“I’m jealous,” she said, pretending not to be. “You could have had room service with me.” She said that flatly, without stressing the innuendo – but the “nuendo” was in there, all right.

“Kill your darlings” is writers’ jargon for one of the hardest lessons of the craft – that the particular passage you worked hardest on and are proudest of is very likely the one you need most to cut.

Max Allan Collins’ early novel Kill Your Darlings is another of his Mallory books, about an Iowa mystery writer who gets involved in real life mysteries. This is the second I’ve read of this series, and I liked it very much. Collins (it seems to me) writes meta-mysteries, mysteries that work on the surface level, but also comment on the genre and its conventions. This particular book is literally about a convention – Bouchercon, an actual writers’ and fans’ convention, fictionalized here. Collins takes the opportunity of writing about hard-boiled mystery authors to place his hero in a genuine hard-boiled adventure. As hero/narrator Mallory notes to his own amusement, every event in the story follows hard-boiled conventions plot point for plot point, until he himself decides to break the pattern, in a scene that might irritate some fans but pleased me greatly.

Anyway, in this story Mallory goes to Chicago for Bouchercon, and there reunites with his mentor and hero Roscoe Kane, a sort of Micky Spillane-esque writer who’s fallen on hard times. When Kane is drowned in a hotel bathtub, Mallory has suspicions, but he can’t convince the police to look closer. He suspects a sleazy publisher with mob connections whom he hates, and uncovers a literary fraud inspired by greed and arrogance, traits not uncommon in gatherings of writers.

Kill Your Darlings is a thoughtful, well-written, fun mystery with only mild objectionable language or subject matter. Mallory mentions at one point that his politics are not conservative, but that’s all there is about that. Highly recommended, especially if you enjoy the golden age of Hard-Boiled.

The bomb was interesting. I thought about the fact that it was interesting, and my first encounter with Vega and Castro had been interesting, and being followed by the guy with the medallions and the other guy was interesting, and I decided it was a good thing to be interested in something. It was a relief, and I had a feeling I should try to make it last.

Is there anything Athol Dickson can’t do? I’ve already praised his magical realism novels, like River Rising and The Cure, so you can imagine my delight to discover he’d written a mystery, my favorite reading genre. I downloaded it (got a free review copy), and it was no surprise – though a delight – to discover that January Justice is very good indeed.

The hero is Malcolm Cutter, a marine veteran. He got a dishonorable discharge under circumstances that made him briefly famous, and left him with a horror of the public eye. He’s not exactly a private detective now – he’s actually a chauffeur and bodyguard. But sometimes he looks into things for people. He worked for a top movie star named Haley Lane, and their relationship developed into something closer than employer/employee. But Haley’s dead now. Somebody drugged their food, and Malcolm himself barely survived. Today he’s still fighting flashbacks, struggling to find something real he can hold on to, so that he can orient his thoughts when they go crazy, and deal with his guilt over Haley’s death.

Malcolm is approached by two men from Guatemala, former rebels, now “politicians.” Their government has been accused of the kidnapping and murder of a former leader of the previous Guatemalan junta. The leader was married to a famous American movie star, who was kidnapped, the ransom drop used as an opportunity to assassinate him. They tell Malcolm their government was not involved, and they want him to prove it. He doesn’t like the men much, but when other men start pressuring him to stay away from the case it raises his curiosity, and he plunges into an investigation that will get him shot at, beaten up, and arrested before he figures it out. He’ll also meet a nice girl.

Dickson writes with all the style and macho you’d expect from the best in the hard-boiled genre. Malcolm Cutter is an appealing hero, with interesting vulnerabilities and flaws. His relationships with his two fellow employees at Haley Lane’s estate are sketched with wry humor and sensitivity. The Christian message is subtle and organically part of the story. I hope very much there will be more Malcolm Cutter novels.

Highly recommended. Mild cautions for adult themes.

Once again, we contemplate a novel with promising writing and some good elements, but the the author doesn’t know how to bring it up to its potential. Sometimes There Really Are Monsters Under the Bed is mostly a disappointment, except for a surprise appendix. (Also the title’s too long.)

Former FBI agent Michael O’Leary left the agency in despair after failing to save the life of a little girl. Later the girl’s mother, the wealthy Annabelle Reardon, pulls him out of his self-destructive funk by giving him a job in her new foundation, devoted to rescuing children in danger – and, incidentally, marrying him. Their work is aided by a psychic empathetic gift that Annabelle possesses – she can learn a person’s secrets by touching their hand. It’s through this gift that she gets a clue to something terrible going on at an orphanage run by a wealthy philanthropist. Going to investigate, they encounter danger and uncover a horror.

There’s not enough story here, in my opinion, for what the author’s trying to do. The book is really a novella, and the story arc is too steep. Annabelle’s “gift” really does little for the story beyond providing a shortcut to giving the heroes a reason to investigate. Some real detective work would have lengthened a story that badly needs lengthening. Also there’s too much emotion here, and the characters talk about it too much. Some of the boy-girl material was moving, but more time should have been spent developing the couple’s relationship in more subtle ways.

