NIK FROBENIUS - DARK BRANCHES (2015)

Synopsis/blurb…..

Author Joe Uddermann has published an autobiographical novel about certain dark events in his past. Expectations run high both in the publishing house and the media, but after an appearance on television sinister things begin to happen: anonymous letters, Barbie dolls with their heads cut off, dead squirrels on the stairs in front of his house. His life with his wife and daughter in Oslo no longer feels secure. Someone is out to get them. Understanding that a seemingly untameable desire has been brought back to life while Joe researched his novel, his wife accuses him of infidelity. George, whom Joe believed to be dead, shows up in the present. When their friend, Katinka is found dead, in an old rose painted coffin in a bog, suddenly there is no knowing who to believe or who to fear. Finally, Joe finds his daughter sitting on a stump in the forest, having seen something that neither child nor adult should see.

“Haunting and very disturbing” – Ann Cleeves, author of Raven Black

Another new author for me with Norway’s Nik Frobenius and Dark Branches. Frobenius wrote the screenplay for the film Insomnia which starred Al Pacino and Robin Williams and which was watched and enjoyed a few months back.

I’ve not read too much Scandinavian crime fiction of late so it was nice to get re-acquainted, with an added bonus being the fact that the book was only one page over the 200 mark.

Our main character Joe seemingly has it all; lovely wife, beautiful daughter and a career that is heading upwards after the release and positive buzz that surrounds his latest book. All is not well in Camp Uddermann though; Joe’s wife seems unsettled and believes he’s been playing away from home; his daughter finds one of her dolls decapitated and worst of all their childhood friend, Katinka is discovered dead in a trunk, murdered the same evening Joe had been to visit her.

Katinka had a difficult relationship with her husband. She’s connected to events from their past that Joe has exploited in his latest literary offering and which certain people are disgruntled about being aired again.   

Is Joe suffering a breakdown? Is George the strange boy from the past really dead as his mother testifies? Why then is he stalking Joe and leaving him strange manuscripts? Why does no-one else seem to see this man?

Joe – author with a disintegrating marriage, mental illness and murderer? Or troubled and isolated innocent?

Frobenius plays with the main character, Joe. You never quite trust or totally like him, but whilst he’s capable of deceit and betrayal, you don’t want him to be a murderer.

Interesting novel - dark, unsettling and not least a little bit disturbing.

4 from 5

Thanks to the publisher Sandstone Press for my copy. Here’s a link to the author’s page on their website.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS - HUSH MONEY (1981)

Synopsis/blurb….

Someone is targeting crooked businessmen for death, and the Chicago Family turns to Nolan for help. Max Allan Collins's hard-boiled Nolan crime novels, steeped in Vietnam-era cynicism, are back in print with new Introductions by the author.

Back in 2013, I started reading Max Allan Collins and his Nolan series, though I got side-tracked after about 3 books. Hush Money is the fourth in the series.

Best book ever? No, but I enjoyed it.

From memory of the previous books, Nolan is a thief-cum-heister who had a falling out with the mob which led to a bit of a war and Nolan being on their hit-list for a number of years. This situation is now resolved and Nolan manages a hotel for them and is kind of living life at a slower pace though boredom is setting in.

Nolan appears about a third of the way into this book. (I was kind of getting concerned that he was going to show up at all!) Someone has been targeting a mob family and taking them out one by one, in revenge for we don’t know what at this stage.

Nolan is brought in to resolve the situation, so business can carry on as usual.

Great characters, maybe not as much action as in previous books though I could be wrong. There’s an interesting dynamic between Nolan and his young side-kick John – friendship? Probably more of a father-son, mentoring type-thing, with John the comic book collector always seeking to handle himself in ways that impress Nolan, without being too obvious about it.

Is it just me or are criminals generally more interesting people to read about than straight Joe’s?

Decent resolution, which offers interesting possibilities for the direction of the next book – Hard Cash which also appeared in the same year as this – 1981.

There's an interesting 2012 intro from the author, which sheds some light on the origins and history of the series with a tasty tit-bit mentioning some irritation and a little bit of friction from Don Pendleton who was a little bit sore about Nolan. (Nolan incidentally pre-dated Bolan, at least from a writing date, if perhaps not in print.)

Pendleton had his Mack Bolan - Executioner series on the go, in which Mack Bolan has his own holy war with the mafia. I did read the first of his books fairly recently - War Against the Mafia.

I know which of the two I prefer and which I'll be reading more from. Roll on August - Hard Cash awaits me!

Groovy man - the author a decade or two ago!

