Favorite Reads: October

Mom is nearing the end of her rehab stint (“home” to assisted living on Thursday) and work has been six different kinds of goofy so my reading time has deteriorated. The good news is that most of what I did get to read was first-rate.

Where the Bullets Fly, Terrence McCauley. Hard to believe he’s my friend. Wide as his talents range, I should hate him. He’s such a nice guy I don’t, but such a good writer I’m still tempted. As with his Prohibition-era crime stories and his University techno thrillers, McCauley makes it all look easy. This is a Western that pays homage to the glory days of the horse opera while clearly written in the revisionist period we’re in now, with awareness that was lacking in the 50s and earlier. This is harder to pull off than it looks (I should know, or my Western would have been done a couple of years ago) and McCauley does more than pull it off; he succeeds.

The Hook, Donald Westlake. Speaking of writers who seem to be able to anything they want and make it look easy, there’ Donald Westlake. Not a Richard Stark/Parker novel, and certainly not a Dortmunder, The Hook is a twist on Strangers on a Train, where a writer who’s successful but blocked hooks up with a writer who’s fertile but can’t get a contract; together they put one over on the blocked writer’s publisher. There’s a catch, though, and given my reference to SOAT you can probably guess what it is, but the complication is completely original and Westlake’s set-up is so masterfully done it doesn’t matter that you’ll see the end coming a chapter or two ahead of time. By then you’ll be wondering less “what” than “how,” and the pace at which the “how” is revealed will fill you with dread.

October's Reads

October was an up and down month for reading, but the ups were so far up, it was a good month.

The Getaway Car: ADonald Westlake Non-Fiction Miscellany, edited by Levi Stahl. I came late to Westlake, and the more I learn of him, the better I like him, both as a writer and as a man. This potpourri of non-fiction—letters, essays, book introductions—is sometimes serious, more often funny, but always well crafted. Lawrence Block’s introduction takes editor Stahl to task for referring to Westlake’s “jokes,” and is right to do so. There’s not a joke in the book, though there are lot of laughs. Westlake’s strength was his wit, which showed itself in his ability to phrase what would have seemed commonplace coming from anyone else in such a way the corner of your mouth can’t help but turn up. Read this, even if you’re not a Westlake fan. Not only will it be great fun, but you’ll likely become a fan.

The Color of Blood, Declan Hughes. Hughes’s Ed Loy books are the synthesis of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. Having heard Hughes speak on the primacy of the PI story in crime fiction, it’s easy to see that passion on every page here. Ed Loy gets hired to do a task, follows through to the end because he needs to know. This may not be the way of a real-life PI with bills to pay and a license to maintain, but it makes for intoxicating fiction. In The Color of Blood, Loy finds the motivations for murder in events over twenty years’ past, and describes them with a kind of prose few other than Chandler have managed. Things get a little convoluted at times and have to be explained in the classic, “I supposed you wonder I called you all together” scene, but even that is less a resolution than the spring that will launch the resolution when it comes.

December's Best Reads

My reading year ended with a bang.

Mischief, Ed McBain – A good, old-school, everyone gets into the act 87th Precinct story, featuring the Deaf Man. Meyer and Hawes get the mystery of abandoned Alzheimer’s patients, Parker and Kling have to work the killings of graffiti artists, and Carella and Brown have to figure out what the hell the Deaf Man is up to. All the stories end with less than perfect resolutions, and McBain is in fine form as the narrator.

Somebody Owes Me Money, Donald Westlake –The Hunter, played for laughs. Chester Conway gets a tip on a horse and winds, then shows up to collect a few minutes after his bookie gets clipped. The bookie’s widow, his sister, two crime factions, and the cops all think Chet’s involved when all he wants is his $930. He’s going to get it, though. Laugh out loud funny in spots, especially when Chet is laid up and all the other players pass though his bedroom to advance their agendas. Great fun.

Swan Peak, James Lee Burke – His flowing descriptions seem better suited for the lush vegetation of Louisiana than to the sometimes stark beauty of Montana, but Dave Robicheaux always delivers. Clete’s more involved here than usual as a vacation goes sour when he accidentally camps on restricted property. Local law, the feds, organized crime, and a Texas escapee and his pursuer complicate things right up to the ending that doesn’t end quite how you expect.

Shakedown, Charlie Stella – A New York bookie quits the business three months before his old boss turns state’s evidence. Multiple plot lines interweave, and no one does anything out-of-character stupid just to advance the plot; it all makes sense when the decisions are made, no matter how badly things turn out. The mobsters are unapologetically, not caricatures, and the dialog is dead on.