2 BY TOD GOLDBERG

Another author with a few books in the collection and who is as yet an untried quantity - Tod Goldberg.

Anything be it a book or film with GANGSTER in the title is pretty much guaranteed to grab my attention.

Tod Goldberg has had another half dozen or so novels and a few short story collections published. His book, Fake Liar Cheat sits on the pile also. 

I'll probably start with these two though.

Gangsterland (2014)

Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man for the Chicago Mafia, able to get in and out of a crime without a trace. Until now, that is. His first-ever mistake forces Sal to botch an assassination, killing three undercover FBI agents in the process. This puts too much heat on Sal, and he knows this botched job will be his death sentence to the Mafia. So he agrees to their radical idea to save his own skin: hide out as a Rabbi in Las Vegas.

Gangster Nation (2017)

"One can't help but think of such greats as Mario Puzo, Jimmy Breslin, Elmore Leonard, and Donald E. Westlake while reading this witty, brutal, vital book. Goldberg is a master." -- Mystery Scene Magazine

 "Gangster Nation is a razor. It will slice you open and reveal your insides. And like the best of Tod Goldberg's work, it'll show you everything you are at your core." --Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author of The President's Shadow

It's been two years since the events of Gangsterland, when legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. It's September of 2001 and for David, everything is coming up gold: Temple membership is on the rise, the new private school is raking it in, and the mortuary and cemetery--where Cohen has been laundering bodies for the mob--is minting cash. But Sal wants out. He's got money stashed in safe-deposit boxes all over the city. He's looking at places to escape to, Mexico or maybe Argentina. He only needs to make it through the High Holidays, and he'll have enough money to slip away, grab his wife and kid, and start fresh.

Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for an Indian Casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his off-time stalking members of The Family, looking for vengeance for the murder of his former partner. So when Sal's cousin stumbles into the casino one night, Matthew takes the law into his own hands--again--touching off a series of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in around him.

Gangster Nation is a thrilling follow-up to Gangsterland, an unexpected, page-turning examination of the seedy foundations of American life. With the wit and gritty glamor that defines his writing, Goldberg traces how the things we most value in our lives--home, health, even our spiritual lives--have been built on the enterprises of criminals.

NOVEMBER 2020 - 30 DAYS, 30 SHORTS!

My quarterly story a day adventure continued in November.

It's a great way to meet new authors, catch up with old ones and it makes a change from reading full length novels all the time.

1st - Neille Williams - A Mashed Potato Murder (Close To The Bone)

2nd - Sebnem E. Sanders - Hunter's Moon (Punk Noir Magazine)

3rd - Mark McConville - Herd of Angels (Punk Noir Magazine)

4th - Stephen J. Golds - The Hard Time (Shotgun Honey)

5th - Nik Korpon - Montevideo (Shotgun Honey)

6th - Daniel Eveloff - Prevenge (Close To The Bone)

7th - Nick Kolakowski - Contact Tracing (Shotgun Honey)

8th - Georgia MacShane - The Flooding of Alice Springs (Brain Drip)

9th - Nigel Bird - Stones In Me Pockets (Shotgun Honey)

10th - Angel Luis Colón - Trimmigrant Song (Shotgun Honey)

11th - JB Polk - Regenerator (Close To The Bone)

12th - Margot Kinberg - And the Music Played (Crime and Mystery Writer Margot Kinberg)

13th - Bruce Maddle - Winterkill  (Close To The Bone)

14th - John Rector - Eddie Loves Animals (Tough)

15th - Ben Boulden - Reprobate  (Gravetapping - blog of Ben Boulden)

16th - Brian Beatty - Serious Business (Mystery Tribune)

17th - Paul D. Brazill - Who Killed Skippy? (Paul D. Brazill)

18th - K A Laity - The Chimp (Punk Noir Magazine)

19th - Billy Kring - The Little Angel (Mystery People)

20th - Steve Ellis - He Knows (Close To The Bone)

21st - Charlotte Perkins Stetson - The Yellow Wallpaper (National Library of Medicine)

22nd - Josh Stallings - When the Hammer Comes Down (Mystery People)

23rd - Fred Andersen - Writers’ Chat Room: Chat Log April 13 (Close To The Bone)

24th - Paul D. Brazill - Stamp of a Vamp  (Paul D. Brazill)

                                            PAUL D. BRAZILL

A Hard Man To Ignore But Well Worth The Effort.

