Oliver Clarke's Blog: Little Slices of Nasty
February 2, 2025
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #23
It feels strange to say it, given how often I used to check them, but I really haven’t missed Instagram, Tiktok, etc in the past week. There are certainly people on each of the platforms that I’m keen to find another way of keeping in touch with, but the services themselves I haven’t missed at all. Having a smaller range of things to pay attention to (basically just YouTube and Bluesky) feels a lot more manageable.
Just a coincidence, I’m sure, but this was also a much better reading week for me.
This was also the week I announced this year’s GarbAugust Wasted Weekend – it’ll be 15th/16th Feb and I’d love it if you’d join me and read some trash.
Books I’ve Read This WeekThe Vengeful Virgin by Gil Brewer
An enjoyably tense slice of noir from the 50s, ‘The Vengeful Virgin’ has all the elements you’d expect (lust, murder, revenge, betrayal) and some juicy prose to boot. The plot is reminiscent of Cain’s ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, featuring an illicit affair and a murder plot. This time the femme fatale is young woman trapped looking after her invalid, wealthy stepfather. When she seduces the local TV repairman the result is MURDER.
It’s definitely a book from the 1950s, with language and attitudes to match, but nothing you wouldn’t expect in a vintage crime novel. The plot isn’t desperately original, but the twists and turns are entraining, the prose is strong and the end is absolutely great.
Despite knowing nothing about NASCAR beyond what I can remember from watching ‘Days of Thunder’ years ago, I keep coming back (sorry) to these Harlequin NASCAR romances. They’re light and fun and really well crafted. This one was no exception, with a sweet co-worker romance between a gruff driver trying to make a return to the sport and the determined PR consultant assigned to work with him.
The romance is the highlight – a nice slow burn with a decent level of tension. The setting works well too, with a large cast of supporting characters (there are loads of books in the series that all knit together, even though they can be enjoyed individually). There’s sibling rivalry, career/romance conflicts and some fun racing action. The book also plays entertainingly with gender roles, with the driver entered into a Bachelor contest and judged on his looks for large parts of the book.
The whole thing feels like a Sunday afternoon TV movie, but one you’d quite happily watch on a rainy day.
V Castro’s reworking and expansion of one of her early books (‘The Erotic Modern Life of Maninalli the Vampire’) is fast-paced, very spicy and a lot of trashy fun. It features a sexy female vampire on a mission, an enjoyably detailed historical back story and a lot of sex. A lot.
There’s a brilliant energy to V Castro’s writing in everything I’ve read by her, you can tell when you’re reading her work that she had a good time writing it and that she wants the reader to have a good time too. I don’t think this is her best book, but it’s definitely an entertaining read.
This is an early-ish standalone from Ed McBain that feels quite different from his 87th Precinct series. Published in 1965 (along with 2 87th novels) it’s much more of a thriller than a mystery. At 300 pages it’s also long for a McBain book. It doesn’t feel long though, it moves at a good clip from page 1 and the broad cast of characters serves the story well. McBain had become used to juggling a lot of voices in the detectives and patrolmen of his police procedurals, and he uses those skills here.
The setting is a small Florida key that gets invaded by a militia group with a grander plan in mind, one that gradually becomes clearer as the plot progresses. The action focuses on both the militia and the local inhabitants, especially the harbourmaster, as they start to fight back. It’s tense stuff, with many boating scenes that no doubt draw on McBain’s experiences in the Navy.
Certainly not my favourite of his books, but it’s well done, gripping and enjoyably different from the work he’s best known for.
January 26, 2025
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #22
If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Goodreads you’ll have seen that I put up an “away” message on each of them (although if you follow me on Goodreads you might see this newsletter there as I couldn’t work out how to turn crossposting off…). I’ve said before that when reading books with content we might not agree with (and I read a LOT of them) it’s up to all of us as individuals to balance the enjoyment we get from the book against any distaste we might feel. The same is true for the social media companies we use and increasingly I’m finding that the value I get from each of the 4 listed above is outweighed by discomfort at their business practices and a feeling that I was an employee as much as a customer.
I haven’t decided yet if I will fully quit any of them, but I certainly don’t regret taking a break.
Books I’ve Read This WeekThe Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
A strange mix of a book, for me at least. I loved some of the writing but disliked the overall experience. On the face of it the plot of two outlaws on a mission for their ruthless boss sound like something I’d love, but this isn’t really a book that’s about it’s plot. I’m not sure what it was really trying to achieve, but whatever it was, it didn’t achieve it for me.
Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley by MC Beaton
Not the best of the Agatha Raisin books, but still an entertaining diversion. This one features ramblers, the death of a local landowner and the continuation of the main romantic sub plot. If you’ve read any of the books you know what to expect, a little humour, a decent mystery and Agatha’s enjoyable abrasiveness.
The Deep by Nick Cutter
The Deep is a book that manages to be less than the sum of its parts. It’s a sci fi horror novel about a terrible new disease threatening humanity and our efforts to defeat it. The only cure seems to be a weird substance found at the deepest point of the ocean floor and a brilliant scientist is sent to a secret lab in the Marianas Trench to research it. When contact is lost with the lab, his brother is recruited to go and find out what has happened.
There are many great things about this book, some fantastic scenes of body horror, some deeply creepy parts, an unsettling back story for the two main characters and some claustrophobic deep sea action.
The problem is the knitting of all of those elements together into a satisfying whole, which Nick Cutter fails to do. The book pivots frequently from one style of horror to another, and whilst they’re all effective on their own, the constant shifting is dizzying. The various strands of the plot pull against each other, and Cutter’s attempts to force them back together at the end requires a twist that I found ludicrous. A shame, because parts of this book are superb.
January 19, 2025
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #21
The world has felt quite strange this week. Often we hear things in the news that sound huge, but which it is hard to tie back to our daily lives. I guess we are privileged when that is the case. Waking up this morning to see that TikTok really had gone dark for users across the US felt very weird and unsettling. Being in the UK, I’m not personally impacted by it, but the fact that many of the creators I followed there are gone from the platform, for now at least, is alarming. It’s a reminder of how fragile things are in a world where we rely so heavily on big tech and the whims of governments.
I was also deeply saddened to learn of the death of David Lynch. I had an Eraserhead t-shirt as a teenager and a Blue Velvet poster on my wall long before I saw the film. Clearly Lynch’s vision was unique, but what’s really amazing about his work is how many people connected with it despite how driven it was by his own obsessions. It’s a rare and wonderful thing when an artist manages to be completely uncompromising and also commercially successful.
Books I’ve Read This WeekSmitten by Janet Evanovich
A mostly entertaining romance novel from Janet Evanovich that is gently amusing and sweet at times, slightly spicy at others, but which suffers from a lack of romantic tension. The set up is simple and appealing, a 30-something single mother applies for a job on a construction site because the hours work well for the school run. The hunky owner of the building company takes a shine to her and gives her the job and romance follows. The problem is that the romance follows almost immediately and is only ever very vaguely threatened. I like lots of obstacles to the happy ever after in my romance novels and this had hardly any. Throw in a weird subplot about a local flasher that dominates the latter part of the book and you have a story that feels out of balances. The individual scenes were often charming, but it didn’t really hang together.
The Green Man of Eshwood Hall by Jacob Kerr
This seems to be a book that gets widely varying reviews from readers. I suspect that’s because it’s somewhat misleadingly marketed as folk horror, publishers’ desire to constantly pigeonhole books is often unhelpful. There is some horror here, but only enough to fill a thimble. What you get instead is a charming, affectionate and engaging written story of a 13 year old girl from a loving but slightly dysfunctional family trying to negotiate life in a new environment. She and her family move to a country village when her father gets a job at the local Manor House. The book is set in 1960 and packed with lovely detail of the rural northern England of the period. It’s cosy and amusing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The elements of horror (focusing on a haunting and the Green Man of the title) are fun too, but I think this is a book best enjoyed as a nostalgic coming of age tale. To put it another way, this is a horror story I think my mum would like.
TNT #3: Spiral of Death by Doug Masters
God only know why I read another TNT book after not enjoying the first one. But I did and it wasn’t any better.
In this one super agent TNT goes up against a fascist group and attempts to find El Dorado. Along the way there’s a smattering of not very exciting violence and a LOT of slightly weird sex. TNT is literally insatiable and proves it a number of times.
If I was to compare the books to anything I suppose it would be to some kind of salacious 70s Euro comic, only without the diversion of sexy pics.
Do not recommend. Need to resist the masochistic urge to read the other one I have.
