Oliver Clarke's Blog: Little Slices of Nasty, page 7

Five Decembers by James Kestrel #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: An epic novel that skilfully combines hardboiled mystery, war and love stories. 5/5

Title: Five Decembers | Author: James Kestrel | Publisher: Hard Case Crime | Pages: 432 | Publication date: 19th October 2021 | Source: Publisher | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: No

Review

Five Decembers is a book that manages to feel both deeply personal and sprawlingly epic. It has the straightforward narrative of classic Hollywood movie and the dramatic scope to match, but also digs deep into the emotions and motive of its characters.

Told over four years (and five Decembers), it starts in Honolulu in the run up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Its protagonist is Hawaii PD detective Joe McGrady. Joe is sent to investigate a body found on a local farm, and quickly finds himself embroiled in a brutal, high profile case. The classic hardboiled detective story of the first third develops into something more complex as the novel progresses, weaving war story and romance into the police procedural.

Joe’s determination to do the right thing keeps driving the tale forward, even as the odds against him mount. He’s an incredibly satisfying character, written right on the edge of cliché but somehow convincing and always great to read. The fact that James Kestrel’s prose has the terse brute force of the best noirs helps a lot. The sentences are short and yet the words flow together perfectly. It’s the perfect style for the story Kestrel is telling. Plain and unadorned, but never lacking in subtlety. Kestrel manages to pack so much meaning into so few words that the story flies by but the emotions and the characters linger with the reader.

There is a beautiful moment in the final third of the book where Joe sees that some trash cans that were dented five years previously in the first third are still dented.

It was amazing what things were allowed to endure, while others evaporated.

So much has happened in the interim and that one simple line encourages the reader to take stock of them, pausing for a moment from the story to think about the real lives that were destroyed by the Second World War.

That’s the power of Five Decembers. It is such a page turning tale, but packed with raw truths about both love and conflict. It’s a brilliant piece of fiction and worth your time whether you’re a crime fan or not.

Synopsis

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn’t know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor

Warnings

Content Warning: Racism, sexual violence

Tolerance Warning: All good

Something More Than Night by Kim Newman #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: Enjoyable and witty crime/horror mash up that could have done with a more ruthless editor 3/5

Title: Something More Than Night | Author: Kim Newman |Publisher: Titan Books | Pages: 368 | Publication date: 2nd November 2021 | Source: Publisher | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: No

Review

On paper, Something More Than Night looked like a book I was going to love, and it was certainly one I was very excited to read. It combines three things I adore, hardboiled crime, horror and film trivia, and comes from an author I’ve previously enjoyed, Kim Newman. Aside from penning the Anno Dracula series and the interesting experimental novel Life’s Lottery, Newman is an excellent film critic and penned a history of modern (well, 70s and 80s) horror cinema which I read multiple times as a teenager.

Something More Than Night had a really fun concept at its heart. Author Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) and actor Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) were school chums in early 20th century England and team up again in 1930s Los Angeles where they get involved in the investigation of a bizarre crime. I won’t give away much more than that, but it’s fair to say that things get very weird very quickly.

For the most part, it’s very entertaining. The story moves at a fair clip and Chandler makes for a great narrator. The writing is often inventive and playful, and the book exciting very funny at times. As you’d expect from a film critic, Newman packs the book with interesting movie lore that’s well woven into the story and doesn’t overwhelm it.

The one spanner in the works is the inclusion of two long chapters that divert the reader away from the entertaining duo of Chandler and Karloff and focus instead on a buddy of theirs who’s a private eye. These sections are written in a very hardboiled third person style which felt laboured. They don’t really add anything to the story and in fact distract from the main action.

At over 350 pages it’s a fairly long book for what is a slight, if entertaining, concept. I honestly think that without the two third person sections it would have been a better, more enjoyable book. As it is, it can feel like a bit of a chore at times, which is a shame, because when it’s good, it’s as much fun as it sounds.

