What I Read In August

VANILLA RIDE - Joe Lansdale
Published: 2009
Setting: East Texas
Protagonist: Hap Collins and Leonard Pine
Series?: 7th
First Lines: 'I hadn't been shot at in a while, and no one had hit me in the head for a whole month or two. It was kind of a record and I was starting to feel special.'
At long, long last, East Texas' finest - Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are back. Hap is a white trash, good ol' boy, with an eye for the ladies, but a penchant for bunny slippers; Leonard is a black, gay, martial arts expert and Vietnam veteran. Together they've been through many years of dead end jobs, romantic troubles, fights, fun and friendship. In this outing, they agree to help an old friend, whose granddaughter is living with a local, small-time drug-dealer. A little skirmish later and our heroes have rescued the girl. Job done. Unfortunately, the drug dealer is tied to the Dixie Mafia - a rather scary bunch of guys with a seemingly never-ending array of assassins, all of whom now seem to be after Hap and Leonard. A great mix of viloence, thrills, humour, and added philosophy from Hap. This is one of my very favourite series, and Joe Lansdale is a truly brilliant writer, and a wonderful storyteller. As I wrote those first lines out for this summary, I wanted to get the book off the shelf and read it all over again. Love it, love it, love it. And here's a great podcast interview with Joe Lansdale.

THE TWILIGHT TIME - Karen Campbell
Published: 2008
Setting: Glasgow
Protagonist: Sergeant Anna Cameron
Series?: First
First Lines: '"Put your arm back through." "No, darlin', no. I got to breathe."'

When Sergeant Anna Cameron arrives at Glasgow's Stewart Street police station to take charge of the Flexi Unit she shows a very confident front - composed, successful, and more than a little frosty. Her personal life, however, is anything but composed and successful. Prostitutes are being viciously attacked and Anna's team is tasked with solving the crimes - a task made much more difficult by the often suspicious and sometimes downright unhelpful nature of the victims. In addition, Anna gets involved in the case of an elderly Polish man who is the target of racial abuse. Anna is a really interesting character - sometimes frustrating, sometimes cold, often very likeable, but above all, never dull. All the characters are very well drawn and some of them are surprisingly touching, without being cloying and melodramatic. In places the book is very dark and not for the squeamish. Along with the darkness there are also some great touches of black humour which mean that it's not a depressing read. The setting is one of the best depictions of Glasgow I've read, and it's shown as the schizophrenic, gritty, in-your-face, characterful city it is. On top of all that, there's a gripping plot that is full of twists and turns. But this is not a bog standard police procedural. It's an insight into real peoples' lives - police, victims and criminals - who all come across in shades of grey.

DON'T CALL ME A CROOK - Bob Moore

Published: 2009 (originally 1935 and lost to the world)
Setting: Glasgow, Chicago, New York - 1930s
Protagonist: Bob Moore
Series?: Standalone
First Lines: 'It is a pity there are getting to be so many places that I can never go back to, but all the same, I do not think it is much fun a man being respectable all his life.'
This is the autobiography of Glaswegian Bob Moore - sailor, adventurer, engineer, world traveller. He's also racist, sexist, violent and, more often than not, pickled in alcohol. Breaker of almost every law imaginable, he's also a thoroughly charming rapscallion. He keeps telling us he's not a crook, and you almost believe him. He doesn't steal things - he borrows things and just doesn't return them. And besides, usually it's the owner's fault he doesn't give them back - they should have been more careful shouldn't they? He has a callous disregard for human life, sometimes breathtakingly so. Moore travels the world in the 1920s and 30s - America, South America, Europe, China - partly because he has a real sense of adventure and seems to revel in danger - but partly because towns, cities, countries and even whole continents often end up a little hot for him because he's...well, let's face it...he is a crook. Bob Moore wouldn't know a scruple if it jumped up and bit him, but he knows how to spin a great yarn.

THE SINGER - Cathi Unsworth
Published: 2007
Setting: Mostly Hull and London
Protagonist: The members of punk rock band Blood Truth
Series?: Standalone
First Lines: 'You can tell its love by the expression on their faces. Four, maybe five hundred of them, packed together so tightly they've formed a kind of human sea, rolling and lapping in waves around the rim of the stage.'
It's 1977 and, like many young people at the time, Stevie Mullin has discovered punk. He and some mates form a band and, when they meet their edgy but charismatic singer Vincent Smith, it seems as though everything falls into place. They shoot to fame on the punk scene and make powerful and inspiring music, despite the tensions under the surface - mostly caused by Vince, who is quite a destructive character. Then, in 1981 Vince disappears. Twenty years later, journalist Eddie Bracknell is intrigued by the story and delves into the secrets and lies that surrounded his disappearance. Cathi Unsworth was a music journalist during the punk era and the atmosphere is totally authentic. I found myself trying to work out whether some of the characters were based on real people. The story and the characters reflect the passion, energy, aggression and rawness of punk, as well as the deprivation, social unrest and alienation of the times.

