Observations from the Balcony

I’ve already read some 200 releases and have some more on my shelf. So these books are the ones that I want to read the most that I don’t have or haven’t read.

The Underneath by Tom Piccirilli

a crime-suspense crossover about a family of thieves who have to deal with a possible serial killer. — From

another one that deals with the bent life. It’s about a guy who returns home to his family of career thieves on the eve of his murderous brother’s execution. There’s a lot of unanswered questions about his brother’s killing spree, and my protagonist has a lot of regrets and remorse about abandoning his pregnant ex-girlfriend. It’s as much a family drama as it is a crime tale, and in some ways its my most ambitious book yet. — From

It’s the story of a young thief named Terry Rand who returns home after a number of years when his manipulative brother, a death row inmate, asks him to come for a visit. That visit sends Terry on a strange journey to find a possible killer and to face up to events from his past, including the abandonment of his pregnant girlfriend, now married to his former best friend. As I’ve said in other places, it’s as much of a dark family drama as it is a suspense novel. — From

Collusion by Stuart Neville

COLLUSION features some returning characters from The Twelve, but has a different protagonist - the father of Marie McKenna’s child. He’s a cop who starts digging into the events of the first book when he realizes his child and former lover have gone missing. But when he gets too close to the truth, his superiors tell him to leave it alone. — From

I.O.U from Concord Free Press

In the spring of 2010, the Concord Free Press will publish IOU, a multi-genre collection of new writing about money—earned and spent, given and taken, remembered and imagined, stolen and gifted. Small town money, globalized money. Our times seem ripe for writers to open up on the subject.

Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski from Minotaur Books

In this neighborhood, make a wrong turn…

… and you’re history.

Mickey Wade is a recently-unemployed journalist who lucked into a rent-free apartment—his sick grandfather’s place. The only problem: it’s in a lousy neighborhood—the one where Mickey grew up, in fact. The one he was so desperate to escape.

But now he’s back. Dead broke. And just when he thinks he’s reached rock bottom, Mickey wakes up in the past. Literally.

At first he thinks it’s a dream. All of the stores he remembered from his childhood, the cars, the rumble of the elevated train. But as he digs deeper into the past, searching for answers about the grandfather he hardly knows, Mickey meets the twelve-year-old kid who lives in the apartment below.

The kid who will grow up to someday murder Mickey’s father.

Choke Hold by Christa Faust from Thomas Dunne Books

Angel Dare. Former pornstar. Vigilante killer. One by one, she took out the men who violated her and destroyed her life. After testifying against the key players in an international sex slavery ring, Angel went into Witness Protection to escape her past and create a new life.

But now her anonymity has been compromised and she’s on the run, relentlessly hunted by the one man she allowed to live.

When a chance meeting with former co-star ‘Thick’ Vic Ventura devolves into a bloodbath, Angel is left babysitting Vic’s illegitimate teenage son Cody, a hot-headed aspiring Mixed Martial Arts fighter. Cody’s in up to his neck, embroiled in a murderous conspiracy of drug smuggling and underground fighting, but all he cares about is making his big debut on a reality television series. Together with Cody’s trainer, Hank “The Hammer” Hammond, a punch drunk ex-grappler with a dark secret, Angel must find a way to help Cody escape his own demons while staying one step ahead of her own.

Pursued through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexican bordertowns and ultimately into the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas, Angel is in for the fight of her life. Can she go the distance or will she wind up on the other end of a no-holds-barred vendetta?

Audition by Murakami from W. W. Norton & Company

In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don’t intend to produce. As the résumés pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama’s attention—Yamasaki Asami—a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. Blinded by his instant and total infatuation, Aoyama is too late in discovering that she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be. The novel’s fast-paced, thriller conclusion doesn’t spare the reader as Yamasaki takes off her angelic mask and reveals what lies beneath.

Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella from Stark House Press

Johnny Porno is his first venture into the past as it takes place in 1973 when the New York mob was at the height of its power, disco was king and the business of pornography was about to explode across America after a New York City criminal court banned the most famous of all porn flicks, Deep Throat.

Johnny Porno is set in 1970’s New York when Deep Throat is being hustled around town by the mob and a guy named John Albano is just trying to get by. This book’s got it all: gangsters and wannabes, cops both crooked and not, hustlers and informers, crazy ex-wives and resourceful girlfriends; and crackling dialog that’s so real you can hear it.

Gutshot Straight by Lou Berney from William Morrow

When Charles “Shake” Bouchon, professional wheel man, walks out of prison after a three-year stretch for grand theft auto, he’s got only two problems: he’s too nice a guy for the life he’s led and not nice enough for any other.

