C.S. DEWILDT - CANDY AND CIGARETTES (2011)

Synopsis/blurb.....

"Candy & Cigarettes is noir of the very highest order, a dark and moody cocktail of the bleak and the beautifully damaged."~Chris Leek, Out of the Gutter Online

In the face of revenge, innocence is meaningless.

Death is omnipresent to small-town loner Lloyd Bizbang. Today proves no exception. After being attacked yet again by a pair of sociopaths who have targeted him since childhood, Lloyd stumbles upon a sight he wishes he could unsee in the town junkyard. Now as he just tries to live through another day, the bodies are stacking up in the town of Horton, and Lloyd finds himself connected to each of them via the drug-and-drink-addled, unhinging police chief, yet another person who has an old score to settle with Lloyd. A game of revenge and survival is underway, but will there be a winner at the day’s end?

Read a little while again, so some of the details and plot points are ebbing away from me.

Small town noir, very dark and with the focus of the story on loner, Lloyd Bizbang (cracking name) and the unnamed chief of police. Lloyd has a connection with death and is tainted in the eyes of the townsfolk. Two accidents, his younger sister drowning and his grandmother falling down the stairs have tarnished him for life. The Chief resents him and with cancer eating through his guts, is going to give Lloyd some undeserved justice. There might be a few bloody casualties along the way.

I quite liked this one. I liked Lloyd, he's undeserving of his fate. He cares for his dying grandfather, he's tormented by two brothers, both bullies and his life is crap. The brothers are vile - aren't all bullies? Lloyd has a pair of friends, who focus on cars and racing and he cadges beer from them both. The owner of the local store does Lloyd no harm, but that still doesn't stop our man lifting a few tallboys whenever he can. I felt quite sad for Lloyd throughout with the crap life he has; enduring the  daily ritual of being the local punchbag, with no hope or expectation of anything ever changing for the better.

The short book (under 90 pages) is peppered with action not just involving Lloyd and the police child, but a slowly widening circle of characters....... assault with a paintball gun, a beating or two, cars and demolition derbies, a town fair, teenagers being teenagers, an abandoned fridge and an enraged missing child, bullying and terror, vindictiveness and an angry gut, history, family, loss, misfortune, terror, violence, death, more death and an inescapable fate and acceptance of that outcome.

4 from 5

I've read C.S. DeWildt before - The Louisville Problem and some pieces in a couple of anthologies - Trumpocalype: A Total Disaster! and Fast Women and Neon Lights.

There's a couple more from him on the pile - Suburban Dick and Love You to a Pulp maybe more.

Read - February, 2020
Published - 2011
Page count - 88
Source - owned copy
Format - Kindle

LAWRENCE BLOCK - TANNER'S TWELVE SWINGERS (1967)

Synopsis/blurb.....

Presenting Evan Tanner - the first series character created by Lawrence Block, best-selling author of A Walk Among the Tombstones...

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain's sleep center, Even Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world's languages (he's fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world's lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge. And, most importantly, time to do his dreaming while he's wide awake.

Karlis, Tanner's comrade in the Latvian Army in Exile, is pining for his true love, a gymnast who can't get out of the Soviet Union. So Tanner sneaks through a hole in the Iron Curtain, meets the child he unwittingly fathered on an earlier trip to Macedonia, smuggles a dissident intellectual out of Yugoslavia, adds to his retinue a six-year-old Lithuanian girl, who'd be the rightful heir to the Lithuanian throne if there ever were one, and winds up not with one Latvian gymnast but with a whole company of them. (Collect them all! Win valuable prizes!)

And he does all this without a passport. Oh, he had one, but he gave it away...

The third Evan Tanner book is similar in vein to the first couple - The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep and The Canceled Czech. We have the same landscape - late 60s Eastern Europe, the same cast of eccentric characters Tanner encounters on his road trip and what is an improbable and unlikely mission at the start, becoming more bizarre and impossible as the book progresses, before Block pulls it off spectacularly at the end.

Fun and, frantic, unlikely and unbelievable, enjoyable and entertaining.

Events, scenes and outcomes which in anyone's else's hands would have you saying... yeah, right and FFS, I was savouring and anticipating just to see how exactly Block gets Tanner out of his latest scrape.

