Home Is The Sailor by Day Keene
Christa Faust is one of my favorite writers and I came to her work via Hard Case Crime. In an interview with her, I read that she got started on crime fiction by reading Day Keene. I wasn’t too familiar with Keene but I knew I had his Home Is The Sailor book in my HCC collection. It was low on my priority list but it shot up after the interview and now, I figured it was time to get to it. It’s your typical pulp fare […]
The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich
Welp…you can check Cornell Woolrich’s name off the list of great Golden Age noir writers I have yet to read. It took me way too long. What I found most interesting about The Black Angel was Woolrich’s style. I don’t know what I expected, perhaps something more hardboiled or with a benighted prose. But he doesn’t write like that, at least for this one. Woolrich is a smooth writer, not prone to overwriting or making his characters sound like Oxford-by-Brooklyn the way some of his contemporaries did […]
Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton
Some reviews are easy. I can churn out 400, even 500 words no problem, either because of the book itself or the context invoked by the book. Rarely can I tell what I’ll have to say before I sit down to write it. I just have to do it. Others, like Social Creature, are tough. It’s difficult to spit out 250 words about a book that has some substance but not much, some memorable scenes but not many, leaves a fingerprint more than an imprint on […]
Four Kinds of Rain by Robert Ward
One of the more memorable things I’ve read in the last few years is Robert Ward’s Red Baker. It’s your typical blue collar male midlife crisis story, only it’s set in Baltimore and is hardcore devoted to the city. Being a native, I love Baltimore tales. When I mentioned to someone that I really enjoyed Red Baker, they suggested I pick this one up. I’m glad I did. This one is an actual crime story set in Baltimore and it’s twisty. In the first fifty or so pages, […]
Double Feature by Donald Westlake
I was fortunate to snag one of the new Hard Case Crime releases just before everything shut down. And it’s a good thing too because Donald Westlake is one of my favorite writers. I love how versatile he is, doing everything from mysteries to broad noir tales to geopolitical thrillers to biting satire works. When I saw that this would be a re-release of two movie-based novellas, I got excited. This is probably the most eager I’ve been for a new HCC in a while. […]
Cropper's Cabin by Jim Thompson
The year of Jim Thompson continues with what is by far the best book of his I’ve read this calendar year. It may be a cut below his truly greatest works like Pop. 1280 and The Grifters but it’s really darn good. I once heard Jason Concepcion of The Ringer fame compliment Quentin Tarantino by saying that the director “democratizes pop culture.” In other words, he takes B-movie stuff like gangster films and martial arts tales and turns them into high art. Thompson can perhaps be thought of in […]
