April's Best Reads

April was a good month for reading. Max Hastings’s Inferno, which took up so much of March, set the bar high. Other writers were up to it.

Inferno: The World atWar 1939-1945, Max Hastings. The Second World War is too large a topic to be handled in detail in a single volume; Hastings acknowledges as much in the foreword. He then proceeds to provide more than a military history, echoing the best elements of Cornelius Ryan’s brilliant work (The Longest Day, The Last Battle, A Bridge Too Far). With insights gathered from generals, politicians, soldiers, and civilians, Hastings has written a masterful history that not only touches on all aspects of the war, but provides incentive to look for more detail on matter one might not have been aware of before. A fluid and eminently readable writer, Hastings spares no one with his criticism—though not without taking conditions into mind—and praises where earned—again, not unconditionally—providing adequate evidence for either. I’d intended to read this in chunks, mixing in fiction along the way, and found I couldn’t put it down. Highest recommendation.

Jimmy Bench Press, Charlie Stella. The darkest of the Godfather’s oeuvre, and I’ve now read them all. Shows the most overt influence of George V. Higgins in both the dialog-driven story and the darkness of the plot, which resolves itself in the only way it could, never giving away too much. Cheapskates may still be my favorite Stella for the humor with which it handles the mob; this is just as good. Brilliant storytelling that never draws attention to itself.

Colt, Jude Hardin. Maybe even better than Pocket 47, the original, and still my favorite, Nicholas Colt story. Colt is approached during the annual drunk he uses to commemorate the anniversary of the death of his wife, daughter and band, by a young man who wants him to find his biological father. Colt passes out, the kid disappears, and very little goes as expected afterward. Just when Hardin makes you worry he’s about to have jumped the shark, he reels things in with a satisfying and believable ending.

The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping, Les Edgerton. Imagine Les Edgerton’s writing. Dark, despairing noir. Habitual criminals. Rapists. This is nothing like that. The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping has a plot John Dortmunder would have trouble negotiating, and Edgerton milks it for all it’s worth. Not for the faint of heart, the crime that really sets the story off involved kidnapping a gangster—no, I can’t do it. I don’t want to spoil even that much. Suffice to say kidnapping, sexual fetishes, forced amputation, Tourette’s Syndrome, certain death, and one-way tickets to Skagway AK are all played for laughs, and he pulls it off. You may find the book takes a little time to catch its rhythm; the beginning is good, but feels at time like he’s trying too hard. Stay with it. Big fun. My daughter described the movie Ted as “Really funny and wildly inappropriate.” It’s like that.

Miami Blues, Charles Willeford. Another of those writers I decided I’d better get to before I missed my chance. (I have a recurring nightmare I’ll be in a horrible accident and the EMT ready to plug me into a bag of blood will pause when his partner asks, “Have you ever read [insert name of author I really should have read by now]? I say no and the EMT says to his partner, “Fuck him. Let him die.” At least now Willeford can’t kill me.) I saw the movie twenty years ago—Fred Ward was born to play Hoke Moseley—and thought this would be a good place to start. It was. Willeford is everything I’d heard he would be. Written so the eye pulls itself across the page, the characters, story, dialog, and setting come together to create a story greater than the sum of its parts, and the parts were impressive themselves. Funnier than I expected, too.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carré. I’d read a few lesser known le Carré’s before. After seeing Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy a few months ago (the Gary Oldman movie version), I decided to get into the books that made his name, and started here, pretty much at the beginning. le Carré is a master, worthy of his praise. I’m not so old I remember the state of the world in the early 60s, but that’s okay: I get it now. Propelled through a dreary landscape by top-notch, understated writing, until it comes to an inevitable and oddly satisfying ending TSWCIFTC is the kind of novel almost never written today: a thriller that leaves you thinking about human nature when the book ends. It’s time to start working my way through his oeuvre in detail. (Side note: I read the 50^th anniversary edition, with a foreword by the author. It’s worth getting just for that.) (Bonus side note: I haven’t seen the movie; I know Richard Burton starred. Imagining Alec Leamus’s lines spoken by Burton works very well, indeed.)

Twenty Questions With Jude Hardin

(Editor’s Note: Saturday’s launch exceeded all expectations, so much so I lack the energy to do justice to all those who made it special for me. A full report will come in Wednesday’s blog. Today, Jude Hardin has plenty to interest and entertain.)

Jude Hardin has worked as a fence installer, pizza delivery man, convenience store clerk, freelance journalist, film extra, professional drummer, bartender, avionics technician, carpet cleaner, chemical plant supervisor, substitute teacher, and registered nurse. His varied vocations have given him a wealth of experiences for his true passion — writing novels.