WALK THE DARK STREETS - William Krasner
Published: 1949
Setting: errrr...a city somewhere along the Ohio River
Protagonist: Captain Sam Birge of the Homicide Squad
Series?: Standalone
First Lines: 'The yellow fog was already creeping up around the Marne Hotel, mingling with the white breath from the sewers, carrying west the faint, sweet, rotting scent of the Ohio River.'
Captain Sam Birge is a dedicated and overworked homicide detective. His latest case is the brutal murder of night club hostess Janice Morel - or, as the front of the book describes her "blackmailer, hostess-entertainer, a lady of no virtue. Somebody wanted her dead." Janice lived in a sleazy residential hotel and when Birge and his partner, Lieutenant Charley Hagen, start their investigations, they interview a number of colourful characters, most of whom have mysterious pasts, or tortured presents, and Krasner brings them all to life with a few deft touches. We get to know Janice herself through fragments of diaries she has left which chart her downward spiral from hopeful, naive small town girl with ambitions of fame and fortune, to used-up, old before her time good time girl. This is an excellent, noir-feeling book, which has a wonderfully seedy atmosphere. Highly recommended for lovers of noir or hard-boiled or TV series like Dragnet.

EYE FOR AN EYE - Frank Muir
Published: 2007
Setting: St Andrews, Scotland
Protagonist: DI Andy Gilchrist
Series?: 1st
First Lines: 'Rain hangs from the sky in silver ropes that dance on the street and spill from choked gutters. Lightening flashes. His face flickers white.'
A serial killer called The Stabber is terrorising Saint Andrews. The victims are all men who abuse women, they are all attacked during storms, and they are all stabbed in the left eye. I sighed when I read the prologue - why must serial killers always write in italics? I mused to myself, twisting the legs off a wasp. However, there was a lot about this book that I liked - particularly the main character - DI Andy Gilchrist, and a couple of the supporting cast. There were things he did that I didn't agree with (she says, vaguely, so as not to give anything away), but I found him an easy and interesting character to read about. The dialogue is excellent and it's very well paced. I also enjoyed the St Andrews setting - traditionally the home of golf and where princes go to university.

Keeping It In The Family - Number 1 - AN EYE FOR AN EYE - Frank Muir

Well, here is the first in an occasional series where Mum, Dad and I will all comment on the same book. Since we all like different things, here's a quick reference guide to the reading habits of the Moore Family (like the Addams Family but not as rich and twice as scary).

Mum

LIKES: cosies, historicals, puzzles, police procedurals where there is not a lot of gore, no sex and definitely no swearing.

DISLIKES: gore, sex, swearing, romance, science fiction. She once tried a Martina Cole (The Ladykiller) and rang me up whispering (god alone knows why she felt the need to whisper, she was sitting in her own living room at the time) to tell me she'd just read part of a pornographic book, and she was shocked. "It had 'lady' in the title, but they weren't, dear." And, apparently, after she read mine, she had to have a small glass of sherry, and then spent the next hour wandering around the house shaking her head and muttering "Weird. My daughter is weird, weird weird." Guess that'll be the blurb for the next one then.

PREFERS: Miss Marple to Philip Marlowe, Inspector Morse to Homicide (and don't even ask about The Wire).

Dad

LIKES: thrillers, spy novels, war stories and books with elves in (the elves can swear their heads off as far as he's concerned). Oh, and maps. He bloody loves maps. If you ever meet him, for goodness' sake don't ask him for directions. Not even to the bathroom.

DISLIKES: romance, books that have too much swearing in (I guess that's my Dad not going to read my next book either, then - I thought it was just my Mum I had to keep away from it). Also doesn't like horror, and books with vampires, pterodactyls and the living dead in them. Also, something called an ungoliant. No, I have no idea either - I think my Dad has been at the sherry too.

PREFERS: Philip Marlowe to Miss Marple, Inspector Morse to Homicide.

Me

LIKES: noir, hard-boiled, capers, PI novels, police procedurals, warped, quirky and funny books.

DISLIKES: cosies - especially those where the protagonist has a heavily featured hobby (I once got a gluten allergy from reading a book where the heroine made bread every three pages), or books where an animal solves the crime. Unless it's a dinosaur (as in Eric Garcia's wonderful series about basil addicted Vincent Rubio).

