Book Review : Alden Jones – Unaccompanied Minors (2014)

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I came to Costa Rica to get away from people like you. I went as far away from you as I could get, and here you are.

I’ve tried to explain to Josie once why her music was making my ears bleed. It’s a complicated, gender-based issue. For exemple, if a young Lemmy Kilmister gets dumped, he is going to write an angry rock n’ roll song about booze, titty bars and unnecessary violence. Now, if Sarah McLachlan writes a song for the same reason, it’s going to be a quiet, mounrful song about keeping your dignity and moving on with your life into an incertain tomorrow. I don’t read nearly enough female readers for that same reason: I don’t feel an intimate relationship to what they do. I did, however feel the pull of Alden Jones‘ fiction. UNACCOMPANIED MINORS is a neurotic, self-sufficient short story collection that highlights the powerful economy of style of Ms. Jones. It’s a smart and mature first step ino the literary landscape.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS is rather short. There are seven stories that clock at a little over than 160 pages and it’s entirely by design. Nothing about this collection hasn’t been carefully thought of. My favourite story was HEATHENS, a story that depicts the relationship between an expatriate English teacher in Costa Rica and a young Christian missionary.  Not only their relationship is about more than just a clash of values, but it’s drawn as the underlying issues of their day to day dealing. It’s a smart and deceptively complex story. I really liked FREAKS too, despite the alluded body horror (I have a weak stomach for that), a story that captured the complexity of human relationship to tragedy (and to their bodies), without taking shortcuts for narrative intensity purposes.

”She’s very mature for her age,” James said to his parents, with scripted sarcasm. The he took me upstairs and we had sex in his bedroom with the door locked. I let me voice be heard that day, with his parents downstairs, knowing I was matures for my age, wanting them to know. I understood pleasure. I attacked it at the throat and it fought back. I did know more than other girls.

What makes Alden Jones special is the level of control she had over her material. It’s normal for authors to want to hit emotional high points, and it’s a variable that often derails a story. The stories of Alden Jones don’t suffer any emotional overkill. They show a stunning creative maturity and precision. It’s so rare to come across an author, male or female, who knows himself/herself enough and understands the purpose of his stories well enough to acknowledge their limitations and use them as a set of boundaries to create their stories. The fiction of Alden Jones will resonate with just about anybody. They are so precise and uncluttered with personal crap that they reveal these traits of human nature that are too complex to be synthesized with words alone and need a narrative frame to be understood.

I had no expectations whatsoever about UNACCOMPANIED MINORS but shit, it was a wholesome and satisfying experience. If you’ll allow me to go back to my musical allegory, Alden Jones would be a band anybody can listen to and appreciate. For Josie and I, it would be Sia or Bad Religion. It’s a great feeling to stumble upon a new impressive talent like Jones, and while UNACCOMPANIED MINORS is bite-sized goodness, it successfully made me hungry for a novel. For a lack of a better comparison, I thought there was a little Raymond Carver to Alden Jones‘ short stories. There is a well-studied minimalism and a keen understanding of human nature to UNACCOMPANIED MINORS. If you didn’t know who Alden Jones was, this short story collection is a brilliant calling card. 

Book Review : David James Keaton – Fish Bites Cop! (2013)

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Daddy always called cops ”Lloyds,” and Jack thought that was their real name until he turned 18. Turned out it was short for ”mongoloids,” which seemed harsh for a whole hour after he first deciphered it.

Every book reviewer is secretly suspicious of short story collections. If they tell you they’re not, they’re lying. When done properly, short stories are mysterious and life-affirming little things, but a collection is also the first thing a writer is trying to sell you. So the quality is the available material on the market varies a lot. I had a good feeling about David James Keaton‘s FISH BITES COP! even if I hadn’t read anything by him before. The man I amicably call DJK has been a veteran of the short fiction scene for several years, won more than one award for his tales and had longer publications to his credit already. FISH BITES COP! is a collection that not only takes a swing at law enforcement institutions, but at every form of authority there is. It’s funny, enlightening and oh, so wrong.

My favourite story in FISH BITES COP! doesn’t deal with the police at all. KILLING COACHES is what happens to your stereotypical high school story when you turn it inside you. The protagonist is not a nerd, but an enthusiastic jock and a psychopath. He is allergic to authority figures, yet he participates in every sport offered in order to take a shot at the coach. David James Keaton‘s description of the authority figures in this story (and pretty much everywhere in FISH BITES COP!) seethes with disgust and contempt. They are clownish figures who gave up on what made them authority figures in the first place. They are fat, lazy, clumsy and hilarious to the objecive observer. KILLING COACHES revisits the high school trauma story in a much more original and liberating way than the stereotypical underdog story.