 I’ve been a fan since his first novel, Pocket-47. Long time readers of this blog know better than to accept what I say without corroboration, so here are a couple of folks you may trust more:

New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen says: "Pocket-47 sucked me in and held me enthralled. Author Jude Hardin keeps the pace frantic, the thrills non-stop, but best of all is his hero, the wonderfully ironic Nicholas Colt. This is a character I'm eager to follow through many adventures to come."

One New York Times bestselling author is not enough. David Morrell (First Blood, from which Rambo was taken) says: "With Crosscut, Jude Hardin takes the PI novel and psychological suspense to a new, unrestrained level. Fast, fierce, and relentless."

Jude graduated from the University of Louisville in 1983 with an English degree, and currently lives and works in northeast Florida. When he’s not pounding away at the computer keyboard, Jude can be found pounding away on his drums, playing tennis, reading, or down at the pond fishing with his son. His newest book is Blood Tattoo.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Blood Tattoo.

Jude Hardin: First of all, thanks for inviting me here, Dana. Nice digs!

Blood Tattoo is the sixth novel in the Nicholas Colt series, including a prequel titled Colt, which was released earlier this year. I wanted to take the series in a new direction, so I added a character named Diana Dawkins, who is an operative for a clandestine government agency called The Circle. She has a problem, and she comes to Colt for help, informing him that he’s been a potential recruit for the agency for a while now. In Sycamore Bluff, the book that follows Blood Tattoo, Nicholas Colt and Diana Dawkins share equal billing. From there I’m planning to give Diana her own series.

OBAAT: Where did you get this idea, and what made it worth developing for you? (Notice I didn’t ask “Where do you get your ideas?” I was careful to ask where you got this idea.)

JH: Like most of my ideas, it started with a what if? scenario. What if a secret agent posing as a Department of Defense inspector happened across a binder full of coded schematics that outlined, in precise detail, how she was going to be framed for assassinating the President of the United States? Who could she go to? Who could she trust? Nobody, at that point, because she doesn’t know who might be on it—maybe people in her own organization. So that was the initial concept.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Blood Tattoo, start to finish?

JH: About six months, but that includes several rounds of edits and time spent on other writing projects. I had a working draft put together in less than four months.

OBAAT: What’s the back story on the main character or characters?

JH: In 1989, at the peak of his career as a rock and blues guitarist, Nicholas Colt crawled from the wreckage of a chartered jet as his wife and baby daughter and all the members of his band were consumed in a ball of flames. Colt was the sole survivor. He went through a very rough period where he basically gave up on music and life in general. He hit rock bottom and finally clawed his way back and decided to become a private investigator.

Colt also had a very troubled childhood. His mother died in a car accident when he was five, and his abusive stepfather committed suicide when he was fifteen. Bad luck has a way of finding him, but he perseveres, and he maintains a sense of humor through most situations.

OBAAT: In what time and place is Blood Tattoo set? How important is the setting to the book as a whole?

JH: It’s set in the present. Most of the action takes place in north Florida, but at one point Colt makes a trip to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

I like to use the nature of various spaces to augment the suspense, so in that regard the settings are crucial throughout.

OBAAT: How did Blood Tattoo come to be published?

JH: Back in 2011 my agent submitted my novel Crosscut to Thomas and Mercer. They loved it, and they put together a multi-book deal, which I accepted. Blood Tattoo is part of that deal.

OBAAT: What kinds of stories do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors, in or out of that area?

JH: I like to mix it up. Right now I’m reading Michael Crichton for the first time. I try to learn something from everything I read, whether it’s horror, techno-thrillers, or historical mysteries.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences?

JH: John D. MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, Stephen King. Just to name a few.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants? Do you even wear pants when you write?

JH: I don’t outline, but I make notes as I’m composing, and I often go back and add things here and there based on those notes.

Pants are always optional, unless you write with a cigarette dangling from your lips. Hot ashes can be painful down there. Not that I gave up smoking six years ago because of that.

OBAAT: Give us an idea of your process. Do you edit as you go? Throw anything into a first draft knowing the hard work is in the revisions? Something in between?

JH: I edit as I go. My first drafts are actually pretty clean.

OBAAT: Favorite activity when you’re not reading or writing.

JH: Sex. I recommend it. It’s even better when another person is involved.

OBAAT: Which do you take to bed at night, the money earned or the good review?

JH: Are we still talking about sex?

OBAAT: Would you stop writing if someone paid you enough money so you’d never have to work again, on the condition you could also never write again?

