The Knife Slipped (Cool & Lam #2) (1939) by Erle Stanley Gardner writing as 'A.A. Fair': The great Hard Case Crime book line published this 'lost' hard-boiled detective novel from the creator of Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner. It was meant to be the second in Gardner's [Bertha] Cool & [Donald] Lam series but was rejected by Gardner's publisher in 1939 for being too racy and for having Bertha Cool be a little too criminal.
Cool, a Rabelaisian giant of a woman, runs a detective agency in Los Angeles. Donald Lam is one of her newish detectives. A woman and her mother hire Cool's agency to discover what that woman's husband is up to at night. The answer is... plenty! And not all Hanky Panky!
Gardner was certainly no Hammett or Chandler. His prose is workmanlike for the most part, while some of the characters and situations are stereotypical. Nonetheless, this is an enjoyable, pulpy time-waster. Bertha Cool is a memorable comic grotesque. And some of the perils and pitfalls of private detecting are highlighted as Lam makes some (near) rookie mistakes.
And the novel is surprisingly racy. And surprisingly cynical about pretty much everything, with most of that cynicism expressed by Bertha Cool, about as knee-jerk a pragmatist as one could ask for. Gardner's PI's aren't all that interested in the larger ramifications of the case, leading to a conclusion that's pretty much a dramatic fizzle. I won't read another of the Cool & Lam mysteries published between 1938 and 1970, but I am glad I read this one. It's a hoot. Lightly recommended.
Suspect (2013) by Robert Crais: Crais steps away from his successful series of mystery-thrillers starring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike to focus on a new pair of crime-solvers, LAPD Canine Unit Officer Scott James and his crime-fighting German Shepherd Maggie.
After his partner is killed and he gravely injured, James spends eight months in rehab before rejoining active duty, now with the Canine Unit. Maggie has also been recovering from grave injuries suffered as a Marine dog in Afghanistan during a battle that cost her the life of her previous handler. So of course Scott James picks her, in part because she's about to be turfed out of the Canine Unit training program because of her PTSD. James knows the feeling.
Crais invests a lot of time and effort in trying to capture the mindset of Maggie without slipping into first-person goofiness. He mostly succeeds -- Maggie's sections are described in third-person, but they focus on explaining how a dog thinks and interacts with its environment and with its handler.
James is a little more sketchy. We learn a lot about him on the job, but very little of his background, likes, dislikes, and so on. Maggie is really the star character here, and James could use more fleshing out.
This is a fairly smart, taut thriller that follows James and Maggie as they try to solve the mystery of who killed James' partner, and why. The investigation has stalled. And in good thriller form, James will insert himself into that investigation. As it turns out, Maggie can really help out -- even as James tries various approaches to help Maggie cope with her PTSD and the fear it provokes in the dog, especially whenever there's a loud, unexpected noise.
Maggie's nose knows, eventually -- and the bond that develops between the two. It's a nice change of pace from the Elvis & Joe Pike novels. Recommended.
The Little Sister (1949) by Raymond Chandler: The Little Sister is the fifth (of nine) novels featuring Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe. Marlowe gets involved in the madness that is Hollywood this time around, along with gangsters and tabloids and a particularly nasty killer who enjoys sticking an ice-pick into the base of his victims' skulls. As is often the case, Marlowe doesn't seem to end up being paid for his cynical, dogged, heroic efforts on the parts of all the people who need his help.
A seemingly naive young woman from rural Middle America hires Marlowe to find her brother, who moved to LA to see the lights and hasn't been heard of in months. As with every Marlowe case, this initially simple proposition blossoms into a labyrinth of corruption, blackmail, and murder in which almost no one is what she or he appears to be.
Chandler's style was so influential that it permeated hardboiled detective fiction, as he added a level of pungent description and social criticism to the prior pinnacle of hard-boiled fiction (and still influential and excellent, then-and-now), Dashiell Hammett and his detective Sam Spade.
Both characters were played by Humphrey Bogart, appropriately and memorably, in movies: Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. An odd but enjoyable movie version of The Little Sister was made in the 1960's with James 'Jim Rockford' Garner as Marlowe.
The Little Sister moves fast and tight, plot-packed without neglecting Chandler's strengths, deployed through first-person narrator Marlowe, at character study and subtly metaphoric descriptions of the California setting. Highly recommended.