There is a lot of material in FISH BITES COP! Over 30 short stories, which is a lot to take in. The collection drifts a little bit from the theme of ”bashing authorities” that it promotes itself with. There are horror stories in there that have nothing to do with police or authority figures. They’re great stories, though. It’s just that the scope of the collection is so large and ambitious that it’s difficult to keep the focus and enthusiasm you began to read it. Not every story was a hit with me, but there were a couple standouts that stayed with me: TROPHIES, KILLING COACHES, LIFE EXPECTANCY IN A TRUNK, BURNING DOWN DJs, QUEEN EXCLUDER, CLAM DIGGER and NINE COPS KILLED FOR A GOLDFISH CRACKER are all memorable. Your run-of-the-mill short story collection doesn’t count as many standouts as FISH BITES COP!

”Do you hate all police officers?”

”I hate all cops, firefighters, paramedics, bounty hunters, security guards…and probably astronauts.”

A lot of hacks are going to try and sell you their weak stuff using catchphrases like ”unadorned prose”. It’s important to read authors like David James Keaton to understand the difference between deliberately unadorned prose and crap writing. DJK writes fiction like Henry Rollins writes letters to politicans and celebrities, with razor sharp irony and a violent sense of humor that defines his prose with an jagged edge that few author authors can brag to have. FISH BITES COP! is a bit of an endurance run at times, but there is enough standout material in there to keep you going. When dealing with short fiction, you should definitely choose who you’re paying attention to and David James Keaton is worth your time. 

Book Review : Archer Mayor – Three Can Keep A Secret (2013)

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”What can you tell me about Carolyn Barber? Governor-for-a-Day a long time ago?”

Raffner didn’t mind and didn’t hesitate: ”Wow- that’s a name from the past. Like bringing up the Black Dahlia in Los Angeles.”

There are some things in life that I like to do and I have no idea why. I just like to do them and that’s it. For example, I like watching the movie THE BURBS on late night television, preferably in the summer. Also, I like to wear cheap basketball shorts for pyjama. Archer Mayor‘s THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET was one of these unexplainable joys. I had no idea that Mayor’s Joe Gunter series was 24 novels long (soon to be 25) before going in. It was the first time I jumped into a series so late and part of my enjoyment came from the figuring out process, yet Joe Gunther and his boys have an undeniable and peculiar charm that’s very difficult to find in literature.

Joe Gunther is the head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, better known as VBI. He’s been a cop for long, he’s been on the beat before and now his outfit is often called for assistance by the local police forces to help solve difficult crimes. Hurricane Irene left a series of strange occurrences the trail of her desruction: a retired high-profile politician turns up dead, a state mental facility patient with a creepy legacy has disappeared and maybe the strangest of them all, an old grave is found filled with rocks and dirt. What has hurricane Irene brought to the surface exactly? Are the three cases connected? It’s the kind of problem the VBI specializes in solving.

A long-standing mystery series is an interesting problem and I thought THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET was a good example, without even having to read the other Joe Gunther books. Writing one novel a year featuring the same characters, you’re going to lose some intensity. I’m sure that if I dig into Archer Mayor‘s books, I’m going to find some volumes that have great emotional peaks, but they’re going to be within the first half. Maybe even within the first five titles. What makes a series thrive for so long is its tremendous sense of structure. That’s why I felt right at home when I read THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET. I knew what direction it was going in, the cases were well defined, it was like watching a rerun of a CSI episode. Archer Mayor has developed a sense of structure that’s both accessible and involving for his Joe Gunther novels.

Of course, you can’t jump into a series at the end and not expect a little disorientation. There are a lot of characters, they all know each other and even if Archer Mayor take the time to bring you up to speed a little, it’s still difficult to point out to know the who’s who. I tried not to get attached to the characters though, since it was not the point of the exercise here and thankfully, Archer Mayor went easy on the exposition. Truth is, the cases were original and fun even if the treatment was a little impersonal for an outsider. So, THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET is a little bit of a fast-food mysery, but it fell into the hands of the biggest McDonald’s fan north of the border. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad term for literature. I just don’t mean it as an insult. I just think of fast-food books as a pre-processed product, rather than a work of art. Both have their place.