In many ways (in fact in most ways) this is a terrible book. It’s ludicrously cliched, to the extent that at times it reads like a parody of a tough LA cop hunting a serial killer novel. I guessed the twist half way through (and I never guess twists!) and the prose is awful. The book has so much unnecessary description of irrelevant details that it could probably have lost 100 pages without losing any story.
And yet it is kind of fun. It’s so easy to read that you could do it when you were asleep and it has the same kind of pulpy appeal as a Doc Savage book. You know it’s stupid but sometimes that’s alright.
January 12, 2025
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #20
This was a week that reminded me how varied the horror genre can be. 3 horror novels read, and they couldn’t be more different from each other. Kiss of a Killer was romantic and suspenseful, The Totem was tense and weird, and Terrifier 2 was darkly humorous and crazily graphic. I think because horror is a feeling more than anything else,nthe genre can have a wonderful diversity of plots and styles.I had fun anyway, even if the Sweet Valley High book was a disappointment.
Books I’ve Read This WeekSweet Valley High: Kiss of a Killer by Francine Pascal and Kate William
A disappointingly obvious end to the vampire trilogy. Boo.
The Totem by David Morrell
David Morrell is an author who deserves more recognition. Best remembered for creating the character of John Rambo in his novel ‘First Blood’ I think modern readers may have the impression that he writes the kind of gung ho action typical of the later Rambo movies. In fact his work is much more subtle, tense and interesting than that.
‘The Totem’ is no exception, a dark, suspenseful horror novel about weird series of deaths in a small town. It pits a mismatched duo of typical 70s thriller stalwarts (a cop and a journalist) against an unknown horror that gradually ramps up and comes into focus as the book progresses.
The book has a slightly fragmentary style, skipping rapidly between scenes that are sometimes no longer than half a page. This may in part be because this 70s version of the novel was a cut down one (Morrell published a much longer version years later), but it works, keeping the reader constantly off balance. It’s tense and compulsively readable stuff, with a very 70s sense of paranoia and uncertainty that works brilliantly.
A humorous, philosophical short novel from 1912 concerning a mysterious figure, Innocent Smith, who turns up at (and disrupts) an English boarding house.
This was the first book in a series of buddy reads I am doing with my dad of his favourite books. I definitely enjoyed it, but not sure I’m as much of a fan of it as he is. It’s definitely amusing at times, with a wonderful turn of phrase at times. but I found it a bit convoluted and more concerned with it’s message than with telling a story.
This felt like kind of a miracle. I am, and have been since childhood, a fan of movie novelisations. They’re often entertaining, and a fun way to revisit a favourite film, but they also can feel like they’re lacking something that would make them fully satisfying as a book in their own right. Books can get turned into Oscar-winning movies, but no novelisation is ever going to win a literary prize.
So my expectations of Tim Waggoner’s adaptation of shockfest ‘Terrifier 2’ were tempered. I’ve read and enjoyed one book by him in the past (and original work called ‘They Kill’), but he’s not an author I know well. This book made me want to get to know his work better. He’s managed to pull off two tricky things here, Firstly, capture the weird magic of the movie – the horror, the black humour, the touching and convincing family dynamic, and the unhinged tone. Secondly, he’s managed to turn a film that is incredibly visual, Art doesn’t even talk, for crying out loud, into an effective book. Even at 400 pages I found it a thoroughly enjoyable read.
It should go without saying though, that if you aren’t a fan of the films this is NOT for you.
January 5, 2025
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #19
Happy New Year everyone!
I’m back at work now, after a very relaxing week or so off that feels like a distant memory. Hope you all got some downtime over the festive period too.
In case you missed it, I’ve started a new series of shorts on YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook. Each day I’m posting something notable which happened in the bookish world on that day. Hope you enjoy them!
Books I’ve Read This WeekHank & Muddy by Stephen Mertz
A fun, fast-paced novel that teams up the Hillbilly Shakespeare Hank Williams with Blues genius Muddy Waters for an unlikely but enjoyable crime thriller. Author Stephen Mertz has spent decades writing men’s adventure books and he brings that same pulpy energy to this novel, whilst also inserting a little of each man’s biography and bringing them to life as characters.
They’re pitched against a formidable band of opponents – corrupt sheriffs, g-men and the KKK – and the plot moves with the velocity you’d expect. The 50s US south setting is well done and there’s a real colour and vibrancy to the backdrop. Throw in a whole bunch of twists and turns and a little emotion and you have a very entertaining read.