Stalking the Angel (1989) (Elvis Cole/ Joe Pike #2) by Robert Crais: The theft of a priceless Japanese book from the Los Angeles home of an American businessman sends PI Elvis Cole and kick-ass pal Joe Pike up against dark family secrets and Japanese organized crime. Pike's character begins to come into focus in this, the second Cole/Pike novel, though the blurb on the back still refers to him as a sociopath (he isn't).
The mystery is a bit thin. The climax is an inspired, epic shoot-em-up that seems to have been written with the movie screen in mind. And for foodies and lovers of brand names, Cole's obsessive recounting of the foods he eats and the brands of clothing people wear is at full-throttle. Recommended.
Lullaby Town (1992) (Elvis Cole/ Joe Pike #3) by Robert Crais: Elvis Cole and Joe Pike head to Connecticut in search of the son a famous Hollywood director abandoned years ago before he was famous. Well, his ex-wife took the son with her and disappeared, and the director didn't care then. Now, he wants to reconnect.
The detective work leads Cole to the missing woman quite quickly... and into yet another big mess quickly after that. There's a certain amount of stereotypical fuzzy-mindedness about the Mafia along the way, along with another massive action climax. Crais, who's worked in TV and movies, seems to enjoy skewering Hollywood pretensions and pretenses here without turning the director into a completely unlikable cliche. Recommended.
Free Fall (1993) (Elvis Cole/ Joe Pike #4) by Robert Crais: The estranged fiancee of an LA cop comes to PI Elvis Cole in search of answers as to why her high-school sweetheart has become furtive and distant. And of course it's not simply another woman. Soon, Cole and best friend Joe Pike are fighting both the police and LA gangs as they search for answers. Things lead to a tightly choreographed, bloody climax. Recommended.
Voodoo River (1995) (Elvis Cole/ Joe Pike #5) by Robert Crais: A Hollywood celebrity hires Elvis Cole to track down her birth mother back in Louisiana. Nothing is ever simple in an Elvis Cole adventure.
Along the way to an explanation, Cole runs up against small-town crooks, the world's worst PI, a 200-pound napping turtle, a Lurch-like enforcer, and a whole lot of Louisiana cooking. This novel also introduces the series' one major drag, love-interest Lucy Chenier, who will spend the next few Cole novels boring the bejesus out of the reader even as she entrances Cole. Recommended.
Indigo Slam (1997) (Elvis Cole/ Joe Pike #7) by Robert Crais: Three kids aged 8 to 16 hire Elvis Cole to find their father, who's gone missing from their LA home. As Cole feels sorry for them, he takes on the case rather than calling Child Protective Services. But what seems simple isn't, leading Cole and hyper-competent partner Joe Pike into a Battle Royale between Viet Namese and Russian organized criminals. 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.
The Underground Man (1971/ Lew Archer #16) by Ross Macdonald: The fickle Santa Ana winds bring wildfires to Los Angeles as a preamble to murder and sorrow in this late-career Lew Archer hard-boiled-detective novel from Ross Macdonald. It's one of a handful of Macdonald's best-reviewed novels, and one can still see why: it's about as mournful and minutely observed a psychological study as one could ask for.
Lew Archer was certainly one of the most rueful detectives in American detective fiction, haunted by his own personal failures and by the seemingly endless sea of woe that each and every one of his cases plunged him into. This time around, Archer gets pulled into the disappearance of a neighbour's young son. Murder soon follows, along with the possible revelation of much earlier murder: there's more than a whiff of Greek tragedy in the ways in which the past shapes the present in Macdonald's novels. But there's also a sense of Existential randomness -- the effects often seem to have no moral relation to the causes.
This is a fine novel, detective or otherwise, shot through with cynical wit and sharp observations about character and landscape. While the hills around Los Angeles burn and then suddenly shift to life-threatening mudslides when the rains finally come, Archer searches for the best available solution to the case. Highly recommended.
The Monkey's Raincoat (1987/Elvis Cole #1) by Robert Crais: The first of Robert Crais's nouveau-noir novels about Los Angeles PI Elvis Cole and his laconic partner Joe Pike sets the model for many of Cole's subsequent adventures. Cole narrates in a snarky, cynical, but often heart-felt first-person voice.
