Observations from the Balcony

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Recent reviews

February 19, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

My reviews of Dooley Takes the Fall by Norah McClintock; The Foreigner by Francie Lin; Borderlands by Brian McGilloway and Go With Me by Castle Freeman Jr. can be found here.

My reviews of The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston; Leather Maiden by Joe Lansdale; Last Days by Brian Evenson and Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock can be found here.

My reviews of Escape from Hell! By Hal Duncan; The Knights of the Cornerstone by James P Blaylock and Valley of Day-Glo by Nick DiChario can be found here.

The Nerd of Noir is now writig reviews for us over at Bookspot Central. So far he has reviewed Sucker Punch, Beat the Reaper and The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.

New Book Arrivals

February 19, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

These are all from the last few weeks.

***

American Rust by Philip Meyer - Love the title and cover; looking forward to this one

Fugue State by Brian Evenson - A collection by Evenson (like one by Jeffrey Ford) is guaranteed to please.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist - I probably won’t get to it for a little while but I finally picked it up.

Powers: Secret Histories A Bibliography - This is more geared towards a specific audience but since I’m a Powers geek I’m looking forward to it.

Very Mercenary by Rayo Casablanca: “…a razor-sharp, darkly satirical, brilliantly warped new novel about murder, love, torture, art, ninjas, ambition, drugs…and everything in between.”

On the Grind by Stephen J. Cannell - This will be a perfect book to take to the park with the kids when the weather warms up.

Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey - This one popped up on my radar screen during a discussion sometime last year. Sounds interesting and has a lot of potential.

Noir by Kevin Jeter - I think I read this one quite a few years ago and can’t really recall much of it so I’m looking forward to reading it.

Dooley Takes the Fall by Norah McClintock - Look for a review link later on today

Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard - Until the Edgar nom I hadnt heard of it but it sounds like a wild ride

The Good Son by Russel McClean

Writing and Other Blood Sports by Charles Willeford - This is a replacement copy from one that I lost a couple of years back. I love this book and could quote from it all day.

Drood by Dan Simmons - It’s a big ass book.

Go With Me by Castle Freeman Jr. - Look for a review link later on today

Pyres by Derek Nikitas - Read this and will review it later.

Amberville by Tim Davis - A teddy bear PI in a city of stuffed animals.

A World I Never Made by James LePore

Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed by Marc Blatte

Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland

Blood Moon by Garry Disher

The Samaritan’s Secret by Matt Beynon Rees

Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura

Cozy or Not: Round 3

February 19, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

The dog that was standing back woofed. Prelude to a bark. I shot it twice in the head through the wall, flipping it backwards, then shot the nearer one twice in the chest. It went down squealing.

Cozy or Not: Round 2

February 07, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

The dog on her chest was killing her. She aimed the gun but the dog kept twisting itself away from her aim until Greta pressed the barrel deep into the rock muscle in its neck where the pelt was already damp with her blood. She fired a shot that made her eardrums blast. The dog’s blood peppered her face, warm, and she felt its teeth pull away. Not even a yelp and it became a dead heap on the ground.

Randomata

February 03, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

Baltimore’s drug economy is worth $872 MILLION

Book review: The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

Jeffrey Ford on Georges Simenon

Cemetary surrounded by parking lot

How NOT to do an interview “For me this is a great steaming shovel full of I don’t care.”

Photographing stillborn babies as a means to facillitate the grief process

And then at the end of the second act he does something completely and utterly unexpected that shows you just how serious he is about getting his daughter back. And it is one of those rare moments that gives you something you’ve never quite seen before. Not from a hero at least.

Randomata

January 30, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

What’s on Bruce Springsteen’s bookshelf

“Even if your youth sucked, hearing the soundtrack from it down the years almost always cripples or caresses you. You can never tell which it’ll be until you hear it.”

Review of The Mystic Signs of Erasing All Signs of Death

Why Do Young Male Writers Love Icky, Tough Guy Deadbeats? “Where’s our 21st century Kerouac? The man on the train so skullfucked by the hijacked American way that he can’t help but see the world and himself truly? He’s probably in diapers. It’ll take a post-male man to bring literature out of the ladies room.”

The Time Machine is a choose your own adventure video series on Youtube. First installment embedded below.

The Best Porn Movie Ever Made

Synopsis of Derek Nikitas new book

The Beauty of Analog “The physical collection has a gravity to it that would be lost and would probably become inconceivable if it were digitized. Handling the objects seems to affect the feelings I have about what I am seeing.”