So he says yes when he’s asked to run a simple errand for his former boss and lover, Alexandra Ilandryan, the formidable pakhan of the Armenian mob in Los Angeles. All Shake has to do is deliver a package to Las Vegas and pick up a briefcase.

Only the package turns out to be a wholesome young housewife named Gina whose husband has run afoul of Dick Moby, aka “The Whale,” an unpleasant four-hundred-pound Vegas strip-club owner. Shake hates to think what’s going to happen to Gina when he delivers her to The Whale, so in a move that’s as noble as it is boneheaded, he decides to set her free.

Now Shake and Gina are on the run to Panama, hoping to unload the very valuable—and highly unusual—contents of The Whale’s briefcase. Shake could end up a rich man, but first he’ll have to outmaneuver two angry crime bosses, a murderous Armenian thug plagued by erectile superfunction, a former pro football player who blames Shake for his romantic woes, and a billionaire swindler with a flair for the theatrical. Not to mention, and not the least, Shake will need to survive his own heart, since he’s going to discover that wholesome housewife Gina is even more intriguing, and a lot more complicated, than he ever imagined.

Full of blindsided double-crosses and hard shots to the head, Gutshot Straight is a tale of love, luck, and larceny against the odds.

Sleepless by Charlie Huston from Ballantine Books

What former philosophy student Parker Hass wanted was a better world. A world both just and safe for his wife and infant daughter. So he joined the LAPD and tried to make it that way. But the world changed. Struck by waves of chaos carried in on a tide of insomnia. A plague of sleeplessness.

Park can sleep, but he is wide awake. And as much as he wishes he was dreaming, his eyes are open. He has no choice but to see it all. That’s his job. Working undercover as a drug dealer in a Los Angeles ruled in equal parts by martial law and insurgency, he’s tasked with cutting off illegal trade in Dreamer, the only drug that can give the infected what they most crave: sleep.

After a year of lost leads and false trails, Park stumbles into the perilous shadows cast by the pharmaceuticals giant behind Dreamer. Somewhere in those shadows, at the nexus of disease and drugs and money, a secret is hiding. Drawn into the inner circle of a tech guru with a warped agenda and a special use for the sleepless themselves, Park thinks he knows what that secret might be.

To know for certain, he will have to go deeper into the restless world. His wife has become sleepless, and their daughter may soon share the same fate. For them, he will risk what they need most from him: his belief that justice
must be served. Unknown to him, his choice ties all of their futures to the singularly deadly nature of an aging mercenary who stalks Park.

The deeper Park stumbles through the dark, the more he is convinced that it is obscuring the real world. Bring enough light and the shadows will retreat. Bring enough light and everyone will see themselves again. Bring enough light and he will find his way to the safe corner, the harbor he’s promised his family. Whatever the cost to himself.

It is July 2010.

The future is coming.

Open your eyes.

Swap/Let it Ride by John McFetridge from ECW Press

When Toronto’s shadow city sprawls outwards with its vicious and encompassing criminal economy, all the local detectives can do is watch, grimace, and drink, sweeping up detritus left in the wake—dead hookers, corrupt cops, and people too slow or weak to keep up or too stupid to get out of the way. Detroit-born, projects-raised, former soldier Get feels right at home here, having returned from the business opportunities he sought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Selling guns to biker gangs and hiding in a veneer of respectability, he soon finds himself wavering because of stick-up girl Sunitha. She wants him to help her rob the bikers’ gold bullion drug money and escape with her, swapping this life for another.

Do They Know I’m Running? by David Corbett from Ballantine Books

Roque Montalvo is wise beyond his eighteen years. Orphaned at birth, a gifted musician, he’s stuck in a California backwater, helping his Salvadoran aunt care for his damaged brother, an ex-marine badly wounded in Iraq. When immigration agents arrest his uncle, the family has nowhere else to turn. Roque, badgered by his street-hardened cousin, agrees to bring the old man back, relying on the criminal gangs that control the dangerous smuggling routes from El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, to the U.S. border.

But his cousin has told Roque only so much. In reality, he will have to transport not just his uncle but two others: an Arab whose intentions are disturbingly vague and a young beauty promised to a Mexican crime lord. Roque discovers that his journey involves crossing more than one kind of border, and he will be asked time and again to choose between survival and betrayal—of his country, his family, his heart.

Wolves of Fairmount Park by Dennis Tafoya from Minotaur Books

The book centers on the shooting of two boys in front of a dope house in Philadelphia, and it follows a young detective and the addict uncle of one of the boys as they each try to uncover what actually led to the shooting.

