Shorts: "The Grieving Husband" by Ben Boulden

The Grieving Husband Ben Boulden   *     *     *     *     “WE THINK”—I sighed my long-suffering policeman’s sigh—“she died early this morning, Mr. Shaw.” Mr. Shaw crumpled into the oversized recliner positioned in front of the behemoth flat-screen television mounted on the wall. The chair’s springs moaned at his considerable girth. An ugly whistle of air whooshed from between Shaw’s lips. When his eyes fluttered, I thought he would faint. He didn’t; instead he patted his rounded belly, drew a deep breath, and stared up at me with sorrowful cobalt eyes. I waited for him to ask the obvious questions: the how, the where, the why of his wife’s death. When it became clear he wasn’t going to, I asked him, “How long had you been married, Mr. Shaw?” “She was—” Shaw paused to wipe his dry eyes with the back of a hand. I offered him a tissue. He took it and squashed it into a ball and then dropped it onto the hardwood floor without using it. When he regained control—and I was certain now his performance was fakery—he said, “She was my soulmate, mister, uh—is it, officer?” “Malone,” I said. “Detective Jeff Malone.” The grieving husband smiled, brushed a meaty finger across the end of his nose and tried snuffling but there wasn’t enough mucus to make it work. So I asked him again how long he and Jane Allison had been married. He leaned forward, the chair creaking with his shifting bulk. “Geez, it will be—” A suffering smile settled on his face. “It would have been sixteen years next month.” I thought he was going to giggle, but he yawned instead. “I’m sorry,” I said. Shaw glowed at my sympathy like he’d won the Powerball. I flipped to an empty page in my notebook and studied it for a beat, before saying, “Were there any problems in your marriage, Mr. Shaw?” Shaw’s eyes inflated. He gasped with theatrical glee. “No, sir!” he said with righteous zeal. “She—we were wonderful together, err, uh…detective. All our friends said they were envious of us, they really did. They said it all the time and they meant it. We were wonderful together, everyone said we were the best couple they had ever seen….” Shaw’s Trumpian monologue faded away, as though even he couldn’t believe anyone would believe him. And for the first time I noticed a subtle odor in the house. Something like bad breath and feces. A combination that made me ponder Jane Allison’s missing dog. I asked Shaw, “Do you have a dog?” The fat man shook his head. “No—” I narrowed my eyes with a policeman’s practiced skepticism. “—I mean, I don’t have a dog but my wife.” Shaw rubbed his dry eyes again. “Oh, Jane, how can it be you’re gone?” His acting was as bad as the dialogue; like Liam Hemsworth playing Hamlet. I flipped another page in my notebook and asked, “What’s the name of your wife’s dog?” His eyes burned cold. His mouth shut in a tight line. Finally, he said, “Why?” “She had dog treats and”—I pulled a purple and white unused poop bag from a pocket—“and this in her left hand. Like she had been walking a dog but there was no dog with her, Mr. Shaw.” I paused for a moment and listened to a clock clacking in another room. I looked back at Shaw and said in a soft voice, “I thought maybe the dog came home.” Shaw’s mouth opened and closed. He looked like a bloated fish that had washed ashore. After several uncomfortable seconds he blurted, “Fluffy!” “Fluffy?” I said. “Is Fluffy here, Mr. Shaw?” “Well—” His eyes darted toward a closed door at the entrance of a hallway leading into the back of the house. “He—” Shaw looked back at me, a smile blossoming on his face. “He’s been missing all day.” As an afterthought he said, “Maybe whoever killed Jane took him.” If I’d had a partner, this is where we would have exchanged knowing looks, but since I didn’t, I shrugged and asked, “Did you like Fluffy, Mr. Shaw?” “Well—” He stuttered. “He—Fluffy, I mean, has never really liked me.” A bead of sweat popped out on his forehead. “I—I was always good to Fluffy and that little”—he paused to find just the right word—“hooligan made my life hell. His incessant barking, his biting.” Shaw’s glacial eyes caught fire. “Do you know what that devil did?” I shook my head. “He pissed on my pillow three days in a row! Three days in a row! And that damned Jane. That bitch! She just laughed when I complained about it.” “Is that why you killed your wife, Mr. Shaw?”  Shaw mumbled to himself. He sat back in his recliner and crossed his arms. At precisely that moment the door at the back of the room bumped and rattled. Shaw’s face molted gray. “Your wife laughed at you, Mr. Shaw? Is that why you killed her?” “No!” His exclamation was compromised by an unmistakable squeak in his voice. The door rattled again; this time louder than the last. I took three quick steps and pulled the door open. The odor of shit and a hairless terrier erupted from within the tiny bathroom. The dog’s resemblance to Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies was remarkable. The duct tape wrapped around its snout was all that had kept it from barking. I turned to Shaw. “Fluffy?” Shaw glared at the dog as it growled and pounced on his feet. Fluffy lifted a hind leg and urinated on Shaw’s ankles. Shaw barked, “You little bastard—” and kicked at Fluffy. The dog bounded away with a cacophony of click-clacking on the hardwood floor. Shaw looked at me and said, “You see! You would have too, Mr.—ah, detective, umm…. I’m sorry, but I forgot your name again.” I hunched my shoulders and nodded with sympathy. Shaw said, “That goddam dog.” But the vitriol and menace were gone. “He’s going to piss on my pillow again.” He shook his head and I could see the despair on his pale face. After a moment I said, “Why not just get rid of the dog, Mr. Shaw? Drive him to a shelter and pretend he ran away? Why kill your wife?” “She—Jane would have known what I’d done.” Shaw leaned back into his recliner and rubbed his belly with a mindless hand. In a whisper, he said, “It should have been that dog, but…those dammed cow eyes of his.” Shaw scowled. “I just couldn’t do it.” I arrested Paul Shaw for murdering Jane Allison. As I handcuffed him, he said, “I loved my wife. I really did.” I really believed Paul Shaw thought he loved his wife. I also believed the best punishment for the crime would have been for Mr. Shaw to spend the rest of his natural life with Fluffy. But the court disagreed. Fin