The life of a book reviewer is exciting like that. When major publishers send you books, it’s like spinning the wheel of fortune: you never know what’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s quite painful, but sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise like Archer Mayor‘s THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET. I would not know what to tell you about the Joe Gunther series in general, since I’ve kind of blanked out the series aspect and read it purely for the mystery. I can tell you Archer Mayor‘s a fun author, though. I’m still not too sure why I liked THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET as much as I liked it, but it was a lot of fun to read. It was fun enough for me to be intrigued about the older Joe Gunther novels. If you like your police procedurals original and unpretentious, you should give this series a shot. 

Book Review : Richard Thomas – Staring Into The Abyss (2013)

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(also reviewed)
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No, she was no ray of sunshine.

Short stories are the great existential question of the publishing game. They are fun, easy to read and a completely different experience from novels, yet no one since Raymond Carver made a decent living only writing shorts. Richard Thomas is one of the most prolific and talented short story writers you can find online and he’s been hard at work this last couple years. In 2013, Kraken Press published an anthology of some of his darkest work yet, titled STARING INTO THE ABYSS. I’ve been a Richard Thomas fan some time, but he’s so active that it’s always hard to wrangle all new publications, so I’m always glad when he publishes a collection that allows me to catch up. Has Thomas found a solution to the short story enigma? Time will tell, but STARING INTO THE ABYSS is another fine addition to his growing underground legacy.

The stories of STARING INTO THE ABYSS have been collected to fit the overarching theme of confronting darkness. Whether it’s the darkness within, the darkness of other, a supernatural kind or nothingness, the characters of Richard Thomas here are all standing in the dark and facing demons. What transpires of that is, surprisingly, some of Thomas’ most humane work yet. He’s a writer with a knack for intimate atmospheres and strong first person narrations, but STARING INTO THE ABYSS highlights the strength and the beauty of human character facing torment. I did not expect that, but I gotta say it layered the reading experience quite nicely and made STARING INTO THE ABYSS a stand out Richard Thomas publication.

One of my favourite stories was SPLINTERED, which is about an estranged couple going through a separation. It’s built on the old choose-your-own adventure format, so there are different ways to read it and different stories that emerge from the same text, depending on your decision. The subject matter is extremely involving from the get-go, and there are subtle hints of supernatural elements. So much is going on in that story. I loved the story TRANSMOGRIFY, too. A cyberpunk tale that’s as much of an aesthetic trip than a narrative one. Whenever Thomas integrates science-fiction or supernatural elements to his stories, he does it very successfully and generates an abstract beauty that his other work doesn’t have. I would go as far as calling him a poet of the cyberspace.

I used to lie awake at night and fantasize about such things. Romanticize these horrible moments and how I would react. War, rape, fistfights. Violence layered upon violence, a momentary release of every thread of anger that had knitted its way through my being.

Perhaps none of the stories in STARING INTO THE ABYSS fascinated me more than VICTIMIZED, though. It’s the kind of story I usually hate, but Richard Thomas succeeded in making me conflicted about his. It’s a fighting story and I’ve had the privilege of being in the ring/cage myself a couple times and it’s not like that at all, yet I would have a difficult time finding a story that epitomizes the romantic myth of fighting so well. Plus, Thomas has an understanding of the cathartic power of fighting that he doesn’t try to justify in self-righetous rants. Sometimes, punching something into oblivion just feels good and when you have your back to the wall, you fight better than your normally would. VICTIMIZED is a story that’s very much pertinent in this era where everyone and their moms discover their inner fighter, so it kind of obsessed me. It sure is an interesting read.

Not all that many authors can make me passionate about a short story collection like this. STARING INTO THE ABYSS was my favourite Richard Thomas so far and I’m sure that as his legacy is growing, it’s going to be a mandatory stop for every reader. While browsing Thomas’ website for this review, I found out that he signed a two books deal with Random House Alibi, so you are bound to see him take the center stage in the near future. It’s good to know that there is still a place in literature for authors like Richard Thomas, who fear nothing and who take pleasure and pride in challenging their reader. If you didn’t know him previously, get started on STARING INTO THE ABYSS  and fall in love with one of the most peculiar, transcendent neo-noir authors in the game. 

Book Review : American Nightmare (2014)

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I thought of my father as completely faceless. In my mind’s eye he is a strange creature with the body of a man and the head of an opened newspaper; an odd mythological figure makes in the Sun Times and bellowing like an elephant.