This was a reread for me, and I enjoyed it just as much second time around. It’s a sometimes brutal, sometimes touching, often very funny western that plays like an offbeat version of True Grit, with the “offend everyone” sensibilities of late 90s/early 2000s comedy.
It features a youthful protagonist on a quest to rescue his sister, a cast of characters that manages to be both eccentric and very likeable, some decent action and a charming found family vibe.
All in all an enjoyable and satisfying read and a great introduction to Lansdale if you haven’t read him before.
This is basically ‘Murder, She Wrote’ does ‘And Then There Were None’, with a high body count to match, and is as much fun as that sounds. It sees writer turned sleuth Jessica Fletcher stuck in a local hotel during a blizzard, the other guests being a wedding party who are gradually getting bumped off.
It’s silly but pacy and entertaining, even if the peril is never ramped up quite as much as it could have been and the mystery is less than perfect.
This is one of those books that feels like it deserves a better review than I can give it. A deeply personal memoir about domestic abuse in a lesbian relationship, it’s far outside my own experience. As well as being intimate, it feels very well considered and researched. The author draws on other texts, but also quite brilliantly on universally recognised (or at least familiar) cultural references to give more impact to her points.
I found it moving, insightful, important and very very readable.
The book’s dedication states “If you need this book, it is for you”. I didn’t need it, but I’m very glad I read it. I’m struck by the fact that it’s a book that has been banned/challenged in US schools/libraries (I read it for a banned books challenge). This kind of censorship is almost always about closing down the very idea of ways of existing that are different to those of the people doing the banning. This feels like a book that some people really would need, which makes trying to hide it away even crueller.
A fun early entry in the Goosebumps series with some enjoyably creepy moments. There are the usual Goosebumps elements – sibling rivalry, well-meaning but useless adults, tried and tested horror tropes. In this case there’s a haunted ventriloquist’s dummy and a pair of competitive twins. I was expecting a better twist at the end, but it was still an entertaining quick read.
Sweet Valley High: Tall, Dark, and Deadly by Francine Pascal and Kate William
The first book in the notorious Sweet Valley High vampire trilogy, this was a fun read but didn’t quite match the delirious highs of the SVH werewolf books I read recently. Published 9 years before ‘Twilight’, it reads a lot like ‘Twilight’, with a brooding, dark haired young man who is romantic one minute and standoffish the next moving into a small town and making the local girls swoon. One of the swooners is SVH twin Jessica, and naturally her sister Elizabeth is suspicious of newcomer Jonathan Cain, not least because a dead body with holes in its neck turns up in town just after he arrives.
All a lot of fun and builds to a pretty great cliffhanger climax.
The second instalment in the Sweet Valley High follwos on neatly fromn the first, gradually building the mystery and suspense. Is heartthrob Jonathan really a vampire? It’s certainly starting to feel like it, and the body count continues to rise. It’s a lot of fun seeing the SVH twins go up against something like this. The books so far haven’t had quite as much stuff going on as the werewolf trilogy, but they’re still an entertaining mix of mystery, horror and yearning teenage romance.
This week’s videosDecember 29, 2024
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #18
As we reach the end of the year it’s hard not to reflect on how disrupted the world has felt over the last 12 months. 2 horrific ongoing wars, climate events, major elections in a number of countries, and the continuing pace of technological change feeling slightly dizzying. Sometimes it feels like burying your head in a book and escaping from it all for a few hours is the only sane thing to do. I’m not sure it’s really the answer, but it does help.
On a more selfish/positive/personal note, 2024 has been a year when the channel has continued to grow healthily, so thank you all for the part you have played in that. As I reflected in a recent video, I’m not sure much will change in 2025, but there are a few new things I’d like to try.
I hope that the year has been a good one for all of you. That you’re ending it in a comfortable place, with some good reads under your belt and a healthy TBR for the year ahead.
Cheerio! (and Happy New Year!)
Books I’ve Read This WeekHer Diaries & Notebooks by Patricia Highsmith
Reading this book was a fascinating, moving experience. I don’t read many memoirs, and when I do they’re the considered, filtered kind. Reading something as raw as this was breathtaking – Highsmith’s most private thoughts laid bare. It feels intrusive at times, but it’s also utterly compelling, even when she’s describing the most mundane things.
She’s an author I’ve come to greatly admire over the last 2 years, so having access to her diaries and notebooks felt like a rare treat, an opportunity to better understand a truly great writer.