Ben Boulden is the author of two novels, several short stories, and more than 400 articles, book reviews, and columns. His latest book, Casinos, Motels, Gators is available for Kindle, and as a paperback everywhere.

© 2024 by Ben Boulden / All Rights Reserved

From Ed Gorman's Desk: "Every Shallow Cut"

 

from ED GORMAN’S Desk

Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli from Jan. 29, 2011   There’s a long tradition in American literature of writers using their mental and spiritual breakdowns as material for their work. Certainly Poe’s phantasmagoric moments allude to his sometimes tenuous grip on reality; Jack London traveled to Whitechapel to see if The Ripper was worth writing about and ended up in an asylum—drunk and temporarily insane; F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about how his personal crash coincided with the market crash of ’29 in both the infamous The Crack Up and in the wan sad opening lines of “Babylon Revisited;” and Fredrick Exley’s masterpiece A Fan’s Notes is nothing but a poetically and clinically detailed charting of alcoholism and dislocation and madness. Tom Piccirilli’s new novella Every Shallow Cut indirectly owes its title to a line on page 139. The novelist-narrator, wasted and wandering, possessor of both murderous thoughts as well as a hand gun, is told by a writer friend who suggests he might be better off in a mental hospital for a time: “I can feel every shallow cut you’ve ever suffered in it [the writer’s new manuscript], all of them still bleeding, tearing wider and becoming deeper. You can die from a paper cut if it becomes infected.” And that’s what Tom deals with in the novella. Infection. An infected narrator, an infected world. The narrator—an esteemed novelist with a trunk load of literary awards and an empty bank account. “A pore lonesome wife-left feller” as Nelson Algren said of one of his characters. Groping for some kind of understanding of all the things that torment him—being fat for so much of his life (though no longer), his resentful relationship with his older brother and the publishing world’s indifference to anything except commercial success. The world is even more infected than the narrator. There are many references to the market crash—jobs lost, houses and cars repossessed, millions of people, much like the narrator, wandering, seeking, as baffled and hurt as he is. He even sends up the publishing business by spoofing some of the books that are hot tickets. My favorite is the one where the archangel comes back to earth to manage a kids’ baseball team. I love the writing here. It is stripped down to a kind of Charles Willeford-Charles Williams simplicity that is all the more effective for its bluntness and accessibility. The dialogue is dead-on. The man’s relationship with his dog Churchill could have been the one false treacly note but Tom makes it work perfectly. No cutesy-poo. Tom Piccirilli has written many fine books and stories but at this point in his career, for me anyway, I would call Every Shallow Cut his masterpiece.   Click here to check out Every Shallow Cut at Amazon.

