BACKSHOT: 2012 by Tom Piccirilli

Backshot: 2012 is the second of two related novellas. 2012 was written by Tom Piccirilli and Backshot:1902 was written by Ed Gorman. The connection between the two is Marshal Delmar Royce who is a minor, but key, player in the latter parts of 1902 and the great³-grandfather of 2012’s antihero, Royce.

Royce is a professional thief lying in a hospital bed with a broken back and useless legs. His lifelong friend and partner, Quill, punched a bullet in his back after their last job and now Royce is looking at a painful future and a five-year prison stretch. The doctor tells him he won’t walk for a year, but Royce is on his feet in six months; it’s another three years before his release from prison and his planned revenge against Quill.

2012 is a touch Richard Stark, but wholly Tom Piccirilli. The plotline is Stark—Royce is betrayed by his partner and spends the rest of the story getting even—but it is stylistically and thematically Piccirilli. Mr. Piccirilli’s literate, smooth, stark style is, perhaps, the finest in modern crime fiction—

“DeKooning sighed. It was the sigh that said you couldn’t believe people were so clichéd, so obvious, so average. You heard the story a thousand times before and here it was again, and you just couldn’t believe you were going to have to sit through it one more time. DeKooning frowned. It said more about him than anything before.”  

It is thematically complex with a heaviness of the past’s influence on the present. Royce is haunted by the image of a man he will never meet, Delmar Royce, and Quill is tormented by the shadow of his abusive father. The story never strays into predictability, and Royce is, if not exactly likable, understandable and even familiar.

Tom Piccirilli died in July 2015 from brain cancer. He was a talented writer who started his career in horror and then migrated to crime. He won multiple Bram Stoker awards for his horror fiction, including best novel for The Night Class, and he won the Thriller Award for best paperback original for his crime novels The Midnight Road and The Coldest Mile. Backshot: 2012 was published posthumously, and as I read it, I wondered if it is the last of Mr. Piccirilli’s original work.   

Purchase a copy of Backshot:2012 at Cemetery Dance’s website.

DOUBLE FAULT by Jack M. Bickham

Double Fault is the fifth novel featuring Brad Smith. It was published in 1993 by Tor. It is Brad’s most personal adventure, focusing on his, and America’s, experience with Vietnam. It is less espionage and more suspense than the other titles and it is the best of the Brad Smith novels.

Arnie Tubb is a head case. He has been in and out of military mental hospitals since leaving Vietnam. After his transfer to the cancer ward of Walter Reed hospital, Arnie takes advantage of its lax security and escapes. During the war Arnie was involved in the massacre of a Vietnamese village, very much like My Lai, which the Army wants to keep secret and Arnie wants to avenge. His vengeance is focused on a group of soldiers who refused to participate in the slaughter and his final target is a helicopter pilot named Kevin Green. Kevin was Brad’s mentor on his college tennis team and he is officially listed as missing in action. His name appeared on a manifest of returning prisoners at the conclusion of the war, but he never came home.

Brad unknowingly gets involved when a member of Tubb’s group, disguised as an Army official, contacts him looking for Kevin and his copilot, Dave Wentworth. Brad insists, sincerely, Kevin Green is dead and he is unaware of Wentworth’s location. After the imposter leaves, Brad telephones Wentworth at his Kansas home and gets an odd reaction. Dave is frightened and abruptly ends the call. A few days and several dozen unanswered telephone calls later, Brad travels to Kansas where he finds Dave dead, his throat slashed, in his apartment. Brad, feeling responsible for Dave’s death, decides to start an amateur investigation and finds himself Arnie’s primary target and a useful tool of the U.S. Army.

Double Fault is a nicely developed suspense novel. The pacing creates something of a funnel. The early scenes rolling along the top, progressing deeper and deeper, narrower and faster until its climactic finale. Mr. Bickham expertly stalls the details of the Vietnam massacre, particularly Kevin Green’s role, until the final scenes, which keeps both Brad and the reader off balance. The unknown factors, Arnie’s motive, Kevin Green’s role, generate believable tension and allow Brad to be played by all sides—Tubb’s group and the government (Army, F.B.I. and to a lesser extent C.I.A.) But what separates this novel from the others is its rendering of Vietnam’s long term impact on the soldiers who fought, in a larger than life manner, and the consequence, or responsibility, of friendship. Brad’s friendship with Kevin Green and his C.I.A. pal Collie Davis at its center.

