This is week 19 and the turn of the S – authors to hit the
spotlight on our Crime Fiction Alphabet Journey.
If you visit
Mysteries in Paradise website, Kerrie has been kindly collating everyone else’s contribution
to the journey
here.
I have probably too much choice on my shelves this week. Some of the authors who have been over-looked and
fail to make the line-up include....Gerald Seymour, Mark SaFranko, Anthony Neil
Smith, Lawrence Shames, Doug Swanson, Zoe Sharp, Dan Simmons..... mentioning,
but a few.
Sandford, Smith,
Smith...........3 enjoyed
John Sandford – Rules
Of Prey
I vaguely remember buying this in hardback when it was first
published in the UK, which would have been sometime either 1989 or 1990. Read
it and loved it and was delighted when he followed it up the following year
with Shadow Prey. Fast forward to 2013 and Lucas Davenport figures in the 23
rd
Prey book – Silken Prey. At some point in the mid or late 90’s with the arrival
of the Keane family’s next generation – 3 in 3 and a half years, I sort of fell
out of love with reading....no time, constantly working and juggling home life with
everything else that was happening...at this point I lost track of the series
and author. I have a lot of the books, probably
not all, but my mission at some point will be to see read through start to
finish. I’m interested to see if Davenport changes through the passage of nearly
25 years. The author has a couple of
other series which I have dipped in and out of and would also like to read more
of Kidd and LuEllen and more latterly Virgil Flowers.
The murderer was intelligent. He was a member of
the bar. He derived rules based on professional examination of actual cases: Never
kill anyone you know. Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern.
Never carry a weapon after it has been used. Beware of leaving physical
evidence. There were more. He built them into a challenge. He was mad,
of course . . .
The killer's name is Louis
Vullion, a low-key young attorney who, under the camouflage of normalcy,
researches his next female victim until the pressure within him forces him to
reach out and "collect" her. Plying his secret craft with the tactics
of a games master, he has gripped the Twin Cities in a storm of terror more
fierce than any Minnesota winter.
It is after the third murder that
Lucas Davenport is called in. It is the opinion of his colleagues that
everything about the lieutenant is a little different, and they are right — in
the computer games he invents and sells, in the Porsche he drives to work, in
the quality of the women he attracts, in his single-minded pursuit of justice.
The only member of the department's Office of Special Intelligence, Davenport
prefers to work alone, parallel with Homicide, and there is something about
this serial killer that he quickly understands. The man who signs himself
"maddog" in taunting notes to the police is no textbook sociopath; he
has a perverse playfulness that makes him kill for the sheer contest of it. He
is a player.
Which means that Davenport will
have to put all his mental strength — and physical courage — on the line to
learn to think like the killer. For the only way to beat the maddog is at his
own hellish game. . .
Martin Cruz Smith –
Gorky Park
I’m unsure when I first read this, probably not 1981 but I
don’t know. I was still a spotty teenager, probably more interested in football
than books in the early 80’s. This period of my life, as does the USSR of Leonid
Brezhnev seems a lifetime ago. I read this and its follow on Polar Star and
loved both. The author has continued to write about Renko on and off over the
years. Tatiana the eighth is out later this year.
Gorky Park is a 1981
crime novel written by Martin Cruz Smith set in the Soviet Union. It follows
Arkady Renko, a chief investigator for the Militsiya, who is assigned to a case
involving three corpses found in Gorky Park, an amusement park in Moscow, who
have had their faces and fingertips cut off by the murderer to prevent
identification.
Roger Smith – Mixed Blood
Roger Smith only appeared on my radar late last year. I was
shopping with my wife on my birthday in October and chose Dust Devils as a
suitable present for my own good self. I still haven’t read Dust Devils but
after reading the back of it, was compelled to seek out his other stuff.
Mixed Blood was a five-star read late last year for the Criminal Library. He has
another book out soon, Sacrifices which will be welcome, but he either needs to
slow down writing or I need to speed up my reading!
If you are unsure on whether to take the plunge on Smith’s
violent modern day portrayal of South Africa, you could jump in with Ishmael
Toffee – a short novella, which will give you a flavour.