Ostensibly, Tanner goes to Europe to visit his unseen offspring and to attempt the rescue of a Latvian gymnast - all in the name of love. What we get is ....... dissident smuggling, Chinese secrets, a Romanian child princess, a suppressed manuscript, a gymnastics team, state of the art Russian fighter planes, a defecting pilot and an unlikely unofficial child adoption. All in a few day's work for our special agent.

As per usual there are some prescient observations regarding nationalism and the state of nations in respect of the Soviet Union and its then satellite states.

Roll on book 4 and a new landscape - Asia.

4 from 5

Read - (listened to) February, 2020
Published - 1967
Page count - 216 (5 hrs 5 mins)
Source - Audible download code from one of the author's assistants
Format - Audible

DONALD E. WESTLAKE - THE BUSY BODY (1966)

Synopsis/blurb.....

A mob boss's right-hand man must track down a missing cache of heroin .

The corpse isn't anybody special -- a low-level drug courier -- but it has been so long since the organization's last grand funeral that Nick Rovito decides to give the departed a big send-off. He pays for a huge church, a procession of Cadillacs, and an ocean of flowers, and enjoys the affair until he learns the dead man is going to his grave wearing the blue suit. Rovito summons Engel, his right-hand man, and tells him to get a shovel.

Inside the lining of the blue suit jacket is $250,000 worth of uncut heroin, smuggled back from Baltimore the day the courier died. When Engel's shovel strikes coffin, he braces himself for the encounter with the dead man. But the coffin is empty, the heroin gone, and Engel has no choice but to track down the missing body or face his boss's wrath.

A second outing for Westlake's The Busy Body. I've stalled on listening to more from Block's Evan Tanner series, until such time as I read the fifth, so I was minded to re-listen to this one during the commute and some hours at work in solitary confinement doing a bit of a solo project.

I enjoyed it last time. I enjoyed it as much second time around, probably a bit more. If I run out of things in my Audible library, I reckon I would enjoy listening to this a third time.

60s book, humour, crime, the mob and some missing drugs and some grave robbing, a likable main character, looking to get out from under the jam he's in.

I said it all last time, I think.

4 from 5

Read - (listened to) March, 2020
Published - 1966
Page count - 179 (5 hours 32 minutes listening time)
Source - Audible download when on a free trial
Format - Audible

* September, 2018 thoughts
----------------------------
I have enjoyed a few Westlake novels over the years, mostly more hard-boiled fare with Parker his professional criminal as protagonist from Westlake's alter-ego Richard Stark than the lighter, comic novels Westlake put out under his own name.

The Busy Body is a mid-60s offering from Westlake and a New York caper. It was a different experience for me on this occasion - having a book read to me, as opposed to reading a book. It's not my preferred format, but actually worked for me on this occasion as I could listen to the dulcet tones of Brian Holsopple (never heard of him before, but he's very good), while working on a Saturday morning in a slightly less frenetic work environment.

Our main plot involves a mob man, Al Engel initially attempting a spot of grave-robbing to recover $250k worth of Mafia drugs which have been inadvertently buried with the courier who died of a heart attack. We have an empty grave and Engel is tasked by his master, Nick Rovito with tracking down the missing suit ergo drugs and who the hell cares about the missing corpse?

Amateur investigation, a dead undertaker, a mysterious women dogging Engel, a dogged and honest detective also with Al in his sights, an unhappy mob boss, a grieving widow, an irritating mother, an annoyed girlfriend, a crappy car, a taxi ride or two, some crooked businessmen, another mob corpse, a gun with prints, a frame up,  and a whole other scam going down with Engel a convenient patsy. Unless of course he can straighten things out.

Pace - reasonable, setting - 60s New York which worked for me, plot - interesting, main character - capable and sympathetic, resolution - satisfactory.

Enjoyable, inoffensive, entertaining, I'll probably remember it longer because of the format it was digested in than if it was an old 60s or later tatty paperback that I turned the pages over.

Probably not his strongest ever book but it was okay for me.

3.5 from 5

Read (ok listened to) - September, 2018
Published - 1966 (2012 recording)
Page count - about 179 (5 hours 32 minutes listening time)
Source - Audible download when on a free trial
Format - audio book on laptop and iPhone
 

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET: R IS FOR........ RAYMOND, ROGUE COP, RUSSIA

Week 18 of 26, time to put my Rs on display......

