Rob Kitchin's Blog, page 187

Reading conversations ...

I tend to be a solo kind of reader.  It's just me and the book.  Sure, I write a review when I've finished and pass on my views, but I feel no great need to discuss the story with others, either while reading the book or afterwards, as might happen with a reading group or a literary event.  Every now and then though I read something that I wouldn't mind a good chat about.  The book I've just finished that fits in this category is Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne.  For most of the book the story was engaging enough, but not particularly extraordinary.  In the last quarter, however, it shifts register and the ending is a powerful sucker punch to the gut that recasts the rest of the tale.  And this is what I'd be interested to explore some more as it completely drained me emotionally at the time and I've been mulling it over since Saturday night.  However, it's almost impossible to discuss the theme and twist here without giving spoilers.  I'll post my review tomorrow, but if you want a story that sends you off into a bit of reflective tailspin then Bed of Nails is worth a read.

Review of Hard Bite by Anonymous-9 (Blasted Heath, 2012)

Three years after his daughter was killed in a hit-and-run accident in LA, Dean Drayhart has turned vigilante, hunting and entrapping rogue drivers using some creative internet scams, then killing his victims.  This is no mean feat, as in the same accident, Dean lost the use of his legs, most of his colon, one of his hands, and in time his wife.  He’s aided in his quest by his new girlfriend, Cinda, an escort, and Sid, his wayward helper Monkey who he’s trained to administer a hard bite to the jugular.  His latest victim is the son of a widow who has inherited her husband's 'godfather' status in the Mexican mafia.  Suddenly the tables are turned and Dean and Sid become the hunted.  The only thing that might save them is LA cop, Detective Doug Coltson, who knows he’s investigating a strange case, but has little idea how bizarre it’s going to get. 

I’m not quite sure how I ended up with Hard Bite on my kindle as I don’t remember reading any reviews.  Someone must have pointed me towards the book.  Whoever it was, I’d like to thank them.  Hard Bite was a joy to read.  Original, witty, smart, dark, and hard with a soft-centre.  Elaine Ash (Anonymous-9) writes in very assured and sparkling prose that is all show and no tell, and which swaps between the first person narrative of Dean and the third person of the other characters, including Sid.  I was hooked from the first sentence (see here).  The plot is very nicely put together, and whilst it could have twirled off into a screwball noir, it manages to be darkly comic without descending into farce, and wheels an interesting path through a morally fraught landscape.  Dean is a remarkable lead character, strong in vision and drive but weak in body, and Ash doesn’t fall into the trap of portraying him in an ableist light.  Sid is great fun as a helper monkey who was dropped from his training programme for attitude problems, and the other characters are all nicely realised.  Along with good contextualisation, there is also a decent sense of place in both LA and Mexico.  One of the most original crime and enjoyable novels I’ve read in a good while and thoroughly recommended. 

Lazy Sunday Service

I finished reading Hard Bite by Anonymous-9 last Thursday and it's been rattling around my head ever since.  Just when you think there's no more angles left to explore in crime fiction, along comes a book with a fresh perspective.  Here's the opening page:

"I like to kill people. 

It's important to admit the truth to yourself even if you lie to others, and I do a lot of lying in my business. Inside my head I try to keep the truth black and white, no grey area: I like to kill. I love to kill people. Certain people. 

Sid knows we're going somewhere tonight because my eyes keep flicking to the clock, and it usually means we've got a job to do. 

I found my latest target online at a news site. A national story local to Los Angeles. Killing locally is a necessity since I'm not really mobile. A Mac with assistive technologies enables me to work the keyboard. 

Assistive technology is a code word for "stuff that helps cripples use a computer." Easy to understand, right? Because it's the truth. People have a hard time with truth when it comes bent and deformed, crushed, or hideous—so they invent terms like assistive technologies to sidestep the one word that makes it crystal clear: cripple. 

Crippled. 

Crippling.

I went from noun to action verb riding a year-long bed of pain. After flirting with suicide, which lost its appeal contemplated deeply, a fresh start in rough justice sounded right. Why settle for cripple when you can be crippling, ha ha. 