Something Strange Stirring in the Noir & Surreal Noir “I’m definitely looking forward to this one, which arrived today, perhaps more than any other Mieville novel. It looks to be influenced by Borges, Kafka, and Kubin. I’ll be interested to see how the literalization of the figurative–Borges generally works because he doesn’t have traditional scenes in his fiction—is achieved here. If he pulls it off it could be magnificent. I’m just speculating here, but getting to Borges through Kubin might be the key, because Kubin did a nifty job of creepy surrealism and Borgesian-type play in the context of a more conventional story. Add in the structure of a police procedural and you’ve got the recipe for something that updates all of these approaches.”

Steampunk Detectives

New Book Additions: The X-mas edition

January 25, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

All of the books below were Christmas presents

Miami Blues by Charles Willeford - Awww we want the Hoke, gotta have that Hoke.

How the Hula Girl Sings by Joe Meno - I posted the opening to this one a few weeks ago. Looking forward to jumping into this one

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley - Replacement copy because I lost my other reading copy.

Memoranda, The Psysiognomy & The Beyond all by Jeffrey Ford - These are the new ones. A classic trilogy.

The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers - This is the new reprint

The James Sallis Reader - Because everyone needs some Sallis under their Christmas tree.

The Shark Infested Custard by Charles Willeford - I haven’t read this one yet and look forward to it.

New Book Additions #6

January 20, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

The Bug by Ellen Ullman

The Bug is a mesmerizing first novel about a demonic, elusive computer bug and the havoc it wreaks on the lives of the people around it. This rare combination–a novel of ideas and a suspense–is a story about obsession and love that takes readers deep into both the personal and virtual life.

In 1984, at the dawn of the personal-computer era, Roberta Walton, a novice software tester at a SiliconValley start-up, stumbles across a bug. She brings it to its inadvertent creator, Ethan Levin, a longtime programmer who is working at the limits of his knowledge and abilities. Both believe this is a bug like any other to be found and fixed and crossed off the list. But no matter how obsessively Ethan combs through the depths of the code, he can’t find its cause. Roberta runs test after test but can’t make the bug appear at will. Meanwhile, the bug, living up to its name, “The Jester,” shows itself only at the least opportune times and jeopardizes the fate of the company.

Under the pressures of his obsession with the bug and his rapidly deteriorating personal life, Ethan begins to unravel. Roberta, on the other hand, is drawn to the challenge. Forced to learn how to program, she comes to appreciate the intense intimacy of speaking the computer’s language.

As she did in Close to the Machine, Ellen Ullman brilliantly limns the space between human beings and computers–a space we all occupy every day as we peer into our monitors. Ullman has been a computer programmer for more than twenty years, and having switched from code to prose, she has shown herself to be a unique, revelatory writer. She is the insider who can articulate the realities of the technical world, taking readers to emotional and intellectual places fiction has never brought them before. With The Bug, Ullman proves she is not only a remarkable essayist but also a master storyteller.

If the Sky Falls by Nicholas Montemarano

If the Sky Falls is the debut short-story collection from award-winning fiction writer Nicholas Montemarano. These eleven stories show why Jayne Anne Phillips has called Montemarano “an American stylist capable of redeeming our darkest dreams.”
Redemption in these intense and sometimes violent stories is found in the lyrical prose, in the act of storytelling itself. A young man tries to rescue his sister from her abusive lover, and in the process must revisit his own family’s violent history (“Note to Future Self”); a home healthcare worker pops pills and takes two men with cerebral palsy to a strip club (“The Usual Human Disabilities”); a man has a breakdown years after witnessing a brutal murder and doing nothing to help the victim (“The Other Man”). In “The November Fifteen,” a man is taken from his home and tortured, though he has no idea why; when he returns home he finds a different kind of torture awaiting him.

Two of the stories—“Shift” and the Pushcart Prize–winning “The Worst Degree of Unforgivable”—are stylistic tours de force. But style in this collection is always at the service of story. Montemarano’s fiction maintains that rare balance between traditional storytelling and experimentation: his work is innovative without being flashy, sincere without being sentimental. In an age of hype, If the Sky Falls truly is the real thing—an original and important achievement in the short-story form.

Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage

In the remote Brazilian town of Cascatas do Pontal, where landless peasants are confronting the owners of vast estates, the the bishop arrives by helicopter to consecrate a new church and is assassinated.

Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters of the Federal Police of Brazil, is dispatched to the interior to find the killer. The Pope himself has called Brazil’s president; the pressure is on Silva to perform. Assisted by his nephew, Hector Costa, also a federal policeman, Silva must battle the state police and a corrupt judiciary as well as criminals who prey on street kids, the warring factions of the Landless League, the big landowners and the Church itself, in order to solve the initial murder and several brutal killings that follow. Justice is hard to come by. An old priest, a secret liberation theologist, finally metes it out. Here is a Brazil that tourists never encounter.

