Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark (pen-name of Donald E. Westlake) (1971): Alan Grofield, occasional co-thief with Westlake/Stark's anti-hero Parker, gets one of his own adventures here, an often grim series of events clumsily but murderously orchestrated by a sociopathic heist planner with no idea how to successfully set up a big heist. Grofield, who needs money for his summer theatre company (!), turns down the seemingly incompetent Myers' offer to join his gang for a brewery heist, thus setting off a country-hopping series of criminal events. Details of the planning and execution of a competent heist not involving Myers are especially fascinating. Recommended.
Neighbors: written by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien; directed by Nicholas Stoller; starring Seth Rogen (Mac Radner), Rose Byrne (Kelly Radner), Zac Efron (Teddy Sanders) and Dave Franco (Pete) (2014): Amusing, raunchy tale of a battle between a fraternity run by Zac Efron and young couple Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen, who've just had a baby and now face the horrors of having a frat move in next to them. Could be sharper, but it passes the time. Lightly recommended.
The Giver: adapted from the novel by Lois Lowry by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide; directed by Philip Noyce; starring Brenton Thwaites (Jonas), Odeya Rush (Fiona), Cameron Monaghan (Asher), Jeff Bridges (The Giver), Meryl Streep (Chief Elder), Katie Holmes (Mother), and Alexander Skarsgard (Father) (2014): Film adaptation plays fairly freely with Lowry's award-winning novel, but nonetheless remains a fairly enjoyable tale of a future dystopia. Jeff Bridges is solid as usual as the literal keeper of memories for a post-apocalyptic society which carefully regulates emotions and emotional attachments. Recommended.
The Superman Chronicles Volume 8: written by Jerry Siegel; illustrated by Joe Shuster, Fred Ray, Leo Nowak, Jack Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul Cassidy, and others (1941-42; this collection 2010): Superman battles an unfrozen caveman and an electrically super-charged Lex Luthor in this volume of his early adventures. Jerry Siegel's interest in science-fiction tropes also manifests in a battle between the Man of Steel and an army of evil mermen, a ray that can age or de-age people, and the electricity-wielding threat of the Lightning Master. Stories written just before the United States entered World War Two feature the Man of Tomorrow battling saboteurs from Napkan (a thinly veiled Japan) and defeating the forces of aggressive European country Oxnalia (an even more thinly veiled Nazi Germany, complete with an Adolf Hitler lookalike as leader). Recommended.
Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake (1969/Reissued 2009): Very funny 'Wrong Man' suspense thriller by the great and prolific Westlake, reissued by Hard Case Crime for the first time in nearly 40 years (!). Our first-person narrator, a New York cabbie with a bit of a gambling problem, gets pulled into an increasingly dangerous situation between two criminal outfits after he discovers the brutally murdered body of his bookie. The female lead is tough and smart, the cabbie likeable, and the plot both twisty and fair. The funniest bit involves a low-speed chase through New York with the pursuers on foot and the leads in a cab that has to keep stopping for traffic lights. Recommended.
Simpsons Comics Explosion 1: written by Ian Boothby, Paul Dini, Chuck Dixon, Sergio Aragones, and others; illustrated by Phil Ortiz, John Delaney, Mike Kazaleh,Serio Aragones, and others (2014): Bongo Comics has done a nice job of doing humour comics for 20 years now. 20 years! As a long-time reader of all comics, I find one of the small joys of Bongo is its use of writers and artists who don't seem to get work at DC or Marvel any more, or not enough of it anyway. Here, those names include Paul Dini (the reason Season 1 of Lost was the best season of Lost may have had a lot to do with his work as story editor), Chuck Dixon, and Sergio Aragones. This 96-page collection is fun stuff. Recommended.
Superman Unchained: written by Scott Snyder; illustrated by Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Dustin Nguyen, and Alex Sinclair (2013-2014; collected 2014): Delayed so many times by Jim Lee, world's slowest artist, that it went from regular series to miniseries, Superman Unchained nonetheless gave us in the nine issues that came out over a two-year period the best long-form Superman story since Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman.
Much of this is due to Scott Snyder's writing. His Superman is thoughtful, stubborn, and painstakingly careful about human life. One of the high points of the series involves the Man of Steel trying to think his way through a battle with a more powerful solar-powered super-being than himself. Snyder gives us other scenes in which Superman's problem-solving abilities are on display -- why DC doesn't have him write an actual Superman on-going is anyone's guess.
The series doesn't ignore the current status quo in DC's main line, in which Superman dates Wonder Woman and has never dated Lois Lane, but it definitely doesn't foreground that state of affairs -- Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are front and centre in the plot. Lee's work is its over-stuffed and often over-complicated self, though it works for the most part with all the shiny gadgets and giant aliens being thrown Superman's way. Highly recommended.
The Cutie (a.k.a. The Mercenaries) by Donald E. Westlake (1960): Early novel from beloved crime novelist Donald E. Westlake, handsomely re-released in paperback by Hard Case Crime. It's also been given Westlake's preferred title, though the Cutie of the title is not what you'd think from the cover.
Westlake's strengths include a talent for intricate plots, apt bits of metaphoric description, and precise and concise characterization. Even this early in his career, all those strengths are present in The Cutie: you don't need to read this just to be a Westlake completist. You don't even need to care who Westlake is, though you will by the end.
Standalone novels like this one put Westlake firmly in the line of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. The Cutie's first-person narrator, a troubleshooter (pretty much literally) for a mob boss in New York, impresses the reader with his determination to find a killer even as his own almost split personality when it comes to violence becomes more and more apparent. He's not a dead soul, but he's probably damned.
Nonetheless, the narrator's pursuit of a murderer who's made things hot for his mob boss hums with menace and moral rot. And the narrator grows just enough in his own self-assessment that the ending comes as a grim epiphany: the things that the narrator assumed worked one way may instead work completely differently, at least when you're the boss.
Verisimilitude makes this sort of street-level thriller work. I don't know how accurate Westlake's depictions of the working of crime in 1960 really are, but they seem real. One of the best bits is a classification of all cops into one of four categories, with the pros and cons of each type. It seems like the sort of thing a killer who's always been too evolved for his econiche might formulate during his downtime. And it's moments like that, among others, that make Westlake worth reading decades after what were supposed to be disposable novels were published. Recommended.
