Gun Machine (2013) by Warren Ellis: Warren Ellis, a long-time comic-book writer (Transmetropolitan, The Authority, and Planetary, among many others) and acerbic futurist, creates one hell of a smart Pop detective thriller here.
Lonely, burned-out, never-was NYPD detective John Tallow starts Gun Machine with a bad day that quickly gets worse. The violent events of the first few pages open a door into a secret Manhattan world of murder and weird maps. And guns. Lots of guns. Hundreds of guns from flintlocks to modern, near-metal-less handguns. An otherwise empty apartment filled with guns arranged into a mysterious, incomplete pattern. And every gun attached to either an unsolved murder or a murder now known to be incorrectly solved.
Tallow's detective instincts get jump-started by this room of mystery, especially after the case is dumped on him because the NYPD not-so-secretly wants Tallow to fail and the cases to vanish as quickly as possible. A bad detective gets born again, though that rebirth may be short-lived. Conspiracies of power don't want the secret of the guns solved.
Ellis' prose is as pungent and cynical as ever, densely packed with information. The plot rockets along. Tallow and the other characters are sharply drawn. Sharply drawn, too, is our attention to the secret maps of Manhattan which Tallow discovers. A financial map based on the time it takes for financial offices to communicate with Wall Street. A map of gun crimes in Manhattan and the other boroughs. And the map the killer carries in his head, of Manhattan before Europeans came, a map that still surfaces in surprising places in the postmodern landscape.
It's a dark romp that engages with social and technological questions as it zips along, dialogue crackling and sparking, the narrative casting a cold eye on the modes of NYPD evidence collection, the surveillance state, the technical specifications of guns used in famous murders, the difficulty of parking in New York, the meaning of Occupy Wall Street, the malign rise of private policing, the dangers of too much exercise, an assortment of Native American tribes and rituals, and the politics of the police bureaucracy.
Gun Machine is too densely packed to make a great movie, but it would make one hell of an HBO miniseries. Highly recommended.
The Godwulf Manuscript (Spenser #1) (1973) by Robert B. Parker: The first published novel featuring Robert B. Parker's hardboiled but sensitive PI Spenser (no first name ever given) involves the Mob and... academia? The titular manuscript is an illuminated medieval manuscript stolen from a Boston university (though not Boston University). The administration suspects campus radicals and hires Spenser to investigate. The case turns out to be more complex than that.
Some of Spenser's defining traits are already in evidence, though muted compared to even a couple of books later in publication. He's a good cook, and cooking will get described in detail that suggests at points that Parker was a frustrated cookbook writer. He's sarcastic, so sarcastic that some scenes strain credibility. He loves quoting literature. He can beat up almost anyone. And he's a sexy beast.
My personal rating of hardboiled detective series seems to now revolve around just how much of wish-fulfillment character the protagonist seems to be, as much for the writer as the reader. The more wish-fulfilly a PI, the less interesting I find the series. And after this first adventure, Spenser was about to become way more wish-fulfilly. It doesn't help that the mystery isn't that mysterious. Lightly recommended.
God Save the Child (Spenser #2) (1974) by Robert B. Parker: The Spenser series begins to shift into some serious wish-fulfillment territory, along with some jarringly creepy stuff involving a gay body-builder having a sexual relationship with a teenager who's way below the age of consent. This doesn't seem to particularly irritate or offend Spenser.
Ah, those carefree days of the 1970's!
Spenser's investigation of the disappearance of that teenager once again seems to be peculiarly non-mysterious, even with the 11th-hour introduction of a sex ring (also involving underage teenagers!) into the narrative. Spenser's long-time gal-pal Susan Silverman appears for the first time, giving Spenser his own wish-fulfillment figure. And someone to cook for, in detail. Not recommended.
Promised Land (Spenser #4) (1976) by Robert B. Parker: This won the 1977 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Novel. Was 1977 a bad year? Were no other mystery novels published? On the bright side, there's no creepy references to sex with underage teenagers this time around (or 'Statutory Rape,' as it's also known).
There is a lot of relatively enlightened talk about feminism and what seems like half a novel devoted to Spenser's relationship with Susan Silverman. Spenser explains how to cook and drinks enough booze to make one wonder why he's still able to function as a PI in his late 30's. Well, really everyone drinks an extraordinary amount and eats a lot of seafood and the occasional spaghetti dinner.
