ED McBAIN - COP HATER (1956)

Synopsis/blurb...

Swift, silent and deadly, someone is killing the 87th Precinct's finest...

When Detective Reardon is found dead, motive is a big question mark. But when his partner becomes victim number two, it looks like open-and-shut grudge killings. That is, until a third detective is murdered.

With one meagre clue, Detective Steve Carella begins his grim search for the killer, a search that takes him into the city's underworld to a notorious brothel, to the apartment of a beautiful and dangerous widow and, finally, to a .45 automatic aimed straight at his head...

From the Author of Money, Money, Money:

"The finest police procedurl series ever...
Keep 'em coming, Ed" 
- Independent on Sunday

First book in Ed McBain's classic series of police procedurals and one I finally cracked after a couple of previously aborted attempts - wrong book, wrong time before.

Once I got into it, it was quite a quick read and one which held my interest. The series runs to over fifty books and I have most of them after a mad splurge on E-bay a few years ago. Ideally I'd like to read them all, but I'll have to see how I go.

Here we get to meet several of the 87th Precinct characters, albeit a couple of them only briefly. Steve Carella is the main focus and we get some of his personal life as well as watching him do the detecting bit. He has a fiance, Teddy who is deaf and dumb and unwittingly gets involved in the outcome to the investigation.

Without ever feeling totally amazed or stunned by McBain's writing, I did enjoy the book. Things are relayed quite matter of factly. Sixty-five years old, it depicts a different time. Cops were the good guys and things were more black and white. They have respect from the community and media as a whole and at least in this book behave properly. I'll be curious to see if that changes as the series progresses.

I liked the everyday scenes of life in the squad room, the interviews at desks, the little snippets about each detective, his family, his salary, the camaraderie, the sense of loss, the visits to the bereaved, the briefing to a journalist and the sting in the tail which that provides - one which eventually forces the killer to show their hand.

The motive for the killings was quite clever and I enjoyed the pace of the book. One of the detectives who is killed is black, but there's no indication of any prejudice displayed towards him by his fellow officers, or subsequently in their dealings with his family. I don't know whether that surprises me or not. Here his skin colour wasn't important because he was one of them.

My edition had an introduction by the author in which he writes about the origins of the series and the research he did. This added to my enjoyment of the book.

Overall - quite good and I'm looking forward to more. Off to dig out my copy of the second - The Mugger - ready for a read sometime soon.

4 from 5

Read - June, 2020
Published - 1956
Page count - 208
Source - owned copy
Format - paperback

JIM HESKETT - REAGAN'S ASHES (2015)

Synopsis/blurb...

Reagan Darby crams her dad's urn into an overflowing backpack. His last wish: deliver the urn to Rocky Mountain National Park and release his ashes into Lake Nanita. To find closure, she'll hike the same route they completed after her latest involuntary stay at the hospital.

But not alone, as she'd hoped. Her cousin Dalton surprises her at the trailhead and insists on tagging along. Soon, his eerie stares and half-volume mutterings set her on edge. As they trudge further into the mountains, dodging moose and lightning strikes, she catches him rifling through her backpack multiple times. She confronts him, but he shrugs it off. His claims that he came along for support wear thin, but she's too deep into the park simply to turn around.

When Reagan discovers a hidden compartment in the lid of the urn, a tiny silver key tumbles onto the floor of her tent. But there's no telling what lock the key might open. More unsettling, however, is that her lithium has gone missing. With only a meager Swiss Army knife for protection, she'll have to fend off her cousin, resist the creeping mania, and escape the forest to find the lock. If the man Dalton works for locates it first, he'll reduce Reagan to the same pile of dust and ash.

Reagan's Ashes combines wilderness survival thriller with amateur sleuth mystery.

Another Audible book downloaded after a freebie code was made available by the author and one I enjoyed but not without a couple of .... meh moments.

Reagan's dad, Mitchell died unexpectedly and she sets out to deposit his ashes into a remote lake where she had trekked and camped with her father previously. Her two cousins surprise her and tag-along, which isn't the trip she was hoping for.

It's quite a busy book........ Reagan has bi-polar and might have forgotten her meds for the trip; her Aussie boyfriend, Liam is a recovering alcoholic; her relationship with her step-mum isn't great and there was friction with the dad before he died; the dad was a compulsive gambler and a bit of a tool who lost all the family money, and unknown to Reagan he stole $240k from his brother, Tyson who is a dodgy dude and a bit of a local crim. The two cousins joining her on the trek believe she is off to claim the money that her dad has stashed somewhere and acting on their father's instructions are to intercept it and return it to it's him, whatever it takes. Oh and she hasn't seen her mum for about six years after she walked out on her.

Lots going on then. I quite enjoyed the trip Reagan took, hiking and camping and trekking, the scenery, the rangers, the dangers from the weather and the need to be constantly alert and above all well-prepared.