I admit, I don't look very imposing. It's my motorized wheelchair, the steel hand, my pencil neck that looks like it could flop over and crack from the weight of my head. I look useless, you think. You think wrong. And fuck you, by the way, for your perception. I bring righteous vengeance to evil people."

You've got to keep reading, right?  Well, I did as I was already hooked at this point.  I'll post my review tomorrow, but needless to say, Hard Bite was one of my favourite reads of the last couple of years. 



My posts this week:

Review of The Diggers Rest Hotel by Geoffrey McGeachin
Social media etc
New EU university ranking exercise - U-Multirank
Review of City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance
January reading
The signal in the noise

The signal in the noise

‘This is Needle.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Haystacks.’

Meyer cocked his head.

‘He’s a data analyst.’

‘A geek?’

‘I am here, you know,’ Needle said.

‘He thinks he’s found your man,’ the lieutenant continued.

‘Yeah?  I’ve got half the cops in the city out on the street and there’s no trace of him.’

‘He’s in an apartment block on Kings,’ Needle said.  ‘Jellicoe House.’

‘Let me guess, someone on Twitter told you?’

‘The data and my algorithms told me.  They isolate the signal in the noise.’

‘You believe this shit?’

‘Sounds better than your shit,’ the lieutenant said.  ‘Go and get him, Meyer.’



A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

January reading

My sense of January was that it was a very good month of reading.  I'd happily read other books by all of the authors listed below.  My pick of the month is Aly Monroe's Icelight (in a close run race with Diggers Rest Hotel).  I usually don't start in the middle of a series, but I'm glad I did in this case and I've every intention of catching up with the first two books.  It was definitely a January kind of book, set in London in the winter of 1947.

City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance ***.5
Diggers Rest Hotel by Geoffrey McGeachin ****.5
Liar Moon by Ben Pastor ****
Icelight by Aly Monroe ****.5
Go With Me by Castle Freeman ****.5
The Devil I know by Claire Kilroy ****
Broken Dreams by Nick Quantrill ***
The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston ****
I Hear Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty ****

Review of City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance (Snubnose Press, 2012)

Nearing his fiftieth birthday, Crowe has been released from prison and has headed back to Memphis.  Whilst inside the ‘Old Man’ has died, a more brutal leader has succeeded him, and the criminal landscape has changed.  The new leader might have ordered a hit on Crowe when he was in prison, but after the death of his wife to a religiously inspired serial killer he wants him to use his talents as an enforcer to exact revenge.  Crowe is prepared to oblige, but also has revenge in mind.  His plan, however, is violently derailed and he finds himself up against a radical Christian sect who have ‘rescued’ a set of serial killers to do ‘God’s work’.

The strengths of City of Heretics are the principle character of Crowe, the sense of context and place, and the general story arc and hardboiled nature.  Crowe is getting on in age, but is unwilling to hand in the towel, and despite not quite being as robust as he once was he has the wits and experience to hold his own.  And he’s not about to let pain and poor odds get in his way, despite being put up against his own past and a gaggle of serial killers loosely controlled by a religious group.  The narrative has a nice pace as it builds to bloody climax and I loved the closing couple of pages.  That said, it took a little while before the book clicked into place and I was firmly hooked in; I had a hard time buying the character of Rad; and I found the prose a little uneven at times, sparkling in some places and a little flat in others.  Admittedly, all minor stuff in the grand scheme of things.  Overall, an entertaining hardboiled tale that turns into a real page turner with an ending that makes me want to read the sequel, assuming one is in the pipeline.