If you’re wondering how society shaped itself into what it is now, you have to go back to the post-WWII boom to understand how it all started. The western world, lead by America, had triumphed of the last great evil : the nazis. So, in the happily ever after that followed, it positioned Americas as ”the good guys” and however they decided to live their lives was seen as ”right”, because it was how ”the good guys” lived. So the post-WII boom was one of the most artificial, self-conscious era in 20th century United States and the cunning head of Kraken Press, Mr. George Cotronis himself, decided it would be the perfect setting for a horror anthology. The result spoke for itself: AMERICAN NIGHTMARE contains some powerful and visceral horror stories that will keep you awake at night.

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE doesn’t fuck around. You won’t find post-WWII stories with ”horror undertones” in there. These are intense horror stories that use the 1950s backdrop to create strong, long lasting images that’ll give them an unforgettable edge. The opener GRANDMA ELSPETH’S CULINARY ENCHIRIDON FOR DOMESTIC HARMONY, by Rachel Anding, reminded me in terms of atmosphere, of Soundgarden’s video BLACK HOLE SUN. There are several layers to it: an idealized family unit, a tyrannic father figure operating behind closed doors and a mother using ancestral knowledge to escape an otherwise hopeless situation. I thought it offered an original and precise social commentary without stepping away from horror. It makes full use of the potent symbolism the genre has to offer.

Speaking of symbolism, I thought the best story in the collection was BOW CREEK, by Raymond Little. It’s one of the best short stories I’ve read this year. I had no idea who Little was before reading this, but he’s officially on my radar. BOW CREEK is so successful and anxiety-inducing because it doesn’t offer the usual answers to the reader. It’s a story about the dark side of a town, which swallows some of its inhabitants. I thought it illustrated in a very literal way the dark side of the American Dream. BOW CREEK showed what happened to the pure soul of children once they grow up to be young adults. There were a couple images in that story that wormed their way into my nightmares. It’s a rare thing for me, with books, but BOW CREEK, by Raymond Little is worth the asking price of AMERICAN NIGHTMARE alone, folks. 

Some other stories that stood out: W.P Johnson‘s THE KING, made a surprisingly playful use the mailman, a recurring figure of 1950s, Rockwellian America and gave it realistic twist that was fun and that constrasted nicely with the horror portion of the story. Max Booth III‘s ALL THE BEAUTIFUL MARYLINS closed AMERICAN NIGHTMARE beautifully. Booth stays true to his reputation of having one of the most original, tormented imaginaries in the game. Once I finished reading it, I’ve actually started it over feeling an unexplainable sense of dread creeping up my spine. Max Booth III does that to me often. I see an overwhelming, terrifying bigger picture to his stories and ALL THE BEAUTIFUL MARYLINS also succeeds at that.

Not every story in AMERICAN NIGHTMARE worked for me. I thought those who invoked 1950s cinema fell flat. I’m a very earnest reader and if a story like BOW CREEK scares the pants out of me right off the bat, it’s difficult for me to get enthusiastic for a story about aliens that look like pears. I thought 1950s horror cinema is the easiest thing to make 1950s horror stories about and those stories who did in AMERICAN NIGHTMARE didn’t work for me. Overall though, it’s an original and terrifying collection about a fascinating, artificial and existential era in the Western World. The authors of AMERICAN NIGHTMARE understand what makes the 1950s so appealing for horror stories.  Readers who like their books to do some damage and challenge them will be pleased by this collection. 

Book Review : Joe Clifford – Lamentation (2014)

Pre-Order LAMENTATION here

(also reviewed)
Order CHOICE CUTS here
Order WAKE THE UNDERTAKER here

According to the paper, drug use had become ”a blight and a sourge on the community.” That may’ve been an hyperbole, but it didn’t take much to put the fear of God into God-fearing people.

It’s often difficult for me to review novels that I really love, because it’s hard to explain why a certain novel is fantastic while another one is just enjoyable. Sometimes, the difference is entirely emotional. Sometimes it’s the smallest details that make a novel hit the right wavelength. Joe Clifford‘s upcoming novel LAMENTATION is a great book. Not an above-average crime drama, not a tightly-plotted mystery, it’s a great novel in the literary sense of the word. A novel that pushed my buttons and kept me viscerally involved. Joe Clifford‘s name is going to be on everybody’s lips after the release of LAMENTATION, on October 7. Get on the bandwagon while it’s still cool.

