At this point, I think enough Cannonballers have written rave reviews about Sherry Thomas’ “Lady Sherlock Series”. Just read these books if the subject matter appeals to you at all. They are a treasure and I think that each one is better than the last. “The Hollow of Fear” is the third book in the series. I have to admit, again, that my Sherlock Holmes background is via Madonna’s ex husband and Benedict Cumberbatch. I, therefore, come at these books without a reference point for […]
Mystery and Racism
In an alternate universe, names like Gar Anthony Haywood and Walter Mosley are known in the same company as those of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. For they too write talented PI characters set in California locations that deal with social issues. Fear of the Dark is Haywood’s freshman effort and it netted him multiple prestigious writing awards for best first novel, including the Anthony and Shamus awards respectively. He should be better known than he is and yet I hadn’t heard of him until I read […]
An Entertaining Mess
To conclude his first LA Quartet, James Ellroy goes back to his roots a little: the entirety of this book is told in the first person as opposed to the shifting points-of-view we usually get from his other stuff. The result is as my headline says: an entertaining mess. When reading the first few chapters, I was relieved to only have to follow one character’s motives instead of three or four. But as with the rest of his books, the plotting here is dense and […]
Vampire, PI
I read almost all of Charlie Huston’s catalogue between 2011-2012. I loved the Hank Thompson trilogy and The Shotgun Rule was good as well. I don’t often enjoy fun, trashy Tarantino-esque thrill writers but Huston has more talent than most. I couldn’t put his books down. The ending of the Hank Thompson trilogy stays with me to this day. However, I avoided the Joe Pitt series series for a long time because I don’t like those kinds of monster crossover works. I tried one Jim Butcher book and […]
A Fusion of Noir and Hardboiled
I read Steph Cha’s first novel a few months ago and in that time, I’ve discovered her work outside of this series is as important as the series itself. She’s listed as the “noir” editor for the LA Review of Books and it appears she writes for the LA Times on a weekly basis. Her column in the Times which covered Linda Fairstein’s unfortunate history as a prosecutor in the Central Park Five case* (and her continuously unrepentant attitude for how the case was handled) helped inspire the Mystery Writers […]
War On Drugs
James Crumley is basically the Raymond Chandler of the American west. I mean that as both a compliment and a dig. I like Chandler and appreciate his status as the OG of the contemporary American mystery novel but I wouldn’t say I’m one of his acolytes. His plots were often heavily convoluted and though I don’t like applying 2018 sensibilities to works published sixty-plus years before, the vast majority of his female characters and how they are treated by Marlowe is nothing shy of misogynistic. Nevertheless, […]
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