In contrast, the short story appended to the back of the book – “Perception” – was excellent. Tight, well-drawn, terrifying, and it provided a neat twist ending that T-boned me completely. That story’s really the best reason to buy Sometimes There Really Are Monsters Under the Bed.

Some intense situations, but no really objectionable material.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said, peering out at the valley.

“Yeah, Idaho is a beautiful state. But Blight County itself is a corrupt little place.”

“Corrupt?”

“Only in the good sense. Most of the politicians can be bought, but they don’t charge much. Even the poor can afford a politician or two. It’s very democratic that way.”

People have been telling me for years I have to read some Patrick F. McManus, and I see now what they mean. Judging by The Blight Way, the first book in the series, McManus’ Sheriff Bo Tully is a welcome departure in the world of mysteries and police procedurals. Here’s a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

When Sheriff Bo is called out to view a dead body, hanging over a ranch fence and dead of a couple of bullet wounds, his first suspicion is against the outlaw Scragg family, on whose land the corpse was found. But why would they call the police on their own murder? Shortly thereafter, a shot-up Jeep is discovered not far away, with three dead bodies in it. Bo’s going to find out what happened, and he’ll do it the Blight County way, which means a lot of cunning and a minimum of pesky legalities. He has his crotchety old father, a former sheriff himself, to help out, and there’s a pretty new medical examiner for him to romance – he’s already romanced most of the single women in the county, without a lot of success.

The Blight Way is refreshingly free of some character elements I’ve gotten tired of (as I’ve told you more than once) recently in mystery stories. Bo Tully is a widower, having lost a wife he loved deeply. He was raised by a single mother, and never even knew who his father was until he was nine. That could be the background for one of those grim, damaged detectives we see so often in contemporary mysteries. But Bo is optimistic and self-confident. He has a good time dating, even if he strikes out a lot, and he has an amusing, cross-talk relationship with “Pap,” his reprobate old man. He’s surrounded by a colorful cast of citizens, most of them more or less involved in criminality, and he generally enjoys riding herd on them. Most of them don’t hold grudges, on either side.

The Blight Way was a fun read. Mild cautions for the usual things, but I don’t think many of you will be much offended by anything here.

That Stuart Neville has produced a moving, arresting, and troubling novel in The Ghosts of Belfast is notable. That this was his debut novel is amazing. Any number of writers would be happy to produce a work of this quality at the end of a long career.

Gerry Fegan is a former IRA hit man, legendary in his home city of Belfast. Since the Troubles died down, he’s been living a quiet life, drawing a salary (of which he spends little) for a government job which involves no duties. He actually spends most of his time drinking, because he needs to be drunk to sleep. His constant companions are twelve ghosts – people he murdered whose voices scream in his head. At last he realizes that they want something from him – they want him to kill the men who ordered their murders, as well as a couple of his accomplices. So he begins that business. The chapters in The Ghosts of Belfast are numbered in reverse, starting with Twelve, counting down as he carries out the ghosts’ commands and they vanish, one by one or in small groups.

At the funeral of his first victim he meets the victim’s sister, a pariah among the Irish Republicans because she married a Protestant, who has since abandoned her and her daughter. Gerry becomes their protector, gradually opening his heart as he touches, for the first time since childhood, the normal relationships of decent people. But his presence puts them in greater danger, and finally they all have to go on the run. Can Gerry protect them while finishing his mission? Should he finish it at all?

The Ghosts of Belfast is more than a thriller, it’s an examination of the complicated tissue of alliances, betrayals, and self-interests that make Northern Irish society and politics so complicated, cynical, and dangerous. It’s worth noting that a professional killer carrying out a vendetta is the most admirable male character in the book. Yet there’s sweetness here too, a sensitive appreciation of life and goodness made more vivid by contrast.

Christianity doesn’t come off very well, if I understand what I read correctly, though there’s no polemicizing against it. At one point Gerry specifically rejects the idea that he needs forgiveness, thinking rather that he needs “something else,” which the reader is left to guess.

I found The Ghosts of Belfast utterly engrossing and deeply moving. Recommended for those who can handle strong meat. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

My wife and I watched Certified Copy, a beautiful film by Abbas Kiarostami with Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, last week. It’s such a rich, moving film I wanted to write about it. All you need to know about the plot is that an English author on a book tour in Italy meets a French woman, both of them art lovers, and they spend the day in a neighboring village. All the tension I enjoyed in this story came from my knowing no more than that. What follows will be my attempt to talk about this film without spoiling any enjoyment for those who have yet to see it.

The first quarter or so of the dialogue is dominated by the ideas of originality and copies. What makes an original work of art uniquely superior to an excellently made replica? What is genuine? What is false? Is there a purpose in a composition or statue that the original fulfills but the copy does not? The two look briefly at a painting that was thought to be original, but discovered to be a recent copy of much older work. She is fascinated by it and hopes he will be too, because it fits the subject of his book, which is also called Certified Copy, but he isn’t. He tries to keep his distance from art, he says. It can be dangerous. I have to wonder if he keeps this distance because he is uncomfortable with that which is truly genuine, beautiful or hopeful.