Cole minutely (frankly, too minutely) details everything he does: you'll know what he had for lunch, where he bought the ingredients, and what beer goes best with it. It's Crais's way of showing that as dippy as Cole's comments seem, he's always observing and evaluating everything around him in detail. Or maybe of offering the reader sandwich-making tips,
Hollywood coughs up a missing father-and-son case for Cole. But things quickly go bad. The Monkey's Raincoat shows Los Angeles at its best and worst, and Hollywood at its corruptive nadir. Guns and drugs and femmes fatale show up. There's an incompetent agent to be reckoned with, and an extremely sleazy producer.
There are a few flaws. Crais doesn't quite have Pike's character down yet -- a flaw only apparent in comparison to later novels. Cole's ability to sleep with every woman in a narrative is in place here, though Crais would later remove this element from the series. And the climax is almost hilariously "cinematic" -- which is to say that it's a blood-soaked, bullet-popping Assault on the Impregnable Fortress. Was it written with a movie deal in mind? Hey, Crais lives in Los Angeles too! Recommended.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) by Philip K. Dick: Winner of the John W. Campbell, Jr. Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of 1974, beating out Ursula Le Guin's revered The Dispossessed. Set in a Dystopian America of 1988, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said presents a world in which America is a terrible, terrible place to live.
The powers that be have isolated the universities, where college dissidents have been literally forced underground by the government as a result of the Second Civil War between Nixon's presidency and all forms of civil disobedience. America is now a police state with a Police Marshal at the top and five regional Police Generals below that position. A person can't function for long in society without a host of official IDs, and as the students and protesters don't have such ID's, they're easily discovered by the seemingly endless series of official checkpoints throughout America.
But the masses -- especially those living away from the depressed inner cities -- still need entertainment. And Jason Taverner, popular talk-show host and singer, is one of America's most popular and well-paid entertainers.
However, one morning, Jason Taverner wakes up in a fleabag hotel room with no ID. He at least has 5000 dollars in his pocket. But as he soon discovers, he no longer exists either on record or in anyone's memories. What has happened? Well, it's a Philip K. Dick novel, so the answer turns out to be typically reality-bending.
Taverner's odyssey to find out what has happened takes him through various levels of the new American society, from ID forgers to police bureaucrats to middle-class potters. The novel soon provides him with a co-protagonist, Police General Felix Buckman. Buckman isn't actually a bad guy -- he's spent his career at the top trying to save the lives of the enemies of the State, though he's still a dystopian bureaucrat with more than one skeleton in his closet.
This is one of Dick's sharpest, most focused later novels. Nonetheless, it still abounds and swirls with those brilliant, disturbing flashes of Dickian imagination. Most prominently in terms of the novel's critique of certain beliefs both real-world and science-fictional, in this world, there are highly intelligent people genetically engineered to be supermen (indeed, Taverner is one). They're called 'Sixes,' after their batch number (a nod to Dick's own Nexus-6 androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis for Blade Runner?). But the sixes couldn't conquer the world because they can't stand being around one another: the superman abhors the superman, and thus fails to conquer.
There is a bizarre form of phone sex that can cause permanent brain damage and ultimately death. There are flying cars and pin-sized nukes and... conventional 33 1/3 LPs and 45s in juke boxes? Cigarettes are heavily regulated by the State, while pot and mescaline are readily and legally available to all. African-Americans are now seen as a rare, exotic group that's close to extinction thanks to decades of genocidal eugenics. And behind it all, there's a dystopia based on fear and paperwork.
There's also hope, though, especially as the novel ends. The dystopian police state will not endure as long as people are capable of small acts of empathy and compassion, and of creating beauty. And entropy affects everything, good and evil, the same: the dystopia will succumb to entropy just like everything else. It's a fine novel that sends back echoes of the world we live in, refracted by Dick's prismatic and unique imagination. The title is derived from a song (an ayre, actually) by 16th-century composer John Dowland ("Flow, my tears, fall from your springs"). You'll have to read the novel to discover the significance. Highly recommended.
Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley #15) (2008) by Elizabeth George: Well, if nothing else, I'd suggest that the first of Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mysteries you ever read shouldn't be this one. It was mine. Nonetheless, there's stuff to admire in this over-sized, over-stuffed mystery set in coastal England among the surfers and locals and tourists. George is a solid and detailed writer of characters, even when those characters slowly move from interesting to boring to intolerable, as they so often do here.