There's a bit of tension throughout as one of her cousins is obviously intending her harm if she doesn't come up with the goods, the other is more likable and less invested in the scheme. Back at the step mum's house, her boyfriend is hip to some undercurrents and all not being well as he witnesses Reagan's uncle hassling the step mum and subsequently does a bit of snooping.

It was interesting viewing the main character as bi-polar. We get some of her past story and struggles and we see the change in her when she stops medicating. Her grief anyway is causing her anxiety. The book kind of sets up Tyson, the uncle as the bad guy in the situation, whereas he had my every sympathy. I don't think I'd be able to behave rationally if a sibling ripped me off to that extent and I might want to recover my cash, with attitude if necessary. The dad initially seems to be a caring father, and is somewhat idolised by his daughter. Bereavement sometimes comes with rose-tinted spectacles. I think if he hadn't died of a heart attack, I might have happily done away with him myself.

The ending is resolved to the satisfaction of all parties, but not before some conflict and a bit of action. It's a bit of a Disney-princess fairy-tale type outcome for Reagan and the boyfriend, which wasn't especially convincing.

Some of the characters throughout, particularly Reagan were well presented and had a bit of depth. As did the boyfriend, Liam and even Reagan's step-mum. The uncle came across as a comedy type villain and the criminal gangster type persona was less convincing as was the stolen money angle. How did her dad get access to it and how did the money pot turn from x into x-plus?

Bottom line - enjoyable but not amazing. I have more from the author and I don't dread reading/listening to them but neither am I stampeding my way towards them.

I managed to listen to this during the work day and commute, so it was a welcome distraction from some mundane duties and not being overly complex or requiring great levels of concentration was a decent enough way of passing the time and harvesting a new author.

The narration by Kate Fisher seemed a bit dead-pan and flat at times, but when Reagan was having issues and struggling with her condition it seemed pitch perfect.

3 from 5

Read - (listened to) July, 2020
Published - 2015
Page count -  348 (8 hrs 9 mins)
Source- Audible download after code from author
Format - Audible

LAWRENCE BLOCK - THE LIAR'S COMPANION (2011)

Synopsis/blurb...

For 14 years, five-time Edgar winner and MWA grandmaster Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column on fiction for Writers Digest magazine. These columns yielded four books regarded as classics: Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, Spider Spin Me a Web, The Liar's Bible, and now, The Liar's Companion.

Listen to The Liar's Companion and gain inspiration to create outstanding fiction.

Another compilation of some of Lawrence Block's Writers Digest columns where he dispenses pearls of wisdom gathered from over fifty years (at time of writing) experience in the field.

Despite having no inclination to take up writing for either fun or profit, I quite liked the peek behind the curtains. There's a bit of repetition as some of the columns which appear consecutively inevitably give a hat-tip to his current novel either just published or about to be. I think in this instance it was Eight Million Ways to Die. I'm not complaining though.

I enjoyed the narration, the anecdotes, the odd reference to other writer's and the writing about writing - mis-steps, the sense of work sometimes going nowhere, abandonment, persistence, practise, discipline. I'm so glad I'm just a reader.

3.5 from 5

Read - (listened to) June, 2020
Published - 2011
Page count - 294 (9 hrs 38 mins)
Source - Audible download code received from David, one of LB's assistants
Format - Audible

LAWRENCE BLOCK - CINDERELLA SIMS (1961)

Synopsis/blurb........

There's no glass slipper in this fairy tale - just a damsel in distress, a bag of cash, and a whole lot of dead bodies.

Reporter Ted Lindsay is trying to forget his ex-wife, and New York City's tough streets are just what the doctor ordered. They're also filled with alluring women, but only one catches Ted's eye. Cinderella Sims is not only beautiful, she's on the run and she needs Ted's help. She's got a bag full of cash and some very angry people staking out her apartment. Before long Ted's forgotten his heartbreak and is launched into the dark streets of crime with Cindy at his side.

The author speaks:

“Look, this wasn’t my idea.

“Three or four years ago, Bill Schafer suggested that I might give some consideration to republishing a book of mine called $20 Lust, which had originally appeared under a pen name. I recalled the book he meant, but dimly; I had, after all, written it in 1960. But I didn’t need to remember it all that vividly to know the answer to his suggestion.

“No, I told him.

“A little later I suggested he might want to publish a fancy edition of Mona, the first book under my own name; it had come out as a paperback original in 1961, and we could celebrate its fortieth anniversary with a nice limited edition hardcover.

“Bill was lukewarm to the notion, but had an alternative proposal; how about issuing a double volume, containing Mona and $20 Lust? Once again, I didn’t have to do a lot of soul-searching to come up with a response.

“No, I told him.

