I enjoyed more.

Once Were Cops, Ken Bruen. Snuck in under the deadline to remind me how good Bruen is, even with awkward material.

Rain Dogs, Adrian McKinty. Book Five of the Troubles Trilogy shows why McKinty didn’t stop at three. He had a lot more for Sean Duffy to say and do.

World Gone By, Dennis Lehane. Sequel to Live By Night, and I liked it better.

Honorable Mention

The Hunter and Other Stories, Dashiell Hammett. A good cross-section of Hammett’s shorts.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. Finally got around to reading this, thanks to David Swinson. I see why it’s such a big deal, though it probably would have moved me more had I read it in school.

L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy. A big, glorious mess of a book. If you’re into Ellroy’s writing for the sake of the writing, read it. If you have a mission to read the entire LA Quartet, read it. Otherwise, see the movie.

The Long Good-Bye / Bay City Blues, Raymond Chandler. One of the Big Three Chandler novels, and one of the best shorts.

One or the Other, John McFetridge. The Olympics came to Montreal in 1976, and Eddie Dougherty was there. Take a look at how the Olympics affects a major city from the ground up.

Rumrunners, Eric Beetner. No one writes books that lend themselves to movie treatments better than Beetner. Unlike many others, his are outstanding books, too. Picture Harry Dean Stanton as the tough as nails old man here.

Rough Trade, Todd Robinson. Boo and Junior are in over their heads again, and Robinson gets them out in a way only he can.

July's Best Reads

July was a bit of an odd reading month, with half of it taken up by a vacation that didn’t lend itself much to reading. Having said that, what reading time I had was well spent.

World Gone By, Dennis Lehane. No one combines as many key elements of good writing and storytelling as Lehane. He’s the best when he’s on his game, writing with style and grace without overtly making you so aware of it you’re distracted from the story, which is always good. I wasn’t a huge fan of Live By Night—at least not by the standards I set for Lehane’s work after such gems as The Given Day and The Drop—but World Gone By more than makes up for it. Enough so that I wonder if I should give Live By Night another chance.

King Maybe, Timothy Hallinan. As good as Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty series is—and that series is damned good---the Junior Bender saga might have eclipsed it. Hallinan is able to take a caper Donald Westlake would have been proud to involve John Dortmunder in and wraps it in a story of psychological control of another person that rises to a pathological level. Those who enjoy the break-ins that launched the series will have more than enough to entertain them, and those who fell under the spell of the more personal elements that turned up in Herbie’s Game and The Fame Thief will get plenty of that. In short, there’s something for everyone here, and, as always with Hallinan, seamlessly delivered.

Crime Scene, Connie Fletcher. The queen of oral police histories. Her books never get stale, no matter how often I read them.

400 Things Cops Know, Adam Plantinga. Another re-read (I’m researching the next Penns River book) that has already earned a place next to Fletcher on my shelf and in my esteem.

The Drop

The current state of popular culture has me bummed, and not above whining about it. Imagine my elation when I finally got around to watching The Drop last week, a film that combines 21^st Century production values with 70s movie sensibilities.

Anything Dennis Lehane is associated with gets my attention, and I’d been aware of The Drop since the book released last fall. (An unorthodox road led to Lehane being asked to write a screenplay based on his short story, “Animal Rescue,” which he concurrently turned into a short novel to be released around the time of the movie’s premiere.) The book went with me to NoirCon and almost led me to miss a night at the bar. A great place to start for someone who is not yet a Lehane initiate. (Though why anyone is not yet a Lehane initiate is beyond me, unless they read Moonlight Mile first.)

The movie captures the feel of the book perfectly. This may not be too much of a surprise,

as the novel is, essentially, the screenplay, but we’ve all seen directors who get on the set and find their Muse has spent too much time in the sun, or got hold of some bad acid and bollocksed it altogether. It’s moody without laying it on, as director Michaël R. Roskam steps back and lets his actors and material rule the day, to great effect. (Though why they moved the story from Boston to New York is beyond me.)

The casting is perfect. Tom Hardy is the Liam Neeson of his generation, playing Bob as someone easy to underestimate. (Is he slow, or playing at it?) James Gandolfini’s Cousin Marv is where Tony Soprano could easily have wound up without some luck and smarts. Noomi Rapace is attractive in a damaged, girl you might see in a working-class bar way, not at all like a movie star. Matthias Schoenaerts plays Eric Deeds as a psycho who exhibits his imbalance through understated menace.