This article originally appeared on Ed Gorman’s blog, New Improved Gorman, on Jan. 29, 2011. It is reprinted here by permission. Ed wrote dozens of novels in a variety of genres, but his most popular work (and my favorite of his work) was in the crime and western genres. His ten Sam McCain mysteries—set in the fictional Iowa town of Black River Falls during the 1950s, ’60, and ’70s—are suspenseful, mysterious, and often funny excursions into small town America. The New York Times called Sam McCain, “The kind of hero any small town could take to its heart” and The Seattle Times called McCain “an intriguing mix of knight errant and realist…”      But Ed was also a tireless reader and promoter of other writers’ work. His blogs—there were three, none of them operating at the same time—are treasure troves for readers of crime, horror, and western fiction both old and new. Ed died Oct. 14, 2016.   Click here to check out Ed Gorman’s Sam McCain novels on Amazon.

Retro Interview: Robert J. Randisi

 

An Interview with Robert J. Randisi from August 2008

Robert J. Randisi passed away earlier this week. He was born on August 24, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York. Randisi wrote more than 500 novels across parts of five decades. His first published novel was the mystery, The Disappearance of Penny (1980), which appeared around the same time as his ghost written, Destroyer #40, Dangerous Games, by Warren Murphy. He created the long-running Gunsmith series (and wrote nearly all its reported 466 entries), which is published under his J.R. Roberts pseudonym. Randisi was a versatile writer that wrote in the mystery, thriller, horror, adventure, and western genres. He received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly for his excellent mystery novel Alone with the Dead, and he was called the “next Louis L’Amour” by author Jake Foster. Randisi co-founded, with Ed Gorman, Mystery Scene Magazine. He founded the Private Eye Writer’s of America (PWA) and created PWA’s Shamus awards, as well as the “Eye”—which is the PWA’s Life Achievement Award. This interview was conducted in July 2008 and originally published at Saddlebums.

First, I want to thank you for taking the time to chat with us Bob.

It’s my pleasure. Always willing to talk about writing and about writing westerns.

I’ve been reading your work, both westerns and mysteries, for seven or eight years and I’m impressed with both the quantity and the quality of your work. My question: what is a typical workday like for you?

I’m usually working on two books at one time, so during the day I’ll work on, say, a western. At some point I stop for dinner. After dinner I watch a little TV, and then I take a nap. After the nap it’s on to the mystery novel I’m working on. I have a TV in my office, so I usually watch while I’m working. Last week I watched all three Magnificent movies on tape while I worked on a western. Also some old Warner Bros. westerns like Cheyenne and Maverick. Then, while working on a mystery I’ll watch some Sunset Strip or Hawaiian Eye tapes, maybe some British mysteries or movies, like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, or American films like Harper or Chinatown. I work until about 4 a.m., then read for an hour before going to bed. Up at 11 am, breakfast and start over. Some days errands—like the bank, the P.O.—take me away from the work for a while. Also going out to dinner with friends. But I work every day.

You created The Gunsmith series, which is published under the pseudonym J.R. Roberts. It first appeared in 1982, and there are currently somewhere in the neighborhood of 320 books in the series. Have you written each book in the series? If so, how do you keep yourself interested in the stories and the characters?

Actually, back in 1983 when Berkley bought out Charter books they wanted to bring in a couple of other writers so we could build an inventory and get about a year ahead. So there were a few years there where I did 8 a year instead of twelve. Also, while two other writers were doing some Gunsmiths I was doing some ghost work, or house name work like Nick Carter books, or helping someone else write their series. So it was pretty much a wash there, and when I do a bibliography—like I did last year for the Stark House reprint of my first novel—I don’t mention the ghost work and some of the series work. It all comes out even in the end. I’ve still done over 430 books since 1982. But there are probably about 30 Gunsmiths in that first hundred that I didn’t do. I own them, though, as I own the entire series. Keeping myself interested got to be a problem in the 90’s—not the 1990’s, but when I reached Gunsmith #90. So I started playing some games, like doing some Gunsmiths that borrowed plots from favorite movies, or doing some Wild, Wild West-type stories. I started one Gunsmith with the line, “Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl,” to see if the editor would catch it. They either didn’t, or they did and thought it was funny. So you need to entertain yourself as well as your reader to keep everybody interested.