GOIN' by Jack M. Bickham

1971 was a big year for Jack M. Bickham.  He turned 41, published six novels, including his novel The Apple Dumpling Gang, and his much lesser known novel Goin’.  Goin’ is different than much of Mr Bickham’s work.  It is a mainstream novel.  Or at least something approaching a mainstream novel.  Perhaps a hybrid between a straight hippie novel and a modern western is more apt.   

The year is 1969.  Stan Pierce is 40, newly divorced—

“CONGRATULATIONS, STAN.  YOU’RE FREE.  BARBARA”   

—and going through a mid-life crisis.  His hair has grown to his collar, he purchased a little Honda 450 street bike, and as the novel opens Stan is headed for the road.  He has no clear destination, but he knows what is behind him; an ex-wife, a young daughter, and a seething personal unhappiness. 

Once on the road Stan joins two bikers who are short on cash, and he tags along to a farm outside the rural city of Kirkerville (likely Arizona, but it is never identified as such), and hires on as a fruit picker.  In Kirkerville he meets a young married woman named Elizabeth Faering.  She is everything he wants.  Young.  Beautiful.  Independent.  Free.  The two lovers concoct a future together, but the dream is interrupted by a fruit pickers’ strike.  A strike Stan agrees with, but a strike that is commandeered by a man who is less interested in getting the workers’ better pay and working conditions, and more interested in starting a revolution.

Goin’ is a pretty great novel.  It fits its time and place; think back to an age when motorcycle riders were considered hooligans, smoking reefer was an unconscionable sin, free love was the opposite of “up-tight”, and Eugene McCarthy was a saint of liberalism. 

The tension is generated both by plot—the strike and the population’s reaction to it—and Stan’s inner turmoil.  He is an everyman outsider.  He attempts to fit, but he is ostracized by Kirkerville’s residents as an outside agitator, it is not uncommon for him to be called a “pinko,” and the strikers, particularly his two friends, view him as a traitor.  His affair with Liz ends badly, although not unexpectedly, and it is written with a powerful simplicity, which makes Stan’s emotional pain visceral.

Goin’ was published as a paperback original by Paperback Library in July 1971, and to my knowledge it has never seen print again.  

This review originally went live April 4, 2014, and I've been thinking about it again the last few weeks. It is a very good novel that should have an audience.

Thrift Shop Book Covers: "Disposable People"

Disposable People was a paperback original published by Tower Books in 1980, which is the very edition that caught my eye. The cover successfully, if a bit psychotically, incorporates several elements in to a whole. The background is a spooky dark green and black, and how can you walk away from the doctor’s half face, half skull? The artist: Bob Larkin.

The opening paragraph:

“The somber-faced man in green stood at the lectern on the small stage, throat mike looped under his chin, watching the audience file in. There were about thirty men and half a dozen women, all wearing ordinary street clothes except for a sprinkling of military uniforms, and all with tense and solemn expressions. After they were seated the only sound in the auditorium was a whisper of chilled, filtered air being pumped six stories underground.”

Mystery Scene Reviews: Issue No. 143

The latest issue of Mystery Scene Magazine—No. 143—at a newsstand near you. The issue is packed (as usual). It features an in-depth article about Margaret Millar, an interview with T. J. MacGregor, and a nice article about Netflix’s Jessica Jones.

Issue No. 143 also includes three book reviews I wrote. The titles: Where it Hurts by Reed Farrel Coleman, Out of the Blues by Trudy Nan Boyce, and The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley. Where it Hurts is a powerful hardboiled neo-noir, Out of the Blues is a promising first novel police procedural, and The Good Goodbye is an entertaining psychological suspense novel. The reviews are available online at Mystery Scene’s website—click the book titles above.

