Top Five Reads of 2009

I’m not sure why I do a top of the year list; probably the same reason I do anything on this blog: to hear myself type. But damn if I don’t enjoy it. So here is the fourth annual Gravetapping Top Five Reads of the Year…enjoy…. And, a little refresher on the rules. The book must be new to me, but its publication date is unimportant.

This year’s list was more difficult to create than its predecessors because, simply, I read so many wonderfully entertaining novels. The year was a year of discovery. I discovered a dozen or so new authors, the bulk of them wrote during the paperback revolution in the 1950s and 60s and I also rediscovered a bevy of authors whom I had ignored for years. The most important from the latter group is Brian Garfield and Donald Hamilton, and from the former H. A. DeRosso, Merle Constiner and Robert Colby.

Here it is, in ascending order.

5. Line of Fire by Donald Hamilton. I read this title in March and I was awed by the power of both its linear storyline and tight, literate, prose. A perfect suspense novel.

4. Cage of Night by Ed Gorman. This is another early 2009 read; I read it in April. It is a story that doesn’t fit a category, exactly, but it lives somewhere between dark suspense, supernatural horror and crime. It is one of the finest horror novels I have ever read.

3. Under the Burning Sun by H. A. DeRosso. I read this one in December. This is a collection of stories written, for the most part, in the 1950s and 60s. The stories, particularly the “shadowlands” westerns are unforgettable. DeRosso was thirty or more years ahead of his time.

2. Fear in a Handful of Dust by Brian Garfield (originally published as by John Ives). I read this title in July. This modern western / suspense novel knocked me off my feet. It is literally perfect. A masterpiece of suspense.

1. Violent Saturday by W. L. Heath. I read it in May. There are only a few crime novels I would ever refer to as beautiful—defined as haunting, sharp, and meaningful—and this is one of them. It is a novel that everyone should read. Really, I mean everyone.

This list easily could have gone to ten of fifteen titles, but I sweated, worked, chaffed, and even cried a few times in my attempts to reduce it to the mandatory five. A few more titles that could have made the list but didn't are: Northfield by Johnny D. Boggs, North Star by Richard S. Wheeler, The Midnight Room and Ticket to Ride by Ed Gorman, Necessity by Brian Garfield, Binary by John Lange, and Slammer by Allan Guthrie.

All in all 2009 was a fine year for reading. I bet 2010 will be just as good.

VIOLENT SATURDAY by W.L. Heath

It’s not often the old phrase, “They don’t write’em like they used to” is accurate, at least not as a positive notion, but W.L. Heath’s Violent Saturday is just such a novel. It is the type of novel you don’t see much of anymore, or more likely, the type of novel that has always been rare. It straddles the line between thriller and literature like a lighted tunnel between heaven and hell. It is a violent novel that has all of the assets of a well-crafted thriller, but it adds the deliberate pace, the characters, and the illumination of a well-rendered piece of art.

Violent Saturday is the story of the small southern town of Morgan, Alabama. It opens with the arrival of three strangers—three men who wouldn’t be noticed except there are three of them and they are obviously traveling together. The men arrive into town quietly, but they have sinister plans to execute before they make a hasty and very loud and violent exit. The plan: rob the local bank and retreat back to Memphis with the cash. The set-up is seemingly simple and very much within the parameters of a streamlined and linear hardboiled thriller, but Mr Heath does something unique and almost magical with the story. He takes the emphasis away from the criminals and instead focuses the story on the town and its inhabitants.

He examines, with a rough and steady hand, the lives of the men and women who populate Morgan. He pans across the socio-economic reality of the 1950s American South; from the country club set, to the working class, to the lower classes of both black and white. The images are vibrant and subtle with a subtext that is cached with hard and damned uncomfortable truths—his portrayal of the black is uncompromising and harsh in both their status as the underclass and their seeming invisibility within the culture. He also digs into the dogma of status and class with a quiet and grim portrayal of the fallen—the families that once where something, but are now no more than forgotten town litter. It feels a little like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.

This isn’t to mean that Violent Saturday is without plot, but rather Mr Heath fused a heap of meaning into the premise of a hardboiled thriller. He muscled the story with a crisp and literate style. The dialogue is true and, at times, nearly beautiful in its simple and truthful sounds—

“With who?”
“With whom darling.”
“All right, with whom, then.”
“With myself. I needed some air.”
“Bill Clayton must have needed some too.”
“Really? I wouldn’t know about that.”
“He was with you.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“That’s a lie.”

* * *

“Hey, you in there.”
“Come on in!” Shelley called.
Another silence.
“Throw the key out to us and we’ll leave you alone.”
I bet, Shelley thought.
“You hear us?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“We’re coming in after it, if you don’t throw it out!”
“Come ahead! I got it right here in my hand.”

Violent Saturday is a helluva a novel and it will appeal to both the reader of thrillers as well as a more literary set—it has the story to satisfy the first and the meaning and depth to satisfy the later. The best part is it does what literature should. It shines a light on the human condition while telling a terrifically entertaining and vibrant story.

A NOTE. Violent Saturday was originally published in 1955 and made into a feature film starring Victor Mature, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. It was directed by Richard Fleischer. The original Black Lizard books republished it in 1985 in mass market with a wonderfully insightful Introduction by Ed Gorman.