Synopsis

Dulwich College, England 1904. A young Raymond Chandler meets an enthusiastic cricketer named Billy Pratt (later Boris Karloff). Sharing a sense of being outsiders at school, the two young men become friends and Chandler encourages Pratt to help him uncover the mystery of the housemaster’s strange wife and various disappearing objects. What the boys uncover will haunt them their whole lives…

Hollywood, USA, 1944. When a young actress names Eliza Dane, also Chandler’s mistress, turns up dead, in an apparent suicide having jumped from the Hollywood sign, Chandler realises he cannot escape his past. He seeks out his old friend and together they confront the terrible creature who entered their lives all those years ago.

Warnings

Content Warning: Racism, alcoholism

Tolerance Warning: All good

Sinister Mix by Brian Bowyer #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: A strong short story collection that provides a terrible glimpse into a very dark world. 4/5

Title: Sinister Mix | Author: Brian Bowyer | Publisher: Self-published | Page: 207 | Publication date: 17th April 2021 | Source: Self-purchased | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: No

Review

Sinister Mix is a strange book. It’s a short story collection that falls into the extreme horror sub genre, one that intrigues me but which I’ve to date failed to really connect with. I think that Sinister Mix has changed that, but to be honest I’m still processing it. It’s a wild ride – extreme to be sure and rough around the edges from time, but horribly compelling. What’s strangest about it is not to so much the gory violence and dismemberment, but the structure of the stories. More on that later.

The 14 stories that make up Sinister Mix are all brief, punchy slices of very dark horror. They’re often shocking and the book comes with just about every trigger warning you could think of. It’s very graphic and unrelentingly bleak with no happy endings and a very high body count. The pain isn’t just physical either, Brian Bowyer does just a good job of describing psychological torture and the agony of grief as he does literal torture.

What’s most impressive about the collection is the sparsity for his prose and storytelling. At times the writing feels like that of an old pulp crime novel, if has that stripped down energy and punch. Bowyer sets up his scenarios with absolute efficiency, before getting into the horror. Often those scenarios are bizarre or horrific from the start – a virus has killed everyone who isn’t an alcoholic, a mother sells her daughter for heroin, a man hires a prostitute who looks like his dead daughter – but they’re usually only the backdrop for the real horror that follows. Crucially though that real horror is relayed with at least a hint of restraint. It’s often the ideas rather than the details that really lingered with me.

Which brings me back to structure. So the writing is good and the setting up of the scenarios is often great, but the tempo of the stories is unusual and it took me a little while to adjust to. They all basically go: Set up, something horrible happens, something more horrible happens, the end. I went into the collection expecting stories with a more classical pacing, that kind of twist ending that the EC horror comics excelled at, or at least some kind of resolution. Bowyer rarely provides that. The stories often finish not because the events have reached their climax, but because the camera has panned away from the action. It takes some time to get used to, and when you do it’s very unsettling. The book ends up feeling like multiple glimpses into a horrible world that continues to be horrible even though you aren’t looking at it anymore.

Synopsis

A family in mourning discovers a creature that renders grief obsolete. A cannibal hunts for food after a plague decimates humanity. A mother loses her son and will do anything to find him. A killer meets the man of her dreams at the tavern where she works. These stories and more are gathered in SINISTER MIX—fourteen tales of terror that will keep you reading long into the night.

Warnings

Content Warning: Rape, child abuse, cannibalism, alcoholism

Tolerance Warning: All good

Throat Sprockets by Tim Lucas #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: A haunting horror novel that’s kind of a vampire story but mostly a fascinating study of obsession. 5/5

Title: Throat Sprockets | Author: Tim Lucas | Publisher: Fourth Estate | Pages: 232 | Publication date: 1st July 1996 | Source: Self-purchased | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: No

Review

Throat Sprockets is a wonderful horror novel that’s far less well known than it deserves to be. Originally conceived as a comic strip, the first two parts of it were published in the anthology horror comic Taboo in the late 1980s. That’s where I originally came across it, and it’s subtle, psychological impact made such an impression on me that when I stumbled across the novel in a second hand bookshop years later I bought it immediately.