The full Nolan series is as follows: (click on any of the first three for a link to my earlier reviews)

1. Bait Money (1973)

2. Blood Money (1973)

3. Fly Paper (1981)

4. Hush Money (1981)

5. Hard Cash (1981)

6. Scratch Fever (1982)

7. Spree (1987)

8. Mourn the Living (1988)

  

Max Allan Collins is the author of several zillion books including the Nate Heller series and another with an outlaw - Quarry - a hitman. The Quarry books are lined up and ready to roll-on once I've finished with Nolan.

Max Allan's website is here. He's on Twitter - @MaxAllanCollins 

Hush Money was bought for kindle a few years ago.

LARRY D. SWEAZY - SEE ALSO MURDER (2015)

Synopsis/blurb……..

1964—Life on the North Dakota farm hasn’t always been easy for Marjorie Trumaine. She has begun working as a professional indexer to help with the bills—which have only gotten worse since the accident that left her husband, Hank, blind and paralyzed. When her nearest neighbours are murdered in their beds, though, Marjorie suddenly has to deal with new and terrifying problems.

Sheriff Hilo Jenkins brings her a strange amulet, found clutched in the hand of her murdered neighbour, and asks her to quietly find out what it is. Marjorie uses all the skills she has developed as an indexer to research the amulet and look into the murders, but as she closes in on the killer, and people around her continue to die, she realizes that the murderer is also closing in on her.

An enjoyable read and initially a 4 from 5, but ever since I put it down there are certain parts of the book which the more I think about them, the more puzzled I become. Certain motivations and explanations for why our killer acts in a certain fashion are difficult for me to comprehend, though it is possible that they make perfect sense and during my reading I perhaps read parts on auto-pilot – mouthing the words to my brain, but not actually absorbing their significance. I’m sure it’s happened once or twice in the past. To elaborate may spoil things for others. (If anyone who has read it wants to chat off-line I’d be interested in finding out whether it was just me.) Motivation for the initial murders was understood and plausible, but certain aspects of how the killer behaved immediately afterwards don’t quite hang together for me, which sort of unravels the plausibility of the whole thing. 

That said there was a lot to like about this one, not least the setting – North Dakota in 1964 and a small community rocked by a couple of savage murders. Our main character is Marjorie Trumaine. Trumaine is a neighbour to the murdered couple and gets asked by the sheriff to look at some evidence found in the hands of one of the murder victims.

Marjorie is married to Hank. The couple are childless and that situation isn’t about to change as Hank is now blind and paralysed after a hunting accident. Marjorie cares for him and despite the kindness of her neighbours is struggling to keep their farm from going under.  Always a bookish person, she juggles the farm and Hank’s care with an indexing job for a New York publishing house. (I’ve never really considered before how indexes are compiled for books. Apparently the author himself works (or worked) as one.)    

There were a few elements revolving around Norse Mythology, which if I'm honest were relevant in the context of the mystery and the ancestry of a lot of the community, but kind of passed me by. 

The best part of the book for me was Marjorie and her relationships and inter-actions with various people within the book - Marjorie and Hank; Marjorie and her friend - Calla the librarian; Marjorie and her cousin – Raymond; Marjorie and Gus – the small-town faded sports star turned cop; Marjorie and her publisher employer. At times assertive, at times passive and a little too much of a doormat for my liking. It’s curious how we act and behave differently depending on the dynamics of different relationships.

I’d like to read more from the author and about Marjorie, though I’m kind of thinking Marjorie may possibly be a one-shot deal, as I’m not too sure that a second mystery with her at the heart would hold water – not unless the author did some drastic restructuring regarding her family relationships.

Still a bit conflicted over whether to go for a 3 or a 4 – on balance I’ll stick with a 4.

Blog friend, Tracy – over at Bitter Tea and Mystery reviewed it here. Tracy, I think enjoyed it a bit more than me.

Larry D. Sweazy has written lots more, including Westerns. His website is here.

Thanks to the publisher, Seventh Street for my copy of this one.    

2 BY DAVID CRAY

2 from David Cray this week, only David Cray is a nom-de-plume and the actual author is Stephen Solomita.

Stephen Solomita is a favourite of mine, though admittedly there’s more books still to be read than have actually been enjoyed thus far – but all that means is that there’s plenty to look forward to.

As Solomita he has featured on the blog a couple of times – a “2 by” post, a review of The Striver and a Q+A session which for the most part was Stephen entertaining us with life on the mean streets of LA as a cab driver.

There have been a total of 6 books published as David Cray between 1995 and 2004. None of these are flagged as series books on the author’s page at Fantastic Fiction, but I think they have one or more recurring characters in a few of them.  