“Time passed. Then Ed Gorman, the Sage of Cedar Rapids, used an ancient private eye novelette of mine in a pulp anthology. When it came out he sent me a copy, and, while I didn’t read my novelette—I figured it was enough that I wrote the damned thing—I did read his introduction, which I found to be thoughtful and incisive and generous. I e-mailed him and told him so, and he e-mailed me back and thanked me, adding that my early work was probably better than I thought.

“‘And,’ he added, ‘I really think you ought to let Bill Schafer publish $20 Lust.’

“I felt as though I’d been sucker-punched. Where the hell did that come from?

“So I got in touch with Bill. ‘I suppose I could at least read it,’ I said, ‘except I can’t, because I don’t have a copy.’ Three days later, a battered copy arrived in the mail. I looked at the first two pages, and I looked at the last two or three pages, and I heaved a sigh. Heaved it clear across the room, and would have heaved the book, too, but instead I hollered for my wife.

“‘Bill Schafer wants to reprint this,’ I said.

“‘Great,’ she said.

“‘Not necessarily,’ I said, and explained the circumstances. ‘I’d like you to read this,’ I said, ‘or as much of it as you can without gagging, and then tell me it’s utter crap and I’d surely destroy what little reputation I have if I consent to its republication.’

“’Suppose I like it?’

“‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll sign the commitment papers, and I’ll make sure they take real good care of you.’

“Well, she liked it. And Bill Schafer published it, and a lot of people liked it, and my agent sold it in France, where even more people liked it. Shows what I know. And it’s now my pleasure to include it in the Classic Crime Library.

“Cinderella Sims was originally intended to be my second crime novel for Gold Medal, to follow Grifter’s Game (aka Mona). At some point along the way I lost faith in it, and wrapped it up in a hurry, and sold it to Nightstand Books. Hope y’all enjoy it!”

Another Lawrence Block oldie from almost sixty years ago and one which I liked while harbouring some reservations about totally siding with the main character Ted. Early on in the book after receiving the news that his marriage is over Ted commits an unpardonable act against his wife which I found abhorrent. 

For the rest of the book, I quite liked his adventures; his move to New York, the grief he felt at the news of his wife's death, his close encounter with the nymphomaniac and his somewhat comedic and fortuitous escape albeit achieved by another act of violence against a woman - maybe hypocritically I found it less offensive than the previous one, his crossing paths and subsequent infatuation with Cinderella Sims and their adventures together - in and out of the sack and on a cross country trip trying to elude and then best a gang of counterfeiters....... sex, violence, trust and mis-trust, false moves and mistakes, near misses, close escapes and violent encounters before an eventual triumph. 

Main character behavioural niggles aside one that kept me entertained while I was listening too it. A bit grim and gritty in places, a bit erotic in others. Definitely of it's time.

I do like the story of it's journey back into print.

3.5 from 5

Read - (listened to) June, 2020

Published - 1961

Page count - 212 (4 hrs 40 mins)

Source - Audible download code from David one of LB's assistants. 

(I do have a previously purchased copy on my Kindle.)

Format - Audible 

ROSS MACDONALD - THE MOVING TARGET (1949)

Synopsis/blurb.....

A lot of people would go to a lot of trouble to get their hands on $100,000 in small notes. Kidnapping for instance. And that's how it looks to Lew Archer when he's hired to trace a missing billionaire. But five murders later and with a tightening circle of suspects, $100,000 no longer seems an adequate reason for all that trouble.

"Without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them."
- Anthony Boucher, New York Times Book Review

Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series of books is highly rated by critics and crime fiction aficianados alike. It's been a series I've wanted to try for a while and one I've ignored for about seven or eight years since hoovering up some of the books. I think I had a stalled effort at reading this one a year ago, before setting it aside. Wrong book, wrong time, but second time around it stuck and I managed to re-start, get past where I stopped before and then enjoy the thing.

Best book ever? No, but I did like it enough to know that the investment made in the other books won't have been wasted.

A missing billionaire and a ransom note and a case for Lew Archer....... a dysfunctional family, love triangles, tension, jealousy, a cult, an investigation, more death along the way and answers.

I read this about a month ago and I'm kind of struggling to remember all the twists and plot points and leads, mis-steps, characters and incidents in the book, which doesn't mean to say I didn't like it. It's more a reflection on my memory and perhaps an indicator that I ought to jot things down as I go along or shortly after if I want to offer some coherent thoughts on my reading (mostly for my own benefit as I look back).

I like older books where there's no reliance on technology to locate people, through either mobile phone triangulations or credit card transactions, where computers take the legwork out of investigations. This one is before my time, but it's the close to the world I grew up in. I think it's a book which has aged well.

Other plus points.... California setting; a decent, likable main character; a cohesive plot which made sense and didn't require any suspension of disbelief, one which isn't overly reliant on incident or action to maintain my interest.

