Favorite Reads, Spring 2026

 I’m a little late with my Q2 list. That doesn’t mean I had trouble finding books to recommend. On the contrary, it was a good quarter.

 The Big Empty, Robert Crais. I’ve been a fan of Crais’s work for over twenty years. His consistency is such I’m hard pressed to say which of his Elvis Cole books is my favorite. Until now. The Big Empty is the work of a master of the craft at the peak of his powers. Not only is this a compelling story with characters as well drawn as any in the literature, Crais handles with aplomb things that cause even the best of writers to stumble, such shifting points of view and timelines. Even if you’re not typically a fan of PI fiction, do yourself a favor and read this one.

 Mirage City, Lev AC Rosen. A new voice to be reckoned with in the PI genre. Rosen sets his novel in the gay community of Los Angeles in the 1950s, when homosexuality was still a crime. The story is complex and well told, and Rosen never stoops to preaching. The issues of the time – more than a few of which still linger, though not officially – are described matter of factly to allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Outstanding book. I’ll look for his earlier novel.

 Gray Dawn, Walter Mosley. There aren’t any compliments for Mosley’s Easy Rawlins novels that haven’t already been said, so I’ll leave it at this: Gray Dawn has everything one would expect from a Rawlins novel without seeming repetitious in any way. Easy’s family life evolves, but he still reaches back to former acquaintances for help when needed. His name may be misleading – things are never easy for Mr. Rawlins – but reading Mosley’s books is never a chore. The writing flows like water over a cliff. No oner does a better job of putting readers firmly in a place they’ve never been.

 Hatchet Girls, Joe Lansdale. Hap and Leonard ride again. I don’t know if there’s anything exceptional about this book when compared to the rest of the Hap and Leonard oeuvre – except maybe the premise – but the voice is so comforting and familiar to readers of the series that you feel like you’ve settled in with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while by the time you finish the first page.

 Crooks, Lou Berney. This book is currently on all kinds of award lists, and deservedly so. The story of a family of, well, crooks, who are proud of their heritage and happy to work together to enhance it. Berney’s writing is easy on the eyes and the story – stories, actually – each could stand alone as novellas. In Berney’s deft hands a framing story ties everything together as the children make their own ways after Mom and Dad had set their courses. Crooks proves a book can be great fun and still thought-provoking.

 At Their Own Game, Frank Zafiro. Why isn’t this guy better known? He’s worked on multiple crime series himself and collaborated on two others (that I know of) and I’m hard pressed to say one is better than the other. Usually a police procedural writer, At Their Own Game takes the POV of a cop turned criminal to examine both sides. The story is complex, with several twists I didn’t see coming until I found myself mumbling, “Of course,” though I never felt adrift. If you’re not familiar with Zafiro’s work, you’d be wise to take a look. Everything he writes is good.

 The Killing of the Tinkers, Ken Bruen. I picked this up at a used bookstore shortly after I heard of Bruen’s death. Two chapters in I realized I’d read it before but never thought of stopping. Jack Taylor is Jack Taylor, and sometimes Bruen makes him suffer more than he should, but Bruen’s ability to tell a tragic story with a little whimsy, and his unsurpassed control of the language, make everything he wrote a treat. His passing is a great loss.

Who You Calling 'Woke,' Motherfucker?

 On October 31, 2024 I posted a blog titled, “Chandler's Misogyny and The Little Sister.” On June 27, 2026, the heroically named Anonymous posted the following comment (I guess he’s a slow reader, as he is clearly not a deep thinker):                                    

 "Full disclosure: I am not what anyone would consider woke." Yeah, I could tell you were totally not woke when you wrote and published a long essay about Raymond Chandler's enduring and beloved detective mysteries and how appalled you are by their misogyny. Nothing screams "Not woke" to me than a long digressive essay judging an author from the 1940s through a contemporary feminist lens. Maybe you could further establish your "not woke" bona fides by examining Hammett's shocking inability to platform black voices in his work.