Empty Mile by Matthew Stokoe from Akashic Books

When Johnny Richardson comes home to the town of Oakridge, California, he has one thing on his mind—putting right a terrible mistake he made eight years ago. Revisiting the past, though, is a dark and dangerous game in small-town America. A searing meditation on the futility of trying to right the wrongs of the past, Empty Mile blends elements of thrilling urban noir with the wide-open spaces of outdoor adventure.

Dark Rain by Mat Johnson from Vertigo

In the days after Hurricane Katrina, two men who fell through society’s cracks travel to evacuate New Orleans to pull off the bank heist of a lifetime. Up against the clock and eluding armed competitors, the men find themselves in the middle of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in American history. All around them, the institutions that form the pillars of our society are falling apart. Surrounded by death and misery, the men face a moral challenge greater than any other obstacle they’ve had to overcome. Is it possible to beat the system, even when it lies in ruins? Can they save even one person–or themselves? Or will those institutions come crashing down right on top of them?

Short by Cortright McMeel

It’s about commodity traders and it makes for quite the ride. You get the sort of inside look, behind-the-scenes stuff that, for better or worse, male readers seem to love. You get the ins and outs of a particular business and American finance in a larger sense, but, along with that, it’s just very well written in a way that few, if any, of those books, ever are.

It’s very strong. It’s just got a mixture of black comedy, fine prose and truly in-depth looks at certain milieus that you just don’t see in contemporary literature or more popular writing . . . ever. There are some sort of sleazy people in it and some, well, there are some just incredibly sleazy people. It’s very funny. A lot of times people will say something is funny when it’s sort of whimsical or aspires to humor, but isn’t actually all that amusing. This, oh, is genuinely very funny. Charles Bukowski meets Honoré de Balzac. Makes having dealt with Cort’s madness almost worthwhile. — From

Bye Bye Baby by Alan Guthrie - I couldn’t find any synopsis info online.

I’m reading Balzac of the Badlands by Steve Finbow right now and I’m just loving it. I should be finished this evening.

The opening paragraph, especially the opening line, should make some crime readers smile.

Some writer somewhere wrote something about never opening a book with the weather. And that’s true if you live where I live. I mean, what would be the point? If I’d looked out of the window at the start of this story, I could have told you about the overcast sky heavy with the threat of rain. I look out of the window now and it’s sunny with a mild breeze. And by the time you read this, it could be a nuclear winter or a globally warmed perpetual summer. But, hold on, you’ll be looking out of your window or your hole in the wall or your gap in the yurk, so god knows what the weather’s going to be like where you are. Anyway, when I woke up and looked out of the window, the sky was light pink and watery blue. And the sun was up there somewhere, inevitably.

On the page before Finbow even has an Elmore Leonard epigraph.

What other references in a book have made you smile or laugh?

From an interview with Brian Evenson

I think, too, that that dark side gives us inroads into the nature of consciousness in a way that the bright sunny side never does, that it reveals things about human nature that are the foundation for the way the mind works.

I think there’s definitely a resurgence going on, that a lot of people have become interested in thinking about noir less as a genre than as a mode that can be applied to other genres, that can infect other genres.

I have an idea for a post-apocalyptic detective novel that I hope I’ll start into soon.

I actually have about forty pages of a sequel to Last Days and an idea for how it could continue. I wrote that about six months ago and haven’t looked at it again yet–I think I need to let it sit a bit to try to get an objective sense of whether it’s too over the top or absurd. Yes, Kline’s pretty beat up, but I think there’s still potentially more to get out of him.

In no particular order here are the top 10 books from 2009 that I own but haven’t had a chance to read yet. They sit on the shelf and taunt me. Those bastards.

My Dead Body by Charlie Huston
Red Claw by Philip Farmer
The Revenant Road by Michael Boatman
My Work is Not Yet Done by Thomas Liggotti
Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup
The Summer of Ubume by Natsuhiko Kyogoku
The Gates by John Connolly
No Doors, No Windows by Joe Schreiber
A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory
Haiku by Andrew Vachss

Using a patented and scientific method I took all of the best of lists that Janet Rudolph has collected so far and wanted to see which ones appeared the most.