It’s a book about cursed art, a topic that has always fascinated me. In this case it’s the movie of the title. Throat Sprockets is a weird, story free film riddled with apparently excises sections, that revolves around the fetishisation of women’s throats. The unnamed protagonist of the novel discovers it playing in an adult movie theatre that he frequents in his lunch breaks out of boredom  with the sterile modern world. He becomes obsessed with the film and his search for more information about it, as well as the impact it has on his life, occupies the rest of the book.

It’s a riveting and beautifully constructed novel. The protagonist’s obsession with the film is contagious and I found myself desperate to get through the book to uncover all of its secrets. Those secrets are wonderfully teased out as the story unfurls, with snippets revealed to the narrator and reader with tantalising but exquisite slowness.

It’s also brilliantly satirical, casting its eye over both the advertising industry and the media in general. In part it’s a book about our fascination with works of art and our need to feel personally connected to them. If that was true in 1994, it is even more so in the age of Men’s Rights Activists trolling actors on social media when they don’t approve of them appearing in beloved film franchises.

I only finished it a couple of days ago, but this is a book that already feels like it will linger with me like the original comics did. It’s weird, compulsive and convincing in the dreamlike way of the best horror. It’s a book that reaches inside you and taps into your subconscious fears and obsessions. It’s also a book that should be far better known than it is. If you like weird things I strongly recommend finding yourself a copy while you still can.

Synopsis

Spending his lunch hours in a porno theater to relieve his boredom, a young advertising executive discovers an obscure film called Throat Sprockets and develops a fascination for women’s throats that gradually consumes his life.

Warnings

Content Warning: Sexual violence

Tolerance Warning: All good

I Watched Them Eat Me Alive: Killer Creatures in Men’s Adventure Magazines by Robert Deis (editor) #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: A wonderfully entertaining and marvellously horrible collection of stories and artwork from vintage magazines. 5/5

Title: I Watched Them Eat Me Alive: Killer Creatures in Men’s Adventure Magazines | Editor: Robert Deis | Publisher: New Texture | Pages: 128 | Publication date: 6th July 2017 | Source: Self-purchased | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: Yes

Review

I Watched Them Eat Me Alive is delightful trip of a book. It’s contents have been torn from the pages of Men’s Adventure Magazines from the 1950s, 60s and 70s and lovingly put back together again into a slim but satisfying volume that mixes artwork, stories and modern critique on both. Growing out of the pulps at a time when millions of blue collar men still read for pleasure, these magazines mixed cheesecake photography, articles on hunting and other masculine pursuits, dramatic illustrations and punchy short stories in the genres with a perceived male appeal: crime, westerns, adventures, sci fi and horror.

The publishers have pulled together a number of different themed books (War, Westerns, Bikers, etc), with this one focussing on animal attacks. Like a weird extension of the non fiction hunting and travel content the magazines also featured, these outlandish tales detail hunters and wilderness adventurers at the mercy of nature and are written in a faux documentary style. There are five stories within, including snakes, gorillas, crabs and flying squirrels (!) as their relentless enemies.  

The stories are very formulaic, often identical in structure, but no less fun for it. Typically they start with some violence, then flash back to provide background, then continue with the violence, and end with their heroes literally cataloguing the body parts they have been robbed of. The detail of that bloody theft is often far more graphic than I expected. The crab story (which gives the book its title) includes references to severed veins flapping like bloody worms.

Aside from the stories, which are fun enough on their own, the book is packed with full colour reproductions of original cover art. The pictures have a glorious retro appeal, harking back to an age before streaming services and video games, when popular entertainment was often just a combination of ink, paper and the fevered imaginations of a hundred hacks.

Synopsis

I Watched Them Eat Me Alive is the first installment of The Men’s Adventure Library Journal, a series focusing on specific facets of the vintage men’s adventure magazines stories, artwork, and history. This deluxe, expanded hardcover contains additional material exclusive to this edition.