R is for....

Raymond - Derek Raymond and a book from his acclaimed Factory series, the first of five - He Died With His Eyes Open (1976) 

He Died With His Eyes Open (1976)

The first of the "Factory" series of bleak, atmospheric and subversive crime novels. A boozed-out tramp found under a bush in West London has been systematically butchered. The awesome depths of violent passion that the victim must have inspired fascinates the detective sergeant put on the case.

R is for .......

Raymond - Ring and Arizona Kiss, probably a book I bought because of the cover and never got around to reading. Or I read it at the time when I didn't log my reading and was also in the habit of keeping everything. Nearly thirty years ago and I can't remember what I had for my lunch yesterday, so who knows.

TIME OUT thought it "A first class noir thriller" 

Arizona Kiss (1991)

When Macky, an ambitious journalist eager to escape from his small southwestern town, attempts to expose a powerful and corrupt judge, a beguiling woman leads him into the town's dangerous underworld 

R is for......

Rogue Cop - a 50s novel from William McGivern

Rogue Cop (1954)

From the station houses to the joy houses, they knew about Mike Carmody. He was the best cop money could buy, and when the Syndicate boys said jump, Carmody knew just how high. But they couldn't buy Carmody's kid brother Eddie--and when Eddie turned against them, the Mob snuffed him out like a nickel cigar. Now Carmody's coming after them--savage and bloodthirsty. He's stalking them down the city's darkened back alleys ... and straight into hell.

R is for......

Russia - I suppose I could have gone for Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series which I've enjoyed the first couple from - Gorky Park and Polar Star, but nah. I'll have a bit of Cold War Espionage from a Russian viewpoint

Julian Semyonov and Seventeen Moments of Spring - The Telegraph included it in a list of The 20 best spy novels of all time a few years ago.

Seventeen Moments of Spring (1969)

During World War II, Soviet super-agent Isaev races to foil a plot by Hitler's advisors to negotiate a separate peace with the West and to create a capitalist-fascist front against the Soviet Union."


Back with something S from the library, I bet you can hardly wait!

Previous Alphabet entries.....

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - A IS FOR.... AX, ABBOTT, ABERDEEN

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - B IS FOR ....... BOSTON, BIRD, BONES

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - C IS FOR.........CAPE TOWN, CONFIDENCE MEN, CROSS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - D IS FOR ....... DETROIT, DISHER, DEAD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - E IS FOR ....... EDINBURGH, EXCESS, ELLIS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - F IS FOR ....... FLORIDA, FRANCIS, FLOATERS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - G IS FOR ....... GALWAY, GUNS, GRAFTON

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - H IS FOR ....... HAMBURG, HAMMETT, HIDDEN RIVER

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - I IS FOR ....... ICE, ICELAND, IZZO

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - J IS FOR ....... JAPAN, JACK CARTER. JELLO SALAD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - K IS FOR ....... KING, KOREA, KEEPER

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - L IS FOR ........ LE CRIME, LEONARD, LOS ANGELES 

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - M IS FOR ........ MIAMI, MACKAY, MUCHO MOJO 

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - N IS FOR ........ NORWAY, NISBET, NEMESIS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - O IS FOR ........ OWEN, ONE NIGHT STANDS AND LOST WEEKENDS, OXFORD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - P IS FOR ........ PARKER, PHILADELPHIA, PAYDIRT

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - Q IS FOR ...... QUARRY, QUINLAN, Q ROAD 

2 BY REGINALD HILL

A couple from British great, Reginald Hill this week. Hill is probably better known for his Dalziel and Pascoe series of books, but I've chosen two from his Joe Sixsmith series.

There were five in total and these are the first two. What's the appeal? Apart from the length - they aren't too long and the fact they feature a PI and I do like PI fiction, the setting of Luton grabs me. My old home town, where I grew up after transplanting in from Dublin as a two year old, where I was schooled and where my mum still lives.

I'm keen to see if Hill's depiction of the town is the same as the one I remember. (Not sure I recall there ever being a St Monkey's though.) These two were published in the early to mid-90s, nearly ten years after I left. That said I was and still am still a frequent visitor there given my affinity for the local football team and of course my dear old mum!