 My reply:

 Your courage is admirable. Anyone with an opinion I'd be inclined to consider would have left his name. And, yeah, I can tell you’re a guy, which only embarrasses me; you're beyond such self-examination.

 Thanks for giving me the idea for another blog post, dickhead.

This is the promised blog post.

 People who know me well will attest to the fact that, while I try to treat all people the way I’d like to be treated, I am not by any means ‘woke.’ The Beloved Spouse™ has an abstract object she calls ‘The Box,’ into which she insists I place some of my comments in the hope no one but her will ever hear them. As was Chandler, I am a product of my age, so many things The Sole Heir™ would never dream of saying strike me as innocuous.

 And sometimes I say shit just for effect. Sue me.

 I’m making a few points here:

1. There is a goodly distance between being woke and being an asshole. Context matters. Standing up for women/racial minority/LGBTQIA+/etc. rights is not woke; it’s doing the right thing. I’m proud to stand up for them, which doesn’t mean I accept their agendas without modification. I’ve had many disagreements with members of all these communities over the years. Sometimes it’s because I’m behind the times; I am, after all, seventy years old. Sometimes I’m an insensitive prick. There are occasions when I genuinely disagree with something they want, or how they want to accomplish it. There are also times my agreement is insufficient (to them), or not in the manner they want me to express it. To someone who is truly woke, that disqualifies me.
2. The fact that Chandler is a product of his times doesn’t mean he’s not a misogynist. He lived in misogynistic times. The laws, as well as social mores, were discriminatory toward women. (And just about everyone else who wasn’t a straight, white male.)
3. Papering over past inequities does not make this a better world. While The Little Sister exposes the misogyny of the times, I would never advocate for changing a word. No one is more strongly opposed to sanitizing the works of Mark Twain by removing the word nigger from his writing. We need literature that accurately describes the vernacular of its time so we can see what progress has been made. Or not.

I feel safe in assuming Anonymous is a white male, almost certainly straight (at best a self-loathing homosexual), as my peers, alas, are the only demographic that says things like this. So, and I’m speaking directly to Anonymous, you ofay, cracker, GED-aspiring-to, latent pedophile: You don’t have to ask if someone is woke any more than you have to ask if a person is vegan; you couldn’t stop them from telling you if you tried.

 Feel free to comment, especially to clarify what the fuck you mean by Hammett's shocking inability to platform black voices. Put your name on it, though. If you’re afraid to use your real name, “Pussy” will do. (With apologies to what may be my favorite part of the female anatomy.)

 

Why I Re-Watch Things (Hat tip to Frank Zafiro)

 The other day, my good friend and fellow writer Frank Zafiro sent a newsletter titled, “Why Do We Rewatch the Same Shows?”

 Most of us have a show or movie we’ve seen more than once. Usually more than once by a lot.

 It’s easy to call that nostalgia, and sometimes it is. But I think there’s more to it than that.

 Some stories become familiar territory. We know the people. We know the rhythm. We know what’s coming, and that’s part of the appeal. In a world that can feel noisy and unpredictable, there’s something to be said for returning to something that already fits.

 Sometimes we revisit stories because they changed us. Sometimes because they remind us who we used to be.

 And sometimes they’re just good company.

  He went on to mention a few of his (the first season of True Detective. Tombstone. Heat) before asking what his readers always come back to.

 For me, that’s a loaded question. I even have a schedule for some movies. For example, the night before the Super Bowl we watch The Drop. On my birthday, Get Shorty. Christmas Eve: The Ice Harvest. (The climax of a run of “Christmas movies” that includes Bad Santa, Bad Santa 2, Die Hard, The French Connection, and LA Confidential, though the latter is subject to review at any time. And, of course, Elf and A Christmas Story.) New Year’s Eve always features The Big Lebowski.