Parker's attention to minute detail as to what people wear makes for a lot of hilarity in these 1970's novels. In today's terms, an awful lot of characters are dressed like garish clowns. So when Spenser himself reacts to one character's choice of clothing as being odd (a white-leather cloak with a hood), one notes that hey, that's actually the most normal-for-now outfit anyone has worn in any of these three early novels!
The mystery is again perfunctory, while not one but two climactic set-pieces occur almost entirely without tension. Spenser's eventual pal/occasional partner Hawk (played by Avery Brooks in the 1980's Spenser TV series starring Robert Urich) makes his first substantial appearance in the series in this, the fourth Spenser novel. He's sort of cool. The novel, not so much. Not recommended.
Sunset Express (1996) by Robert Crais: LA PI Elvis Cole and Zen super-soldier Joe Pike take on a case with more than a whiff of O.J. Simpson in this mystery-thriller. A prominent LA businessman and philanthropist sits in jail, accused of the murder of his wife. The high-priced legal team defending him hires Elvis to track down any leads that might exonerate the businessman. And that's really just the beginning.
Detective work takes the wheel for much of this installment of the Cole/Pike chronicles, though the ending moves effortlessly into thriller territory. An enjoyable, fast-paced read with a cynical take on justice for the rich, marred only slightly by the inclusion of Elvis' girlfriend Lucy Chenier, Louisiana lawyer and most boring recurring character in the whole series. Crais is great at a lot of things, but scenes of love and romance really aren't in his wheelhouse. Recommended.
Demolition Angel (2000) by Robert Crais: Carol Starkey died for several minutes three years before the start of this novel, caught in the explosion of a bomb triggered by an earthquake while she and her superior officer on the Los Angeles bomb squad were trying to defuse it. The medics brought her back; her superior, also her lover, died at the scene. She's off the bomb squad now, a detective with more than a small drinking problem and a chain-smoking habit that apparently allows her to survive never eating.
But now a mysterious bomber-for-hire dubbed 'Mr. Red' has come to LA. And he's not working for hire -- instead, he seems to be targeting bomb squad personnel. As the lead detective on the murder-by-bomb of a former colleague, Starkey soon finds herself the object of Mr. Red's attention.
There's a whiff of the Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter relationship in this, but only a whiff. Mr. Red isn't a literature-loving genius -- he's an obsessive bomber with hacking skills thrown into the mix. Crais makes the world of bombs and bombers into a fascinating study of technique and art. Starkey is a compelling character, as are Mr. Red and the ATF agent who arrives to consult on the case early in the narrative. Recommended.
Hostage (2001) by Robert Crais: Jeff Talley is a former Los Angeles hostage negotiator and SWAT member who's moved to a small town near LA to escape the mental anguish of a failed hostage negotiation. Three years have passed, and the small-town quiet has done little to allow him to patch things up with his wife and daughter, much less move beyond the trauma. However, an extremely screwed-up hostage situation in his small bedroom community is about to force him out of his shell.
This Robert Crais novel was made into an OK Bruce Willis movie. I think. In any case, it's an extremely good thriller. Crais is a whiz at piquant, short-form characterization for both minor and major characters alike. Talley is a nicely drawn portrait of despair, PTSD, and dogged commitment to protecting others regardless of the cost to himself. The lead hostage-taker is a squirmy, obsessive kid whose characterization wouldn't be out of place in a Jim Thompson novel. Plot twists blow up every fifty pages or so as the narrative rockets along to its conclusion. Recommended.
The First Rule (2010) by Robert Crais: Joe Pike's career as a military contractor comes back into play when one of his former team members is brutally murdered along with his wife, children, and nanny in what looks like a home invasion by the same murderous thieves who've been terrorizing the LA suburbs for months. It is and it isn't. So Pike supplies the hyper-competent muscle and his partner Elvis Cole supplies the detectiving acumen as the two search for answers and vengeance.