Understated. That’s the key work that sums up why The Drop is so good. No explosions. No chases. Just a story about people in difficult situations not always of their choosing, making borderline—and sometimes bad—decisions. Nothing in it feels made up, and everything in it makes perfect sense in retrospect. Everything you need to know to figure the final twist is there. Americans seems to make fewer of this kind of movie every year. (Of course, director Roskam is Belgian.) Let’s hope The Drop isn’t too much of an isolated incident.

Potpourri

I was going to promote The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of today, but, frankly, I’m tired of treading the line between promotion and bloviating. I don’t much like telling people how good my book is and how they really, really ought to read it if they want to be happier/have nicer hair/better sex/live longer. I think it’s a good book, but I’m prejudiced, not to mention a writer (read: introvert) and not a marketer (read: extrovert). It’s not only awkward for me, it’s exhausting. So, not today. If you think you might like Stuff, or any of my books, I’d be delighted if you bought or downloaded a copy, and will sign a paper copy any time you want. If not, buy someone else’s book. There are a metric shit tonne of excellent writers out there, as even a brief perusal of posts here will prove. Read any the authors mentioned. You’ll thank me for it.

So what am I going to post about, if not as an act of shameless and blatant self-promotion? Well, there are a few things:

McFly Day 2. The original box of books for The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

had some errors I hadn’t caught. Friend of this blog and blogger extraordinaire himself Peter Rozovsky pointed them out and I corrected them. While the errors

weren’t major—not as bad as some professionally edited and printed books I’ve read recently—the books didn’t meet the standard I like to set, and I appreciate Peter’s pointing them out. That was the last book I’ll self-publish without first availing myself of his professional services. It’s nice to think the original versions with the errors will be worth something someday, but I’m pretty sure the only five copies ever printed are in my office, so you missed your chance. That ought to learn you.

(Editor’s Note: I thought you weren’t going to promote the book.)

(Author’s Note: That’s just a mention, not promotion. They don’t want to buy the fucking book, they don’t have to.)

/ / / /

The Center for Fiction’s Crime Fiction Academy posts interviews and talks from noted crime writers. I’ve seen the interview with Elmore Leonard (Part Two is here) and the talk given by Dennis Lehane (also in two parts). Both are educational, engaging, and funny, well worth the time. Other authors in the series include Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, and George Pelecanos, though I’ve not had a chance to check theirs out.

/ / / /

I have long considered Ed McBain’s work to be the apotheosis of crime fiction, so it was better than good news to learn last week Hard Case Crime will re-release two early (as in pre-87^th Precinct) McBain novels, both out of print for over sixty years. So Nude, So Dead will launch in July, with Cut Me In to follow in January of 2016. Details and samples of each can be found by following the links. Congratulations and thanks are due Charles Ardai, one of the good guys in publishing, for bringing these back.

/ / / /

Every parent worries if they’re doing it right. Rarely is the correctness of an approach brought home as well as was done for me last week, when The Sole Heir told me a brief anecdote that took place between her and The Beau. They were cooking, and he didn’t think she used enough non-stick coating on the pan. She acknowledged she might have used more, but had recently received a

“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?” from me in a similar situation. The look he gave her made it obvious he had no idea what she was talking about. Understanding references to movies released 22 years (and more) before her birth was a bit of a project we undertook when she was about eleven years old, so she’d understand cultural references derived from those films. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jaws, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Animal House, Lawrence of Arabia, The Big Lebowski, both Godfathers, Alien, Aliens, The Terminator, Terminator 2, and probably fifty more over the years are familiar to her when they might not otherwise have been. We’ve all seen Internet lists of the “Ten/Fifteen/Twenty Greatest Movies Ever For [some quality],” that include only movies made in the past fifteen years or so, or since the writer first started paying attention. The Sole Heir knows better, and I’m happy to have played some small part in that. Our educational and entertaining screening room is available to her and The Beau on request.