Mystery Scene is available at many newsstands, including Barnes & Noble, and available for order at MS’s website.

No Comment: "Winesburg, Ohio - 'Sophistication'"

“In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into the long night of late fall. Farm houses jogged away along lonely country roads pulling their portion of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods in off the sidewalks and lock the doors of stores. In the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and further down Main Street the fiddlers, their instruments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the feet of youth flying over a dance floor.”

—Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio: “Sophistication”. Library of America, 2012. Page 176.

Purchase a copy of Winesburg, Ohio at Amazon.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context.]

CROSSFIRE: THE SCALES OF JUSTICE by John Hegenberger

1988. Eliot Cross is tired of the private detective game and thinking about his exit. His one-man shop, Cross Examinations, in Columbus, Ohio, is less than busy. His elderly mother and estranged father both died the prior month, and the bottle has become more comfort than it should be. His head hurts, too, since taking a knock the previous night after discovering a dead body at roadside. The body disappeared and the police are less than interested in Eliot’s story.

An old flame, Diane Davis, convinces Eliot to take one last job before shuttering the business. It is an industrial espionage case involving the theft of a high tech industrial scale developed by Ms. Davis’ employer Justice Scale Corporation. Eliot takes the job for no reason other than wanting to end his P. I. run with a win. The case, unsurprisingly, is more than it seems and by the end includes a few dead bodies and even circles back to Eliot’s disappearing roadside corpse.

Crossfire: The Scales of Justice is a nicely entertaining private eye novel. Its plot is complicated, interesting, and satisfyingly over-the-top—it includes a blackmail scheme threatening the 1988 Summer Olympics. It is written in a smoothly terse, almost ironic, first person. Eliot is self-deprecating, tough, and attracts women like a film star. The setting is nicely late-1980s, including vintage descriptions of Columbus, cars, and music. It is easy to read, more fun than any Tuesday night on television, and thoroughly enjoyable.    

   

Purchase a copy of Crossfire: The Scales of Justice at Amazon.

BACKSHOT: 1902 by Ed Gorman

Backshot: 1902 is the first of two related short novels. 1902 is written by Ed Gorman and Backshot: 2012 is written by Tom Piccirilli. The connection is familial. Marshal Royce, who appears in the later parts of 1902, is the grandfather of the protagonist in 2012. I haven’t read 2012 yet—my copy is still wending its way across the United States, last check put it in North Carolina—but 1902 is damn good.

Declan Parnell is a young, relatively harmless, man working in the finest restaurant in Granite Bend. He has two weaknesses, the tables in the local casinos, and Jancey. Jancey is the beautiful, manipulative, self-serving girlfriend of Declan’s boss. She gives Declan a taste whenever she wants her beau in a jealous huff. Declan’s other vice destroyed his relationship with his only real friend, a middle-aged woman named Burl, which makes him vulnerable to a supporting role in the robbery of a local judge. The robbery goes bad, and Declan’s prospects get bleaker when Marshal Royce, who is in town investigating the local Sheriff for corruption, starts sniffing around.

Backshot: 1902 is a marvelously executed western noir. Declan is likable, maddening in his foolishness, and hopelessly inadequate to Jancey’s powers—

“She was right. I didn’t know much about women and the little I did know scared the hell out of me.”

It is very much like an old Gold Medal crime novel—a man trapped in a situation far out of his control, his downfall brought by a beautiful woman, and his redemption in the arms of another. It is developed with Ed Gorman’s masterful colors of humanity. The most egregious, nasty villains are painted with the light brush of understanding, creating a moral ambiguity that is more horrifying than straight evil. It is an understated masterpiece, an apt description of many of Ed Gorman’s works, and well worth the price of admission.  

       

Purchase a copy of Backshot:1902 at Cemetery Dance.