20 years into the Cole and Pike novels, Crais and his characters show no signs of series exhaustion: this is one of the two or three best of those novels, with surprises, detection, and action set-pieces splendidly balanced. Joe Pike even has some refreshing moments of introspection, the big laconic lug. Highly recommended.
The Promise (2015) by Robert Crais: Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are back to detect and kick ass in Los Angeles. They're joined by Scott James and Maggie, the K-9 handler and dog who were the protagonists of Crais' Suspect. There's a lot of highly involving, extremely interesting stuff about how K-9 handlers and their dogs do their work. Like pretty much everyone in the Crais universe, James and Maggie are suffering from the after-effects of violence-related PTSD. But Maggie is a good dog. A very good dog. And a former Marine! Solid, diverting work. Recommended.
The Last Detective (Elvis Cole and Joe Pike #9) (2003) by Robert Crais: LA private detective Elvis Cole and occasional partner Joe Pike deal with a problem close to home this time after the son of Cole's girlfriend is abducted from outside Cole's house by someone who claims to have a grudge against Cole for something that happened during Cole's Tour of Duty in Viet Nam.
The mystery plays pretty much fair this time out, though the reader will probably know what's really happened before Cole and Pike. As with many Cole/Pike adventures, this one ends with a violent, cinematic, and thrillingly choreographed action sequence. It's Hardboiled Action in the Mighty Crais Manner! It's all fun and diverting, if a bit shallow. Recommended.
Taken (Elvis Cole and Joe Pike #15) (2012) by Robert Crais: LA private detective Elvis Cole and occasional partner Joe Pike again deal with a problem close to home as a kidnapping case suddenly results in Cole himself being kidnapped. Mighty, laconic Joe Pike springs into action with the help of nearly-as-mighty good-mercenary Jon Stone as the clock ticks on the lifespans of Cole and the young couple he was searching for.
The set-up for Taken is really interesting. The logistics and practice of illegal immigrant trafficking on the U.S.-Mexico border come in for scrutiny. Real-life horrors are exposed, along with real-life hypocrisies. Pike and Stone make the world's most competent rescue team.
Taken is also Robert Crais' most complex novel from a structural standpoint. Several narratives running at different times and with different POV's converge at the climax, seamlessly. It's really a triumph of plot. Recommended.
Birdman (1999/ Jack Caffery #1) by Mo Hayder: Glastonbury region police detective Jack Caffery makes his first appearance here in a strong though flawed first novel from Mo Hayder. Caffery is of that ilk of police detectives who really should be private eyes -- like Luther or Jo Nesbo's Norwegian Harry Hole, his ability to stay employed by the police often shreds suspension of disbelief. But not so much here in his first adventure.
Caffery, as wounded a presence as almost any fictional detective I can remember, is, seemingly like all wounded detectives public or private, also the Best Damn Detective on the Force. In his first novel, Caffery faces a puzzling case that begins when a building project results in the discovery of several female bodies buried in a mass grave. They all have similar mutilations and surgery scars. What does this mean?
Well, we'll find out eventually. Caffery has to deal with a racist fellow detective whose beliefs send the investigation careening off course. He has to deal with his unsatisfying girlfriend. He has to deal with what must be the world's largest Scotch bill at the liquor store -- seriously, Caffery drinks single-malt Scotch the way other people drink all other liquids consumed in a normal day. And Caffery must wrestle with the demons of his own past, a brother abducted and never found when Caffery was just a boy.
Hayder skilfully creates the mystery and its halting solution over the first 90% or so of Birdman. Alas, the perilous stereotypes of the thriller in the age of the Hollywood blockbuster make the climax somewhat disappointing, as it gives us yet another absurdly competent serial killer and yet another sidekick imperiled by the stereotype of the dead partner (See: narratives going right back to Gilgamesh). These things seem rote and boring. But the rest of the novel is very good, and Hayder and Caffery will get better as they go along. Recommended.
The Devil's Star (2003) (Harry Hole #5) by Jo Nesbo. Translated by Don Bartlett 2005: Harry Hole (pronounced HO-LEH) appears in his fifth adventure here. The Norwegian police detective's adventures weren't originally available in publication order in English translation, and the three I've read have lacked any overt explanation of when they occur. That's a bit annoying until one can get onto the Internet and discover publication order. So it goes. I still have no idea how Michael Fassbender can play the gaunt, weathered Hole in the movie of The Snowman.