Social media etc

On Monday it was year since I started using Twitter and Facebook.  I’m a sporadic user of Facebook, which I find tends to be more personally focused.  It’s a different story with Twitter.  Despite my deep scepticism as to the utility of 140 character posts before starting, I’ve found Twitter to be useful on a host of fronts - discovery, dissemination, conversation, identification.  Through following journalists, academics and book bloggers (I’m pretty choosy who I follow - people who have interesting things to share; I’m not interested in personal info and what people are wearing or eating, or where they are; or in following back for the sake of it), I’ve a constant stream of news and links to stories, articles and new books, letting me keep on top of developments in fields I’m interested in and to find new, interesting scholars and authors.  I can also share my own work, whether that be blog posts, papers or books, and that of others, and I have little doubt that people have discovered interesting stuff through my tweets.  I’ve also had a series of interesting conversations with folk, and identified potential contributors for events and projects.  Put short, it’s become a core part of my academic life.  I would have scoffed at that suggestion a little over a year ago.  My handle is @robkitchin

Review of The Diggers Rest Hotel by Geoffrey McGeachin (Viking/Penguin, 2010)

1947 in Melbourne, Australia, and Charlie Berlin is back working as a detective after serving as a bomber pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force, flying night missions over Germany.  He’s returned to find himself at the bottom of the pile, his colleagues having advanced whilst he was away, and with a head full of demons after being shot down and housed in a prisoner of war camp in Poland.  When the railway payroll is yet again robbed, he’s packed off to the small rural twin-town of Albury-Wodonga to investigate.  By sending him alone to solve a case that has already confounded others it seems that his bosses have set him up to fail, and the local cops are hardly welcoming of the arrival of a city detective.  From his base at The Diggers Rest Hotel, Berlin sets about tracking down the armed gang of robbers with the help of a rookie constable and a beautiful, feisty local reporter, who both see Berlin and the case as a way to better things and places.  Berlin though is not just taking on the gang, but also the memories that haunt him, especially the horror of the anti-aircraft fire, the death march back towards Germany from his Polish camp, and the execution of a young Jewess.

The Diggers Rest Hotel won the Ned Kelly Award for best crime fiction novel in Australia in 2011.  McGeachin drops the reader into rural Australia in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, with its small town politics, social unease about change, and folk traumatised through what they’d experienced or lost.  He is especially strong at characterisation, populating Albury-Wodonga with an interesting set of people, all struggling in some way to make do, or get on, or come to terms with the past and the present.  In particular, Charlie Berlin and Rebecca Green make for an enjoyable, feisty pairing.  Add in a compelling storyline of Berlin investigating a set of payroll robberies by an armed gang and you have a very nice mix - a strong sense of place and historical and social contextualisation, wonderful characterisation, and interesting plot, told through engaging prose.  Although the resolution was credible, the only slightly jarring element was the ending, which seemed to come about ten pages too soon and left a couple of threads dangling that are hopefully dealt with in the next book in the series.  Overall, a very enjoyable read on several levels.

Lazy Sunday Service

We watched a thoughtful and moving Japanese movie last night called Departures (which won an Oscar for best foreign language film in 2009, and loads of other awards). A young man loses his job as a cello player in a Tokyo orchestra and moves back home to his small town with his wife.  Seeking work he answers an advert to work in 'departures', thinking it might be a travel agency.  Instead, it is to undertake the ritual of preparing the dead for their coffin.  Given the taboos concerning death in Japanese culture, it is a job that few people want, including the young man.  But it is work and it is cathartic and allows him to see the world afresh, even as those around him shun him. The film was beautifully shot, well acted, and had a very good script.  One of those films that makes you think about life - and in this case, also death.  I'd recommend to anyone who enjoy reflective, thoughtful movies.


My posts this week:

Review of Icelight by Aly Monroe
Some tasty US imports
Some media pieces from today
Review of Liar Moon by Ben Pastor
Killing time
Still living in a haunted landscape

Killing Time

‘Tom.’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘Are you in or out?’

‘I just told you, I’m thinking.’

‘What’s there to think about?’ the dealer asked.

‘The ten bucks in the middle of the table.’

‘It’s like playing with a sloth!’

‘Let him think,’ the fourth player said. ‘It ain’t gonna make a difference to who wins the pot.’

‘Except we’ll all be a few minutes nearer to the ever after with nothing to show for them.’

‘Like that matters.  Since retirement what have any of us have done except kill time?’

‘Tom?’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘Jesus.’

'Get another beer and stop rushing the man.’



A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words