Knowles and Truman: What I've been reading

© Peter Rozovsky 2017

Why you should read Dirtbags and John McFetridge

Eryk Pruitt's Dirtbags is a tall tale, a couple-on-the-run story, a moving noir story as Jim Thompson or, especially, David Goodis might have written it, a rural roman noir, a dark comedy with a touch of Southern Gothic, and satire without hitting the reader over the head to make its point.  It's also a serial-killer story for readers who hate serial-killer stories, thanks to its blessed absence of interest in abnormal psychology.

One review calls the novel "sort of like a book about a serial murderer written by Carl Hiaasen, only a lot darker," but don't let the Hiaasen comparison stop you; this book is funny without, however, degenerating into a cheap yuk-fest.

*

I wrote Saturday about Dietrich Kalteis' The Deadbeat Club, so this is a good time to remind you to read A Little More Free, by Kalteis' fellow ECW Press author John McFetridge, Nobody is better than McFetridge at seamlessly blending big crimes, small crime, social/historical setting, and an appealing protagonist.  This and Tumblin' Dice are my favorite McFetridges.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Peter Rozovsky is a fictional character

John McFetridge's new novel and a galley of Charlie Stella's next one arrived this week, so you know I'll be reading lots of low-key humor the next few days, lots of gorgeous transitions between small jokes and big drama that make both hit even harder.

Here's one example from the McFetridge book, A Little More Free, the scene the aftermath of a fatal fire, relatives learning that their loved ones have died:

"There were other people inside. It was quiet for a minute and then Dougherty heard the crying."

*

"`Sixty-five cents for a pint? We should arrest you.'"

Another plus: Unless McFetridge or his publisher, ECW Press, made changes between unbound galley and finished book, the police photographer Rozovsky, a sidekick in McFetridge's Black Rock, gets a first name this time.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

How crime writer R.D. Cain avoids cliché

I'm an impatient reader, apt to put a book down if it does not grab me with its first ten words. I also grow weary of crime fiction tropes that I run into over and over, most recently the chapter narrated from inside a killer's head and set in italic type.

At the same time, I'm impressed when a crime writer manages to make a hoary set-up fresh. That's why I think Dark Matter, by the Canadian crime writer R.D. Cain, just might work.

The novel opens with a young woman slowly recovering consciousness to find she has been imprisoned in basement. Now, if the author were Scandinavian, you know what would happen to the young woman, and the only question is whether her demise would be even bloodier than you imagine. And you would never hear her voice except in a scream that seemed to consume her entire being and echo forever. etc, etc.

Such chapters, (lovingly) intent as they are on portraying the victim's agony, never do her the honor of giving her a voice, much less a sense of humor. Cain does both. First the humor:

"The feeling she had was familiar, high and weightless like vapor floating in infinite blue sky. She had tried oxys before and this felt similar. It was a warm, cozy feeling, like being wrapped in a warm blanket and having every inch of her body hugged by someone she loved. This kind of drug didn't appeal to her."

The voice comes when the woman discovers she has two fellow prisoners, also young women. The three talk, and not entirely with teeth-chattering fear. Whatever Cain intends to do with the young victims, they feel like characters for whom a reader might feel empathy. And that's a lot more than one can say for the endless succession of mangled straw men and women thrown up in so many first chapters.

*

That's how one author makes something fresh out of a set-up that risked tumbling into cliché. Who else does this? And how do they do it?

(Dark Matter is published by ECW Press, one of the publishers I highlighted in my recent Philadelphia Inquirer article "Eight Crime Writers Worth Tracking Down.")
© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Meet Mike Knowles

Mike Knowles' Wilson is a bit like Richard Stark's Parker, and that's not a bad thing to be.

But the differences between the two one-named heist planners are more interesting than the similarities. Wilson is not nearly as distant a figure as Parker, for one thing, in large part because he's the novels' first-person narrator as well as their protagonist. And Knowles, through Wilson's eyes, explores supporting characters', er, character, more than Stark/Parker ever does.

My previous blog posts about Knowles have titles that include "More in Mike  Knowles' literary caffeine jolts" and "Darker than Parker," which may give you some idea of what you're in for.

Never Play Another Man's Game is the most recent of the four Wilson novels, preceded by Darwin's Nightmare, Grinder, and In Plain Sight. The latter three are available in an omnibus edition.

Read an excerpt from Another Man's Game.

*

Speaking of Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), today would have been his seventy-ninth birthday. Here's a video tribute from friends and collaborators to the creator of Parker, Dortmunder, Grofield, and the screenplays of The Grifters and The Stepfather. And here are four posts I put up about Westlake after he died on New Year's Eve, 2008.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Good stuff from Canada

I am delighted to announce that John McFetridge's new novel, Tumblin' Dice, is on its way, with an interesting distribution offer from its publisher, ECW Press: Buy the book, get the e-book free.

Whatever the format, how can you resist an opening like:

"The High had been back together and on the road for a couple of months playing mostly casinos when the lead singer, Cliff Moore, got the idea to start robbing them."

Or this, part of which I've quoted before, but is worth quoting again:

"Cliff said, `What the fuck?' and the soccer mom looked up and said, you don’t like it?, and Cliff said, no, it’s good, honey, `Really good. I’m almost there.' When he finished, he signed another autograph, the mom saying the first time she saw the High was in Madison, must have been ’78 or ’79, her and her friends still in high school, sneaking into the show ..."

followed shortly by

"Cliff started to follow, felt a hand on his arm, and looked around to see two very hot chicks, had to be teenagers, but maybe legal, looked exactly the same — long blond hair, tight jeans, low-cut tees, like twins, same serious look on their faces — and he said, `Hey, ladies, looking for some fun?' 

"One of the girls said, `No, we’re looking for our mom. She was talking to you before.'”

Read the first chapter of what looks to be a funny, exciting, coming-of-middle-age crime story on the publisher's Web site. (If you're not in Canada, do what I did and order Tumblin' Dice from The Book Depository.)

***

Another landsman, Howard Shrier, weighs in with Boston Cream, his third novel about an ethical but tough Toronto private investigator named Jonah Geller. Shrier's first two books were called Buffalo Jump and High Chicago, and each won an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada.

In naming his novels for American cities close to the International Boundary between the United States and Canada, Shrier leaves himself 5,525 miles to prolong the series all the way from Port Angeles to Presque Isle. And, if the opening pages of Boston Cream are any indication, he continues to do a fine job of portraying the life of a P.I., who, in addition to using computers every day and killing if he absolutely must, is thoroughly secular yet aware at every moment of, and reasonably comfortable with, his Jewish identity.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012