Blood Sympathy (1993)

PI can mean many things, but can it really mean a balding middle-aged redundant lathe operator from a high-rise in Luton, Beds? Joe Sixsmith thinks it can. His Aunt Mirabelle thinks you'd have to be crazy to hire him, and Joe's current clients certainly fit the bill. One seems to be confessing to the brutal murder of his whole family; another thinks she's a witch. Alongside them, the two heavies who believe Joe is hiding their illicit drugs seem almost normal.

"Splendid comic moments in this entertaining mystery" SUSANNA YAGER, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

" A thoroughly engaging investigator" PATRICIA CRAIG, TLS

"Read him" LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

Born Guilty (1995)

Hurrying out of St Monkey's church on the last Amen of the Creation, Joe Sixsmith stumbles across a boy's corpse and into more trouble than he's ever known... Soon his casebook is full to bursting: retired colonial Mrs C. demands to know how the boy got there; exotic punk Gallie urges him to find the stranger nosing into her garanddad's past; while Butcher, that briefest of briefs, is hellbent on digging the dirt on a deputy head's out-of-school activities.

Ever valiant for truth, Joe threads his mild-mannered way through the mean streets of Luton, fighting off angry cops, demented druggies and the matchmaking machinations of his Auntie Mirabelle. But the truth he discovers does not set him free; for there's little joy in confirming that today's kids grow up so much faster than he did, and even the luckiest of them find out all too soon they have been born guilty.

"He (Hill) pays attention to the old-fashioned values: meticulous plotting, authentic characterization and realistic dialogue" MARCEL BERLINS, THE TIMES

"Hill's cheery sleuth, with his nice line of dry banter, is as thoroughly appreciated as his generous and crafty plotting" JOHN COLEMAN, SUNDAY TIMES

CHUCK MORGAN - CRIME EXPOSED (2019)

Synopsis/blurb....

Fresh off investigating the ambush murders of two police officers, Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent, Buck Taylor and his team are called upon to find a missing journalist, in a case that leads to murder and child pornography, in the much anticipated fourth “Crime” novel.

She was about to thank the Good Samaritan when he reached a huge hand behind her head and in one swift move slammed her forehead into the steering wheel. The blow was so hard that it cracked the top of the steering wheel. It took two more blows to knock her out.

He put the car in gear and, checking once more up and down the highway, pushed the car past the end of the guardrail and stopped it at the edge of the drop-off. The reservoir was still frozen, but he hoped that enough of the thaw had occurred to make the ice thin enough so the car would crash right through it. He was confident that the snowfall that was underway would cover the hole in the ice.

With one last look up and down the empty highway, he closed the door, walked behind the car and gave it a shove. With a grinding of metal against rock, the car bounced over the edge and rolled down the side of the reservoir, crashing into the ice with a loud bang, and after a second’s hesitation, broke through the ice and disappeared beneath the surface. He stood on the shoulder of the road and watched until the taillights blinked off.

Best book ever? No, but once I got into it I quite enjoyed the tale.

A missing investigative reporter case, turns to murder after the chance discovery of Barb McBride's car and corpse at the bottom of a lake. Barb's latest story - wrapped in secrecy until her broadcast - is the key to it all. Investigator Buck Taylor and his team dig into the world of child pornography and paedophile rings involving her family - her drunkard husband, Jim and her brother-in-law, Bob and some of the state's rich and powerful men.

It's a decent enough police procedural mystery with an engaging, if not a little bit too perfect lead investigator, Buck Taylor. Taylor's a widower, liked and respected by all his team and colleagues and with contacts throughout the state of Colorado, including the ear of the higher ups. Capable and intelligent he drives the investigation and propels the book forward.

The first portion of the book after the scene describing what happens to Barb, concerns a rapid investigation onto the double homicide of a couple of uniformed police officers. It occupies nearly fifty pages and in truth doesn't really add that much to the book, other than emphasising Buck's credentials as a decent investigator and a man with a heart and compassion for those less well off and living on the fringes of normal society.