David Cray  Stephen Solomita has a website here.  

What You Wish For (2002)

David Cray staked out his gritty, darkly realistic territory in the field of crime fiction with the gripping police procedural Little Girl Blue. In it, he also introduced the tough-minded NYPD lieutenant Julia Brennan and disaffected undercover cop Peter Foley." "Now a captain and commanding officer of the district attorney's Sex Crimes Unit, Brennan is single-mindedly investigating the homicide of Adeline Rose, an elderly widow and heartless stepmother who has been found murdered in the third-floor sitting room of her Manhattan townhouse. So engrossed does Julia become in cracking a case with several likely suspects, one motive (money), and no alibis, that she barely notices Peter Foley's failure to return her phone calls. By no mere slip of the mind, on Foley's part. For he has discovered that his daughter, Patti, kidnapped more than five years before, is still alive. Prepared to do anything on either side of the law to get Patti back, Foley has intentionally been avoiding Julia, so as not to compromise her by-the-book procedural scruples. Julia, though, soon proves to be Foley's fiercest ally. Flouting the risks to her very public career, in an increasingly more hazardous and only marginally legal pursuit through the seedy precincts of the city's child pornography industry, she joins Foley in his desperate search for his eleven-year-old daughter. With stakes so high, no rules hold.

Partners (2003)

On July 8 Jorge "Finito" Rakowski is released from the Otus Bantam Correctional Center on Rikers Island, where he has served ninety days for Criminal Mischief in the Fourth Degree; he's a thief. Nine months, thirteen victims, and several Latino aliases later, the handsome, sandy-haired Finito, whose magnetism only begins in his penetrating green eyes, has with deadly invention raised his criminal stakes. He has become a serial killer. In this gripping, new police procedural, the enthusiastically reviewed David Cray again lays bare the ambitions and betrayals among New York City's police detectives at the same time that he explores the darker side of the criminal mind. For NYPD's Belinda Moore-confident, cool, professional, black-and her dogged, promotion-hungry partner, Pudge Pedersson, find themselves not only baffled as to the identity of the notorious, slippery, and increasingly desperate Break-In Killer, but also battling, and defying, their superiors in the police bureaucracy. More and more, Belinda and Pedersson realize they can't crack the case and play by the book. What they don't realize is where the case-and a perp who's on to them-is dangerously, maybe even fatally, taking them.

LOGGING THE LIBRARY - PART FORTY

Possibly at the halfway stage of the exercise, but maybe not. Having spent an afternoon shuffling the tubs around and giving myself some palpitations about the strength of the joists in my attic, there are 42 tubs still to catalogue. (Though they may or may not house 50-odd books in each.)

When I have the paperbacks and hardbacks in the attic done, there's 100-odd books downstairs, plus a load of "papers" and PDF copies of books also in the attic, then the Kindle. Something to worry about in about 42 week's time maybe.......

Tub 40 anyway.........

Tub 40 - pre-logged look!

Alan Bennett, William Boyd, David Nicholls, Kenneth Abel, Robert Deane Pharr,

Robert Deane Pharr,

Kenneth Abel - likened to Elmore!

Hakan Nesser, Russell James, P.J. Tracy, Steve Ulfelder, Ernesto Mallo,

Argentinian Crime,

Scandi crime.

Brit crime,

Joe R. Lansdale, Charles McCarry, Johan Theorin, Hakan Nesser, Jim Thompson.

Jim Thompson

Espionage from McCarry

Joe R. Lansdale - standalone novel.

Steve Mosby, Elmore Leonard, Arnaldur Indridason, Victor Headley, David Kevien,

Carl Webster book

David Levien - Lee Child likes him,

Michael Peterson, Peter Robinson, Bill James, Tony Hillerman, James McClure,

Native American crime

Harpur and Iles series book

South Africa - during apartheid era

P.B.Yuill, Graham Hurley, David Morrell, Giles Blunt, Mark Gimenez,

Canadian Crime

UK police procedural

John Irving, Ed O'Loughlin, Christopher Ross, Greg Rucka x 2,

Horror on the shelves?

Atticus Kodiak books

London Underground - non-fiction

Bill Bryson, Jonathan Valin, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Manuel Vasquez Montalban, Inbali Iserles,

Spanish author

Harry Stoner series book,

African journal from Bryson

YA book - slipped in the tub by one of the kids?