Since we’re talking about your publishing history, what is the first novel you published? Was it a long time coming, or did you hit print quickly once you decided to write it?

My first novel under my own name was called The Disappearance of Penny. It was a mystery that was published in 1980. (I did a ghost job on a book that came out in ’79). I sold my first short story in 1972, sold my first novel in ’79 on basis of an outline. I’ve sold all my novels that way, have never sold a completed manuscript. I met my first editor at an MWA [Mystery Writers of America] cocktail party where I used to tend bar so that everybody in the room had to come to me, and I’d meet everybody. We got along and I pitched him on the book. He liked it and bought it, and he’s the guy who asked me if I could write westerns, which led to The Gunsmith. So I’d say when I decided I wanted to do novels instead of short stories it took me about two years to get a book of my own in print. And I’ve never looked back. I’ve had a book published every month since January of 1982 (including those ghost and house jobs).

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

That happened when I was 15. That was when I not only decided I was going to be a writer, but that I was going to be a full-time writer by the time I was 30. When I turned thirty I had about 12 Gunsmiths under contract, so I quit working to write full time. That was a fifteen-year plan. My second fifteen-year plan was to be a millionaire by the time I was 45. Didn’t work out as well as the first plan.

You have had a long career—you have written in several different genres and published extensively in both novel form and short stories. Is there a specific genre or format you enjoy working in best? If you could choose, would you concentrate on shorter works or novels?

I prefer to write novels, and my first love has always been the mystery. Specifically the hardboiled private eye novel.

It is my understanding that you have written several novels under house names—other than your long running series The Gunsmith. When you write under a house name do you approach it differently than your other work? Do you enjoy writing them, and if you can would you briefly explain how series writing works? Do you have any responsibility for promotion, or does the publisher prefer you stay quiet about your authorship?

First, the Gunsmith name “J.R. Roberts” is not a house name. It’s a pseudonym. That means it’s still mine, I get royalties. When I wrote 6 Nick Carter books in the ’80s I got a flat rate, no royalty. Usually when you write under house names—like the guys who write Longarm and Jake Logan—the publisher keeps quiet about it, so you have no input into promotion. They want the reader to think that “Tabor Evans” is really a guy who writes Longarm. If you look at the copyright page of a Gunsmith, it has my real name on it. So writing under a house name is different than writing your own series. You do the best you can when writing a house name series, but you have more invested in your own. I’ve done some Trailsman books, and I finished out the Canyon O’Grady series (the last seven) and a series called Shelter (3 books when the author, Paul Ledd [Paul Lederer], wanted to quit).

Is there a book, or a few books, that you have written and are particularly proud of?

The Ham Reporter was published in 1985 by Doubleday Books, and reprinted last year by Stark House (as a double with my first book). It features Bat Masterson when he was a sports writer in New York City in 1911, and he solves a mystery with a young Damon Runyon. The first Keough, Alone with the Dead, got a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. It’s one of my favorites. Also Curtains of Blood, my Jack the Ripper meets Bram Stoker book. (Actually, I wrote that as a “Bram Stoker” novel, but the publisher put it out as a “Jack the Ripper” novel). And a little western called The Ghost with Blue Eyes.

Most writers are voracious readers, and I’m wondering what you read for pleasure?

I read what I write, mysteries, westerns, some science fiction, and non-fiction for research.

Now I want to turn to the western genre specifically. What first led you to the genre?

My first editor—after we did Penny—called me one day and said that his publisher wanted to get into the adult western market. This was 1981. He asked me if I could write westerns. I said yes. I’d never read one up to that point, but I got where I am by never saying “no” to an editor. I went out and bought 40 westerns, one of each in as many series as I could, so I would not repeat a character. I did a proposal for the Gunsmith. First they bought two books, then a third, and then they said they wanted to get it on a monthly basis and gave me a 9 book contract. Nobody ever asked me if I could write a book a month, and I never asked myself. Once I got the Gunsmith I just kept creating series (Tracker, Angel Eyes, Mountain Jack Pike, The Bounty Hunter, Ryder, all published during the 80’s) and writing them, until it got to the point where, in 1984, I wrote 27 novels in 12 months.