EAST OF DESOLATION by Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson)

East of Desolation is the twenty-second novel published by Harry Patterson, and the first to appear under his most famous byline, Jack Higgins. It is also a pivotal title in his transition from midlist to bestselling writer. It was originally released in the U. K. as a hardcover by Hodder & Stoughton in 1968, and it was issued in the United States by Doubleday & Company; it was Mr. Patterson’s first U. S. appearance in hardcover.

Joe Martin is a British pilot flying an Otter Amphibian from the small town of Frederiksborg on the southwest coast of Greenland. The flying season is short and the climate cold, but the money is double what he can earn elsewhere and its lack of civilization suits him. He has summer contracts with several mining outfits, and a special deal flying provisions to an Ernest Hemingway-style actor hunting polar bears and everything else drawing breath. The actor is a washed up legend named Jack Desforge who authors, and perhaps believes, his own mythology.

Things get interesting when an insurance adjuster, Hans Vogel, arrives with the widow of a pilot whose crashed airplane was discovered on the ice-cap a year earlier. Vogel wants Joe to fly him to the wreckage to identify the pilot. The story, both Vogel’s and the widow’s, Sarah Kelso, doesn’t add up and Joe has an uneasy feeling about the whole thing.

East of Desolation marks Harry Patterson’s entrance to the top-tier of adventure writers—Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, Hammond Innes. It is markedly better than its predecessors; its characters are richer with less caricature, the plot is larger with more doubt about its conclusion, and its setting is sturdy with a forbidding sense of isolation. It is first person narrative with a hint of the unreliable. Joe Martin knows more than he is sharing with either the reader or the other players. A characteristic shared by most of the cast—Desforge, Kelso, Vogel—which generates significant tension and unease.

Joe Martin is the most developed protagonist of Mr. Patterson’s early work. He is, like many of Mr. Patterson’s protagonists, a man who has fallen below his station, but he is also more; an alcoholic, divorced, and hiding. His relationship with women is more complex than the usual and there is a nicely executed romance between he and an actress friend of Jack Desforge. An early line nicely defines his feelings—

“I think it was General Grant who said: War is hell. He should have added that women are worse.”

The is plot complicated, there are more variables than Mr. Patterson’s earlier work, and a larger cast with believably suspicious motives. It is enhanced by the strong and forbidding setting of Greenland. The flying scenes, to a rank non-pilot, have the feel of reality and give the story a sense of high adventure. And everything works perfectly.

Thrift Shop Book Covers: "Judas Country"

Judas Country was published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton as a hardcover in 1975. The edition that caught my eye was the Pan paperback edition published in 1977. The cover successfully portrays violence in an otherwise serene locale—the softly golden colors hint at sunset in a nicely rural, very Mediterranean, background shattered by a shot-up Beetle and a crouching man with a revolver. The artist: Harry Hants.

The opening paragraph:

“A few minutes ago the sky had been a place. Of clouds, winds, pressures, turbulence. Now, it was just the décor of a flashy Cyprus sunset. The propellers wound down and stopped with a brief, violent shudder, but I went on sitting there, running my hands over the still-unfamiliar avionics switches and trying to wriggle some of the stiffness out of my neck and shoulders. A small Ford van dashed up and stopped just in front.”

Judas Country is, like most of Mr. Lyall’s early work, centered around aviation and it is considered by many critics to be among his best novels.

BLAZE!: A SON OF THE GUN by Stephen Mertz

Blaze! is a newish adult western series created by Stephen Mertz and published by Rough Edges Press. It is “newish” because there are now nine in the series, and the first, Blaze!, was published all the way back in January 2015. It features the husband and wife bounty hunter team J. D.—don’t ever call him Jehoram Delfonso—and Kate Blaze. The ninth and most recent entry in the series is Blaze!: A Son of the Gun written by Stephen Mertz.

The Ludlow brothers are wanted men with a Pinkerton reward attached. J. D. and Kate track the three outlaws to a deserted Arizona ranch the men are using as a hideout. The capture turns quickly to violence and the bounty claim becomes dead, rather than alive. It happens fast, but not easily. J. D. is rescued from an ambush by a young man named Joe Bridge who is running, with a young woman, from his former employer and his girl’s stepfather; a trio of gunnies in their wake. J. D. and Kate help the couple escape with no expectation of anything other than collecting their bounty in nearby Whiskey Bend and riding on. But they get caught up in a shootout in the dusty town and things only worsen from there.