Dedicated to exploring the lost world of vintage men’s adventure magazines (aka MAMs), The Men’s Adventure Library chronicles the mags’ three decades on American newsstands, from the early 1950s through the mid-1970s. Mixing elements from many sources–early pulp fiction, detective stories and true crime, mystery and noir films, exotic travel magazines, celebrity scandal rags and bachelor mags–MAMs ratcheted up the tension and amped up the testosterone to create explosive, entertaining, and often outrageous reading for millions of American men. Though long extinct and mostly unseen for generations, their pervasive influence continues to shape some of the most popular and enduring pop culture tropes and trends.

Curated by MAM historian/collector Robert Deis and writer Wyatt Doyle, The Men’s Adventure Library reprints and provides context for classic MAM stories and artwork drawn from the mags’ rich history of gonzo pulp, with releases available in full-color trade paperback and deluxe, expanded hardcover editions. Each volume is a vivid reminder that MAMs were extremely cool, unexpectedly influential, and still pack a bare-knuckle punch. Read ’em all…if you’ve got the guts!

Warnings

Content Warning: Animal cruelty

Tolerance Warning: Sexism, racism

Headhunter by Michael Slade #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: A mix of police procedural and extreme horror that misses the mark a bit on the former but absolutely nails the gore. 3/5

Title: Headhunter | Author: Michael Slade | Series: Special X #1 | Publisher: Star Books | Pages: 477 | Publication date: 1984 | Source: Self-purchased | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: No

Review

I read ‘Headhunter’, the first of Canadian author Michael Slade’s Special X series, decades ago as a teenager and really liked it. Returning to it years later I didn’t find it quite as good as I’d expected, but still had fun with it. It’s an appropriate book to review here, as Slade is a McBain fan. The master is noted in the acknowledgements and there are a couple of references to the 87th Precinct within the book, with a character recommending to one of the cops that he gives them a try. 

Slade is described in the bio as a pseudonym used by a group of partners in a law firm. His Twitter presence today suggests he is just one person now, so not sure if the writing partnership dissolved at some point.

The book details an investigation by an elite team of Mounties into a series of sex murders where the female victims are decapitated. It’s a kind of hybrid of police procedural and out and out horror, with the original marketing of the books definitely leaning more towards the latter. The horror is pretty brilliantly done. It’s extremely graphic and quite shocking at times, with a tonne of perverse sex thrown in for good measure. That may account for my fond memories of the book from my teenage years.

What works less well is the plotting. At 470 pages it’s way too long and the storytelling is muddy and confusing at times, darting all over the place. McBain’s influence is clear in some of the prose and the flashes of humour through the book, but unfortunately not in tightness of the writing. I’m not sure if the issues may in part be down to the fact that it was written by a team, but it could definitely have used a better editor to trim it down.  

For all that though, when it’s good it is very good. The action and horror scenes crackle and it’s so imaginatively disgusting that it gets a thumbs up from me. I’ve been gradually picking up the later books in the series, so expect to see more reviews here soon.

Synopsis

The women aren’t safe with a beheading killer on the lose. Detective Robert DeClercq was even eluded as he and the police combed the lower depths of the sexual underground on two continents.

Warnings

Content Warning: Racism, sexual violence, incest, graphic gore

Tolerance Warning: All good

The Reformed Gun by Marvin H Albert #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: Clichéd but solidly enjoyable 50s western. 4/5

Title: The Forgotten Gun | Author: Marvin H Albert | Publisher: Gold Medal | Pages: 140 | Publication date: 1959 | Source: Self-purchased | Content warnings: No | Tolerance warning: Yes

Review

‘The Reformed Gun’ is a forgotten western from the 1950s, one of thousands of slim paperbacks with colourful covers and engaging titles that filled the shelves at one time but have now fallen very much out of fashion. Whilst crime fiction has proven perennially popular, westerns seem to have had their day. That is perhaps understandable, the tropes of manly white men protecting their womenfolk from Native Americans and Mexicans certainly feel horrifically dated. Although you could argue that the protective man mantle has been ably picked up by the likes of ‘The Walking Dead’’.