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

In the tradition of Dennis Lehane, Walter Mosley and Greg Iles, Attica Locke spins a tale of mystery and intrigue, set in Houston, Texas during the oil-rich 80s. And as it entertains, the book offers a powerful message about race, class, how the decisions you make can change the course of your life, and how the past influences the present.

Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl, and he runs his fledgling law practice out of a dingy strip mall. But he has long since made peace with his path to the American dream, quietly and carefully tucking away the more radical parts of his past: the guns, the FBI file, and the trial that almost ended his life. But one night he makes an impulsive decision to save a drowning woman’s life, opening a Pandora’s Box in the process. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him everything. But through it all, Porter stumbles upon a chance to become the lawyer…and the man he once dreamed of becoming. BLACK WATER RISING, with its universal characters in relatable situations, will resonate with multi-generational readers.

The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

A comic novel that tells the story of Ray Midge of Little Rock, whose wife has run away with her first husband, Ray’s credit cards, and his car. Ray sets off to get his own back (especially his car). Along the way, he encounters an array of Portis’ unique characters: inner-directed and undeflected innocents, with Ray the most calmly determined of them all.

Borderlands by Brian McGilloway

Winter 2002. The corpse of local teenager Angela Cashell is found on the Tyrone-Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland, in an area known as the Borderlands. Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin heads the investigation. The only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl’s finger and an old photograph, left where she died.

While Devlin searches for the girl’s killer, her father has his own ideas about who is responsible—and his own ideas about how to make them pay. Meanwhile, Devlin becomes reacquainted with an old flame eager to rekindle their affair.

Then another teenager is murdered, and Devlin unearths a link between the recent killings and the disappearance of a prostitute twenty-five years earlier—a case in which he fears one of his own colleagues is implicated. As a thickening snow storm blurs the border between North and South, Devlin finds the distinction between right and wrong, vengeance and justice, and even police officer and criminal becoming equally unclear.

A dazzling and highly lyrical debut crime novel, Borderlands marks the beginning of a compelling new series featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin.

Forensics: A Guide for Writers

New book additions #5

January 20, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

The Negro in American History vol. I: 1928-1968, The Negro in American History vol. II: 1854-1927, The Negro in American History vol. III: 1567-1854 - Research purposes

The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay

Mark Genevich is a South Boston P.I. with a little problem: he’s narcoleptic, and he suffers from the most severe symptoms, including hypnogogic hallucinations. These waking dreams wreak havoc for a guy who depends on real-life clues to make his living.

Clients haven’t exactly been beating down the door when Mark meets Jennifer Times—daughter of the powerful local D.A. and a contestant on American Star—who walks into his office with an outlandish story about a man who stole her fingers. He awakes from his latest hallucination alone, but on his desk is a manila envelope containing risqué photos of Jennifer. Are the pictures real, and if so, is Mark hunting a blackmailer, or worse?

Wildly imaginative and with a pitch-perfect voice, The Little Sleep is the first in a new series that casts a fresh eye on the rigors of detective work, and introduces a character who has a lot to prove—if only he can stay awake long enough to do it.

The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

The sky is falling for the Caspers, a family of cowards: for Jonathan, a paleontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric giant squid; for his wife, Madeline, an animal behaviorist with a failing experiment; for their daughter, Amelia, a disappointed teenage revolutionary; for her younger sister, Thisbe, on a frustrated search for God; and for grandfather Henry, who wants to disappear, limiting himself to eleven words a day, then ten, then nine. Each fears uncertainty and the possibilities that accompany it. When Jonathan and Madeline suddenly decide to separate, this nuclear family is split, each member forced to confront his or her own cowardice, finally coming to appreciate the cloudiness of the modern age. With wit and humor, The Great Perhaps presents a revealing look at anxiety, ambiguity, and the need for complicated answers to complex questions.

DeKok and the Dead Harlequin by A.C. Baantjer

This latest Baantjer mystery delves into a grotesque double murder in a well-known Amsterdam hotel. In a surprising twist, Inspector DeKok has nightly conversations with the murderer and tries everything possible to prevent the man from giving himself up to the police. Risking the anger of his superiors, DeKok goes so far as to disappear in order to prevent the perpetrator from being found. Meanwhile, two unexpected characters add to the web of confusion: a six-year-old girl who never sleeps and a respected accountant who seeks DeKok s advice on committing the perfect crime. With Dead Harlequin, Baantjer has created yet another intelligent, absorbing tale.

Safer by Sean Doolittle

Aa young couple moves into an idyllic little cul-de- sac—and ignites a harrowing journey into darkness as a shocking accusation is made, a family is shattered, and the mystery of a long-ago crime begins to unravel.