That done, we are then concerned with the disappearance and murder of our reporter. I liked the slow, steady discovery of information, the different strands of enquiry and the different skill sets of the team involved, as well as the tangential case which derived from the discovery of the car in the lake. There's a cyber aspect to the case, digging into laptops, recovering data, uncovering hacks and the planting of information, accessing phone records as well as the normal legwork of face to face interviews and team briefs. On the other side, there's those involved in the paedophile ring, trying to clean house and avoid detection. Inevitably one side ends up disappointed.

Overall more to like than dislike.

3.5 from 5

Crime Exposed is the fourth in the author's Buck Taylor series after Crime Interrupted, Crime Delayed and Crime Unsolved. Crime Denied, the fifth in the series was published recently.

Read - March, 2020
Published - 2019
Page count - 343
Source - review copy from Reedsy Discovery
Format - PDF read on laptop


*Reedsy Discovery can be found here.

MARCH 2020 - FILMS (CINEMA)

A few films viewed before the cinemas closed their doors ........ a feel good shaggy dog story, disgust and outrage at corporate America, a tense drama and a peculiar horror film, prompting the question - WTF was that all about?

Dark Waters (2019)

You have to scratch your head and wonder about companies that prize profit over people... knowingly poisoning a town's water and it's own employees - WTF! Has Mark Ruffalo ever been in better form? I doubt it.

A film to make you righteously angry.

From Wikipedia.......

Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan. The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. It stars Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, and Bill Pullman.

The film is based on the 2016 New York Times Magazine article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" by Nathaniel Rich. Parts of the story were also reported by Mariah Blake, whose 2015 article "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia" was a National Magazine Award finalist, and Sharon Lerner, whose series "Bad Chemistry" ran in The Intercept. Bilott also wrote a memoir, Exposure, detailing his 20-year legal battle against DuPont.

Dark Waters was theatrically released in a limited capacity on November 22, 2019, by Focus Features, and went wide on December 6, 2019. The film received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $21 million.

The Lighthouse (2019)

A strange one to be sure....... isolation, disconnection and a slow descent into madness while surrounded by ever increasing squallor. Willem Defoe and Robert Pattinson are extremely intense. I wouldn't say I necessarily enjoyed it, but I'm glad I watched it. At least I won't die wondering.

From Wikipedia......

The Lighthouse is a 2019 psychological horror film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max Eggers. An international co-production of the United States and Canada, the film was shot in black-and-white with a 1.19:1 aspect ratio. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two lighthouse keepers who start to lose their sanity when a storm strands them on the remote island where they are stationed.

According to Eggers, although the final story bears little resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe's fragment "The Light-House", the film began as an attempt by his brother Max Eggers to do a contemporary take on the Poe story. When the project stalled, Eggers offered to work with his brother and the project evolved into a period thriller with the Poe elements largely removed. Dafoe and Pattinson were cast as the lead characters in February 2018. Principal photography began on April 9, 2018, and lasted a total of 34 days in Leif Erikson Park in Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, Canada, and inside a hangar at Yarmouth International Airport in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

The film had its world premiere at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival on May 19, and was theatrically released on October 18, 2019, by A24. The film was praised for its technical aspects (notably the cinematography and production design), Eggers' screenplay and direction, and the performances of the leads. It was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 92nd Academy Awards.

The Invisible Man (2020)

Another extremely tense edge of the seat drama. Elisabeth Moss is very good, as per usual. She always seems to be downtrodden and a victim in her roles. I loved her in The Handmaid's Tale.

From Google....

After staging his own suicide, a crazed scientist uses his power to become invisible to stalk and terrorize his ex-girlfriend. When the police refuse to believe her story, she decides to take matters into her own hands and fight back.

The Call of the Wild (2020)

I read the book by Jack London a few years back - thoughts here. Long enough ago that I couldn't say whether the film is faithful to the story, but I did really enjoy this. Harrison Ford is very good. What's not to like about a film about a dog with spirit and intelligence in abundance?

From Google.......

Buck is a big-hearted dog whose blissful domestic life gets turned upside down when he is suddenly uprooted from his California home and transplanted to the exotic wilds of the Alaskan Yukon in the 1890s. As the newest rookie on a mail-delivery dog sled team, Buck experiences the adventure of a lifetime as he ultimately finds his true place in the world.


Ranking top to bottom
1 Dark Waters
2 The Call of the Wild
3 The Invisible Man
4 The Lighthouse