Normal life is a challenge to Jay Porter. It’s been that way since his parents died in a car accident, back when he was a child. His older brother Chris developed a powerful drug habit and their relationship has pretty much dictated Jay’s life since then. It sabotaged his relationship to Jenny, the mother of his child, and affected his capacity and desire to get a decent job. Chris is a regular of local sheriff Pat Sumner‘s holding cells, but when he gets picked up for interrogation in the disappearance case of his junkie business partner, everybody’s life gets a little more complicated. Torn between his desire to move on and his deeply rooted love for his brother, Jay will take one last swan dive into his brother’s problem, hoping to clear his family’s name.

I read a lot of crime novels. One recurring issue that always bugs me is that it always portrays the same crummy bars, cheap motel rooms and war torn urban landscapes. I’ve got this theory that the recurring settings breed the same character over and over again. One of the aspects where LAMENTATION hits a home run is the striking originality and the lifelike realism of its setting. 

I was probably better disposed than some others to enjoy the setting of LAMENTATION because I come from similar town than Ashton, New Hampshire: an isolated, bucolic mountain town with a lingering sense of pride. The level of detail Joe Clifford puts into describing the timeless atmosphere of small towns and the all-consuming winter is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The powerful setting of LAMENTATION helps shaping characters who are devoured by a unique melancholy that will ring true to any reader.

”Sure, sometimes we have a look around. What’s the big deal? They’re throwing things away. What are you getting so pissed off for?”

”Because people are trusting you to do a job. I know that word doesn’t mean anything to you. But it’s how the rest of the world operates. And you are taking advantage of them. Identity theft? That’s what you’re into these days, Chris?”

You’d have to be an idiot to drop off your computer to my brother and his junkie pals.

If I had to compare LAMENTATION to an existing novel, I would not hesitate and compare it to Dennis Lehane‘s MYSTIC RIVER. It’s not a copycat novel or anything like that, but Joe Clifford, like Lehane, is not afraid to slow down the tempo and build atmosphere using details and a character’s inner life to paint what seems to be a rather straightforward mystery into a powerful and original portrait. Clifford takes this objective, borderline banal headline of a junkie’s disappearance and transforms it into a gut wrenching saga of two brothers using Jay Porter‘s soulful and melancholic voice. That’s how the alchemy of great fiction operates: an objective issue seen through the eyes of a fascinating character. Not only Joe Clifford understand and applies this principle in LAMENTATION, but he also illustrates its power clearly.

Every time I review a fantastic novel, it’s the same story: I feel like I’ve failed to explain how good it really is, because there is something about literary greatness that transcends words. Let me tell you what I think is going to happen upon the release of LAMENTATION, then: it’s going to get amazing reviews, national publications are going to show interest, it’s going to sell an obscene amount of copies, maybe become a movie and turn Joe Clifford into a rock star. That’s how good I think the novel is and that’s how high I am on Joe Clifford‘s skills after reading LAMENTATION. I’m a good audience in general, but I don’t go bonkers over a novel that often. It’s a remarkable book. You should hit the pre-order button without thinking twice. You can thank me later.

BADASS

Book Review : Joe Clifford – Wake the Undertaker (2013)

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(also reviewed)

Order CHOICE CUTS here

”You’re built like a brick house now. What are you doing, lifting trucks for a living?”

”I was in prison.”

That killed the mood.

I’m sure you’ve had this awkward discussion before, ending with a friend earnestly telling you to watch SIN CITY, that it was the best film noir they’d ever seen. It happened to me several times, with different people. I liked SIN CITY all right, but it was a rather classic hardboiled tale featuring the usual suspects: a femme fatale, a rugged outsider, crooked cops, a conspiracy that unermines an entire city, etc. I liked it, but if you read enough hardboiled fiction, you’re going to read that story over and over again. I’ve always liked the classic hardboiled setting, but I take it in limited doses nowadays. Joe Clifford‘s novel WAKE THE UNDERTAKER was a breath of fresh air in that regard since it mixes classic hardboiled and contemporary themes to create something original. It’s bound to become the missing link between that guy who loved SIN CITY and you. 

Colin Specter once was an up-and-coming singer, bound to bust through Bay City’s scene and into international success. But when Colin falls in love with Zoey, Gabriel Christos, who runs the club he performs at, orders that Colin is dealt with. So Colin is disfigured, has his vocal cords mutilated and takes the fall for a drug bust. Seven years later, he’s become a mountain of muscle and is release from prison into a very different Bay City. Gabriel’s old man, once the head of Bay City’s mob has branched into legitimate business and announced that he’s running for mayor. With his back against the wall, Gabriel turns to Colin for help, but Colin has another agenda in mind: finding Zoey and figuring out what the hell happened during these seven years.