For Paul Callaway and his wife, Sara, moving from the East Coast to a quiet midwestern town was a major adjustment. But right from the start, Paul has tried to fit in. He’s played golf with the guys. He’s even joined the Neighborhood Patrol, grabbing a flashlight and a walkie-talkie to make these neatly tended streets even safer. Then Paul makes one mistake—and now they want him gone. But nothing could have prepared Paul and Sara for the quarrel that has erupted between Paul and a neighbor—the self-appointed leader of the Neighborhood Patrol. Or for the next outrage, as police arrest Paul for a sordid crime he didn’t commit. Suddenly Paul’s life, university career, and marriage are at risk, as he finds himself locked in a desperate fight with an angry man, a dark conspiracy, and a secret that began with a child’s disappearance ten years before.

Y: The Last Man vol. 5 trade by Brian Vaughn - In the middle of a re-read of the series.

Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano

One hungry, hallucinatory night in the dark heart of Havana, Mano Rodriguez, a young doctor with the revolutionary medical service, comes to the aid of a teenage jinetera named Julia. She takes refuge in his clinic to break away from the abusive chulo who prostituted her, and they form an unlikely allegiance that Mano thinks might save him from his twin burdens: the dead-end hospital assignment he was delegated after being blacklisted by the Cuban Communist Party and a Palo Monte curse on his love life commissioned by a vengeful ex-wife. But when the pimp and his bodyguards come after Julia and Mano, the violent chain-reaction plunges them all into the decadent catacombs of Havana’s criminal underworld.

Inspired by fifty years of Cuban noir, from the Cold Tales of Virgilio Pinera to Reinaldo Arenas’ Before Night Falls, Arellano’s Havana Lunar intertwines an insider testimony on the collapse of socialist Cuba with a psychological mystery that climaxes in the eye of Hurricane Andrew.

New Book Additions #4

January 20, 2009 By: Brian Category: Uncategorized

Cotton Comes To Harlem, A Rage in Harlem and The Heat’s On all by Chester Himes - These were used book purchases, I’m trying to rebuild my Himes library.

Chester Himes: A Life by James Sallis - Only $5 at a used book store!!!!

The Vampire of Ropraz by Jacques Chessex

1903, Ropraz, a small village in the Jura Mountains. On a howling December day a lone walker discovers a tomb recently opened, the body of a young woman violated, left hand cut off, sex mutilated and heart cut out. Horror in the nearby villages, the return of atavistic superstitions, mutual suspicions in the heart of winter. Then two more bodies are violated. Now a suspect must be found. Fevez, a stable-boy with blod-shot eyes is arrested, convicted, subjected to psychiatric care and then vanishes in 1915. Chessex takes this true story and weaves it into a lyrical tale of fear and cruelty.

Disturbing the Dead by Sandra Parshall

Tom Bridger, who is half Melungeon, thought he had escaped his mountain community’s lingering prejudice against the mixed-race group when he left to work for the Richmond, Virginia Police Department. Tom was moving up the detective ranks when a family tragedy brought him back home and moved him into his father’s job as a county sheriff’s deputy.

Now the bones of a Melungeon woman who disappeared ten years ago have surfaced on a remote mountaintop, and all evidence points to murder. Violence escalates as the victim’s poor family and the wealthy white family she married into scramble to protect their secrets from Tom’s probing. But as he probes into his father’s investigation of the case, he finds his father was not the man he idolized.

The woman Tom is falling in love with, veterinarian Rachel Goddard, is struggling to start over in a place that holds no memories for her. Rachel puts herself in danger when she befriends the dead Melungeon woman’s niece, Holly. As a child, the girl witnessed something that could implicate her aunt’s killer, but she is too terrified to tell anyone what she knows. While Rachel is determined to keep Holly safe and help her piece together past events, the guilty are equally determined to silence the girl–and Rachel too, if necessary.

Will this murder be Tom’s and Rachel’s undoing or will it free them to look into the future?

Lunatics by Bradley Denton - I’ve been wanting to read this one for a while now so I was glad to find a copy.

Jack’s friends learn of Lily’s existence after his arrest by the Austin police for public indecency. And while they’re all convinced he’s insane, they are his friends, and if that involves hijacking him to a cabin in the woods to keep him out of trouble during the full moon, they can handle it. But with each passing month Jack’s crowd — spiky Carolyn and her gorgeous-but-dumb boytoy Artie, sexy single mom Halle, and less-than-ecstatically-married Stephen and Katy — is gradually pulled into Lily’s orbit. And once they’ve fallen under the influence of the goddess of desire, nothing will be the same.

Not for Jack, or his friends, or even Lily herself . . .

More Twisted by Jeffrey Deaver

Jeffery Deaver has compiled a second volume of his award-winning, spine-tingling short stories of suspense. This second collection contains 15 previously published short stories plus one new Lincoln Rhyme story. The titles of the stories are:

-The Return of Count Electric by William Browning Spencer - I haven’t read this collection yet (I don’t think). Love his novels though.