Tag: crime

My man, James Lee Burke. It’s been over a year since I read you, which is too long, considering I’m only on the sixth Dave Robicheaux book out of eighteen. After this one, I may speed things up because you did some amazing work here. I have Dixie City Jam sitting next to my bed, but I’m building quite a backlog of  paperbacks, so it may have to wait.

I’m going to digress and talk about my problems. Skip the next few paragraphs if you’re not interested. Here’s the problem: I seem to be suffering from a horrible case of the recency effect. If it’s happening now, I like it. Is that normal?

I’m reading this book thinking that it’s not only the greatest JLB book I’ve read, but maybe the greatest American crime novel I’ve read. Additionally, I think I may like Burke more than Grafton and Hillerman and Francis. What’s wrong with me? It has to be that I feel this way about the book because it’s in my hands, now. I just don’t trust myself to seriously rank a book while I’m reading it.

Okay, enough with that. Wow, I loved this book though.

Burke’s hero is a dark and brooding crime fighter working for the New Iberia (Loiusiana) sheriff’s department. This book is similar to the first five in the series because Robicheaux gets suspended from the department for a period of time. He doesn’t seem to be able to get through any book without some sort of beef with authority.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

It was different though because of how surreal and mystical it was. In the past I’ve quoted passages where Burke describes Robicheaux’s demons in colorful and sordid ways (here and here). Nothing like that stuck out here, but there was an ongoing fantastical dialogue between Robicheaux and a dead Confederate general that was comparable in it’s strangeness. These conversations were visions that Robicheaux was having and it took a little while to get used to them, but eventually I started looking forward to them. They added a lot of color and worked well to build the suspense.

The suspense was intense. The final chapters, with the malevolence and danger and emotion, were incredible. But as evil as the bad guys were, the good guys (and women) were caring and compassionate. Hopefully good people Elrod Sykes and Rosie Gomez show up in future books.

I also need to note in future books how much Robicheaux reaches into his childhood. In this one, he witnessed a murder as a teen-ager that came back to visit him in current day (I think he was 57 in this book). I’ve already looked ahead to the next one and it seems like there’s something comparable. Grafton does this a little, but not necessarily with the main character. She brings up stuff from the past to add to the current story. I’m getting more used to the tactic.

Long live the American detective novel!

This latest install of Grafton’s alphabet series is the first I’ve read in real time. By that I mean I read it right after it came out. I pre-ordered it at Amazon and banged through it over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m all caught up with Grafton now… just waiting around for the next one.

This felt like the longest and most rambling of any of her books. I say rambling because Grafton uses the perspective of three related parties along with the normal first person account by Millhone. This all happens simultaneously, unlike the last book, which dredged up a murder from twenty years ago. I like this a lot better.

It was difficult to put this one down. Really difficult. Grafton went in some new directions this time around. It was the first time I recall a scene with Millhone that was not told in the first person. It was fun to get a different perspective of Millhone from someone else. It also had the longest and most involved non-Millhone romance storyline that I recall.

Great book.

I have to believe that most of Grafton’s fans are women, say 75% maybe. Actually, that may be low. If you read through her Facebook comments, her hardcore fans are probably 99% women. I may be one of very few males who has read A through V in order. That makes me feel special.

Well, not really. But I’ll tell you this, I feel like I’ve made some strides since noticing how few books I read by female authors. Fully eight of the 29 books I’ve read so far this year were by female authors. How about that? I’m all about expanding horizons, pushing through boundaries, and great pizza, to name a few things.

Hopefully she is full blast on W right now. I’d preorder it if I could. What’s she going to call it? I can’t think of any obvious crime-related words that start with W.

One thing is for sure, she isn’t selling the film rights any time soon. Check out this interview at the 5:10 point. She says:

I worked in Hollywood for fifteen years. I hate those people. Most of the ones I met were just as nice, they were educated, they were gracious. They would savage your work.

That’s beautiful. It’s a great interview. Among other things, she discusses the book previous to this one and lists some of her favorite authors. I wonder how long this video will be up because it’s from Border’s Media. Hopefully they don’t blow it up along with everything else because of their bankruptcy. Heck, if you go to Borders.com you get redirected to Barnes and Noble.

She’s been on a two year cycle for books so I guess I’ll have to wait until 2013. Too bad.

I said I was going to read this book after catching up on Grafton’s alphabet series. This book is credited by Sue Grafton as being highly influential to her work. She even uses Macdonald’s fictional California town of Santa Theresa as the setting for her books (it’s really Santa Barbara). That’s a serious tribute.