Another reason not to make this one's first Lynley would be the after-effects of a tragedy that afflicted Lynley at the end of the previous novel. It might be better to start with Lynley the upper-class Lord who joined New Scotland Yard and not sad Lynley walking the coast and avoiding everyone he knows.
Jesus, though, this is a long novel (and all of George's mysteries seem to be of similar lengths). Do people really want mysteries that are this long and this melodramatically stuffed with a long list of characters whose lives are explored in exhaustive detail? I guess they do. I think mysteries generally work better at shorter lengths, perhaps 60,000 to 90,000 words for novel (Careless in Red looks to be about 200,000+ and feels like a million by the end).
Well, and the ending is stunningly unsatisfactory. It partially exists to show that Lynley was right all along and that the investigation of one suspect was pointless, but the attendant lack of closure leaves a sour taste. You will learn a lot about surfing, though, and you will marvel at the ridiculous, comic-relief detective-sidekick Barbara Havers. George is an American who's made a successful writing career out of these giant British mysteries. Anglophilia never gets old. Not recommended as a first Lynley adventure.
Chasing Darkness (Elvis Cole #12) (2008) by Robert Crais: A typically zippy Elvis Cole detective novel set in and around Los Angeles, this time during Fire Season. That cynical knight Cole and his occasional crime-fighting partner Joe Pike seek to unravel the mystery of a dead serial killer who shouldn't be able to have been a serial killer. Cole's relationship with the police is typically rocky, the mystery fair and nicely plotted, and the climax slightly less bloody and body-count-intensive for Crais.
Ignoring the tricks played with large print and line spacing in this paperback, one notes that Chasing Darkness clocks in at just about the typical length for a 1950's or 60's hard-boiled detective novel -- it's short and to the point. There's a lot of police procedural this time around, as Cole follows the LAPD's investigation with one of his own. Solid entertainment. Recommended.
L.A. Requiem (Elvis Cole #8) (1999) by Robert Crais: The Southern California-set Elvis Cole hard-boiled detective series (well, soft-boiled -- Elvis is an emotional softy) always pays off in terms of tightly plotted, minutely detailed detective fiction, almost always with a large side portion of the procedural. There's a lot of procedural in this one, as the police and Cole investigate a murder together thanks to the power and influence of the victim's father.
As was the case for several Cole novels, the only real drag is Lisa Chenier, Cole's love interest who sucks all the joy and energy out of the novel whenever she appears. It doesn't help that Cole suddenly inspires romantic obsession in a female L.A. cop in this one. Crais is at his best when delineating complicated investigations or dropping the occasional witticism. His romantic writing stinks.
L.A. Requiem stylistically opened up the Cole series when it came out in 1999, mixing as it does the traditional first-person detective narration with third-person flashbacks involving Cole's hyper-competent detective pal Joe Pike and a number of other characters (including the killer) and third-person narration for events Cole is not present for.
Overall, the novel's greatest strength lies in its depiction of the course of an investigation. The Los Angeles police are depicted sympathetically, for the most part, with a lot of nuts-and-bolts descriptions of just how a murder case is investigated. Good stuff. Recommended.
The Forgotten Man (Elvis Cole #10) (2005) by Robert Crais: Robert Crais explores L.A. private-eye Elvis Cole's tortured childhood in this novel, in which a man claiming to be Cole's long-vanished father is found murdered in an alley. As always, Crais's depiction of the details of an investigation is top-notch. The flashbacks are also fascinating, as are many of the supporting characters.
Crais also brings in a character from a non-Cole novel, Detective Starkey from Demolition Angel. She's a former bomb-squad officer forced into other police work after getting blown up. She's a fun counterpoint to Cole until she becomes romantically obsessed with him, a sub-plot that Crais used with another female cop in the earlier L.A. Requiem. And it's annoying here too. And while Cole is estranged from gal-pal/wet-blanket Lisa Chenier in this novel, she shows up just enough to put a damper on a number of scenes.
The novel is otherwise solid and twisty and thoroughly enjoyable. The indomitable Joe Pike appears, as does Cole's diffident pet cat. Crais opens up the narrative to third-person material not witnessed by Cole, who otherwise traditionally (for the hard-boiled detective) narrates in first person. The climax is thrilling, though it repeats certain plot elements from the earlier Cole novel L.A. Requiem. And the killer is fascinatingly depicted, though he shares a lot of similarities with the killer in L.A. Requiem. Maybe I shouldn't have read these books back to back. Recommended.