The first name I was remembered when reading WAKE THE UNDERTAKER was James Ellroy. Joe Clifford is not trying to ape Ellroy’s trademark telegraphic style, but his novel crackles with the same dynamic energy than the L.A Quartet. There is also a larger-than-life, deliberately overdrawn aspect to WAKE THE UNDERTAKER that will remind you of comic books. There were these late night cartoons in cable television, back when I was a teenager, that featured the same kind of fearless and energetic approach to displaying a violent underworld. I don’t remember the title of these, but WAKE THE UNDERTAKER triggered the fond memories I have of them. It’s a novel deliberately painted with broad strokes, which is fine because it’s not trying to be sophisticated.

I remembered seeing bums when I was a kid, but nothing like this. Maybe I’d been blind or delusional, the way the mind edits out the unpleasantness as you get older, recalling only novel politicians and honest cops, days when your dad was the srongest man in the world, but it seemed like the divide between the haves and the have-nots grew wider by the day in this town.

So, what does make WAKE THE UNDERTAKER original when it’s built with variables that are borderline cliché? Joe Clifford established a distance from other similar novels by mixing these classic, boderline themes with contemporary ones. WAKE THE UNDERTAKER is a classic hardboiled novel with a contemporary point of view. The character are iconic and easily recognizable and relatable, yet the relationship between them are way more complicated than the boring crooked-cops-and-romantic-robbers dynamic that you usually find in classic hardboiled. Zoey, for example, stands in for the femme fatale, but she’s way more complex than that. She’s that beautiful, selfless woman who had to make difficult choices and turn her back to people she loved and her choices defined the lives of several characters around them.

WAKE THE UNDERTAKER is a gateway novel into the world of hardboiled fiction. It’s accessible, straightfroward and it has a strong, visual style. It was a refreshing experience for me to fall in love again with that underworld that dragged me down the rabbit hole several years ago. The Bay City of WAKE THE UNDERTAKER is a timeless place in our collective consciousness, not unlike the mid-century Los Angeles of James Ellroy, except it’s not bound by the shackles of reality. It’s not an emotional experience, but it’s not a novel that’s trying to be. WAKE THE UNDERTAKER is meant to be enjoyed as a quirky love-letter to classic hardboiled and as another trip to that underworld/netherworld of the lost souls we’ve been fascinated by for a century. Whether you’re feeling nostalgic or you’re trying to turn someone to the dark side of fiction, WAKE THE UNDERTAKER is the novel you need. 

Book Review : Tom Pitts – Piggyback (2012)

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David Foster Wallace once said in interview that the greatest character of twentieth cenury fiction was a suitcase full of money. It’s a loaded thing to say and I’m sure it was meant to be cynical, but there is more to this statement than Wallace would’ve liked to admit. Greed is an immortal evil, but contemporary fiction turned it into a commodity: a suitcase full of money, a shipment of smack or, like in Tom Pitts‘ PIGGYBACK, a car trunk full of weed spiked with a cocaine cargo. Pitts’ short, intense novella is a fatalistic display of how men surrendered their lives to their own greed. To that all-consuming feeling that it’s never enough.

Paul lost his shipment of drugs to two of his mules. Becky and Shelly stole a trunk full of weed, unaware that the cargo was laced with a 5 kilos piggyback of cocaine. So, Paul is in trouble and turns to his friend Jimmy, an enforcer with a knack for solving difficult situations. They soon find themselves on the tail of the two girls, who brought two boys into their schemes: Jerrod and Tristan. Paul and Jimmy are also tailed by Jose, the drug lord who the shipment belonged to. PIGGYBACK is a race to the end of a dark and fateful night, where greed and brutality are going to change the lives of several people who were never supposed to meet in the first place

PIGGYBACK is a deconstruction of what I call ”the suitcase-full-of-money conundrum”. It begins with a clear, almost translucid cliché and quickly works its way to that an abstract place where characters are confronting one another and it becomes impossible to distinct who’s lying, who simply ignores the truth, who’s a perpetrator and who’s just an unwitting accomplice to what was supposed to be an easy score. It creates a (suspended) reality of its own that would not have existed if it had followed its course.The final scene of PIGGYBACK is both Shakespearean in its ambition and inspired by Westerns. It’s a bite-sized tragedy with no innocent victims. 

