Booked (and Printed): August 2024

 

Booked (and Printed) August 2024 While August’s temps were too hot, the days were noticeably shorter than those at summer’s height and a few even showed the promise of autumn. Heck, here and there leaves are shimmering red and gold. My reading volume was normal for August, but my eyes were sore all month and so much of my reading happened on Kindle to allow me to adjust the font size to “super old guy with angry peepers.” I read five books—two story collections, two novels, and a single nonfiction true crime—along with two individual short stories. You’ll notice, however, I’m only going to talk about one of those shorts because I don’t remember a thing about the other, besides the author’s name, and the magazine where I read it: a late-1980s Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM). Well, that issue went missing in what I think of as “The Case of the Missing EQMM” and it’s a true mystery because I’ve been looking for it for three weeks. Now, I’m wondering if a rascally poltergeist is playing tricks. But alas…onto that solitary story I wrote in my ledger and remember well. “THE SPY CAME D.O.A.,” by W. L. Fieldhouse, is a solid whodunit featuring Army CID investigator, Major Clifford Lansing, printed in the Feb. 1979 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. When Lansing is called into investigate the murder of a colleague working undercover on a narcotics investigation in Nuremburg, Germany, he discovers a long line of criminality and treachery. Fieldhouse does an excellent job of shuffling suspects across the page and mixing action scenes into the narrative to keep things interesting. I guessed the culprit earlier than I should have, but that didn’t bother me a whit.

As for the books. Four of them are new—published in 2024—and the fifth is an old favorite. TIEBRAKER, by Jack M. Bickham (1989), is my version of comfort reading. It’s Bickham’s first mystery featuring aging professional tennis player and part-time spy, Brad Smith. In this one, Smith is sent to Yugoslavia to cover a new tournament, the Belgrade Open, for a tennis magazine. But his real assignment is to help the young tennis phenom, Danisa Lechova, defect to the United States. Tiebraker is a wild ride with a marvelous Cold War-era Eastern Bloc setting, a bunch of action, romance, and a brilliant dosing of tennis. I’ve read it five times (maybe more) and I’m sure I’ll read it again. You can read an old review I wrote for Tiebreaker here. Steve Hamilton’s AN HONORABLE ASSASSIN (2024), is a thriller that reads so fast it is easy to ignore the implausibility of the plot. It is Hamilton’s first solo job since 2018 and his first Nick Mason novel—there are three so far—since 2017. It should appeal to anyone who likes an adrenalin-rich and low-calorie thriller. Check out my full review of An Honorable Assassin here. LONG HAUL: HUNTING THE HIGHWAY SERIAL KILLERS, by Frank Figliuzzi (2024), is a scary but fascinating look at serial killers working America’s highways. It is centered around the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings initiative, which identifies and tracks these murders. After reading it, I’ll never look at truck stops with same innocence as I once did. My full review of Long Haul is here. Lee Child’s SAFE ENOUGH AND OTHER STORIES (2024), is a collection of 20 standalone tales without Jack Reacher anywhere in sight. The stories are thoughtful, exciting, mysterious, and…good! Check out my review of Safe Enough here. The final collection (and book) of the month, HERETIC 2: MORE STORIES, by Philip José Farmer (2024), is a cool collection of three of Farmer’s early stories—one novella and two shorts—from the 1950s. They, like pretty much everything Farmer wrote, question authority and religion in an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. I’ll have more to say about this one in the next few weeks. Last, and I suppose least, is Robert Littell’s A NASTY PIECE OF WORK (2013), because I gave up the fight a little more than halfway to the finish. I’ve enjoyed Littell’s spy fiction, including his extraordinary novel about the CIA, The Company (2002), but what appealed to me most about A Nasty Piece of Work—its P.I. status and New Mexico setting—wasn’t enough to overcome the longwinded narrative, including pages-long descriptions of women’s ankles and feet. I couldn’t pin down when the novel took place, either. It felt like it was written in the late-1980s—no cell phones, descriptions of an Afghanistan that seemed more Soviet Union-era than post-9/11—and then half-heartedly updated to give it a 21st Century feel. It didn’t work. On any level. Fin— Now on to next month…

Review: "An Honorable Assassin" by Steve Hamilton

 