What are a few of the western writers who have influenced your work?

When I finally did start reading westerns I read a lot of series, like the Buchanan books by “Jonas Ward.” I really enjoyed the Fargo books by John Benteen (a pseudonym for Ben Haas). I read the Sackett books by L’Amour, and some of the Silvertip books of Max Brand, but my preference ran to reading stuff like Jory Sherman’s Gunn series, or George Gilman’s Edge and Steele books.

If you could bring back the work of one western writer who would it be? Is there a specific title?

I learned a lot about writing adult western by reading the Gunn series. Jory Sherman is a helluva writer, and I saw that I could write good westerns around the sex scenes. I’d like to see those books reprinted.

You also write mysteries, and it seems there has been—both historically as well as today—a significant amount of writers who do good work in both genres. Do you think there is a relationship between the mystery and the western that promotes this crossover, or is it simply the economics of professional writing?

Well, the economics of doing this for a living makes it necessary to write in multiple genres, but there seems to be a symbiotic relationship between mysteries and westerns that appeals to a lot of writers. A lot of my westerns ARE mysteries at the same time. Same can be said for the work of Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini, James Reasoner and others. There are similarities between the lone gunman (badge or no badge) and the P.I.

The mystery genre is thriving, but many believe the western is in decline. What do you think about the western genre today, and what do you think the future holds for the western story?

I’m afraid that the further we get from the old west the less people are interested in it. That doesn’t happen with mysteries, and is certainly not a problem with science fiction. The young writers of today did not grow up watching western movies or TV, so the interest is not there. There IS work out there for western writers—up to last year I was still writing them for five publishers. Every time one publisher decides to cancel a line, somebody else starts one up. Leisure has proven that there is a market, but I wouldn’t look for anyone other than McMurtry and the late L’Amour to hit any best seller lists. Harper Torch just ceased publishing westerns, and I had done two series for them, The Sons of Daniel Shaye and The Gamblers (these books are just starting to appear). The books made money, but they canceled the line, anyway. Sometimes, they just don’t make “enough” money for the publisher. I’m still writing westerns for Leisure and Berkley.

Okay, now let’s get down to your current work. What is your latest novel?

Lately I’ve been writing mysteries about the Rat Pack in Vegas in 1960. The first was out last year called Everybody Kills Somebody Some Time. It centered around the filming of the original Ocean’s 11. My character is Eddie G., a pit boss at the Sands who the “guys” go to for help. The second book, Luck Be a Lady, Don’t Die, will be out in December of this year. I’m also writing books that combine the mystery with the current Texas Hold’em craze. My co-author is Vince Van Patten, the commentator for the World Poker Tour. The first book, The Picasso Flop, was out earlier this year. It will be out in paper in 2009, as will the next book, The Judgment Fold. I’ve got a new western out from Leisure called The Money Gun; [and] the first in a new series called The Gamblers: Butler’s Wager. Actually now it’s a trilogy. (Leisure has reprinted 3 of the books I wrote in the 80’s as “Robert Lake” and the 4th is coming out, all under my real name. I’m trying to get them to reprint some of my old series, under my real name.) I’m working on the first in a soap opera mystery called The Yearning Tide. My co-author is Eileen Davidson, one of the top actresses in the soap world for 20 years. Right now she’s on The Bold and the Beautiful. We’re doing two books right now, maybe more. It won’t be out till next year. I’ve got a mystery anthology coming out this month called Hollywood and Crime, stories set during the history of Hollywood. And I’m still out there pitching.

Can you tell us about the novel—or any other projects—you are working on now?

Right at the moment I’m working on the 13th Giant Gunsmith novel, and the first of the soap opera mysteries, and I’m about to start the third Rat Pack book.

I have one last question, and I must warn it is a little vague. If you could chose any project to work on, what would it be?

I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. If I mentioned it some wise guy would steal it. I’m enjoying the historical aspect of the Rat Pack books. It was what I enjoyed about writing The Ham Reporter. So I have some other historical mysteries I’d like to do, and some western novels that deal with actual historical figures.