I came to the book in a roundabout way. Quentin Tarantino’s masterful movie ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ features a cowboy novel called ‘Ride a Wild Bronc’ which is read by Leonard Di Caprio’s character. The book doesn’t exist, but Tarantino’s novelisation of his film contains a fake advert for it which attributes it to Marvin H Albert. A bit of web searching revealed that Albert was a real author who published a load of westerns, detective novels and thrillers under various names from the 50s up until the 90s. He also penned a lot of movie novelisations, including the one for ‘The Untouchables’, which I’m pretty sure I read back in the 80s.

That’s a long introductory ramble for a review of a short book. The good news is, it’s a good book! Plot-wise it’s fairly simple. Concho Reynolds is a young gunfighter with a chequered past he wants to leave behind. When he gets involved in a feud between two ranchers he not only has to pick a side, but also decide if some causes are worth picking up his gun again for.

The prose in ‘The Reformed Gun’ isn’t always great, there are a lot of repeated words and it can be clumsy and stilted at times. Fortunately the story and characters more than make up for that. The book might be full of clichés (the troubled young man trying to prove himself; the gruff, settled father figure who comes to trust and guide him), but they are clichés that work. Concho’s struggle to do the right thing is convincing and gripping. The book uses action scenes sparingly but well. Every time a pistol is drawn or a rifle cocked I found that I cared about the outcome.

It’s not a book that will give you massive insight into the human condition, but as a tense, enjoyable thriller it’s a lot of fun. Certainly it was good enough to make me want to read more of Albert’s books. And more westerns for that matter.

Synopsis

Concho mounted his horse and rode off without a word. In his pocket was one silver dollar and on his hip was a gun he could steel for hundreds of dollars. The gun he had sworn to never use again.

Warnings

Content Warning: None

Tolerance Warning: Sexist tropes

Fiddlers by Ed McBain #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: A fitting end to a wonderful series – gripping, funny and poignant. 4/5

Title: Fiddlers | Author: Ed McBain | Series: 87th Precinct #55 | Publisher: Orion | Pages: 228 | Publication date: 2005 | Source: Self-purchased | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: No

Review

Coming to the end of a series you love is always a bittersweet moment. That’s more true than ever in the case of ‘Fiddlers’. Evan Hunter died the same year it was published, making it his last published work as well as the final 87th Precinct mystery. As a long time fan, it’s hard to read it without reflecting on that.  

The good news is that it’s an excellent end to the series. McBain pulls in many of the regular characters: Carella, Kling, Hawes, Brown, Genero, Parker and Ollie Weeks to investigate a string of shootings that seem to only be connected by the fact that the same gun was used in each. That single mystery takes up the whole book, backed up by the mini storylines about the lives of the characters that have become common in the later books. Kling’s relationship with Sharyn Cooke, Carella’s with his new mother’s second husband, Ollie’s with patrolwoman Patricia. All make enjoyable additions to the main plot, and if none of them reach a definite conclusion, nothing is left too badly hanging.

The main plot is where the action is though, and it’s a very enjoyable, if poignant, mystery. The investigations into the lives of the individual victims are handled separately, and all come together beautifully in a climax that see the different detectives independently identify the killer. It’s gripping and fascinating stuff, with McBain’s talent for creating incidental characters who convince completely in full effect. There’s also some great humour in the book, in particular a wonderful scene where the appalling Andy Parker gives Ollie Weeks relationship advice (“you’ve got to create the right ambulance….it’s a French word…”).

As sad as it is that such a brilliant series had to come to an end, it’s fitting that the final entry should be one that so encapsulates the best elements of the books and of McBain’s writing. Great mysteries, great characters and a view of humanity that includes the joy and laughter as well as the darkness.

Synopsis

It started with the blind violinist – shot twice through the head at point-blank range in the alley outside his dingy restaurant. It’s only when the omelette lady gets shot with the same gun in the same way 24 hours later that the 87th Precinct really starts to sit up and take notice.