The proverbial suitcase full of money was the main character of PIGGYBACK, as it dictated just about everything, from the pace of the action to the fate of the cast. It was an efficient little novella, but it missed a character that defined itself by something else than the object of pursuit. The storyline stops dead in its tracks and unveils the grand finale as soon as the payload has been found. I would have loved a different perspective on such a classic trope, a fresh angle, but I can’t say that Tom Pitts is not tackling the issue properly in PIGGYBACK. It’s a tight, intense and yet somewhat traditional story about a missing payload and how it defines people’s faith once it falls off the radar. A good, quick read for your summer. 

Book Review : Richard Stark – The Jugger (1965)

Order THE JUGGER here

(also reviewed)
Order THE HUNTER here
Order THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE here
Order THE OUTFIT here
Order THE MOURNER here
Order THE SCORE here

”Don’t ever show a gun to a man you don’t want to kill.”

One of the great life lessons of the 20th century was that money changes people. The opportunity for life-changing cash will turn a normal being into a dangerous scavenger, ready to do anything. Funerals and notary offices are full of families broken by greed. Most of the Parker novels are about greed and the relentless violence that usually comes with it in the underworld, but it’s not what makes them special, though. Their obsessive protagonist who loves the job way more than he loves the money is what makes them so great. THE JUGGER is the sixth novel of the Parker series and it’s about death, legacy and shitty, opportunistic people. It’s been identified by Richard Stark himself as one of the weaker points of the series * and rightfully so. It’s not a bad novel by any means, it’s just aimless and kind of a clusterfuck.

In THE JUGGER, Parker travels to Nebraska after receiving a distress letter from his longtime friend, retired safecracker Joe Scheer. It seems like age it getting the best of him and Parker can’t allow a man who knows all his secrets to go soft. When he arrives, Scheer is dead and a couple sharks are circling his estate: a thief who’s out of his depth, a crooked doctor, an opportunistic undertaker and greedy, manipulative cop who’ll stop at nothing to get what he believes is his due. They’re a bunch of bloodthirsty amateur, yet Parker is a cold, calculating pro who doesn’t leave witnesses and evidence in his trail. He might not have a choice but to bury this entire band of crooks if he wants to skip town with his anonymity still intact.

The premise of this novel is extremely seducing. I love the idea of Parker dealing with the vultures around his old friend’s fresh body and leaving with the loot. The first 50 pages or so reflected my hopes about THE JUGGER, but it doesn’t grow very far past that point. Joe Scheer is dead, what happened to him is enevually revealed, but his fortune remains hidden and the characters are frustrated. They’re not exactly going after one another either, they remain soaking in that atmosphere or paranoia They’re just doing the same thing, dancing the same dance over and over again. There is an entire part that discusses what happened to Scheer, which is not unfamiliar practice for Richard Stark, but it feels like padding here, because THE JUGGER is kind of a claustrophobic clusterfuck.

”Now, am I smart?”

Parker stood in front of him and said, ”Already today I hit you twice. Once I knocked the wind out of you, oonce I knocked the consciousness out of you. Here you are back the third time. You call that smart?”

That begs the difficult question : what do you do in a series?  Do you try to keep your characters as true to themselves as possible, or do you occasionally stray for dramatic purpose? Parker does both in THE JUGGER, but I think both time, the choice is wrong. He remains paranoid and careful while dealing with Joe’s death, which thwarted the narrative, yet he became sentimental and loopy about his old friend ** enough to get suckered into the kind of trouble he usually eludes trought his streetwise, yet cerebral personality. Like I said, these are hard choices and I don’t know if THE JUGGER could’ve been made any better otherwise, but I thought that’s how it became a lesser novel than the first five volume of the Parker series. Hard to begrudge Richard Stark for that, though. Everybody can have an ”off” day.

The Parker novels never cease to amaze me. He is one of the most iconic characters in crime fiction, he has 24 books dedicated to his adventures and YET, he’s still kind of an untapped resource. In this age of television, he is one of most charismatic, fun and translatable character yet and there are about 5 seasons worth of material already formatted. If BREAKING BAD was picked up by AMC and became a huge success, it’s hard to think of Parker as too hardcore for the mainstream viewership. But maybe I’m just dreaming out loud. The best things in life are often kept from the spotlight and it helps keeping them special. THE JUGGER is not the novel that would turn Parker into a national television sweetheart, but the fans will appreciate the development in the most dangerous thief’s storyline.