 There are others I re-watch randomly. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Frends of Eddie Coyle. The Wild Bunch. Appaloosa. Open Range. Unforgiven. The Usual Suspects. Miller’s Crossing. Chinatown. In the Electric Mist. The Nice Guys. And don’t forget the cult classics: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Animal House. The Princess Bride.

 Why do I rewatch these? Some are comfort food, things I know I can rely on for a pleasant evening no matter what else is going on. (Butch Cassidy, The Nice Guys, Monty Python, Animal House, The Princess Bride, Get Shorty, The Big Lebowski, The Ice Harvest.)

 Sometimes I want to remind myself how good stories are properly told. (The Drop, Appaloosa, Chinatown, In the Electric Mist.)

  Sometimes I just want to be swept away in the scope of a story. (The French Connection, LA Confidential, The Wild Bunch, Open Range, Unforgiven.)

 What makes all but the comfort food examples stand out is that every time I rewatch something like LA Confidential, The Drop, Unforgiven – or the greatest TV series ever made, Deadwood – I see things I’ve not noticed before. They’re such layered entities there’s always something to catch, even after repeated viewings. (I’ll include The Wire in there, too.)

 I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into detail here, but when I was working on my Master’s, one of the best teachers I ever had (Benjamin Zander) told us that, since we had chosen to dedicate our lives to music, we could no longer listen purely for entertainment. That didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy it – of course we could, and did – but our listening had to be deeper. Why did we enjoy it? Why did we not enjoy it? What can we learn from an artist’s interpretation? I became a much better musician than my meager talent gave me any right to be, thanks to studious application of this admonishment.

 The same is true of my reading and viewing now that I’m a writer. Movies and TV have to pass the So what? Test, and I need to be able to justify why they did, or did not, if only to myself. That’s where the bulk of my repeated re-viewings earned their stripes. I’ll never get tired of them because the more I know, the more I learn; it’s an endless cycle. It may be a point of craft, or it maybe when it’s over I sit back and tell myself That’s what you aspire to. It doesn’t matter that I know I’ll never attain the heights of my favorites; I’m newly motivated.

 One’s reach should always exceed their grasp. That’s why I watch these over and over again. To remind me.

Notes From the Shamus Awards (Or, What Publishers Don't Do)

 

(Disclaimer: My experiences with the publishing industry have not been such I wish to repeat them. Take my comments below as honest appraisals from an admittedly biased point of view, which doesn’t make me wrong.

 

That said, the five books we selected were all worthy of winning the award and might have won in a year when the competition was not as strong.)

 

I was recently a judge for the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Awards; the results will be announced at Bouchercon in Calgary. Our panel received 34 novels, several of which reminded me that, while my experiences with small publishers were less than optimal, the big boys aren’t much better.

 

I’ll leave aside marketing campaigns, or the lack thereof. We all know that ship has sailed and sunk. The big boys are sloppy even with the most targeted of marketing, such as submitting for awards.

 

Here are the requirements to qualify for a Shamus Award:

Eligible works must feature as a main character a person PAID for investigative work but NOT employed for that work by a unit of government. These include traditionally licensed private investigators; lawyers and reporters who do their own investigations; and others who function as hired private agents. These do NOT include law enforcement officers, other government employees, or amateur, uncompensated sleuths.

 

Succinct and clearly written. Yet half a dozen publishers sent books that didn’t qualify. One book overtly stated the protagonist was a government employee, though this was left murky until the last few pages. Is reading the requirements too much to ask? Or maybe they didn’t read the book? Or ask the author?

 

The most egregious example of sloppy work came from the publisher of a well-known author whose name often appears on award lists. We were tasked with evaluating books published in 2025; the publisher’s cover letter indicated a January 2026 release. I suspected a typo, so I checked. Sure enough, January 2026. This is your job, people. At least pretend to make an effort.