JH: I would take the millions and then publish on the sly under a pseudonym. What could possibly go wrong?

OBAAT: If you were just starting out, which would you prefer: 1. Form your own indie publishing house and put your work out in paper and e-book yourself? 2. Go with a small or medium traditional house that offers very little or no advance, a royalty that is only a fraction of what you'd get on your own, and also makes no promise of any type of publicity push, keeping in mind that you also will lose the publishing rights for a period, sometimes indefinitely?

JH: I started out with a small press, and I think they did a great job on my debut. The book received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, along with some other solid reviews, and it’s a book I’m proud to have written. Right now I’m trying my hand at self-publishing, but there’s no way to predict what the future might hold. The only thing I know for sure is that publishing is a tough business, and that writers must choose their own path based on their goals and what they hope to gain from the experience.

OBAAT: Beer, mixed drinks, or hard liquor?

JH: Yes.

OBAAT: Baseball or football?

JH: In the early 1970s, when I was a kid, I was a big Cincinnati Reds fan. Johnny Bench was my hero. I wanted to be a catcher because of Johnny Bench. I bought a mitt, a face mask, shin guards, a chest protector, everything I needed to be just like Johnny. Except the talent, of course.

Well, I recently reconnected with one of my favorite teachers from Jr. High, and I soon discovered that he’s the former Executive Director of the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, and that he’s the current team historian.

I still have that catcher’s mitt from when I was eleven.

And my friend is going to get Johnny Bench to sign it for me.

So right now? BASEBALL!!!!

OBAAT: What question have you always wanted an interviewer to ask, but they never do?

JH: What’s Charlize Theron REALLY like?

OBAAT: What’s the answer?

JH: I don’t have a clue. L

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

JH: A standalone thriller. It’s still in the idea stages, but I plan to start writing it soon.

Sycamore Bluff, the follow-up to Blood Tattoo, is almost ready to be published, so I’ll probably release those two books concurrently. In the digital age, there’s no point in delaying publication once a book is ready. There’s infinite shelf space, and lower prices mean readers can afford to buy more books than ever before. It’s a great time to be a writer.

Also, I just finished a collaboration with author J.A. Konrath a couple of weeks ago, a novel featuring his Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels and my Nicholas Colt. Hoping to see that one released before the end of the year.

A lot going on lately, so my batteries are still sort of recharging at the moment. But I’ll start on the new thriller soon. I get antsy if I go too long without working on a book.

OBAAT: If you could give a novice writer a single piece of advice, what would it be?

JH: If you smoke, wear pants.

Best Reads For 2011

I didn’t read quite as much this year as I had in the past, for several reasons, all of which have been documented elsewhere. That doesn’t mean I didn’t find plenty of books worthy of recommendation. I meant to have a list of ten, then twelve, the fifteen, but I could draw a bright line until I was into the twenties.

So here you go with the books I read last year and would be willing to read again, time permitting. They’re listed in alphabetical order; no preference should be inferred.

Absolute Zero Cool, Declan Burke. Publishing is more farked up than even I thought if this doesn’t establish Burke as someone to keep an eye on. Meta-fiction at its best, as the author argues with a character and himself to spin a tale no one else could have thought of, let along written.

Big Money and Big Numbers, Jack Getze. Getze’s trick is to show you the climax at the beginning, then work back toward it, a la Michael Clayton. Not only does Getze pull it off both times, he’s a lot funnier.

City of Lost Girls, Declan Hughes. Not Hughes’s best Ed Loy novel, and I still couldn’t bear to leave it off the list. There’s no one better working today.

Crashed and Little Elvises, Timothy Hallinan. Hallinan took a break from his Poke Rafferty thrillers to start an e-book series about a master burglar who works as sort of a PI for the underworld. The plots are witty and Hallinan hits a perfect balance of humor and action both times.

The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide, John McNally. Does for how to be a writer what Stephen King’s On Writing does for how to write. Young writers in particular should pay attention to what McNally has to say.

Eddie’s World, Charlie Stella. Stella first. The influence of George V. Higgins is writ large, but this is no knock-off. No one captures peripheral mob figures as well as Stella.

Generation Kill, Evan Wright. The book on which David Simon based his HBO series. Things have more perspective in the book. Must reading for anyone who wants a first hand look of what war is like without actually having to go.

Gun, Ray Banks. A novella that describes one day in the life of a just-released convict. Unforgettable.

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James. Even more detailed than the original. Maybe too much to read straight through, though James’s writing wears better than a lot of people who are supposed to be writers.