How to describe ’The Thorn Birds’? It’s hugely long (around 700 pages) has an uncomfortable premise (the relationship between a Catholic priest and a woman – they first meet when she is 10 and he is 26) and it was massively successful. The book is the most successful Australian book ever and the TV mini series was the second most successful of all time when it first aired. Oh, and it’s fine. The premise is less horrific than it might have been, the length is just about justified by the multi-decade, generational family saga style of the story and it’s readable enough. The book came out at the time that the rest of the world was remembering Australia existed, and the setting helps – there’s an authenticity to it all that makes even the minutiae quite interesting. There are some decent set pieces too, including a storm sequence which is wonderfully dramatic.
The characters are okay, not exactly fascinating, but interesting enough that I did enjoy following their lives. The lack of a real plot is probably the book’s biggest weakness. It’s one of those blockbusters that’s more a series of things happening than an actual story. Sometimes that works but I’m not sure it did here.
In summary, it was 700 pages and I finished it, so I guess it was okay?
It’s Christmas Eve in New York in the early 70s and a group of black militants is planting bombs to further their cause. When one of the bombs is lost an officer from the bomb squad and leader of the militant group go on a race against time to find it. This could have been amazing, but it fumbles the ball a couple of times and ends up simply being a very enjoyable curio. The Christmas setting is well done, the politics is reasonably even-handed (be prepared to encounter every racial slur you can think to though) and there’s even a redemption sub-plot for a minor character. I never say this, but it admit felt like it should have been longer. The final act is very rushed and could have had even more tension wring out of it.
I love trash books like this that capture the mood of a moment, and ‘Victims’ certainly does that, for better or worse.
‘Eye of the Needle’ is an early novel from Ken Follett, now best known for his doorstep historical sagas. The book was first published in 1978, by which point Follett had already published a bunch of crime novels and trashy tie ins. It was his first big hit and was filmed 3 years later with Donald Sutherland in the lead role.
It’s not hard to see why it was so successful. It’s a gripping, convincing thriller set in WW2 Britain, and follows a German spy who has discovered the truth of the D-Day preparations. Pitched against him are the authorities (both MI5 and the police) and some civilians who get caught up in events.
What impresses most about it is the character work and the sense of place. It really does feel like an accurate portrayal of life in wartime Britain, and the cast (including trhe spy himself) are convincingly and sympathetically drawn. You know he has to be stopped, you want him to be stopped, and yet you also feel the tension of his double life.
It’s all great, page-turning stuff, and very enjoyable.
December 22, 2024
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #17
Writing this on a chilly, bright Sunday morning which finds me starting to feel a tiny bit Christmassy. The presents are wrapped (bar one which I’ll get to later) and all the food is bought. Whatever you’re doing for the festive season, I hope you and yours have a wonderful and peaceful time. I will probably be doing reading sprints on the afternoon of Boxing Day (26th Dec) if you’d like to join me.
My cold impacted my reading a bit this week, with only 2 short books completed. The fact that I’m also reading two mammoths (‘The Thorn Birds’ and Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries) probably didn’t help – check back next week if you’re interested in reading my thoughts on those.
Yesterday, my daughter and I watched the 80’s BBC drama ‘Threads’. I’d long been aware of it and its reputation, but wasn’t prepared for just how effective it was. It describes, in an interesting mix of drama and documentary, the impact of a nuclear war, focussing on one British city. If it was a book, I’d definitely talk about it on the channel.
Cheerio!
Books I’ve Read This WeekGravedigger by Joseph Hansen
‘Gravedigger’ is a solid PI novel from the 80s with the twist that the detective is openly (and happily) gay. It’s the 6th book in the Dave Brandstetter series (there are 12 in total, the first published in 1970, the last in 1991) and I suspect when they first came out that twist was a much bigger deal than it is today. Despite that advances we’ve made since then, it’s still refreshing to see a LGBTQIA+ lead character in a crime novel whose sexuality is almost incidental to the rest of the book.
The mystery itself is engaging and entertaining, with Dave investigating an insurance claim from a father who believes his daughter was murdered by a cult leader. It has a great early 80s California vibe, just the right number of twists and turns, and comes in at a perfect mystery novel length of just under 200 pages.