The Englishman, James Miller, brings up another idea early on, that humanity’s purpose is pleasure. People should be free to do their own thing. The woman counters by saying people have responsibilities, such as family, that need tending, and she tends her own family with a bit of irritation. At one point, he continues talking about this need for living one’s own life while she is on the phone with her son, who can’t find something. She calls her son an idiot for not looking where she is telling him to look. He’ll find it if he’ll listen to her. Though they are not talking to each other, she and James are talking about the same thing. He is looking for self-fulfillment; she is telling him she knows where to find it.

She seems to tell him again indirectly in a scene in which she disappears into a church for a few minutes. He looks in at the door and believes he sees her praying. When he asks her about it, she shrugs it off saying she was doing something else, but the church setting must be significant. She is a figure of hope, a call for self-sacrifice, and she draws him to the church (which seems to either interest or trouble him; it’s hard to tell). In the same space, an elderly couple, probably married for 50 years or more, inches across the courtyard from the church door to an inn door. They are a picture of the love and faithfulness James wants know but believes does not exist.

Now, having thought this far, I think I’ll have to turn on the spoiler alert. Sorry. Continue reading Certified Copy →

He rattled his ice. “The death of friends, or death of every brilliant eye that made a catch in the breath.”

“Yours?”

“Yeats. I came across it in a book the other day while I was looking for something else, you know the way you do. Can’t get rid of it.”

“What’s it mean?”

“The lights are blinking out, buddy. Every night there are a few less than there were the night before.” He set down the glass sharply. “Let’s go out in the sun.”

I tend to think of Loren D. Estleman as one of the new kids in the detective novel biz, because that’s what he was when I first started reading him. But in fact he’s an old veteran now, a solid purveyor who unashamedly works Raymond Chandler’s old corner, instead of trying to put out big, thick thrillers about government conspiracies like so many others in the genre. He gives honest value for the reader’s money, and I relish his books. Among those, Every Brilliant Eye is (in my opinion) one of the strongest. It’s not a new book – it goes back to the 1980s, yet it felt fresh to me.

Amos Walker of Detroit, Estleman’s series detective, gets a call to go and collect his old friend and army buddy Barry Stackpole, who’s fallen off the wagon, out of a “blind pig” bar in a bad part of town. Barry is Detroit’s top crime reporter. The bar gets raided before Amos can extricate Barry, but he manages to sneak them both out (by punching a cop). The next time Amos sees Barry, he’s dried out again, but then Barry disappears completely. The newspaper’s lawyer hires Amos to look for him, because he has a date to testify before a grand jury.

Searching for his friend, poking into his affairs, Amos finds evidence that Barry had been writing a book about their time in Vietnam, and he comes to believe that Barry is dead, and that he’s dead because he was uncovering an old crime from the war. There’s police and civic corruption (business as usual in Detroit) involved, and Amos finds himself set up for a fatal accident, among other threats.

There’s real pleasure to be had in plain, old-school mystery writing, and I enjoyed Every Brilliant Eye immensely. Recommended. Cautions for language, violence and adult themes (including the hero committing adultery).

English writers are well known for mysteries, but not (so far as I’ve noticed) much for hard-boiled mysteries. English private detectives tend to the very cerebral, like Sherlock Holmes, or the very domestic, like Miss Marple. If novelists want to write gritty crime stories, they’ve traditionally chosen police procedurals.

But Keith Dixon has broken ranks. In the novel Altered Life he introduces private eye Sam Dyke (one assumes the name’s a tip of the fedora to Dashiel Hammet), a two-fisted shamus who works the mean streets of Manchester (and they’re plenty mean).

As the novel begins he’s meeting with Rory Brand, who runs a high end consultancy service that’s branching out into software development. Rory believes somebody’s plotting to ruin him, and he wants Sam to investigate. Sam says no thanks. The job calls for skills he doesn’t possess. Anyway, he doesn’t like Rory much.

The next day Rory is dead, his neck broken. And when Sam (rather guiltily) attends the funeral, he meets someone important from his own past. One of Rory’s subordinates hires him to investigate the murder, and there’s a kidnapping, and things get dangerous.

The prose is good, and I had only a few nitpicks about word choice. Although there’s one sour comment about Margaret Thatcher, there’s also a positive view of the business world that frankly surprised me in an English book. Sam Dyke is as tough a detective as you could ask for. All to the good.

On the negative side, I found him kind of dull. I know it’s a trope to make a hard-boiled gumshoe a wisecrack artist, but that serves a purpose, like the fools in Shakespeare’s tragedies. It prevents things from getting too dark, and keeps the detective from being a bore. Although Sam has a couple moments of cleverness, all in all he’s a dour fellow, and I got a little tired of him.

Also, in the final showdown, I thought he was just foolhardy, walking unprepared into a situation he knew he couldn’t control, leaving his fate to dumb luck.

Nevertheless, I thought Altered Life a commendable debut, and I might just read another Sam Dyke story.

Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.