25th - Robert Ragan - PO Box (Punk Noir Magazine)

26th - Fredric Brown - Don't Look Behind You (You-books.com)

27th - Christopher Witty - Bones (Northodox Press)

28th - David Tromblay - Short Timer (Shotgun Honey)

29th - Paul D. Brazill - The Luck of the Devil (Paul D. Brazill)

30th - Amy-Jean Muller - Your Hair Woman (Close To The Bone)

Previous outings.......

AUGUST, 2016 - 31 DAYS, 31 SHORTS!

AUGUST, 2017 - 31 DAYS, 31 SHORTS!

AUGUST, 2018 - 31 DAYS, 31 SHORTS!

AUGUST, 2019 - 31 DAYS, 31 SHORTS!

FEBRUARY, 2020 - 29 DAYS, 29 SHORTS!

MAY, 2020 - 31 DAYS, 31 SHORTS!

AUGUST 2020 - 31 DAYS 31 SHORTS!

WILLIAM BAYER - PEREGRINE (1981)

 

Synopsis/blurb....

This novel won the Mystery Writers of American Edgar Award for Best Novel.

Circling high over Rockefeller Center is a peregrine falcon, the most awesome of the flying predators. She awaits a signal from her falconer. It is given: The bird attacks, plummeting from the sky at nearly 200 miles an hour, striking a young woman and killing her instantly.

By chance, newscaster Pamela Barrett witnesses the slaying. Her impassioned account of it on television that evening thrills the falconer - a brilliant madman who identifies with his deadly bird and, through her, seeks catharsis. He becomes fascinated with Pam and enmeshes her in a bizarre and deadly scheme, even as she finds herself drawn to him by an erotic need she does not understand.

As killing follows killing, the terrified city becomes the backdrop of an extraordinary drama. Police and the media engage in cutthroat competition to find the murderer. Two predator birds are pitted in a fight to the death above Central Park. Call girls, rich eccentrics, striving careerists, dealers in the black market for rare birds - all play their roles in this study of secret passion, desire, fulfillment, and ecstasy. The ancient sport of falconry, in which birds are trained to hunt and kill on command, is the key to the spectacular operatic finale.

For all its excitement and intricate detail, Peregrine is more than a thriller: It is a study of secret passion - desire, fulfillment, ecstasy. In the falconer, in Pam his prey, and in the burnt-out detective who finds in this case a means to his salvation, author William Bayer has created vibrant characters each of whom is both hunter and hunted, each of whom fulfills the others in extraordinary ways.

An early 80s Edgar winner from William Bayer and a book with an unusual murder weapon - a peregrine falcon. Enjoyable and exciting upto a point, I think I struggled with a lack of understanding as to why the murderer was killing, despite a decent amount of time spent in his head. When his bird attacks he feels electric and alive. As he increases his attacks and the New York public become panicked and scared, in a great part fuelled by the publicity that he helps engineer through his notes to the TV lady who witnesses and reported on the first attack; he feels sated and omnipotent and in control. Further attacks fuel his fantasies which ever increasingly feature Pam the TV presenter. I understood the perverse sense of satisfaction he felt as his bird did his bidding, but frustratingly I didn't get any clue as to why he felt compelled to go down the particular road he was travelling on.

During the book we spend time in the company of three different characters; the killer himself; Pamela, the struggling TV presenter with a career in the doldrums, that is until she witnesses the first murder and it explodes on an upward trajectory and, after only appearing on the periphery for the early part of the book, Detective Janek. 

Inevitably the three protagonists are drawn closer and closer together as the book progresses. Pamela conducts her own enquiries, albeit on behalf of her network and always to fuel the story, into the different aspects of falconry - training, breeding, the sport and its fans and detractors as well as the black market and the leading characters in the pursuit. The killer; by positioning himself closer and closer to Pamela, as an unofficial adviser of sorts to her and her network, given his expertise regarding the peregrine. And lastly Janek, who intersects with Pamela, while trying to control the information her and the TV network release from the killer, while trying to get a handle on him to advance his investigation.

It's a tense and exciting book and it read quite quickly. I liked the setting - New York - who doesn't?  The conclusion when we get to it, is a bit strange and weird, but it put to bed most of my concerns.  Probably the star of the show though was the bird. His initial attack is breathtaking and he reportedly dives at 150mph, which had me shaking my head - no way. A bit of googling later, 150mph sounds slow as they can get to 220 apparently. WTF!