* I don’t have the quote for that, but several Parker fans told me this.

** As sentimental and loopy as Parker can get. He’s not a very showy guy.

Book Review : Joe R. Lansdale – Cold in July (1989)

Order COLD IN JULY here

(also reviewed)
Order SAVAGE SEASON here
Order MUCHO MOJO here
Order THE BOTTOMS here

Author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell stated in his book OUTLIERS that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to become a master at something. How can you become a master at telling stories? Do you have to spend 10,000 hours living through and processing some life-altering stuff? Do you have to spend 10,000 hours observing human nature or just spend it writing like a maniac and hope for the best? Whatever path Joe R. Lansdale took to become a masterful writer, most agree that COLD IN JULY is some of his best work. I had it mind to read it for a couple years now, but since Lansdale’s novels are not that easy to find in Montreal, it’s not before the movie adaptation was released that I kicked my own ass and ordered it from Amazon. I was a rabid Joe Lansdale fan already, but can the man WRITE or what? COLD IN JULY is another triumph, a fierce psychological thriller that doesn’t play by the rules and mocks the conventions of every genre.

Richard Dane shot and killed a burglar inside his house. BAM. Right through the eye. Business as usual in Texas, I can already hear you say. Not exactly. Dane is a quiet family man, a frame shop owner who’s principal challenge in life is to not fuck up as a father. The police investigator in charge of his case identifies the victim as Freddy Russel, a local hoodlum who had been taking chances with his life for too many years already. Dane feels extremely shitty about what he’s done and inquires about Russel’s burial. When he’s warned off by the police and informed that Russel’s father Ben is out of jail, it doesn’t deter Dane from doing what he thinks is right. Sometimes, your conscience is not the best guide, though and there might be more to it than just two emotionally scarred fathers. In COLD IN JULY, the confrontation between Richard Dane and Ben Russel is just the beginning of a fall down the rabbit hole of the underworld.

Here’s the wonderful thing about Joe R.Lansdale‘s fiction. I usually figure out novels about 100 pages in. Tropes are like a series of tunnels a story goes through. Once you identify the trope (revenge, love triangle, coming-of-age, etc.), it’s going straight from there and what keeps the story interesting is the characters. COLD IN JULY‘s use of storytelling tropes is like a pinball machine, it’s completely unpredictable. I thought I had it figured out by page 50, as Ben Russel was putting pressure on Richard Dane to confront him, but by page 70, COLD IN JULY did a 180 degrees and added a new, deeper layer to its storyline. Same thing happened 100 pages later, as the story entered its final act and that entirely new thing. That characters of COLD IN JULY were complex and memorable, but they had that crazy, hyperactive storyline to showcase themselves in. 

If my review is not convincing enough for you, maybe the FREAKIN’ MOVIE TRAILER will be.

Joe R. Lansdale is one of the best authors at seamlessly blending genres. Writing a crime novel in the Far West or a horror story in space is juxtaposing genres, but it’s not blending them. COLD IN JULY has this universal appeal. That story could’ve been told in any possible setting and it would’ve still been a psychological thriller, psychological horror, a hardboiled novel, a Western and a samurai epic all rolled up in one. Lansdale understands the essence of these genres so well that he can apply them to every possible setting and COLD IN JULY happens to be a perfect storm. Richard Dane is a protective dad and a frame builder, but he’s also a knight, a cowboy, a sleuth and a tormented man who lives with the idea of death the way samurais do. COLD IN JULY is so incredibly layered, emotionally and narratively complex, that it has something to please everybody.

I’m king of gushing here. It’s no secret I’m a Joe R. Lansdale fan, though. I’d say his work, Tom Piccirilli‘s and Dennis Lehane‘s had the most influence on me. COLD IN JULY is one of his most complex, unpredictable and ultimately satisfying novels, so yeah, I’m kind of gushing. Plus, I’ve read this baby in July! If you’re considering waiting until July 2015 to do so, please don’t. I know there is a specific month in the title, but it’s not a novel that should be stored for eleven months. I know I’ve given my BADASS stamp of approval to another novel last week, but I’m giving it again for different reasons: COLD IN JULY might not be a transcendent emotional experience, but it’s a masterful novel nonetheless. It’s an expert blend of genres and a wild and original story. It’s Joe R. Lansdale at his absolute best.

BADASS