Appeared on 6 lists

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

Appeared on 5 lists

The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Melville
The Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan

Appeared on 4 lists

Ravens by George Dawes Green

Appeared on 3 lists

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
Hardball by Sara Paretsky
The Gates by John Connolly
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson

Appeared on 2 lists

A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
Bryant and May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Dial H for Hitchcock by Susan Kandel
Dog On It by Spencer Quinn
G.I. Bones by Martin Limon.
Life Sentences by Laura Lippman
Londongrad by Reggie Nadelson
Nemesis by Jo Nesbø
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly
Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
The Cloud Pavilion by Laura Joh Rowland
The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson
The Last Child by John Hart
The Long Fall by Walter Mosely
The Lord of Death by Eliot Pattison
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Tower by Ken Bruen & Reed Farrel Coleman

Appeared on 1 list

13 1/2 by Nevada Barr
9 Dragons by Michael Connelly
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
A Darker Domain Val McDermid.
A Duty to the Dead and The Red Door by Charles Todd
A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny (McKenna)
Arctic Chill by Aranldur Indridason
Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan
Boca Nights by Steven M. Forman
Bone by Bone by Carol O’Connell
Box 21 by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom
Breathing Water by Timothy Hallinan
Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry
Dark Mirror by Barry Maitland
Darling Jim by Christian Moerk
Desert Lost by Betty Webb
Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins
DIE FOR YOU
Drood by Dan Simmons
Faces of the Gone by Brad Parks
Filthy Rich by Brian Azzarello
Get Real by Donald E. Westlake
Heaven’s Keep by William Kent Krueger
House Secrets by Mike Lawson
I-5 by Summer Brenner
LOOK AGAIN
Neccesary as Blood by Deborah Crombie
New Tricks by David Rosenfelt
Pix by Bill James
Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
Roadside Crosses by Jeffrey Deaver
Server Down: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery by J.M. Hayes
Shadow of Betrayal by Brett Battles
Shatter by Michael Robotham (David)
Skin by Mo Hayder
Stardust by Joseph Kanon
Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears
The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell)
The Black Ice Score by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
The Calling by Inger Wolfe
The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas
The City and The City by China Mielville
The Cleaner by Brett Battles
The Doomsday Key by James Rollins
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (Brenda)
THE GIRL SHE USED TO BE
The Hidden Man by David Ellis
The Lord God Bird by Russell Hill
The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
The Odds by Kathleen George
The Paris Vendetta by Steve Berry
THE RELIABLE WIFE
The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer
The Way Home by George Pelecanos
The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah
TRIAL
Trust No One by Gregg Hurwitz
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton
VANISHED
Walking Dead by Greg Rucka

I finally got around to creating the list of authors that were new to me in 2009. The Rap Sheet kicked it off this year. Not every book listed was published in 2009 but I’m always surprised to see just how many new writers I try and which ones have been around for a long time that I finally got around to.

I tried increasing my crime comics coverage this year so the list is in two parts with comics bringing up the rear.

2009 debuts are bolded.

Winterland by Alan Glynn (2010 release in the U.S.)
Sweets and other stories by Andre Williams
Liar by Justine Larbalestier
Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick
The Devil’s Staircase by Helen Fitzgerald
The Singer by Cathi Unsworth
Poisonville by Massimo Carlotto
The Jerusalem File by Joel Stone
Hound by Vincent McCaffrey
The Water’s Edge by Karin Fossum
The Longshot by Katie Kitamura
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
Worst Nightmares by Shane Briant (U.S. debut)
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
The Midnight Room by Ed Gorman
Big Machine by Victor LaValle
Chaos by Escober
Printer’s Devil and Senseless both Stona Fitch
Dope Thief by Dennis Tafoya
Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous
I-5 by Summer Brenner
Private Midnight by Kris Saknussemm
Almost Gone by Stan Richards
While the Devil Waits by Jackson Meeks
In the Devil’s Territory by Kyle Minor (story collection)
All That I Have and Go With Me: A Novel Castle Freeman both by Castle Freeman Jr.
In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
Lowboy by John Wray
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
American Rust by Philipp Meyer
The City in These Pages by John Grant
The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay
Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano
Very Mercenary by Rayo Casablanca
Dooley Takes The Fall by Norah McClintock
Borderlands by Brian Mcgilloway
The Foreigner by Francie Lin
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
Pyres by Derek Nikitas
Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock (story collection)
The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliot

Comics

Wish You Were Here: Vol. 2 They Found the Car and Volume 1: Innocents by Gipi
Calvario Hills Vol. 1 by Marti
Leo Pulp by Claudio Nizzi
Ball Peen Hammer by Adam Rapp
Strongman by Charles Soule
Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry
The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book by Joe Daly
West Coast Blues by Jean-Patrick Manchette
You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich
Dark Entries by Ian Rankin
MPD-Psycho Volume 1 by Eiji Otsuka
Low Moon by Jason
8-9-3 by Jack Hsu
Incognegro by Mat Johnson

…it is believed by scholars that Shakespeare was possibly more than one writer making him the R.L. Stine or V.C. Andrews or at least James Patterson of his day.

From