Reluctant bank robber
Jack Burn is on the run after a heist in the United States that left $3 million
missing and one cop dead. Hiding out in Cape Town, South Africa, he is
desperate to build a new life for his pregnant wife and young son. But on a
tranquil evening in their new suburban neighbourhood they are the victims of a
random gangland assault that changes everything. Benny Mongrel, an ex-con night
watchman guarding a building site next to Burn's home, is another man desperate
to escape his past. After years in the ghetto gangs of Cape Town he knows who
went into Burn's house, and what the American did to them. He also knows his
only chance to save his own brown skin is to forget what he saw. Burn's actions
on that night trap them both in a cat-and-mouse game with Rudi 'Gatsby' Barnard
- a corrupt Afrikaner cop who loves killing almost as much as he loves Jesus
Christ and Disaster Zondi, a fastidious Zulu detective who wishes to settle an
old score. Once Gatsby smells those missing American millions, the four men are
drawn into a web of murder and vengeance that builds to an unforgettable
conclusion.
Schwarz, Skipper,
Sturges............3 unread
Stephen Jay Schwarz –
Boulevard
I’m unsure of the how or the when I came across this author,
probably only a year or two ago, but this and his second book, Beat also
featuring Hayden Glass intrigued me. I don’t suppose I will get to this soon,
but it’s reassuring knowing that it’s safely shelved and waiting for me.
Stephen Schwarz's
intensely nonstop thriller is about a LAPD homicide detective who must find a
killer responsible for a series of murders that are directly related to him.
Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective and former vice cop Hayden
Glass is a sex addict. The addiction has ruined his marriage and irreparably
damaged many of his relationships. However, he has always been able to separate
his behaviour from his career. But, when a series of killings in the L. A. area
seem to be meant as a sign just for him, his addiction threatens to ruin both
his professional career and his life.
"Raw, twisted,
and so hard-boiled it simmers from beginning to end." – Robert Crais
Roger Allan Skipper -
Bone Dogs
I was probably sucked in by the cover for this one, though a
recommendation by William Gay another author on my book shelves would have
helped. I think I got this at some point late 2011 or maybe even early last
year, so it isn’t too dusty yet. He has written other stuff, but for once I
have exercised restraint and held off from buying anything else by him until I
see how Skipper’s Bone Dogs goes.
I think I should
maybe extend that mantra to all authors – don’t buy anything new from an author,
unless I have read all their other books on my shelves.....yeah right, like
that is going to happen!
A pound to a penny, when I start reading this, my kid's take the mickey and claim it's me in 10 years-time!
Tuesday Price is a
wiseass, a boozer, and a loser. Only his wife Linda recalls a smarter, better
man, and she's losing faith in that man's return. When Tuesday befriends a
strange, silent Vietnam vet who eternally sits with a cooler of beer in a
disabled pickup, Linda's had enough. At her departure, Tuesday is left with
only his new friend as a companion - until the old vet is found dead, and
Tuesday is blamed. Alone and haunted by regret, Tuesday's daily life
deteriorates until he must unearth his sordid past to reach a worthwhile
future. But his past is a tangle of murder, deceit, and abandonment for which
his only punishment has been self-inflicted. In order to reclaim all that has
been lost, he returns to his deserted childhood home and, with hammer and
nails, rebuilds the sagging structure, reassembling a history quite different
than the one he'd believed while finding the future not at all what he'd
expected.
"Skipper...
brings both protagonists and environment to life in powerful language that
ultimately becomes a sort of hard-edged poetry." – William Gay
P.G. Sturges - The
Shortcut Man
This author is a fairly recent addition to my shelves and another
new author for me, courtesy of a friend of mine from over at Goodreads who
recommended him. P.G. is the son of Preston Sturges, a famous American playwright,
screenwriter and film director. Sturges Jr. has to date written 3 in the Shortcut Man series and I have the lot, waiting for a window in the calendar to get stuck in and hopefully enjoy. They look like my kind of book.
Recommended or blurbed by Michael Connelly
In the best tradition
of James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard, P.G. Sturges has written a smart and
entertaining crime novel set in the underbelly of Los Angeles, with a cast of
characters that runs the gamut from saints to sinners. In the center of it all
is Dick Henry, a "shortcut man," who cuts through red tape for his
clients, whether it be an elderly woman ripped off by shady contractors, or a
landlord with a pesky tenant many months behind on the rent. Sturges's
characters live in a world where right and wrong is a fine line, a line often
crossed by our hero, Dick Henry, who knows that the shortest answer to many
problems may not always be legal.
Back next week with some T's!