 

One day each judge received a box, sans cover letter or packing slip, with 12 books in it. Maybe that was all we were supposed to get; maybe not. There was no way to know. Another box arrived the day before the deadline containing two books and a cover letter that mentioned three. I sent him an e-mail to point out the error; he apologized profusely and overnighted the missing book. It worked out, but why wait until the day before the deadline?

 

A friend I trust recently pointed out that my cover descriptions could be better. Since I had 34 examples written by experts sitting in my reading room, I figured I’d not get a better resource.

 

This is why I don’t get paid to figure.

 

Almost without exception they give away too much of the story, including the first big reveal, which spoils whatever tension the author intended. The prose is too often not just purple but lurid, leading people unfamiliar with the author to potentially false conclusions about the style and quality of writing inside. Several have spelling, usage, and grammar errors. I can’ t decide if the people writing them were incompetent, or if the text was produced by AI and not proofread; I also can’t decide which is worse. A publisher’s lifeblood is clever and literate use of the written word. Such amateurish dust jacket blurbs are akin to Weyerhaeuser setting forest fires.

 

Things aren’t much better inside the book. Authors who write hardcover novels are under enormous pressure to meet deadlines and word counts; rarely is what they turn in isn’t as clean as they’d like it to be. That shouldn’t be a problem, as the publisher who pushed them so hard for the deadline has editors and proofreaders to tidy up after them. The author’s job is to be creative and on time.

 

Well, Maxwell Perkins* is dead and his descendants aren’t doing so hot themselves. Many of the books I read were filled with

·         The same word used too often and too close together.

·         Flabby writing. I realize not everyone wants to write as sparely as I do, nor should they; that’s a stylistic decision. Still, the amount of time spent on things that do not matter – say, two full paragraphs describing a waitress who will take an order and never be seen again – is mind numbing. Readers are busy people. Don’t waste their time.

·         Unnecessary repetition. I was taught, if I wrote the same thing three ways in hope of getting through to the reader, to pick the best and cut the others. This no longer appears to be the case, as the practice is clearly endorsed by publishers who must believe their readers are so stupid they need things explained multiple times.

 

The philosopher Tom Waits once said, “The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is ruining the quality of our suffering.” There is a lot of good writing out there. There’d be even more if the publishing industry held up its end.

 

(* - If you don’t know who Maxwell Perkins was, or have not seen the movie Genius, rectify the situation immediately.)

 

Rob Hart, Author of Three Hitmen and a Baby

 Today marks the launch of the third book in Rob Hart’s Assassins Anonymous series, Three Hitmen and a Baby. I’ve known Rob for several years and was a little surprised when it dawned on me I’d never had him on the blog. Today’s interview corrects that oversight.

 

For those who don’t know, Rob worked as a publisher for MysteriousPress.com and was a class director at LitReactor. He is the author of The Paradox Hotel, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award that was named one of the best books of 2022 by NPR; The Warehouse, which sold in more than twenty languages around the world; the Ash McKenna series of private eye novels; and more other woks than space permits, and, since this is the Internet, space permits a lot.

 

One Bite at a Time: Welcome to the blog, Rob. I was at Yonder the night you test drove the first chapter of Assassins Anonymous. Like everyone else there, I was blown away. I know better then to ask an author where they get their ideas, but I need to know how you came up with a twelve-step recovery program for professional killers.

 

Rob Hart: For a very long time I had an idea on the backburner of my brain, about a bunch of assassins in some kind of group therapy setting. I thought it would be funny to take a bunch of characters like that and stick them in a circle to talk about their feelings. One day it dawned on me that I could do that with the recovery process—which includes both steps and an amends process, which creates a bit of a container for the story. As soon as I thought of it in those terms, pretty much the whole thing clicked.

 

OBAAT: The books are violent and laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes simultaneously. How are you able to combine the two without detracting from the effect of either?