In Defense of Flogging, Peter Moskos. Thoughtful and thought-provoking look into how criminals are punished in America.

Joe Puma, PI, William Campbell Gault. I honest to God don’t remember why I bought this collection of five stories from the Fifties, but I sure am glad I did. First rate PI writing.

Lawyers, Guns, and Money, J.D. Rhoades. Crime and corruption in a small southern town described in perfect balance and style for the setting and material.

Maximum Bob, Elmore Leonard. I’d read it before, and I suspect I’ll read it again.

Pocket 47, Jude Hardin. A deft combination of complexity and readability. Hardin keeps this up and he’ll be the obscure no longer.

Road Rules, Jim Winter. More fun than anyone has ever had in Cleveland. Either Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen would have been happy to write this.

Rut, Scott Phillips. Scariest post-apocalypse scenario yet: what happens if we keep doing what we’ve been doing. Phillips’s wit ensure nothing drags or becomes predictable.

Samaritan, Richard Price. Good intentions with questionable motivations. Not as gripping as Clockers, but a marvelous book.

Setup on Front Street, Mike Dennis. Don’t let the setting (Florida Keys) fool you. As hard-boiled as they come while still using the setting to maximum advantage. The first of a series; the second is already on my Kindle.

Shadow of the Dahlia, Jack Bludis. Maybe my favorite book of the year. Bludis has a reputation, but this was the first book of his I’d read. He captures the period perfectly with a riveting story.

Shit My Dad Says, Justin Halpern. Not just a compilation of tweets, Halpern provides some family history to place the quotes in perspective. He’s a good and funny writer himself, and the old man’s quotes are priceless, though some do seem a little prickish when you realize they were delivered to a twelve-year-old kid. (Sorry, I’m not going to go with the politically correct * when we all know it’s the I in shit.")

True Grit, Charles Portis. I’d seen both movies, finally got around to reading the book. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I can hold a job, waiting as long as I do for good stuff.

Two-Way Split, Allan Guthrie. Hard to say too much without giving away a key plot element. Pay close attention and you’ll not be disappointed.

A Vine in the Blood, Leighton Gage. This newest in the Chief Inspector Mario Silva series may be the best.

June’s Best Reads

I’m enjoying my summer off from writing (waiting for Wild Bill to come back from formatting by doing light prep research for uploading) by watching baseball (the Pirates are two games over .500 on July 1 and I lived to see it) and reading. Lots of reading. And, as you can see by the list below, lots of good reading.

Samaritan, Richard Price. Not his best, still better than just about everyone else. Price examines white guilt through the story of a writer who returns home to the project where he grew up and tries to do good for debatable reasons. As always, solving the crime is less important than how the principals respond to the act of solving the crime. The book goes on a little longer than it needs to, but the writing never drags. Easy to see how Price got hooked up with David Simon for The Wire. They were made for each other.

Charlie Opera, Charlie Stella. Not as polished as his more recent books, easy to see how this one launched Stella into multiple publications. What could have turned into yet another story of an innocent straight guy in over his head against the mob—winning implausibly when he had no business doing so—becomes the story of a resourceful man who’s straight, but as hard as the crooks who are after him. Law enforcement plays just enough of a role, and the hoods are just shortsighted enough, to keep things believable. Stella’s writing has become tighter over the years, but nothing drags here. It was fun to see where he came from.

Setup on Front Street, Mike Dennis. I’ve been aware of Mike Dennis from his blog and other sources for a while now, finally got around to reading him. Now I’m kicking myself for waiting so long. He hits the trifecta here: great, but not overdone setting (Key West), a protagonist who’s hard enough to get things done in the manner described while retaining your empathy, and a spot-on voice reminiscent of Mickey Spillane. I thought I might like it going in, but not nearly as much as I did. Dennis also has a knack too many writers have forgotten these days: get in, tell your story, and get out. No padding here.

Collateral Damage, the authors or the Do Some Damage blog. Several collaborative blogs have released collection in the past year or so. This one and its predecessor (Terminal Damage) are the best I’ve read. Not a weak story in the bunch, though Joelle Charbonneau, Russell MacLean, and John McFetridge stand out. Just about the most entertaining dollar you’ll ever spend. (Assuming you have a Kindle.)

Pocket 47, Jude Hardin. Kick ass. Hardin’s hero is a former musician turned PI (which I love, as one of my protags is a musician turned PI) who struggles to make ends meet in a manner reminiscent of Hickey and Boggs. Nicholas Colt gets involved in what appears to be  a routine wandering sister case and finds himself seeing dead people. Okay, not really, but read the book to find out. Helluva read.