I'm not a big fan of serial killer books (and I'm not talking books that just happen to have a serial killer IN (I love books by Steve Mosby, Mark Billingham etc)), I mean books where it's all about the quirks. The more patterns or quirks the killer has, the more blood is spilled and body parts mutilated, the more good writing, character development and a decent plot seem to go out of the window. The ones I don't like are where the author seems to think that making their killer a murderer of blue eyed women with one arm (the women, not the murderer), who drowns his victims in an increasingly violent way in a vat of hot chocolate, while narrating The Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner, drawing a picture of a squirrel on the wall and scattering rose petals around the bathroom is all the character development and justification the avid reader needs. A-ha - the serial killer was burned by a scalding mug of hot chocolate as a baby, force-fed him by his mother Rose, a blue-eyed ex-Womens Royal Navy sailor who lost an arm in a bizarre accident involving a rabid squirrel.

I'm also not big on spy thrillers and medical thrillers. If I see a jacket blurb which mentions the White House, and the words 'explosive' and 'conspiracy' and which has a shadowy picture of someone rappelling down a big building, carrying a large knife dripping blood, or an enormous syringe, then I'm more likely to put it down in a hurry than slap in into my shopping basket with glee. I have the same reaction to 'Knights Templar' and 'Illuminati'.

I don't like gratuitous anything - but then, one person's gratuitous is another person's prerequisite. My Mum would definitely find most of the books I read have gratuitous sex, violence and swearing. I find the books she likes have gratuitous cats. And butlers. And people being poisoned with rare poison from the Three Kneed Scarlet Guatemalan Tree Frog. And gentility. As for the sex, well, if it fits (oo-er missus) then it's fine. But again, one person's unnecessary may not be another person's. I have read crime fiction where it seems to be put in for titillation purposes (as though someone has said to the author "There's not enough heaving bosoms. Spice it up a bit. Page 58's a bit dull, stick a sex scene in there." And, since I do a lot of my reading on public transport, I don't particularly want to be titillated at 8am on a wet Monday morning while sitting on the bus next to a drooling bloke who's oozing curry and beer from every pore. Call me straight-laced, but... And sometimes, sex scenes can be funny without meaning to be. I read a mystery a few years ago where the woman was asleep and the man slid one hand between her thighs and the other into her mouth. And this was supposed to be erotic. I'm sorry, but if anyone slides anything in my mouth while I'm sleeping, then I'm probably going to dream it's a chocolate eclair and chomp down hard. On the other hand, there are plenty of books that do it well, but I'm not going to mention any of them just in case you tell my Mum.

PREFERS: Raymond Chandler to Miss Marple, Homicide to Inspector Morse.

Whoops, sorry about that. Got carried away there. I'm not even sure that any of the above is useful. The only area where we all agree is the romance category (none of that icky luuuuurve stuff for the cold-hearted Moores thank you very much). As far as all of our dislikes are concerned, there are, of course, exceptions to every rule - I was going to say I didn't like vampires until I remembered that I love Charlie Huston's books.

I shall shut up now and leave you with the reviewlets - in order of how popular the book was with us.

Frank Muir - EYE FOR AN EYE
Publisher: Luath Press 2007
Published: 2009

Dad's Comments:

The story tells of the investigation into eight deaths by DI Andy Gilchrist, who due to a jealous or incompetent DCI is suspended from the force and decides to go it alone. The murders of men who habitually abused their wives were carried out in a gruesome and unique way, and part of the investigation concentrates on locating the source of the murder weapon.

This was an easy book to read, though I was not sure about the Anglo Saxon words used. The ones that referred to bodily functions were, in the main, used in context. it was rather like hitting your thumb with a hammer, strong language sounds better than "Oh bother". I thought that the references to reproduction were a little overdone.

There are quite a number of false leads or suspects which are relevant to the story, and the twist at the end is bizarre to say the least. It was a story that I enjoyed reading, I look forward to HAND FOR A HAND, the next in the series about Andy Gilchrist.

My Comments:

The premise of AN EYE FOR AN EYE is that there is a serial killer called The Stabber terrorising Saint Andrews. The victims are all men who abuse women, they are all attacked during storms, and they are all stabbed in the left eye. Anyone who has a copy of the Moore Family checklist in hand is by now licking the tip of their pencil and saying "Hmmmmmm, this one won't go down very well with the annoyingly verbose one." Well, in one way, you would be correct. I sighed when I read the prologue - why must serial killers always write in italics? I mused to myself, twisting the legs off a wasp. However, there was a lot about this book that I liked - particularly the main character - DI Andy Gilchrist, and a couple of the supporting cast. There were things he did that I didn't agree with, but I found him an easy and interesting character to read about.

The dialogue is excellent and it's very well paced. I also enjoyed the St Andrews setting - traditionally the home of golf and where princes go to university. I will be interested to read the next one, but hope that there's no serial killer next time.

Mum's Comments:
Eeee, our Donna, why did you give me that book? I only read a page or two - not even a whole chapter. It's not my sort of book - you know that. I like a nice story with a nice beginning, a middle and an end and with no language in. I didn't read enough to see whether I liked it. Not my cup of tea. You can have a nice story that's down to earth without all that in it.


So there you have it. Was that remotely useful? Interesting? To be repeated, or never again?