This collection of eight short stories from Eric LaRocca perfectly captures the weird vibe that makes their work so compelling. It’s hard to say exactly what it is about LaRocca’s work that keeps drawing me back to it, maybe it’s the singleminded vision it possesses. There is something about all the stories here, and everything else by them I’ve read, that feels unlike anything else out there. A weirdness, a darkness, an unsettling insight into the human psyche.
I think my favourite story was the most conventional one, ‘You’re Not Supposed To Be Here’ which has a pulpy crime feel to it, alongside LaRocca’s trademark darkness. There’s also a great introduction from Chuck Wendig.
December 15, 2024
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #16
I’ve had a lovely pre-Christmas cold find me towards the end of this week, which has left me without the energy to do much but lay about and read. I’m hoping to shake it soon, but as things stand I’m most definitely not in the Christmas spirit. In an attempt to get a little bit festive, I did watch the new Netflix movie ‘Check-In’ which has a decent concept (tiger kidnapping to force a TSA agent to turn a blind eye to a dodgy bag going on a plane) and was enjoyably suspenseful once it got going.
Not featured below, as I’m still reading it, but I’ve also been spending time with Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries this week. It really is a fantastic book – raw, moving, gleeful and insightful. A fascinating glimpse into the mind of a great writer ( I say glimpse, but it’s a thousand pages, so maybe that isn’t quite the right word).
Cheerio!
Books I’ve Read This WeekAsk the Parrot by Richard Stark
Incredibly (some might say shamefully), I’ve reached my 50s without ever having read one of Richard Stark (aka Donald E Westlake)’s Parker novels. This probably wan’t a great one to start with as it’s late in the series and (I believe) continues the plot from the previous book. Despite that I had a really good time with it and will definitely be going back for me.
Parker is a thief (albeit a reasonably honourable one) and in this book he rolls off one botched heist straight into another, when a stranger finds catches him on the run and pressures him into helping out with a longed for big score.
It’s an enjoyable ride, humorous, hardboiled and tense, with a great cast of characters in its small-town setting. Parker is great central character, amoral enough to be convincing and interesting, but sympathetic enough to not just come over as a sociopath.
Joe R Lansdale’s 6th book in the ‘Hap and Leonard’ series doesn’t quite measure up to the best of them, but it’s still a fun ride. In this adventure, Hap saves the daughter of a millionaire from a brutal attack, gets a big payout as a result and takes his buddy Leonard on a Mexican cruise. Needless to say, things go badly wrong.
The appeal of these books is the banter between the two leads and trying to figure out how they’ll get out of the scrapes they get into. This one delivers on those fronts, but the plot felt a little bit too convoluted to me.
‘The Strange’ is a wonderful, page turning sci fi adventure, that blends western tropes, horror and a coming of age narrative into a very satisfying whole. It’s set in Mars in the 1930s, humans are mining the planet. Teenage heroine and narrator Annabelle helps her father run the town diner and gets pulled into a quest across the planet when robbers attack their business.
Annabelle is pure Mattie Ross (the heroine of Charles Portis’ excellent western ‘True Grit’), but no worse for that. She’s smart, determined, funny and a joy to read. The events of the book and the background to the occupation of Mars are ridiculous in just the right way. It’s pure pulpy entertainment, with monsters, robots and peril.
A very enjoyable read from an author I’ll definitely be revisiting
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December 7, 2024
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #15
This week has been a very satisfying one book-wise. The three books I finished were all extremely enjoyable, representing just the kind of popular, genre fiction that I love. Writing to improve or educate is all very well, but for me writing to entertain is equally important. The joy of a good read is it’s ability to lift you out of yourself and transport you. All three of the books below did that for me.
Cheerio!
Books I’ve Read This WeekThe Gathering by CJ Tudor
The concept of ‘The Gathering’ is an interesting one. Vampires are real, but a protected minority who live in settlements separate from humans, surviving on animal blood and often subject to discrimination.
Set a mystery novel against this backdrop and you have a fun ride. The lore is well handled and the mystery unfolds at just the right pace. The Alaskan setting works perfectly and the cast of characters (especially heroine Barbara) are convincing and engaging.
‘May the Wolf Die’ is an extremely accomplished debut thriller, which combines a great setting, a kickass heroine and a breakneck pace.
Set in Naples, it follows Nikki Serafino, who acts as a liaison between the Neopolitan police and the US Navy. It’s a neat setup, which allows the plot to cover both local crime/law enforcement and more geopolitical tensions.
