As a companion to Scrum’s ‘Favourite Authors’ thread, I thought I’d start this one, for Forum members to discuss which novels they are currently reading, and to share their opinions.

I recently finished Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark/Donald Westlake. It was so good that I spent a good hour today, adding everything I could find by the man, at least what’s still in print, to my Amazon wishlist.

Now though, I’m currently about fifty pages into Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen. Having read everything else, this remains the last novel by Mr. Hiaasen for me to read. I’ll try to take my time. I can say that throughout his career, he consistently breaks more than a couple of Mr. Leonard’s rules; but he does spin some good yarns.

Anybody else care to share what currently sits on their night-stand, coffee table or desk?

Dov Seidman’s How—Why How we do Anything means Everything, in Business (and in Life)

Saw and met Mr. Seidman at a lecture he gave here in Syracuse couple of weeks ago as part of The Famous Entrepreneurs Series. They do 3 or 4 of these lectures a year, sponsored by local companies. I’ve attended a few so far. You always get a book and can stay after for a signing and reception. I’ve read Carly Fiorina’s memoir, Tough Choices, Rod Beckstrom’s The Starfish and the Spider, and passed along a few others that aren’t collecting dust on the shelf.

Dov Seidman’s book is fascinating. Talks about leading by inspiration rather than with an iron fist, to ‘outbehave’ the competition in today’s connected and transparent business world.

I’ll get back to the fiction after this one.

American Skin by Ken Bruen.  He is rightly called master of Irish Noir.  He is brutal,dark but also with literary talented strong writing style and with some nice dark humor.

He is an unholy mix of Jim Thompson+Elmore Leonard with the dark,bleak Noir,criminal oriented characters and the writing style,humor is like an Irish slang version of Leonard.

A modern crime writer im really glad to discovered.  He is up there with my favorite crime writers of different eras.

I’ve only encountered Ken Bruen’s work once; it was a co-written book, released through HardCase Crime, with Jason Starr, if my memory serves me. For the life of me, I can’t remember much about it, so I’ll have to go back and dig it out. One for the re-read list.

Dont read his co-written books.

I have one of them Slide and i dislike it.

Its not written nearly like his own books.  Jason Starr might be good on his own to but he suck with Bruen imo.

Get his Jack Taylor books or American Skin.

Hardcase crime books of his,Starr are so over the top and lame.

I wasted months cause i was dissapointed by the hardcase crime book of theirs i got.  Then i read his own book The Guards and was blown away by his ability,characters.  A book that makes you sad,want to cry and laugh at some of the humor is very rare.

elmore and updike
bech

I’m going through the Harlem novels of Chester Himes again. Himes is an interesting case. He couldn’t write for shit, couldn’t plot & his characters are strictly cartoons. (His much vaunted career as a bonafide criminal didn’t amount to much either, getting sent away on one of his first capers.) Nevertheless there is something appealing about him, worth a second reading. It must be his imaginary universe, the vice & crime ridden slums of black Harlem in the 1950’s, in the summer heat or the dark of night or the stink of pure evil.  And the reader spends more time with the crimes & the criminals & the poor fools caught inbetween (something in common with EL here) than with the nominal heroes detectives Djones & Djohnson. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend these books to Forum members, there’s too much author in the texts, & most aren’t in print at the moment anyway, but if you come across one on the bookshelves of someone you’re spending the weekend with I’d say give it a go.

Crime Beat -South Africa

http://crimebeat.book.co.za/blog/2009/02/25/top-ten-krimis-roger-smith-makes-his-choice/

Top Ten Krimis : Roger Smith makes his choice
February 25th, 2009 by Barbara
Coming soon to a book shop near you will be Roger Smith’s no holds barred Mixed Blood (Henry Holt, distributed locally by Pan Macmillan.) To give you some idea of what sort of krimi you’ll find on Smith’s shelves here’s his top 10 in, to quote him, ‘no particular order’.

1. Glitz, Elmore Leonard
This is when Elmore Leonard really hit his stride, doing what he does best: a multi-viewpoint narrative that moves like hell. Great dialogue (of course), a tough-but-vulnerable hero, a sick and nasty villain, with a good-looking woman thrown in. Is there anybody out there who wouldn’t kill to be able to write as effortlessly as this?

2. Point Blank, Richard Stark
I was an impressionable early teen when I first read this, and I still dip into it once in a while. Parker (no first name, precious little backstory) is out of prison and wanting revenge. As lean as a Brazilian supermodel, this book sucks you whole into Parker’s amoral world. Stark was the alias of Donald Westlake, who died in Dec 2008.

3. No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
Loved the movie. Love the book even more. McCarthy strips his prose down to bare essentials and takes us on a dark tour of the Texas badlands. He effortlessly shifts between multiple viewpoints and casually tosses out some of the greatest dialogue I’ve read in years: “There is no description of fool, he said, that you fail to satisfy”. I know there could never be a sequel… Pity.

4. The Talented Mr Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
Forget about the limp movie version, and read this deadpan amorality tale from the fabulously understated Highsmith. Before you know it, you are rooting for the most seductive anti-hero series fiction has ever produced: Tom Ripley. Tom is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve his son, Dickie, from Italy. Ripley insinuates himself into Dickie’s world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf — at all costs. All five Ripley books (spanning 1955 – 1991) are essential reading.