Blaze!: A Son of the Gun is pure pulp joy. It is something like a 1960’s television western mixed with an Ace Double. Its plot is simple, linear and well executed. There is action on nearly every page with absolutely no doubt about who the good guys are and the bad. There is a low level, one or two scenes, of less than PG-13 married sex, which is where the “adult” part plays in, and, if I were to make a wager, I would bet Kate is tougher than J. D. 

No Comment: "Nowhere to Run"

“Vigil half turned in his chair, raised a hand, and when the waiter arrived he ordered two more bottles of the mineral water. He smiled at David. He was not an ugly man until he smiled.”

—Ron Faust, Nowhere to Run. Turner Publishing Company, 2013 (© 1981). Page 57. Captain Vigil, a Mexican policeman, is questioning David Rhodes about the murder of a young woman.

Purchase a copy of Nowhere to Run at Amazon.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context.]

My Reviews Elsewhere: "The Plague of Thieves Affair"

My review of The Plague of Thieves Affair is live and available at Ed Gorman’s blog. The Plague of Thieves is an historical detective novel set in late-nineteenth century San Francisco, and has the flavor of a Sherlock Holmes tale—including a Sherlock impersonator—with two whodunit mysteries and grit enough to make it interesting.

Read the review.

Purchase a copy of The Plague of Thieves Affair at Amazon.

Now Available: "Truth Always Kills" by Rick Ollerman

Stark House Press’s latest original novel is now available in very attractive trade paperback and ebook versions. Its title is Truth Always Kills, and its author is Rick Ollerman. Rick is the king of the Introduction at Stark House—a vocation he has mastered—and his fiction is no less intriguing.

I was given the opportunity to write the Introduction for Truth Always Kills, which was daunting since there was little chance I could introduce Mr. Ollerman’s work as well as he introduces the work of others. I gave it my best go, but it pales in comparison to the novel. A novel that is half parts suspense and crime, and very good.

Truth Always Kills can be purchased directly from Stark House’s website, or at Amazon—here is the trade edition, and here is the ebook.

BREAKFAST AT WIMBLEDON by Jack M. Bickham

Breakfast at Wimbledon is the fourth novel featuring aging tennis pro Brad Smith. It was published in 1991 by Tor, and it has a certain nostalgia for me since it was the first Brad Smith, and Jack Bickham, novel I read back in the long ago. It is also pretty good, and represents Brad Smith’s transition from cold war to post-cold war hero.

Brad is uneasy when his old pal and CIA contact Collie Davis makes an unannounced appearance at his Bitterroot Valley Resort—

“Collie Davis did not make casual visits.”

—with good reason, as it turns out. Collie wants Brad to accept an invitation to play at Wimbledon. A legitimate terrorist threat has been identified, and it centers around a young Irish tennis star named Sean Cork. Brad’s job: play tennis, ingratiate himself with Sean Cork, and collect information. All very hands-off with no expected direct danger. Unsurprisingly, it is more complicated than it is supposed to be, and the danger is very real, and very personal, to Brad.

This is one of my favorite of the Brad Smith novels, and for more reasons than mere nostalgia. It brings something new to the series—terrorists rather than communists—without losing the atmosphere and tone of the previous novels. It helps that Brad’s Soviet nemesis Sylvester remains a key player, and it includes more tennis action than any of the novels since Tiebreaker, which is good since Mr. Bickham writes it so well. It is the longest, and includes the largest cast, of any of the novels. There is a drug crazy American tennis star playing doubles with Brad, an Irish entrepreneur millionaire with a taste for both money and tennis, the very naïve Sean Cork, and a bunch of terrorists that run the gamut in both sophistication and psychopathy.