Bruce Zimmerman, Gerald Seymour, Reed Farrel Coleman, Don Winslow, Mike Knowles,

Moe Prager PI series

Series book from Mike Knowles

Sequel to a Trevanian novel,

Bradley Denton, Gerald Seymour, Dashiell Hammett, Nicholas Blincoe, Harry Crews - bio book,

My kind of book,

20's hard-boiled from Hammett

English thriller writer

Nicholas Blincoe

Essays on Harry Crews

Tub 40 put to bed.

Highlights........ Kenneth Abel, Joe Lansdale, Mike Knowles, Greg Rucka...

Lowlights........ nothing in particular, though I did struggle to get into Blincoe when I tried reading him a few years ago. Second time's the charm, maybe.

Full list of 50........

AUTHOR		TITLE	YEAR	SERIES	FICTION/NON
ABEL	KENNETH	THE BLUE WALL	1996		F
ADLER-OLSEN	JUSSI	REDEMPTION	2013	DQ3	F
BENNETT	ALAN	FOUR STORIES	2006		F
BLEDSOE	ERIK	PERSPECTIVES ON HARRY CREWS (ed.)	2001		N
BLINCOE	NICHOLAS	JELLO SALAD	1997		F
BLUNT	GILES	FORTY WORDS FOR SORROW	2000	JC1	F
BOYD	WILLIAM	ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS	2009		F
BRYSON	BILL	AFRICAN DIARY	2002		N
COLEMAN	REED FARREL	REDEMPTION STREET	2004	MP2	F
DENTON	BRADLEY	BLACKBURN	1993		F
GIMENEZ	MARK	THE ABDUCTION	2007		F
HAMMETT	DASHIELL	RED HARVEST	1929		F
HEADLEY	VICTOR	SEVEN SEALS	2002		F
HILLERMAN	TONY	THE BLESSING WAY	1970	JL1	F
HURLEY	GRAHAM	TURNSTONE	2000	F+W1	F
INDRIDASON	ARNALDUR	HYPOTHERMIA	2009	IE6	F
IRVING	JOHN	THE 158-POUND MARRIAGE	1974		F
ISERLES	INBALI	THE TYGRINE CAT	2007	TC1	F
JAMES	RUSSELL	PICK ANY TITLE	2002		F
JAMES	BILL	HARPUR AND ILES	1988	H+I4	F
KNOWLES	MIKE	NEVER PLAY ANOTHER MAN'S GAME	2012	W4	F
LANSDALE	JOE R.	FREEZER BURN	1999		F
LEONARD	ELMORE	UP IN HONEY'S ROOM	2006	CW2	F
LEVIEN	DAVID	THE CONTRACT	2011	FB3	F
MALLO	ERNESTO	SWEET MONEY	2011	IL2	F
McCARRY	CHARLES	CHRISTOPHER'S GHOSTS	2007	PC7	F
McCLURE	JAMES	SNAKE	1975	K+Z4	F
MONTALBAN	MANUEL VASQUEZ	SOUTHERN SEAS	1986	PCM2	F
MORRELL	DAVID	THE COVENANT OF THE FLAME	1991		F
MOSBY	STEVE	THE CUTTING CREW	2005		F
NESSER	HAKAN	THE INSPECTOR AND SILENCE	2010	IVV5	F
NESSER	HAKAN	BORKMANN'S POINT	2006	IVV2	F
NICHOLLS	DAVID	STARTER FOR TEN	2003		F
O'LOUGHLIN	ED	TOPLOADER	2011		F
PETERSON	MICHAEL	A TIME OF WAR	1990		F
PHARR	ROBERT DEANE	GIVEADAMN BROWN	1978		F
ROBINSON	PETER	CAEDMON'S SONG	1990		F
ROSS	CHRISTOPHER	TUNNEL VISIONS	2001		N
RUCKA	GREG	KEEPER	1996	AK1	F
RUCKA	GREG	FINDER	1997	AK2	F
SEYMOUR	GERALD	THE FIGHTING MAN	1993		F
SEYMOUR	GERALD	THE GLORY BOYS	1976		F
THEORIN	JOHAN	THE DARKEST ROOM	2009	O2	F
THOMPSON	JIM	CROPPER'S CABIN	1952		F
TRACY	P. J.	TWO EVILS	2012	M6	F
ULFELDER	STEVE	PURGATORY CHASM	2011	CS1	F
VALIN	JONATHAN	NATURAL CAUSES	1983	HS5	F
WINSLOW	DON	SATORI	2011		F
YUILL	P. B.	THE BORNLESS KEEPER	1974		F
ZIMMERMAN	BRUCE	BLOOD UNDER THE BRIDGE	1989	QPM1	F