Dark Seeker by K.W. Jeter (1987): Subtle and gradually building horror novel about the aftermath of a California incident that managed to combine something like the Manson Family with a psychoactive drug that seemed to create a shared consciousness among those who used it.
The charismatic, insane psychiatrist who ran the drug trial -- and created the murderous group -- now languishes in an asylum for the criminally insane. Several of the participants who did not actually murder anyone are free, but they need to take a pharmacopia of drugs several times a day to remain sane: the consciousness drug's effects on the human body are permanent and persistently intrusive.
While the main narrative thread follows recovering cult member Michael Tylers's attempts to remain sane and build a new life with his girlfriend and her son, other plotlines (all of which will eventually dovetail with Tyler's story) show us the journalist who made a ton of money with the True Crime book about the cult and a homeless man named Jimmy who's been enlisted by one of the most dangerous, uncaptured cult members to take care of a mysterious child stolen by that cult member from Michael's ex-wife, who's finally been re-arrested by the police after hiding out in L.A. for several years.
Jeter does a nice job of keeping things at least somewhat ambiguous throughout. Those who take the drug believe that they encounter a being they call the Host, which exhorts them to commit terrible acts. But is it real, and if so, is it supernatural (which is to say, some sort of demon), or is it some sort of psychic projection of the shared consciousness of the drug users? From the outside, though, the verdict of the legal system, and of popular opinion, is that everything about the drug is fake, including the shared-consciousness effect. The cult members went bananas. That is all.
Dark Seeker manages to make even the mercenary, grasping journalist sympathetic, at least towards the end, as he finally gets to experience violent events first-hand. Jeter's characterization of the occasionally unlikeable Tyler, homeless Jimmy, and girlfriend Steff, who's recovering herself from a life of terrible relationship choices and physical abuse, is both strong and subtle. The Host itself is a disturbing presence when it appears (or seems to appear), and Jeter describes the sensory distortions of the drug with hallucinatory elan. And the book ends with a stunner of a final ten pages.
Problems? I'd have liked some more development of what exactly happened with the cult and its charismatic leader -- it almost seems as if some more heavily expository sections were cut so as to keep the page count down. The only other real problem is the title, which really should be something like The Host or The Dark Host. Again, this seems like decision-making at the publishing or editorial level. Recommended.
Lost Angels by David J. Schow collecting the following stories: Red Light; Brass; Pamela's Get; The Falling Man; and Monster Movies (Collected 1990): The horror boom of the 1970's and 1980's helped make the 1980's and early 1990's the Golden Age of horror short-story collection released in mass-market (as opposed to specialty house) paperback. This continues to be something of a boon to this day, as used copies of some of the finest collections in horror history still show up in used bookstores and on-line for purchase in situations where the collections haven't been re-published.
David J. Schow has been immortalized as one of the founders of the Splatterpunk sub-genre of horror that came to prominence over the course of the 1980's. He's a writer of diverse interests, however, and this collection doesn't feature anything in the Splatterpunk genre. Instead, it features four novellas or novelettes that are indeed described in different ways by the collection's title, and a concluding non-horror story that's nonetheless deeply concerned with horror, its history, and those who love it in its many forms.
Overall, Lost Angels is a dynamite collection. Schow sets all the stories in Los Angeles (another reason for the title). The city insinuates itself into every narrative in all its weird, night-bright oddness. Hollywood players, hangers-on, and bystanders populate the stories. Schow integrates the supernatural with this Hollywood Babylon in sinister but sometimes comic ways -- one supernatural being wants its story told on film, for example.
The thematic concerns of the stories firmly place Schow within the legacy of Fritz Leiber. Like Leiber, Schow searches for supernatural situations that fit the contemporary world, or even grow out of it, per Leiber's seminal 1940 story "Smoke Ghost." Indeed, one story here is a brilliant companion to Leiber's "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" -- or an inversion, in some ways.