This time around, Hole grapples with alcoholism, a fellow detective whom he suspects of being a criminal, and his relationship with his girlfriend. Oh, and there's a serial killer. Plot-wise, this is a satisfyingly complex and engaging detective thriller -- and the red herrings really work beautifully and surprisingly.
Harry remains a somewhat improbable figure throughout. The novel deals with the probability that he will either quit his job or be fired at pretty much any moment, but Harry's superhuman detection skills pretty much ensure that that will never happen regardless of what stupid things he does in the course of an adventure. And boy, does he do stupid things in every novel.
It all fits into what some might call The House Paradigm -- the story in which someone's ability at one's job makes him or her impervious to criticism for other failings, no matter how grievous. That's sort of tiring, though at least Harry doesn't kill anyone in a drunk-driving accident this time around, only to escape all punishment because Everybody Looks Out For Harry.
I've read three of Jo Nesbo's Hole novels now, and I'll note one other problematic recurring plot point: once again, one of Harry's loved ones is imperiled by the killer. If this happened as often in real life as it does in novels, TV shows, and movies, no one would be a police officer. Enough already. Create suspense without the repeated threat of horrific violence to a woman or child. So it goes. Recommended.
The Deceased (1999) by Tom Piccirilli: The late and much-lamented Tom Piccirilli's early horror novels were uniquely strange. Strange events, strange creatures, strange protagonists. The simplest of plot-lines could suddenly stop dead for disturbingly violent and/or sexual set-pieces. Characters might spend pages immersed in their own poetic maladjustment. The prose would push the limits of the purple and the florid, sometimes going way, way beyond the red-line. And it all worked as the expression of someone who wanted more out of the horror novel than simply plain prose and A-Z plotting.
The Deceased embodies Piccirilli's approach to horror. Indeed, there's almost no point describing it in all its pulpy, poetic, weird glory. It's about a young horror writer wrestling with the demons of his terrible past. Some of those demons are deceased members of his own family. There's pathetic fallacy and incest and tips on writing (seriously). There are strange things in the forest surrounding the ancestral home. There's that ancestral home with its weird construction and hideous facade. There are ghosts and monsters and voices from the past.
To borrow a phrase from somebody, it's all a bravura frenzy. It's also the sort of writing that seems to drive a certain type of reader, one looking for the straightforward and the plain style, completely nuts. You're watching a gifted writer assemble and disassemble himself simultaneously. It may not always be pretty, coherent, or even 'good' in a traditional sense, but it's compelling and very human. Recommended.
The Midnight Road (2007) by Tom Piccirilli: 40ish Flynn is a case-worker for New York City's Child Protective Services. He's a broken soul due to childhood tragedy. But he's also dogged and committed to child welfare. And a huge fan of film noir. So of course he gets involved in a noirish case with hints of (possible) supernatural horror.
The late Tom Piccirilli wrote a string of noirish thrillers beginning in the early oughts. This is one of them. It lacks the exuberant stylistic flourishes of some of his earlier horror works, but it's plotted beautifully, with twists that are difficult to see coming.
Flynn is very much the damaged would-be knight of noir and hard-boiled detective stories, emotionally stunted but heroically struggling against demons inside and outside. The character's own investment in noir makes for a sort of running meta-commentary on the action, as Flynn notes ways in which his own story does or does not resemble the noir films he loves so much.
Piccirilli tamps down his stylistic flourishes for, I assume, reasons of commercial viability: a person has to eat. But they also suit the noir and hard-boiled genres he's working with. Stylistic outliers like James Ellroy exist, but for the most part the hard-boiled heroes and anti-heroes and straight-out villains of Piccirilli's genre antecedents work within a world of flavourful but not wildly experimental or impressionistic prose.
The result is that old chestnut, a page-turner, one which doesn't end until Flynn has dealt with his internal demons. The identities of the antagonists come as a shock, but a fair one. Flynn, sympathetic and self-lacerating, makes for a fine protagonist. And touches of the absurd -- Flynn finds himself haunted by the talking ghost of a French bulldog, probably the result of slight brain damage incurred early in the novel. In all, a very satisfying ride on The Midnight Road. Recommended.
Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson (1966): Thompson's first full-length book points the way towards what was dubbed his 'Gonzo Journalism' (heavily rearranged, partially fictionalized, intensely subjective reporting) while nonetheless remaining fairly straightforward. 50 years after the events and people Thompson covers, the book still packs quite a punch.
Thompson managed to insinuate himself into a West Coast Hell's Angels chapter for about a year during what was really the first mass-culture awareness of the Hell's Angels (which were, at the time, a fairly small assortment of West Coast motorcycle gangs). Amidst fairly quick snapshots of the history the rise of motorcycle gangs (in America, a post-WWII, California-centric phenomenon at the beginning), Thompson also critiques the various hysterical media and public response to biker gangs.
But while Thompson takes care to contextualize and humanize the various bikers he comes into contact with, he doesn't sentimentalize them: this is a book that does end, hyperbolically, with Thompson quoting Heart of Darkness in relation to the Angels ("Exterminate the brutes."). Some of Thompson's sociological speculation about the roots of biker culture lying in America's long-standing, migratory White Trash community comes across as less than a little half-baked -- but he also seems to be on to something.
Thompson's Hell's Angels -- swastika-wearing, rape-culture-glorifying, knee-jerk violent, loyal to one another, fascist in their essential make-up, deeply racist -- ultimately come across as being the barbaric forebears of such things as today's Tea Party.
Obviously, Thompson couldn't make that connection in 1966. But his lengthy exegesis on the nihilistic tribalism of the Angels could just as well be describing the ultimately nihilistic, destruction-worshiping, violence-loving Far Right of the American 21st century. Loyalties exist only within one's own tribe. People outside that tribe aren't just disposable -- they aren't really people. And everyone is against you. As the jacket copy says, a strange and terrible saga. Highly recommended.
Savage Night by Jim Thompson (1953): Prolific thriller writer Jim Thompson wrote the sort of pulp that literary critics came to love over the course of his lengthy career. There's a fully realized sense to the worlds he created in his novels, even an early one like Savage Night, that makes them unforgettably bleak.
He most often focused his narratives on murderers and monsters; Savage Night makes its first-person narrator, a Mob hit-man who's been on the run for years only to be pulled back in for one more assassination, pitiful and human and utterly awful. But so is almost everyone around him, as is typical in a Thompson novel: there are very few good people in the world his characters inhabit.
For more than half a decade, the narrator 'hid' inside the guise of a poor but honest man. And he truly believes that he was a decent person for those years. But by the end of the novel, even that assessment will be in doubt. Thompson's characters often possess radically destabilized senses of self. Nothing is certain.
Savage Night hums along in its brevity. Our narrator becomes, if not sympathetic, than at least pitiable. And the oft-discussed final thirty pages take the characters into the realms of broken consciousness and the almost surreal. It's one hell of a denouement. Highly recommended.
Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson (1964): Famously moved to French Africa and adapted to film by Bernard Tavernier in 1981 as Coup de Torchon, Pop. 1280 occurs in novel form in the pre-World-War-One American South, in the smallest county in its state. And possibly the most corrupt.
Our first-person narrator, the sheriff of this small county, makes the psychotic narrating lawman of Thompson's earlier The Killer Inside Me look like Sherlock Holmes by comparison. His sole redeeming feature is disgust at the racism of the poor whites around him. That's it. That's all he's got.
Well, perhaps he's redeemed also by his role as Nemesis to some pretty terrible people -- but as he also wipes out the innocent, he is, ultimately, no saint. Our narrator has spent his life as a lawman gliding by, doing little, taking bribes, protecting the status quo -- and pretending to be far, far stupider and more guileless than he truly is. Or maybe he's always been doing terrible things behind the scenes.
Among other pleasures, Pop. 1280 offers the reader a grad course in unreliable narration -- an escalating, almost vertiginous lesson in this by the end of the novel. The inside of the narrator's head turns out to be a labyrinth. But the Minotaur seems to be all the bloody, terrible, despicable things people do to one another because they're damned and because they can. There is no Theseus, and no thread leading to safety. This is perhaps Thompson's bleakest depiction of humanity in general and America in particular. 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.