I reckon I've enjoyed other books from 1981 more than this one though. That said I'll look forward to more from William Bayer in the future, including his other Janek books. I hope he features more prominently in them than he does in this, as he is a little bit absent from a lot of the proceedings.

Overall 3.5 from 5

Read - (listened to) November, 2020

Published - 1981

Page count - 305 (10 hrs 27 mins)

Source - Audible purchase

Format - Audible

2 BY MERCEDES LAMBERT

A couple from 25-30 years ago and another-new-to-me author, Mercedes Lambert.

Mercedes Lambert wrote three novels featuring lawyer, Whitney Logan and her friend Lupe Ramos - these two plus Ghosttown. Ghosttown was published posthumously in 2007. She also had a fourth novel, El Nino published under her real name. 

Mercedes Lambert - Douglas Anne Munson sadly passed in 2003.

Her books have been praised by Ken Bruen, Michael Connelly and John Lutz to mention a few

LA setting, a couple of strong female characters, a missing person, armed robbery, death, secrets  what's not to like?

Dogtown (1991)

Whitney Logan, attorney-at-law, is broke. So when Monica Fullbright shows up with a thousand dollar retainer wanting her to locate her missing housemaid, an illegal immigrant named Carmen, Whitney takes the job. She may not like playing sleuth, but she can't afford to be picky. Enlisting the aid of Lupe Ramos, a chicana prostitute who works the street below her office, she soon finds out that Monica is not all she seems. And when the two of them stumble on the housemaid's dead body, they quickly find themselves on a fetid trail of Latin politics, drug smuggling and misguided allegiances. Nothing is as it seems in Dogtown

Soultown (1996)

Whitney Logan and Lupe have gone in different directions, the only thing in common their shared dream of a new start. But Whitney figures she owes Lupe something and agrees to help her reunite with her son, now living with Lupe's ex-boxer brother Hector and his new girlfriend in Koreatown. When they show up to get the boy, they find themselves in the midst of an armed robbery. However, this is no simple operation, but a complicated theft involving old Korean friends. Whitney agrees to help, and soon finds that Hector's girlfriend Kim and the old friends all have closely held secrets that none of them are prepared to give up. Even her alliance with Lupe is an uneasy one. Deception is the order of the day in Soultown

LAWRENCE BLOCK (as SHELDON LORD) - A WOMAN MUST LOVE (1960)

 

Synopsis/blurb....

A WOMAN MUST LOVE is #12 in the Collection of Classic Erotica, and it’s never been reissued since Midwood brought it out in 1960. Consequently I’ve just read it for the first time since I wrote it some 57 years ago.

I remember the circumstances of writing it. I was living in Buffalo, at 422 Starin Avenue, in the house where I grew up. Besides writing, I was co-proprietor of a coffee house and non-alcoholic nightclub called The Jazz Center. (We hosted some decent musicians. Trumpeter Sammy Noto, who’d quit Stan Kenton’s band because he didn’t like living on the road, led one combo that played our joint with some frequency. Another band was fronted by a dude known alternately as Tommy Green, Tommy Mundy, and Ahmed Khan; his specialty was bongos and bullshit, but he had some good musicians working for him. One night Percy Heath of the Modern Jazz Quartet came by late, sat in with our guys, and played a twenty-minute bass solo that I wish I could hear again. That part was nice, but we never took a dime out of the place, and after I sold my interest to my partner, an old Trotskyite named Frank St. George, he wound up making the musicians partners so he wouldn’t have to pay them. After he was forced to close down, Frank went on to have a distinguished career as a Buffalo restauranteur.)

See, that much I remember. And I remember my writing schedule at the time. I would be at the club, or out on the town with the unfortunate young woman destined to become the first Mrs. Block. Then I’d get home, and I’d have a cup of coffee with my night owl mother before she went to bed around midnight. Then I’d write until dawn, when I’d have breakfast with my early-rising father. And then I’d go to bed and sleep until it was time to get up and do it all over again.

As for the novel itself, A WOMAN MUST LOVE, I can’t say I remembered much. It’s set in Buffalo, in the very neighborhood in which it was written, and I hadn’t even recalled that about the book until I read it on my Kindle. I vaguely remembered that there was a book in which I’d given all the characters English and Irish counties as surnames, and this seems to be the book. Aside from those two elements, I felt like the old boy in the assisted-living center, meeting new people every day.