The most interesting character is an MI5 agent named Clarence Tune. Tune is assigned to liaise with Brad, and keep him safe, which is telling on the perceived importance—or lack thereof—of Smith’s mission. Tune is not given high priority or sensitive assignments, and he is considered less an agent and more a liability by his peers. His character is summed early by Brad—

“Science has not told me so, but I think there must be some other substance excreted by people whose lives have been marked by failure. Such people emit a sour, acidic smell, the work of a few molecules, perhaps, and so primitive that it communicates on a psychic level I cannot understand.”

—if only partially accurate since Tune’s presence, and assistance, is essential to defeating the underlying terrorist plot. A plot that is not made clear until the final pages of the novel. The action is plausible, and the pacing is superb. It has the highest level of characterization of all the novels, and—despite an aged plot—is as readable today as it was 25 years ago. 

Mystery Scene Reviews

The latest issue of Mystery Scene Magazine—No. 142—is now available at newsstands everywhere. The issue is packed (as usual). It features an in-depth article about BBC’s Foyle’s War, an interview with Robert J. Randisi, and comprehensive look at the Library of America’s Women Crime Writers of the 1940s and 1950s.

Issue No. 142 also includes two book reviews I wrote. The titles: Tom & Lucky (and George & Cokey Flo) by C. Joseph Greaves, and Ivory by Tony Park. Tom & Lucky is an historically accurate look at the 1936 trial of Lucky Luciano, and Ivory is a scorching adventure thriller set in Southern Africa. The reviews are both available online at Mystery Scene’s website—click the titles in the previous sentence.

Mystery Scene is available at many newsstands, including Barnes & Noble, and available for order at MS’s website.

2015: The Year in Reading

2015 was a great year for reading in both quantity and quality. I finished 61 titles, and will likely finish one more—the forthcoming Out of the Blues by Trudy Nan Boyce—which is three short of last year’s mark. The majority of the titles were fiction, but the total includes a tolerable number of nonfiction works, too. The nonfiction tended towards history and true crime, which included a number of interesting titles including Night by Elie Wiesel and Mind Over Matter by Ranulph Fiennes.

I entered 2015 with my two ever recurring goals—1. Increase the number of “new” authors (in 2014 I read only eight authors new to me); and 2. Increase the number of female authors on my reading list. I successfully increased the number of new writers, and also managed to add a few—only three—female authors to my list (all are included in the “new to me” category).

I became acquainted with the work of ten authors in 2015: David Lippincott (Salt Mine), James W. Hall (Bones of Coral), Sandra Block (The Girl Without a Name), Rick Ollerman (Truth Always Kills), Trace Conger (The Shadow Broker), Andrew Coburn (The Babysitter), Tony Park (Ivory), Christine Matthews (Beating the Bushes), Carolyn Hart (High Stakes), and John Saul (Nathaniel). The best of the “new”—and it was actually published in 2015—was Park’s Ivory. The number of new authors, and female authors, was due, mostly, to writing reviews for Ed Gorman’s blog and Mystery Scene Magazine.  

As is my habit, I returned to old favorites many, many times. In fact, four authors accounted for 17 titles, which is approximately 28 percent of the total for 2015. I read five by Jack M. Bickham, and four each by Jack Higgins, Dean Koontz, and Ed Gorman.

Now all that is left is my top five favorite novels of—at least that I read in—2015. No rules, except no repeats. If I previously read it, it is not eligible for the top five. It was difficult to pare the list to five, and there were two or three that were cut from the list that I wish hadn’t been. With that said, my five favorite novels of 2015 are—

5. Ivory by Tony Park. Mr. Park is an Australian thriller writer who writes vividly about Africa. This one is set in Mozambique, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean. The protagonist is an ex-SAS officer turned pirate to finance the rehabilitation of his family’s hotel on the Island of Dreams. The pacing is fast, and the locales are exotic and it actually lives up to the term “thriller.”  

4. The King of Horror and Other Stories by Stephen Mertz. If the title didn’t give it away, this is a collection of short stories by crime and adventure writer extraordinaire Stephen Mertz. It includes all of Mr. Mertz’s short stories over the past several decades, and each is very entertaining. Read the Gravetapping review.