Warnings

Content Warning: Child Abuse, homophobia, racism

Tolerance Warning: All good

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: Slow burn horror novella pays off horrifically in the final third 4/5

Title: Nothing But Blackened Teeth | Author: Cassandra Khaw | Publisher: Titan Books | Pages: 128 | Publication date: 19th October 2021 | Source: Publisher | Content warnings: No | Tolerance warning: No

Review

Nothing But Blackened Teeth crept up on me like one of the creepy as hell monsters it features. It starts slowly and gently and, if I’m honest, didn’t grab me that much at first. The more I read though, the more I liked it and by the end I was completely swept up by the nightmare that had gradually unfurled.

It’s a shortish book (definitely a novella rather than a novel) and the premise is simple. A group of friends travel to Japan for the wedding of two of their number, staying in a huge and ornate mansion. The mansion, no surprises, is populated by demonic creatures from Asian folklore who begin to prey on their unwanted guests.

For the first half Nothing But Blackened Teeth is slow and very much character based as the various members of the party are introduced. I struggled a bit to keep engaged with it, what kept me going was the strength of the writing. The prose is unusually good, and the setting carried with it the promise that something was going to happen.

When it did, I was very glad I’d kept reading. The final third of the book is tight as a drum and absolutely terrifying. As the supernatural elements explode onto the page that pace ramps up and that excellent prose ties everything together wonderfully. It has the surreal, horrifying feel of the worst nightmare and kept my Kindle glued to my hands.

Sometimes novellas don’t work for me, having neither the punch of a short story nor the depth of a novel, but Nothing But Blackened Teeth walks the tightrope beautifully. It’s the perfect length for what is a fairly simple horror tale, and the balance between build up and climax has of big time. I’ve seen a few less positive reviews floating around for this one, but I thought it worked very well indeed.

Synopsis

A group of thrill-seeking friends in search of the perfect wedding venue plan to spend the night in a Heian-era mansion. Long abandoned, and unknown to them, this mansion rests on the bones of a bride, and its walls are packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

Their night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare, as the house welcomes its new guests. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

Warnings

Content Warning: None

Tolerance Warning: All good

Edge – California Killing by George G Gilman #BookReview

CriminOlly thinks: A brutal western that’s far more entertaining than it probably should be. 3/5

Title: California Killing | Author: George G Gilman | Series: Edge #7 | Publisher: New English Library | Pages: 127 | Publication date: 1973 | Source: Self-purchased | Content warnings: Yes | Tolerance warning: Yes

Review

I’m not sure if it’s because George G Gilman had churned out six other Edge books in quick succession before ‘California Killing’, or because I’ve read them almost as quickly, but the seventh in the series didn’t delight me as much as the previous books.

The plot, such as it is, sees Edge tryout to get back money stolen from him in a stagecoach hold up. The action mostly takes place in a small Californian town and with the usual rivalries between powerful men. Gilman has great fun implying that the town (literally called The Town With No Name) will become Hollywood. Pretty much every character and location has a movie-relayed name: Mayer, Wayne, Bronson, the Paramount Hotel, the RKO Ranch and so on. Whether the reader has as much fun is questionable. It’s a gag that’s amusing at first, but quickly outstays its welcome. I also found it made it harder to remember who all the characters were.

The action, though, is just as brutal as you’d expect, even if the body count is lower than in many of the other books. It’s packed with shootouts, torture, maiming and rape. In fact there’s even more of the last than in previous books. Like the humour, it’s starting to feel a bit over used and unwelcome.

On a more positive note, there’s a bit more about Edge’s Mexican heritage, with one of the villains of the piece clearly marked out as such by his racism. There’s also a great finale, including a ridiculous but brilliant death for the main villain.

Not as good as the previous books then, but still the kind of punchy, pulpy entertainment that will keep readers looking for that kind of thing happy for a couple of hours.

Synopsis

It seemed nice. A quiet little town, just outside Los Angeles. The central building is a theatre run by Rodney Holly. Right next door is the photographer, Justin Wood. A small pleasant place to live, the kind of place people dream about.

But people die there. Some silently and alone, others shot down in the uneasy streets. It’s amazing how blood can run cold in the hot California sun. Before long, there are no dreams left…just the edge of a nightmare.

Warnings

Content Warning: Racism, sexual violence

Tolerance Warning: Sexism