Macdonald’s main character is a private detective name Lew Archer. Much like Kinsey Millhone, he roams southern California solving mysteries. I’ve already read a set of his short stories so I knew what I was getting into.

This was a fine book by an interesting author. Macdonald is one of our greatest crime writers, too bad he’s a University of Michigan grad. That won’t stop me from reading his books. I’ll grab The Drowning Pool, his second Lew Archer book, the next time I’m at Open Books.

Archer was just as surly and prone to violence as he was in the group of short stories I read. He was a little funnier than I expected though; very quick with the quip, like this moment when he was tailing a suspect at night:

The truck highballed along as if it was safe on rails. I let it get out of sight, switched my lights again, and tried to feel like a new man driving a different car.

That was back when cars had fog lamps. It was published in 1949, although with cars and telephones, it doesn’t feel too dated.

The story is about a millionaire gone missing and Archer is hired by the wife to track him down. There was plenty of family carnage in the back story and no shortage of odd characters. I lost my place in the story a few times. It’s been a busy couple of weeks and my concentration often waned, so I’ll chock it up to that. I never lost interest though. The lineup of brutal gangsters, seedy lawyers, shady women, and friendly enemies kept me alert and tuned-in. Great stuff.

I said the other day while watching Killshot that I was inspired to read some Elmore Leonard, so here we are. Actually, it could be the other way around, or not. It doesn’t matter which inspired which, they were both good.

I’m starting to get a feel for the Elmore Leonard formula after only a few short instances. One thing that he often seems to have is a strong yet vulnerable heroine. In this book, Kathy Diaz Baker is a tough parole officer with two really rough parolees, both of whom were sent away by a crooked judge nicknamed Maximum Bob. It turns into a twisted circle because the judge wants to sleep with non-receptive Kathy, and one of Kathy’s parolees wants to kill the judge. All sorts of shenanigans ensue.

During the shenanigans, Kathy falls for a local detective and it evolves into a tasteful little affair (this is the vulnerable part of Kathy). Kathy character reminds me a little of Jennifer Lopez’s character in Out of Sight, another great Elmore Leonard book and movie. Man I loved that movie. I’m going to watch that again soon.

It all takes place in Palm Beach county Florida. In certain ways, even besides the South Florida angle, it’s a little like a Carl Hiaasen novel, but a little darker and not as much hilarity. I like both.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

The relationship that Kathy has with the cop comes to an abrupt halt when one of her parolees kills him. It was an emotional part of the book and the way Leonard drew out the drama by interspersing two scenes during the killing was masterful. I was engrossed, mad, sad, you name it.

Superb story. I’ll be reading more Leonard in the coming years, and maybe grabbing a few of the movies on Netflix.

I consume a fair amount of crime novels, but I’ve never read any Ross Macdonald. I happened in to this book because I was at a friend’s house and he just handed it to me. I started it within a few days, which I rarely do, but I was between works of fiction and didn’t feel like working down my backlog, so I launched into it.

This book is gritty, hardboiled detective fiction in short story format, published in 1955. It’s a great introduction to Ross Macdonald and his main character Lew Archer, a California private detective.

To give you an idea, in the story Gone Girl, Archer walks into a bar to inquire about the whereabouts of a woman. He’s greeted by a piano-playing barman who talks in rhymes. Unsurprisingly, Archer replies with a rhyme of his own:

Where did she lam, Sam, or don’t you give a damn?

That’s what I’m talking about, quirky, strange, with pretty spare prose, but great stories. So great in fact, that I’m going to read all of the Lew Archer novels in order starting with The Moving Target, which MacDonald wrote in 1949. It was also made into a movie with Paul Newman, entitled Harper. I just purchased the book on the Kindle (pleasantly surprised that Vintage has these in digital format).

I’ve rooted around a little and it appears that Sue Grafton was highly influenced by Ross Macdonald. That, my friends, is some serious validation for Macdonald because Grafton is one of my favorite writers (not that Macdonald needs any validation, but from my perspective…). I’ll have more about this link to Grafton after I’ve read The Moving Target.

I liked all the stories in The Name is Archer. They are dark and violent and mostly have surprise endings. There is also plenty of dry humor, like this passage from the story entitled The Suicide:

On the way to the diner, she caught the eye of every man on the train who wasn’t asleep. Even some of the sleeping ones stirred, as if her passing had induced a dream. I censored my personal dream. She was too young for me, too innocent. I told myself that my interest was strictly paternal.

I’m going to like this stuff a lot. I can tell.