 

RH: I just think that’s where my voice falls naturally. I like to have a good time and laugh, but I also like to consider things seriously. Sometimes it takes a little modulation in the editing process, but for the most part, these books are just a joy to write.

 

OBAAT: Among the many things that makes this series special is how Mark keeps finding himself in mortal danger and has to get out of it without killing anyone, yet you never ask the reader to suspend too much disbelief. Do you outline those scenes, storyboard them, rehearse them, consult with martial arts and weapons experts, meditate, what?

 

RH: That part is a ton of fun. I do have a fighting background—I train in Muay Thai, but also previously trained in Krav Maga, and dabbled in BJJ and boxing. So in terms of how to choreograph a fight scene, what happens to the human body, etc… that’s all me just pulling from experience.

 

I do occasionally storyboard stuff, if it’s a bigger action sequence, because geography is important to a good action scene. And I do a lot of research, both on lethal and non-lethal weapons. But that’s the thing: the more limitations you have, the more creative you have to be. Shooting someone in the head is easy; sending Mark into a room full of people wielding guns, and he has to make it out without dying and without killing anyone? That takes some effort. But it also makes things way more fun.

 

OBAAT: On a panel at Left Coast Crime in 2025 you said you do an editing pass of your books working from the last chapter to the first. I’ve done that on my most recent books and now swear by it. What does the back-to-front approach accomplish for you and what made you think of it?

 

RH: I honestly don’t know; I can’t remember if I thought of it, or if someone suggested it to me. But, yes, starting with the last chapter and moving through to the front of the book is something I usually do on the third of fourth pass of editing. It puts fresh energy into the ending, and it helps to see things out of order sometimes, so you can think differently about how the plot fits together.

 

OBAAT: As a PI fiction guy, I have to ask what the deal is with Ash McKenna. The books are clearly collectors’ items, as I see them online with prices ranging from $30 to almost $60.

 

RH: I’m not sure anyone is actually paying that, but god bless ‘em if they are…

 

When Polis folded I held onto the rights. We poked around a little, and a lot of places interested in putting out a five-book backlist also want a new book to go with it. I’m not interested in writing more Ash at the moment—I like the ending I gave him—and my other stuff is already tied up.

 

But also, the books are being developed for TV. The team behind it is brilliant, the pilot script is amazing. So I’m going to hold onto them a little while longer. They’re a scratch-off lotto ticket at this point. If the show moves forward, they could be worth a lot more.

 

Those books will be back eventually. I’m just not currently in a rush.

 

OBAAT: What’s next for you? Will there be more in the Assassins Anonymous franchise?

 

RH: Indeed! So the third book, Three Hitmen and a Baby, comes out imminently. (Editor’s Note: ‘Imminently’ = today.) The fourth is called City of Killers. It’s set in Bangkok, and it’s a very fun premise, plus has a very cool payoff for people who’ve read all the books. That should be out in June 2027.

 

After that, I’m out of contract. If the series continues to do well and there’s an appetite for more and I still have ideas—sure, I’d love to write these characters for a long time. But the market dictates. So if you really want to make sure Mark and his friends stay alive, buy multiple copies, give them as gifts, tell friends, leave reviews… every little bit helps.

John Steinbeck and Me

I’ve been wanting to dip my toe back into the blog pool for a while now, but blogging is much like exercising: the longer you go without doing it, the harder it is to start again.

 

Tidying my hard drive in anticipation of a new laptop, I was surprised to find how many writing tips from my betters (read: just about everyone who can spell)I have compiled over the years.

 

Thus was born as misguided an idea as you are likely to find on the Internet outside of anything posted by Donald Trump. Using these tips from famous writers as fodder, I’m going to post my own thoughts about them, mostly how they relate to my writing, if at all. This could be an educational exercise, in which case yay for me. It could also be a catastrophe, in which case yay for you, as it’s always fun to watch someone else crash and burn when it’s their own damn fault.

 Today’s installment looks at six writing tips from John Steinbeck.

 Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

This is a variation of the dictum The Beloved Spouse™ taught me years ago: eat the elephant one bite at a time. I don’t think I could have written seventeen novels any other way.

 

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

This may be the one tenet I observe most religiously, so much so some first drafts look more like screenplays, as I leave notes for what needs to be filled in so I don’t lose momentum.

 

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

This is something I learned as a musician when a performance wasn’t going as well as I liked. I’d pick a single person in the audience, typically in the back row, and play just for them. As a trumpeter, this made me project, which forced me to breathe and phrase properly regardless of the volume. It works just as well for writing, even if the single person in my imaginary audience is me.

 

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it — bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

See my response to Number Two above. It’s not unheard of for me to go back, complete the chapter, then throw it away in a later draft.

 

Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

Steinbeck’s version of ‘kill your darlings.’ I cut a whole chapter from the final draft of the work in progress, even though I really wanted it in there, so much so I made excuses to keep it in all previous drafts. Reading through it this time, knowing it was my last chance to make changes, forced me to realize that, while well-written and entertaining, it did not move the story and did not tell us anything about the characters we didn’t already know.

 

If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

It used to scare The Beloved Spouse™ when she’d hear me arguing with myself behind a closed door. It probably still does – as it should – but even she agrees it makes the books better.

 

I enjoyed this exercise more than I thought I would. I hope you did, too.

 

 

Winter's Favorite Reads

 This is a shorter quarterly list than usual. That doesn’t mean read any less, or that I didn’t like as many books. I’m a Shamus judge this year, so my reading time has been consumed by award submissions and I don’t think it’s appropriate to single any of them out until the short list has been announced. Those books will be noted in a future “Favorite Reads” post.

 

The Blooding, Joseph Wambaugh. An examination of the first homicides solves through DNA analysis. Two young women were brutally murdered in only a few minutes from the English university where the scientific breakthrough was made, allowing their cases to be used to prove the theories. Fascinating from start to finish and told in Wambaugh’s avuncular yet riveting style. I never met the man, though we corresponded once, but I was truly sad when I learned of his death last year. He was a national treasure for both his fiction and non-fiction writing, and the crime writing community owes him more than can be expressed.

 

The Fatal Saving Grace, Jim Nesbvitt. It took nerve to reintroduce loose cannon private eye Ed Earl Burch into a formal law enforcement setting, but Nesbitt shows the inevitable friction while also displaying the ways in which Ed Earl was a stud cop in his day. The supporting cast plays well off of the protagonist and the dialog is always entertaining without drawing attention to itself. Nesbitt also creates a sense of place reminiscent of the movie Hell or High Water, though this story takes place farther west. I’m going to have to go back and look into some of the books I missed in this series while I wait for the next one, and I am waiting for the next one.

 

Hang on St. Christopher, Adrian McKinty. Book Eight of the Sean Dufffy trilogy. (That was the author’s original plan. The first three went so well he couldn’t stop, and we’re all better off because of it.) Duffy is a Catholic cop in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, which means he has to check his car for bombs every time he gets in. The friction between Duffy and the protestant cops has pretty much died down, but no one else he deals with during an investigation trusts him, including Special Branch. McKinty creates a sense of time and place like few others, and Duffy is a fascinating and always growing character. Let’s hope the author has at least one more of these in him.

 

The Last Exile, Sam Wiebe. Book Five of the Wakeland series picks up where Sunset and Jericho left off, with Dave Wakeland having left the agency he was running with partner Jeff Chen. The book starts with Wakeland living in Montreal and returning to Vancouver to help Chen’s cousin, lawyer Shuzhen Chen. What starts as a protection job soon enmeshes Wakeland with a ruthless motorcycle gang as he learns the agency is in the midst of going under, due in large part to an unscrupulous real estate developer. Wiebe always makes the Wakeland novels about more than the case, and The Last Exile is no exception.