I was surprised to be reading less the erotic romp the Midwood and Nightstand books tended to be than an out-and-out romance novel. Barbara, a young widow, has vowed to be true to her husband’s memory (even though he’d wished otherwise). She’s courted, and she has a couple of adventures, and there’s a certain amount of coupling in the book of one sort or another, but the damn thing’s a romance, and I have to wonder how I came to write it.

It would have been about a year later that my own father died—suddenly, of an aortic aneurysm. In the years that followed I might well have gone through some sort of Hamlet/Oedipus crap when my mother resumed dating, though I can’t recall much in the way of conflicted feelings. But the book was way earlier, and where the story came from I have no idea.

Well, never mind. I hope you’ll find things to enjoy in Barbara’s story—not least of all Paul Rader’s cover art. Long after I’d forgotten the words I wrote, I remembered those vivid pastels.

Not one of my favourite Lawrence Block books, but I was entertained as well as troubled in equal measures with this one.

Obviously it was aimed at the adult soft porn (erotic) market of the day and during the course of the book we have a widow finding out that her vow to stay faithful to her dead husband's memory is sorely tested. Eventually she succumbs and thereafter she has a series of midly titillating encounters with a boiler repairman, and a couple of teachers from the school where she works - one female, one male, before she eventually decides she isn't gay. Her boyfriend and her then presumably go off page to live life happily ever after, now she has finally put her guilt and bereavement behind her.

I think what troubled me is the second encounter with the boiler man where he forces himself on her. Comforted by her friend, within x number of hours she's enjoying a romp with her compadre. I suppose it's indicative of the times and I'm applying 2020 20-20 vision to the attitudes and mores of sixty years ago. It's almost as if rape can be quickly dismissed and gotten past. I doubt very much that life works that way. The attack is cruel, brutal and violent, and you would have to believe our main character is suitably traumatised.

Maybe I'm over thinking things and should just consume a dated piece of work, attempt to apply some context to the book and its audience and the time it was written and move on.

I enjoyed portions of the book. The main character suffers loss, survives it, comes to terms with her new reality, and decides to carry on living life and enjoying it. The end.

3 from 5

Lawrence Block has been read many times in the past and I'll look forward to many more in the future.

Read - (listened to) November, 2020

Published - 1960

Page count - 168 (4 hrs 21 mins)

Source - Audible purchase

Format - Audible

NIK KORPON - RADICALS (2020)

 

Synopsis/blurb......

Jay Brodsky is an enigma. To his fellow agents at the FBI’s cybercrimes division. To his new partner. Even to himself. For someone whose skills are beyond question, he often seems just on the edge of losing control. He seldom speaks about his family and his personal life, but he seems to be hiding something. And he has an unusual obsession with even the most obscure punk rock. 

So when a mysterious cyber-terrorist organization begins erasing Americans’ medical debt, Jay must put his personal issues aside to focus on an attack that threatens to destabilize the US economy. But when the trail leads to his own family, Jay will be forced to confront everything he never knew about his parents and his long-missing sister and decide where his true loyalties lie. 

With his country and his mind racing toward a breaking point, can Jay find the answers before everything descends into chaos?

A fast paced thriller with an intriguing backdrop of punk rock, family history and current day anarchism. Our main character is Jay, an FBI agent. He is currently investigating some hackers who are causing mayhem by wiping out insurance debts. Each subsequent attack increases the threat to the economic stability of the country, irrespective of the rights and wrongs and morality of some of the companies suffering the losses. There's some real sleazeballs getting their comeuppance. While frowned upon and feared by the authorities, the actions attract some level of public sympathy.

Somewhat inevitably the crimes escalate and increase in ferocity ie murder and as a consequence the pressure on Jay and his unit multiplies.

I quite liked the main character, Jay. He's a loner and has several peculiar OCD tics which he has to enact, particularly when stressed. His part in the investigation, reveals to the reader, much of his past.... difficulties with his parents, a maverick upbringing of protest and rebellion, grief and bereavement, deep roots in punk rock and a strong bond with his sister, which fractured when Jay signed up to be an FBI agent. 