Nikki is an engaging central character, easy to root for an as physical and driven as a good detective should be. The book has a great sense of place too, rich descriptions mean the city and its communities really pop on the page, but they ever get in the way of the story.
It’s the plot and pacing that are the real star though, There is a relentlessness to events that make the book almost unberably tense and gripping. I don’t think a chapter goes by without something dramatic or momentous happening. There is just so much going on in the book, the main investigation, secondary ones and multiple sub-plots involving the cental characters and their families. There’s enough content here for a 600 page book, so the fact it clocks in at a relatively svelte 350 pages is impressive. What’s also laudable is that it never feels overwhelming. Despite the multiple characters and narratives, I never felt like I didn’t have a clear grasp of what was going on.
This might be the crime debut of the year, I can’t wait to see what Heider does next.
I remember my local library having a copy of ‘The Long Walk’ under the Richard Bachman pseudonym back before it came out that he was King. I was always intrigued by the premise, but didn’t ever check it out. I wish I had because this feels like a book written to be read by young men.
King wrote it in high school I believe, and that shows in the fact that he lays things on as thickly as he does. Despite (or maybe because of that) the book mostly works. It’s certainly gripping and engagingly told and the central premise (every year in a near future America 100 young men walk until only one of them is still going) is immediately gripping. It’s basically ‘The Lottery’ meets ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They?’ and it has more raw power than something like ‘The Hunger Games’ which dilutes its political message with an actual plot. The plotlessness of ‘The Long Walk’ should be a problem, but in King’s hands it isn’t. You basically know what is going to happen from the first page, but he still mananges to keep it gripping. I think that’s largely down to decent character work. The boys on the walk might not be likeable, but they do feel quite realistic and you grow to care about them.
December 1, 2024
The CriminOlly Plain Dealer #14
As I revealed in a short I put up on Saturday, I’m not a big fan of the number that comes after 12. We’re skipping am issue of the Plain Dealer this week as a result, and skipping straight to 14.
As well as the books noted below, watched the new Ted Danson Netflix show ‘A Man on the Inside’ this week and enjoyed it enormously. I went in expecting a cosy, comic mystery and got something a bit more. Definitely recommended.
Cheerio!
Books I’ve Read This WeekApartment 16 by Adam Nevill
‘Apartment 16’ is a chillingly effective horror novel about weird goings on centring on a London apartment building. Apryl, a young American woman has come to London to sort out the affairs of her great aunt, a resident of the building who has died. Meanwhile, Seth is a young man with a troubled past who works as a security guard there. The interweaving narrative sees the two investigate the increasingly strange events at the block and delve into its dark history.
Like all the Adam Nevill books I’ve read, there’s a deep creepiness here. He is particularly good at describing the unusual, giving you just enough to get your mind working overtime to fill in the details.
The book is maybe a tad longer than it needed to be, but that’s a small criticism of an otherwise excellent horror story. It’s tense, compelling and darkly enjoyable.
This collection of short stories inspired by the video game LA Noire is an unexpected gem. The stories are punchy, pulpy, crime shorts from some great writers, including Lawrence Block, Andrew Vachss and Joe R Lansdale. For me the highlights were Joyce Carol Oates’ excellent tale of a friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Short (the victim of the Black Dahlia murder) and Francine Prose’s wonderful story of an acting class that teaches movie actors who to be convincing murderers.
Neil Simon’s Murder by Death by HRF Keating
I haven’t seen the movie this is based on (one of those high concept, star studded 70s comedies) and suspect if I had I might have enjoyed this more. The premise is fun – a reclusive millionaire who hates detectives invites a bunch of them to his mansion to solve a murder – and there were some individually funny lines, but it largely failed to entertain me. I suspect it worked better on screen, with the various stars hamming it up, but as a book it was probably always doomed to failure.
The Gunsmith 319: Out of the Past by JR Roberts
The Gunsmith is one of those massively long running western series that combines old school cowboy action with a little smut. It’s been running since 1982 and is still going, with over 500 entries if you count the two spin off series Gunsmith Giant and Lady Gunsmith. This is the first one I’ve read and it was decently enjoyable. Hero Clint Adams gets approached by a teenage girl claiming she’s his daughter. Her mother, a woman from Adams’ past, has been murdered, and naturally he saddles up and goes to investigate. There isn’t a tonne of action (of either kind) but it was still a fast paced and entertaining read. Nothing to write home about, but a fun way to spend a couple of hours.
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