Check out Robert J. Randisi’s books here at Amazon

Dark Western Duality: The Magpie Coffin & Blood Meridian

Dark Western Duality: The Magpie Coffin & Blood Meridian by Mike Baker   I read The Magpie Coffin and Blood Meridian simultaneously, though that’s not entirely accurate—I started Blood Meridian a week ago, alongside a few other books. Much like crossing the great of Texas, there’s no quick way through Blood Meridian. The Magpie Coffin, by Wile E. Young, is the first entry in Death’s Head Press’s splatter western series and, from my casual review of general opinion, is considered the best of the lot. The story follows Salem Covington, who has made a deal—likely with the Devil—for a gun that renders him unkillable by any weapon except its twin, which is lost somewhere in the world. This gun demands that Salem fill a ledger with kills, making him a sort of reaper. If he meets the gun’s quota before the twin can find him, he can enter heaven blameless. The book opens with Salem’s Comanche teacher, Dead Bear, having been murdered along with a white buffalo, Dead Bear’s familiar, by five cavalrymen. Salem decides they must be killed next for vengeance and to satisfy the gun’s demands. He brings along a young soldier named Jake, who is half hostage, half acolyte, and a whore named Ruby, or something like Ruby. Jake knows one of the soon-to-be-dead men personally and can identify him. He brings Ruby because he saved her, and Salem finds that impulse—saving a life—somewhat novel and amusing. The narrative unfolds into a series of brutal, righteous killings, and a simple narrative mechanism allows you to anticipate Salem’s fatal flaw and where the story is headed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; while originality makes for a great book, executing a well-worn concept with flair can still result in an entertaining read. Young may not be groundbreaking, but he is certainly engaging. Meanwhile, I’m reading Blood Meridian, the heavyweight champion of dark-hearted human brutality. By comparison, The Magpie Coffin’s “darkness and horror” feel like lightweight comic book fare. I began to look forward to Magpie’s “brutality” as a way to cleanse my palate of the absolute bleakness and wretchedness of Blood Meridian. I believe the love for Magpie stems from its well-crafted writing. Young understands the elements that make an entertaining western, and it is indeed gory af. However, if you’ve read any Piccadilly Cowboy material, excluding the supernatural elements in Magpie, you may find Magpie doesn’t cover new ground, unlike The Red Station or Cruel Angel Past Sundown, which, while structurally flawed, push the genre beyond mere horror and gore. I’m not saying this to discourage you from reading Magpie—on the contrary, I believe you absolutely should. It’s a fun book. However, the splatter western series offers a treasure trove of western goodness that merits exploration beyond just Magpie.

Now, there are thousands of reviews far better than I could write about Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, so if you want to know more about the book itself, I recommend seeking those out. I’ll summarize it briefly: it’s about a runaway in the West called the Kid who joins the Glanton Gang as they venture into Mexico to collect Apache scalps for a bounty. They descend into a killing spree of epic proportions, slaughtering the innocent alongside the guilty, destroying everything they touch. The writing is poetic. You can miss a phrase and find yourself lost for pages, requiring you to double back, much like getting lost in the woods. It’s so dense that I often “discover” scenes I swear I’ve never read, even though I’ve read every word six times. Though it isn’t long, I’ve never been able to hold the entire story in my mind all at once. Like I’ve said, I’ve read it six times, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite. It’s the quintessential example of western noir. McCarthy’s view of humanity as apex predator, as monster, is utterly devoid of hope. It was entertaining the first time I read it in the ’90s—like the Bible told from the Devil’s perspective—but now it just feels like trauma. I read it last week while waiting out Hurricane Helene, and I don’t know anymore. It feels like an assault. It reminds me of Henry Miller’s words in the opening of Tropic of Cancer: “This is a libel, slander, defamation of character, a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, man, destiny, time, love, beauty…” I’m not even sure I can call it McCarthy’s best book, as it feels his least human and completely devoid of optimism or anything like optimism. However, it may very well be the best artistic rendering of the West, though it is, in fact, not a western at all, despite my earlier classification. There’s more to it than that; the book confounds definition. But for me—this time—the takeaway is this: to hell with Cormac McCarthy and his grief at being born human, or a massive restatement of the idea that hope thrives despite history’s glaring evidence to the contrary.

Check out The Magpie Coffin here at Amazon Check out The Blood Meridian here at Amazon

 

Booked (and Printed): September 2024

 

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.

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…