As the investigation progresses and circles closer and closer to the old music scene he and his sister inhabited, our man is conflicted. Do his job, stop the anarchists and possibly do damage to his estranged sister or put absent family before duty. Uncomfortable family secrets are uncovered, a work partnership has potential for more, but only if he can open up his secret self. 

As well as the quirkiness of the main character and his emotional baggage, I enjoyed the depiction of the music scene and the ground level participation in it....... band membership, gigging, touring, friendships, the collecting element and also the point at which for some people it stops. You grow, you move on, you depart the scene, you rebel back into normality and a career. The other fork in the road, you stay, you play, you live the doctrine, you submerse yourself in non-confirmity and embrace anarchy and you reject and despise the sibling that took the other path.

Family reunions can be fleeting and not always happy events, but blood can prove thicker than water.

Lots to like..... pace, plot, character, history, a nostalgic look back at a fascinating musical genre, which on this side of the Atlantic this reader embraced (albeit a dipping of a toe in the water, as opposed to a head first total immersion). There's a decent outcome to round things off. I'd be happy to see a second book with Jay Brodsky in the future.

Radicals was my first time reading author Nik Korpon's work. Irrespective of a sequel, it won't be my last. Old Ghosts and Wear Your Home Like a Scar sit on the pile already.

4.5 from 5

Read - (listened to) November, 2020

Published - 2020

Page count - unknown (6 hrs 45 mins)

Source - Audible freebie purchase after receiving a download code from the author

Format - Audible

2 BY JOE IDE

A couple from Joe Ide and his well regarded IQ series. 

I sometimes scratch my head in bewilderment. I mean there's an author and a series of books that everyone raves about, I read the blurb, like the sound of them, buy them but never actually get around to reading them. WTF!

There's four in the series so far, with a fifth due out early next year.....

1. IQ (2016)

2. Righteous (2017)

3. Wrecked (2018)

4. Hi Five (2020)

5. Smoke (2021)

No doubt, I'll buy the bugger, by then I hope to have read a couple at least, watch this space!

From the author's wensite - JoeIde.com

JOE IDE is of Japanese American descent and grew up in South Central Los Angeles. Joe’s favorite books were the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. The idea that a person could face the world and vanquish his enemies with just his intelligence fascinated him. Joe went on to earn a graduate degree and had several careers before writing his debut novel, IQ, inspired by his early experiences and love of Sherlock. Joe lives in Santa Monica, California.

 IQ (2016)

'Joe Ide is the best new discovery I've come across in a long time. And Isaiah Quintabe is the kind of sleuth not seen on the mystery landscape before.' Michael Connelly

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA JOHN CREASEY (new blood) DAGGER

THE TIMES CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH: 'Full of humour, originality and high-quality writing'

East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, the elderly are being mugged, children go missing. But word has spread: if you've got a case the police can't - or won't - touch, Isaiah Quintabe will help you out.

They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. His clients pay him whatever they can afford, a new set of tyres or some homemade muffins. But now he needs a client who can pay. And the only way to that client is through a jive-talking, low-life drug dealer he thought he'd left behind. Then there's the case itself. A drug-addled rap star surrounded by a crew of flunkies who believes his life is in danger; and a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic. If he solves this case, IQ can put right a mistake he made long ago. If not it won't just be the hit man coming after him ...

WINNER of the ANTHONY AWARD for Best Debut, the SHAMUS AWARD for BEST FIRST P.I. NOVEL. the MACAVITY AWARD for Best First Novel; SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 EDGAR AWARD and STRAND CRITICS AWARD.

Wrecked (2018)

Isaiah Quintabe - IQ for short - has never been more successful, or felt more alone. A series of high-profile wins in his hometown of East Long Beach have made him so notorious that he can hardly go to the corner store without being recognized. Dodson, once his sidekick, is now his full-fledged partner, hell-bent on giving IQ's PI business some real legitimacy: a Facebook page, and IQ's promise to stop accepting Christmas sweaters and carpet cleanings in exchange for PI services.

So when a young painter approaches IQ for help tracking down her missing mother, it's not just the case Isaiah's looking for, but the human connection. And when his new confidant turns out to be connected to a dangerous paramilitary operation, IQ falls victim to a threat even a genius can't see coming.

Waiting for Isaiah around every corner is Seb, the Oxford-educated gangster who was responsible for the death of his brother, Marcus. Only, this time, Isaiah's not alone. Joined by a new love interest and his familiar band of accomplices, IQ is back - and the adventures are better than ever.