It made a bit of a change from my usual reading and along with some other older books I've recently read - Ed McBain (50s), Sjowall and Wahloo (60s), David Craig aka Bill James (70s) - it's breathed a bit of old new life into my favourite passion.

4 from 5

Ross Macdonald wrote nearly twenty Lew Archer books as well as a few other novels. The Drowning Pool is the second in the series and the next one I'll be reading.

Read - June, 2020
Published - 1949
Page count - 196
Source  - purchased copy
Format - paperback

WES MARKIN - THE REPENTING SERPENT (2019)

Synopis/blurb....

A DCI Michael Yorke Thriller

A vicious serial killer slithers from the darkness, determined to resurrect the ways of a long-dead civilisation.

When the ex-wife of one of DCI Michael Yorke’s closest allies is left mutilated and murdered, Yorke and his team embark on their greatest test yet. A  deeply personal case that will push them to their very limits. 

And as Yorke’s team are pulled further into the dark, the killer circles, preparing to strike again. 

The Repenting Serpent is a true edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting page turner.

The third of four books I have from Markin in my Audible library and the second full length novel featuring DCI Michael Yorke and his team.

If you like serial killer books with plenty of twists and a decent cast of police characters, some warped scheming and plenty of bloodshed and some urgency in the investigation, you'll probably like this series of books.

If you're a bit ambivalent to this trope in crime fiction, you probably might be less well enamoured.

If there are elements of the killer's delusions and motivations that sees himself re-cast in modern Salisbury as a long dead Aztec deity with the venom from a pet, poisonous octopus one of the weapons in his armoury you might think WTF. That would be me then.

I finished it about a fortnight ago and to be honest I think my eyeballs have only stopped rolling around in the back of my head. Sorry just couldn't buy into it and as such any investment in subsequent events didn't really interest me and the outcome was irrelevant.

I had to finish it because that's what I do.

2 from 5

A Lesson in Crime and One Last Prayer For the Rays have been enjoyed before. The next in the series, The Silence of Severance was listened to after this one.

Read - (listened to ) June, 2020
Published - 2019
Page count - 300 (7 hrs 42 mins)
Source - Audible purchase
Format - Audible

WES MARKIN - ONE LAST PRAYER FOR THE RAYS (2019)

Synopsis/blurb.....

The disappearance of a young boy. An investigation paved with depravity and death. Can DCI Michael Yorke survive with his body and soul intact?

With Yorke's small town in the grip of a destructive snowstorm, the relentless detective uncovers a missing boy’s connection to a deranged family whose history is steeped in violence. But when all seems lost, Yorke refuses to give in, and journeys deep into the heart of this sinister family for the truth.

And what he discovers there will tear his world apart.

The Rays are here. It's time to start praying.

One Last Prayer for the Rays is the first novel in the shocking and exhilarating bestselling Detective Yorke series. If you like intense thrillers, flawed detectives and complex killers, then you'll love Wes Markin’s dark and twisty series. Perfect for fans of L.J. Ross, Peter James, Jo Nesbo, Chris Brookmyre, and Stuart Macbride.

An entertaining enough listen for the commute to and from work and for some of the hours in-between. That said I think the book just reinforces my belief that I'm not the world's biggest fan of books featuring deranged scheming protagonists harbouring murderous intent.

Decent enough writing, well-rounded characters, especially Michael Yorke and some of the close members of his team. All of them have a bit of personal baggage accompanying them, either in the form of back-story history or current day relationship issues.

Here we have a schoolboy vanishing in the middle of the day and a mess of blood left behind. The boy is a Ray and around Salisbury way everyone knows who the infamous Ray family are. Their potted family history includes...... death, murder, cannibalism, pig farming with possibly some defective hereditary gene running through their blood giving vent to some serious issues through the generations.

Yorke and his team are in a race against time to save the boy, a situation complicated by the reappearance of another equally deranged Ray family member, one with some unresolved personal business with one of Jake's officers.

It's a busy book with lots going on and the investigation struggles to keep pace with spiralling events. Eventually all the loose strands get tied up and resolved with some unfinished business with one protagonist offering scope for further mischief in a future book.

An okay book, not especially my cup of tea, but it wasn't one where I was tempted not to finish. I was invested enough to want to know the outcome. Others reviewers on Amazon obviously feel stronger about than I do....... on the UK site there's over 600 ratings with nearly 90% giving this 4 or 5 stars.

Decent enough narration, with Aubrey Parson injecting plenty of passion into his story telling.

3 from 5

The series prequel A Lesson in Crime has been enjoyed before. I have a couple more of the series also to get to on Audible.

Read - (listened to) June, 2020
Published - 2019
Page count - 326 (9 hrs 7 mins)
Source - purchased copy
Format - Audible