An Honorable Assassin by Steve Hamilton Blackstone, 2024   Steve Hamilton is best known for his series featuring former Detroit cop turned reluctant Upper Peninsula private eye, Alex McKnight. McKnight appeared in eleven novels between 1999 and 2018. The first, A Cold Day in Paradise—which I heartily recommend—netted Hamilton an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The McKnight books are meaty, well-plotted, character-driven extravaganzas, but they never attracted many readers outside the P.I. genre. Which is a shame because they are as good as anything the mystery genre has to offer. In 2016, Hamilton changed course and released a crime thriller, The Second Life of Nick Mason, to great fanfare. It made multiple best-of-year lists, including from NPR and Kirkus Reviews and, perhaps most telling, it landed on the New York Times bestseller list. The Second Life of Nick Mason combined a rich Chicago setting with solid characterization and an intricate (and surprising) plot. It, frankly, surpassed most thrillers of its kind on every level. Hamilton followed it up with the second Nick Mason book, Exit Strategy, in 2017, then in 2018 released an oddball Alex McKnight book—odd because, unlike the other McKnight books, it alternates between first and third person and is told from multiple character perspectives—titled Dead Man Running. Since then, other than a co-authored novel with Janet Evanovich, Steve Hamilton has been silent. At least until now, because his third Nick Mason title, An Honorable Assassin, is scheduled for release tomorrow (Aug. 27). The Second Life of Nick Mason opened with Mason being released from a 25-years-to-life sentence, for a truck heist gone wrong, after serving only five years. Part of the deal is Mason must work as an assassin for a Chicago gangster named Darius Cole; the guy who arranged for Mason’s release. Those first two books are about Mason’s struggle to break free from Cole and now in An Honorable Assassin, after he has finally escaped Cole, he finds himself bound to a mysterious and sinister international cartel. An Honorable Assassin begins only hours after Exit Strategy ends. Mason is sent to the world’s second largest city, Jakarta, Indonesia, without any instructions except that he’ll be met at the airport. When he arrives in Jakarta, even before he has left the airport, Mason’s first assignment is dished out—assassinate a wealthy terrorist sponsor named Hasham Baya as he arrives on a skyscraper’s helipad. Everything goes wrong: Baya escapes, the building is overrun by Indonesia’s paramilitary unit, Detachement-88, and Mason is arrested. The mission planning seems non-existent to Mason and, even worse, before he can get out of police custody a French Interpol agent, Martin Sauvage, takes an interest in him. Unlike Hamilton’s first two Nick Mason novels, which are a marvelous marriage of the crime and the thriller genres, An Honorable Assassin is a straight-line rocket propelled thriller. It is closer to Lee Child and David Baldacci than what we are used to seeing from Hamilton, but the electric style and frenetic pacing keep the pages turning and the reader from wandering into the improbabilities of the plot. A step below the first two books in the series, An Honorable Assassin is still a bunch of fun and very much worth reading.

Click here to purchase the Kindle edition or here for the paperback at Amazon.

Booked (and Printed): June 2024

Booked (and Printed) June 2024 My reading numbers were better in June than in May; although my eyes whined all month like a 13-year-old after being asked to set the dinner table. I read six books—two story anthologies and four novels—and two individual short stories. My reading was squarely within the mystery genre and what I read ranged from good to WOW—which is (WOW, I mean) the highest rating on my atomic book meter. First up—and this one hit the WOW scale with an unheard of WOW+1—was Stark House’s impressive but simply titled 25th Anniversary anthology, THE STARK HOUSE ANTHOLOGY, edited by Rick Ollerman & Gregory Shepard (2024). Its 30 stories, all written by authors previously published by Stark House, popped and sizzled. A previously unpublished short novel, So Curse the Day, by Jada M. Davis, is worth the price of admission all by itself. The anthology is big, entertaining, and fun as f— Well, you know… I reviewed it here. The other anthology, THREE STRIKES—YOU’RE DEAD!, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley (2024), is a sports-themed extravaganza of good clean mystery reading. I liked it a lot and you can read my full review here. As for the two shorts—“BERTIE’S MOM,” by Jeremiah Healy, and “PHONE CALL,” by Berton Roueche—both were good. I especially enjoyed the Healy tale, which featured his Boston private eye, John Frances Cuddy. It was clever with a shimmering sense of humor. I read both stories in the September 1989 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine—which has a cringe-inducing photograph of Hulk Hogan on the cover (not shown because…well, just because.)

Okay, now for the novels I booked in June. I liked ’em all! My favorite, and it was a photo finish because Steve Hamilton’s The Second Life of Nick Mason (2016) gave it a run, was David Housewright’s seventh Rushmore McKenzie mystery, HIGHWAY 61 (2011). When McKenzie’s girlfriend’s daughter, Erica, asks him to help her father out of a jam he reluctantly agrees. Reluctantly because McKenzie doesn’t like Erica’s dad and as it turns out his instincts are spot-on because he finds himself embroiled in a blackmailing scheme with its roots in prostitution and murder. The slam-bang climax is stunning and leaves the reader wondering which side of the line—good guy or bad—McKenzie is standing. I should write a detailed review of Highway 61, but it’s unlikely since I’ve written too many reviews of the McKenzie novels in recent months and I would hate for my readers (all three of you) to get bored. So... What is more likely is that a review of THE SECOND LIFE OF NICK MASON will appear in the next few weeks because it is a smoking good read. A crime thriller more than a mystery, it chronicles Nick Mason’s unexpected release from a 25-year federal beef for murder. But Nick’s newfound freedom comes with strings, the type that anyone with a conscience would balk at, and more than a few hard choices. The Chicago setting is marvelous and Hamilton’s rich writing gives Nick’s inner-world a vibrant poignancy. The only new book I read was David Bell’s craftsman-like psychological thriller, STORM WARNING (2024). Set during a hurricane in an almost abandoned and falling-apart high-rise apartment building on a barrier island not far from Miami, there is more to fear than the weather because a killer is lose. The handful of remaining residents hole up together, but one-by-one they disappear. Bell does an excellent job of concealing the killer, as well as their motive, and building an uneasy tension. Storm Warning isn’t as good as some Bell’s previous outings—Cemetery Girl (2013) and Layover (2019) come to mind—but it is still an excellent summer read. As for that fourth novel, NIGHTMARE AT DAWN, by Judson Philips (1971), which is the seventh Peter Sayles outing, was surprising for a couple reasons. First, its cover made it look like a straight action book, but it turned out to be a well-plotted suspense novel with a light mystery. Second, Judson Philips is the real-life name of Hugh Pentecost, the guy who wrote dozens of smart traditional mysteries in second half of the 20th Century. But maybe the biggest surprise? I liked it enough to officially begin hunting for more Judson Philips stories generally and Peter Sayles books in particular.     Fin— Now on to next month…