November's Best Reads

Lots of good stuff read since last time, and more news on the way, but work still needs to be done. So, without further ad, my favorite November reads:

Every Bitter Thing, Leighton Gage. Leighton Gage’ death a couple of years ago was a great loss. His series featuring Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the Brazilian federal police has many of the best elements of Ed McBain’s 87^th Precinct, writ large across a nation. The rapport—not always without edge—between his cadre of cops is spot on, and the political reactions to the cases ring true. This is the first in the too-short series I’m re-reading from the start. After refreshing my memory here, I can’t wait to get to the next. If you haven’t read any of these books, you’re missing out. First rate stuff, right down the line.

The Drop, Dennis Lehane. Read this in two days during free time at NoirCon, which gives you an idea of how I blew through it. True, it’s not a long book, but it’s damn near perfect. Lehane is a master at making narrative flow like dialog, while writing dialog George V. Higgins would be proud of. Appropriately funny in spots, dark in spots, and with a twist that made me want to see the movie even more. Highest marks.

Cottonwood, Scott Phillips. Phillips never disappoints. Asking which of his books is my favorite will return a different answer, depending on whether I’ve most recently read: The Ice Harvest, The Walkaway, or Cottonwood. Right now it’s Cottonwood. I toy with the idea of writing a Western someday. If I do, this is exactly the tone I want to take. Scott can start lining up his legal team now. (The book appears to be out of print. Amazon has several links. The one provided is not a recommendation, just the first one listed.)

Queenpin, Megan Abbott. Great period read. It’s easy to see how this put her on the map. Her females are as tough as any man without being caricatures and their predicaments are realistic, as are the resolutions. Reminded me of The Grifters in the mentor-protégé relationship, though is derivative in no way. Sets up well for a sequel, if she ever chooses to. The period patter was a bit much, at times.

Black Rock, John McFetridge. I read a pre-release e-book and had trouble getting it onto my Kindle; the formatting didn’t come out right. I read it again in paper to have a little more of a pure reading experience and liked it even more. Kindles are great, but they can get between the author and reader in ways books do not, and this is a book you want nothing to be in the way of. (That’s called license, when a writer makes up grammar on the fly like I just did. Look it up.) McFetridge never received the public acclaim his Toronto series deserved. Let’s hope Constable Eddie Dougherty does, and that he doesn’t have to get old and cranky to do so.

Sucker Punch, Ray Banks. Working my way through the entire Cal Innes series, happened to read this one on the plane to Bouchercon, completely unaware Innes spends most of this story in LA making a mess of chaperoning a young boxer. Banks is as pitch-perfect a writer as I can name. Uses no more words than necessary, but no fewer, and exactly the right ones. His plots are as complex as they need to be, and his characters are alive the instant you first meet them. Grade A stuff.

Kill Clock, Allan Guthrie. An author/agent/editor/publisher polymath of a writer, Guthrie knows how to leverage the flexibility available in e-books to write stories only as long as they need to be. Pearce is the perfect anti-hero here, not looking for shit, but not going to put up with any, either. When he finds himself in a bad situation he had nothing to do with—and wants nothing to do with even more—he’s more than capable of bringing it to a head on his own. Guthrie doesn’t back away from his ending, which some won’t like, but is exactly what the story needed. The wry little coda at the end is a nice touch.

Breaking Point, Gerard Brennan. Another novella. Brennan, along with Guthrie and Banks, may have the best understanding of the benefits of the form. A sequel to The Point, Breaking Point picks up the story with some scores settled, but some still outstanding. Brian Morgan only wanted to buy some grass, but his dealer’s unrealistic ambitions suck him in a classic “wrong place/wrong time” scenario. Brennan isn’t as dark or hard edged as Guthrie, but his anti-hero is someone you can root for, while Kill Clock’s Pearce is someone who causes you to fear for the other guys.

TheLincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly. I read for style as much as for anything else. This is why best-sellers rarely appeal to me: too bland. I live for books where I can read a particularly nice bit to The Beloved Spouse, or pause and sit back with the ultimate compliment: I wish I’d written that. Connelly rarely does that, so it’s a tribute to how well his plots and characters are drawn that his books envelope me as they do. His research is so well done, I use his books as research for my own. And I can’t put them down. I didn’t think I’d like the premise for The Lincoln Lawyer, but found it in a discount bin for six bucks. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.