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I love September. The beginning of autumn, the cooling temps,
and the first rush of green leaves turning gold, copper, and crimson. A
marvelous month that is second only to October in my book of favorite things.
Speaking of books (which is why we’re here, right?), my September reading
life ended up embarrassingly small—three books and five short stories—due,
mostly, to a late month skirmish with Covid that wiped out my pleasure
reading for more than a week. Quitting two novels halfway through didn’t help
either, but we’ll get to those later. The month started strong with David
Housewright’s tenth Rushmore McKenzie mystery, THE LAST KIND WORD (2013).
I’ve said before how much I enjoy McKenzie’s adventures and The Last Kind
Word is one of the best in the series so far. McKenzie reluctantly goes
undercover as a professional thief in Northern Minnesota when an AK-47 that went
missing during the ATF’s botched Operation Fast and
Furious—a real-life ATF sting operation gone sour on
the U.S.-Mexico border—shows up in an amateurish robbery in rural Minnesota. The bungling robbers turn out to be a down-on-their-luck
family. McKenzie worms his way into their circle and, while he is trying to
get a line on where they purchased the AK-47, he plans
a complicated heist for them. Things get sticky when McKenzie begins sympathizing
with the hard luck criminals and a local gangster and a couple crooked cops arrive
on the scene. The Last Kind Word has a Richard Stark vibe, great
characterization, and a sizzling plot. HEMINGWAY’S NOTEBOOK, by Bill Granger (1986), is
the seventh (of fourteen) November Man thrillers; it’s my favorite of the
four series’ titles I’ve read, too. After faking his death years earlier, November
is called back from retirement when an acquaintance from the intelligence community
threatens to tell the KGB he’s still breathing—an organization that would love
to change November’s status to cold and dead. So November agrees to help with
a niggling little revolution on the tiny Caribbean Island of St. Michel. Of course,
nothing is as it seems and November is hard-pressed to peel away the layers
of deceit and stay alive at the same time. And it’s done with Granger’s usual
irony and distrust of secrecy and authority. The annual short story anthology, THE BEST MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE STORIES OF THE YEAR—2024, edited by Otto Penzler and Anthony Horowitz,
is something I look forward to every year. This entry is good, but below the
standards I’ve come to expect since a few of the stories made me wonder why
they had been selected for its august pages. The good, and even a few great
tales, made me forget the mediocre stuff without incident. I’m planning a detailed
review of this one later in October and so I’ll leave it at that. |
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While my book length reading was pathetic, the number of individual
short stories I read, five all together, was pretty okay. And every one of those
tales were varying shades of good. C. J. Box’s “ONE-CAR BRIDGE,” which features Wyoming Game
Warden Joe Pickett, is about a greedy and flat-out mean landowner that may,
or maybe won’t, get his just desserts. It was part of Box’s collection, Shots
Fired (2015). “THE TWO-PERCENT SOLUTION,” by
Jack Ritchie, is a silly and dishonest (read that as impossible for the
reader to solve) puzzler featuring Harry Turnbuckle unmasking an arsonist and
murderer. Ritchie hit every bad note he could, but somehow its conclusion still
elicited a smile. It appeared in the June 1984 issue of Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine. Al Sarrantonio’s clever horror story, “LAST”—which
was published in the anthology Shivers VI (2010)—is a hardboiled and
stylish play on humanity’s longstanding fear of technology. And it, unlike
Ritchie’s tale, hit every note with a maestro’s touch. “DOOM OF THE DARK DELTA,” by James Reasoner (2024), is good pulpy fun. When sailor and
soldier Jorras Trevayle is washed ashore after a shipwreck, he finds an evil
sorcerer, a battery of wicked soldiers, a naked woman running for her life,
and a species of freakishly large snakes. And all of them are an obstacle to
Trevayle’s survival. Reading “Doom of the Dark Delta”—which is the first novella
in Reasoner’s new Snakehaven series—is like cracking the pages of an
old Weird Tales. But its zesty spirit, cracker-jack plotting, and
splendid adventure are all James Reasoner. Finally, Alan Orloff’s gritty and
hardboiled flash story, “ONCE” (2024), is an irony-laced
crime story with a surprise begin enough for a much longer tale. You can read
“Once” here at Shotgun Honey. Now, for those two books mentioned earlier
where the pages quit turning before the story did. Between you and me, both DNFs (did
not finish) were likely caused by me and Covid more than to any deficiencies in
the books themselves. Although read ahead and I’ll mention a few anyway. Sam Llewellyn’s RIPTIDE (1992).
Llewellyn is a favorite suspense writer of mine and I’ve always enjoyed his novels
set around the ocean and yachting. I’ve tried reading Riptide before
and failed, so maybe it’s less Covid than…something else. The narrative is
flabby and uneven, which is unusual for Llewellyn, and damned if I could get into
it. Again. Maybe I’ll wait another ten years and read it with different results. The other was Phillip Thompson’s first
Colt Harper novel, OUTSIDE THE LAW (2017).
The hardboiled style, sweltering rural Mississippi backdrop, and gritty plot are
right up my ally, but the narrative never spoke to me and seemed a little
flat, for no reason I can point to, which makes me think my perception of Outside
the Law was influenced more by a foggy head and a cough than any real problems
with the story. Maybe I’ll try it again with fresher eyes. Fin— Now on to next month… |
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