5. Tough Guys Don’t Dance, Norman Mailer
Alcoholic writer Tim Madden awakes one morning with a gruesome hangover, a painful tattoo on his upper arm, blood all over the passenger seat of his Porsche, a severed female head in his marijuana stash, and almost no memory of his actions on the preceding night. Bled dry by alimony payments, Mailer whacked out this short, hard-edged crime novel for the money. Wish he’d done more – he seems to be having a high old time.

6. The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
The narrator, Lou Ford, is a small-town sheriff who appears to be a sweet, dumb, hayseed. In reality he’s a super-sharp psychopath, fighting a nearly-constant urge to act violently. Ford describes his urge as the sickness. A Thompson classic, and a reminder that protagonists don’t have to be nice.

7. The Big Nowhere, James Ellroy
Three men are caught up in a series of mutilation killings against the backdrop of blacklist-era Los Angeles. Ellroy writes like a speed demon. Story goes that he was told by a publisher that his manuscript was too long, so rather than lose any content he just chopped out unnecessary words. Some of his later books verge on self-pastiche, but this one is relentless.

8. Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone
A counter-culture Conrad, Stone’s Vietnam-era tale of drug dealing and deception has worn pretty well. He has a way with character, dialogue and off-hand violence that is unique. Great climax with people dropping hallucinogenics and getting shot to pieces in the California desert.

9. God’s Pocket, Pete Dexter
Leon Hubbard was arrogant and near psychotic. So when he was killed on a South Philadelphia construction site, everyone who knew him wanted to bury the bad news with the body. All, that is, except two — Leon’s mother and a local columnist. Funny and frightening, this has Dexter’s trademark skill with multiple-POVs, a brilliantly conjured “City of Brotherly Love” and a style all of his own.

10. Drive, James Sallis
“I drive. That’s what I do. All I do.” So says Driver, the enigmatic movie stunt-driver/ getaway wheelman in this neo-noir. A robbery gone bad. Betrayal and revenge. With a dark and nasty backstory bleeding through. Barely longer than a novella, this is a sawn-off shotgun of a book. Sallis’s writing is cut to the bone, but he still produces hard urban poetry. Read it in one sitting.

Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazell. Not bad, not bad at all (I am translating it into Italian, but I would have read it anyway).

Old City Hall, by Robert Rotenberg. Excellent Canadian legal thriller (my next translation; the book is due out in the States in a couple of weeks).

djones - 25 February 2009 02:26 PM

I’m going through the Harlem novels of Chester Himes again. Himes is an interesting case. He couldn’t write for shit, couldn’t plot & his characters are strictly cartoons. (His much vaunted career as a bonafide criminal didn’t amount to much either, getting sent away on one of his first capers.) Nevertheless there is something appealing about him, worth a second reading. It must be his imaginary universe, the vice & crime ridden slums of black Harlem in the 1950’s, in the summer heat or the dark of night or the stink of pure evil.  And the reader spends more time with the crimes & the criminals & the poor fools caught inbetween (something in common with EL here) than with the nominal heroes detectives Djones & Djohnson. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend these books to Forum members, there’s too much author in the texts, & most aren’t in print at the moment anyway, but if you come across one on the bookshelves of someone you’re spending the weekend with I’d say give it a go.

Black Lizard has several of his Harlem books in print.

I will get the first just to try him.    I hope he is better than you think.  Setting isnt everything for me.

Finished Native Tongue, by Carl Hiaasen. Although it was entertaining; it wasn’t the strongest work he’s published. I much preferred the last novel I read by him, Basket Case. Written in first person, concerning the character Jack Tagger, an obituary writer who’s trying to break a hot story to get back on the front page.

I’m now going to start Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane. I’ve never read his work so I have no idea what to expect….

lucaconti - 25 February 2009 08:13 PM

Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazell. Not bad, not bad at all (I am translating it into Italian, but I would have read it anyway).

Old City Hall, by Robert Rotenberg. Excellent Canadian legal thriller (my next translation; the book is due out in the States in a couple of weeks).

If you ever have the time, or the inclination, I would love to hear more about the process of translation. Especially in relation to Elmore’s books; trying to preserve the attitude and style of his writing, while converting English into Italian. Are there any prominent obstacles that you encounter?

I have to admit: I gave up on Shutter Island by Lehane. Forty pages in, I was bored rigid.
Perhaps I’ll give it another go, sometime.
On the recommendation of a friend, I’m now reading Christa Faust’s Money Shot, released last year through Hard Case Crime and nominated for the Poe award.
Only a few pages in so far, so we’ll have to see how it goes.

I finished reading in a day The Wounded and The Slain by the uber talented Dave Goodis.

Now i have started reading The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly.  Lincoln Lawyer was the only legal thriller i have read that wasnt Grisham crap i have high hopes for this one too.

I’m reading Road Dogs.  I was able to put my hands on an ARC.

pbenjamin - 05 March 2009 11:09 PM

I’m reading Road Dogs.  I was able to put my hands on an ARC.

Let us know what you think.