3.  Split Image by Ron Faust. This is an old school noirish treasure. It is dark, riveting, and curious; as much literature as commercial. It weaves an enticing mixture of Edgar Allan Poe—think “The Tell-Tale Heart”—Alfred Hitchcock, and a 1950’s Gold Medal novel. It is one of Mr. Faust’s finest novels. Read the Gravetapping review.   

2.  The Husband by Dean Koontz. This is a mesmerizing, well written, and extraordinarily entertaining thriller. It is smooth with the beat of poetry in its prose—not in a complicated manner, but rather the meter and rhythm. It opens in a rush, and keeps the steady pace from beginning to end without falling into the trap of overwrought doldrums or meaningless melodrama. Read the Gavetapping review.       

1. Snowbound by Richard S. Wheeler. This title won a Spur Award when it was published in 2010; an honor it surely deserved. It is the story of John C. Fremont’s ill-fated fourth expedition, which was ostensibly to find a railroad route across the Rocky Mountains at the 38^th Parallel between St. Louis and San Francisco. A fool’s dreams at best. It is a powerful novel of survival and calamity, and deserving of a much larger audience than it has so far reached. Read the Gravetapping review.

My Reviews Elsewhere: "The Sundown Speech"

My review of Loren D. Estleman’s most recent Amos Walker novel, The Sundown Speech, is live and online at Ed Gorman’s blog. The setting is post 9/11; twelve or so years ago. And, as Mr. Estleman explains in the Afterword, it is an expansion of a novella he wrote as a serial for the Ann Arbor News. It is also pretty terrific.

Read the review.

Purchase a copy of The Sundown Speech at Amazon.

Now Available: "Anything Goes" by Richard S. Wheeler

Richard Wheeler’s latest novel, Anything Goes, is now available in hardcover from Forge. It is Mr. Wheeler’s “first print novel…published in three years,” and it, like all of Forge’s Westerns, is handsomely designed.

Richard Wheeler’s fiction has won an astounding six Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Western Writers of America. I have been a longtime fan of his work, and he, at least by email, is one of the kindest, polite, and knowledgeable people I have corresponded with. Earlier this year I conducted an interview with Mr. Wheeler—one I’m particularly proud of—you should read.

I am also planning to review Anything Goes in the next few weeks, but until then here is the publisher’s description—

“Anything Goes: the enchanting story of a vaudeville troupe that makes its way to Western mining towns, from renowned master of the Western novel, Richard S. Wheeler.

“The cowboys, gold miners, outlaws, gunmen, prostitutes, and marshals who populate the Wild West never see much big-city entertainment. Most towns are too wild and rowdy for entertainers to enter, let alone perform in. All that is about to change.

“August Beausoleil and his colleague, Charles Pomerantz, have taken the Beausoleil Brothers Follies to the remote mining towns of Montana, far from the powerful impresarios who own the talent and control the theaters on the big vaudeville circuits. Their cast includes a collection of has-beens and second-tier performers: Mary Mabel Markey, the shopworn singer now a little out of breath; Wayne Windsor, "The Profile," who favors his audiences with just one side of his face while needling them with acerbic dialogue; Harry the Juggler, who went from tossing teacups to tossing scimitars; Mrs. McGivers and her capuchin monkey band; and the Wildroot Sisters, born to show business and managed by a stage mother who drives August mad.

“Though the towns are starved for entertainment, the Follies struggles to fill seats as the show grinds from town to town. Just when the company is desperate for fresh talent, a mysterious young woman astonishes everyone with her exquisite voice.
“The Wild West will never be the same. They've seen comics, gorgeous singers, and scimitar-tossing jugglers. Now if the troupers can only make it back East . . . alive!”

Purchase a copy of Anything Goes at Amazon.

My Reviews Elsewhere: "High Stakes"

My review of Carolyn Hart’s enjoyable novel High Stakes is live and online at Ed Gorman’s blog. It is cold war romantic suspense with a nicely executed plot, likable characters, and a satisfying twist.

Read the review.

Purchase a copy of High Stakes at Amazon.