Aside from that search to create new ghosts and monsters, Schow explores the loneliness of the modern urban and exurban world through romantic and familial relationships, quests through bars and parties and decaying sections of Los Angeles, and keenly observed set-pieces in very specifically imagined locations that include strange, junk-filled warehouses, topless bars for ruthless businessmen, studio offices, and occult shops with sarcastic clerks. Love, identity, and loneliness inform much of this collection. It's not that Nothing Is What It Seems...it's that Some Things That Seem, Aren't. Highly recommended.
The Bible Repairman and Other Stories by Tim Powers containing "The Bible Repairman," "The Hour of Babel," "Parallel Lines," "A Soul in a Bottle," "A Journey of Only Two Paces" and "A Time to Cast Away Stones" (Collected 2011): Tim Powers is pretty much the best living American fantasist -- the only writer I'd say could contest him for this imaginary title would be Gene Wolfe. Longtime friend of Philip K. Dick, Powers may show Dick's influence in his eclectic choice of subject matter and in the intricate, sometimes byzantine complexity of his plots.
But Powers' other strengths -- his careful attention to historical detail and his ability to ground even the wildest of fantastic conceits in that detail -- are all his own. He writes fantasy as if he were a 'hard science fiction' writer.
Powers normally seems to prefer novels to spin out his detailed, involving tales, so short-story collections are rare and generally quite short. This is no different, but the density of imagination in the stories collected here makes this brief collection (less than 200 pages) seem much more filling than its length would suggest. All of the stories are filled with the wealth of invention and attention to detail that marks Powers' work; the general introduction and afterwords to each story supply fascinating insight into the inspiration for the stories.
Los Angeles, Powers' preferred locale when he's not travelling through time and space, is the setting for five of the six stories. The sixth and last, "A Time to Cast Away Stones," returns us to the horrifying early 19th-century world of Powers' novel The Stress of Her Regard, focusing on the fascinating Trelawny, a fellow traveller with Byron and Shelley who would live to be an occasional confidante of the Pre-Raphaelites, and who is noteable for almost wholly inventing a biography for himself that survived unchallenged for nearly 80 years. Highly recommended.
They Thirst by Robert McCammon (1981; this edition 1988): McCammon may have been the most Kingian (Kingesque?) horror novelist of the late 1970's and early 1980's, probably because of sensibilities shared with Stephen King and not out of simple imitation. He was good at creating sympathetic characters and then running them through the grinder, and most of his 1970's and 1980's output seems to echo one Stephen King novel or another, and sometimes two or three at the same time. They Thirst seems to have been bounced off both Salem's Lot and The Stand as well as Dracula. Certainly the Vampire King -- Conrad Vulkan, a Hungarian prince who 'died' in the 14th century -- recalls Bram Stoker's Dracula more than he does any of King's vampires. But this vampire has specific, on-stage help from Satan, or at least an adequate stand-in, as a powerful supernatural being referred to as the Headmaster (a name that doesn't really work in the 'Inspires Dread' category) is backing the Vampire King's play for earthly dominion with some heavy magical mojo.
McCammon's cleverest idea here lies in his choice of location for the Vampire King's D-Day: Los Angeles. McCammon's vampires can't tolerate sunlight, but Los Angeles appeals to the Vampire King because he/it, having been 'turned' at the age of 17, is forever obsessed with youthfulness. Los Angeles, home to both gleaming, artificial youth and a sordid, violent underbelly, is a perfect match for this vampire. No old people need apply for admission to this army of vampires. I'd guess no fat chicks either.
The vampires herein exist within a supernatural framework: they are most definitely not viral in origin. Set against the vampires are a ragtag but plucky mismatched group of heroes (is there any other kind of group in popular culture?) who must work together to save the planet from becoming a scrumptious, bloodsoaked buffet: a terminally ill Roman Catholic priest; an 11-year-old boy who loves monster movies; a successful but troubled young comedian; a middle-aged cop who escaped from vampires in his childhood home in Hungary; a mystical young woman; and a handful of other supporting characters. The last third of the book sails straight into the epic, recalling King's The Stand in its elevation of the stakes of the battle. The climax is apocalyptic: McCammon doesn't back down.
I can see why McCammon withdrew this, his fourth novel, from publication for nearly 20 years, citing the idea that his early novels, while good, marked a writer who was still learning. There's much that's derivative in They Thirst, and a bit that's silly, but McCammon's strength at propulsive plotting and at sympathetically drawn characters makes this well worth seeking out. Recommended.
