Parker - 04 March 2009 03:29 PM

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.

How was The Wounded and The Slain?
I did a quick search about Mr. Goodis, as I’d never heard of him before. Now I know why; he died seven years before I was born and most of his work appeared to go out of print. Now though, from what I gather, some of his books are back in print.

Jade - 06 March 2009 12:59 AM

Parker - 04 March 2009 03:29 PM

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.

How was The Wounded and The Slain?
I did a quick search about Mr. Goodis, as I’d never heard of him before. Now I know why; he died seven years before I was born and most of his work appeared to go out of print. Now though, from what I gather, some of his books are back in print.

The Wounded and The Slain was well written,strong character piece.  You really cared what happened to the main couple.  Its also set in Kingston,Jamiaca in the 50s.  He wrote it very well showing those days.  The normal Jamacians,people in slums,driving taxi,feeding of the rich Tourist.

He is seen as important Noir writer in the vien and era of Jim Thompson.

He is strong with characters,twist,writing style,words.  He is like Thompson cause that both dont care about the cool Noir with PI,crimes,heist but more about people in bad situations.

He has several famous books of his print.  I recommend Shoot The Piano Player as a good starting place.  You can get it from Vingtage/Black Lizard if you dont find it in the library or second hand.

Nice one, I’ll try to track it down.
This forum is a great place to exchange views on books/authors.

I fear that I may incur some kind of stress-related illness very soon, though, as my ‘to read’ list grows much faster than my time to read them all. Plus, I might have to indulge in some kind of ‘Frank and Ernest’ caper, just to fund my increasingly more expensive book-purchasing habit!

Have just finished the 4th ‘Dexter’ installment from Jeff Lindsay - Dexter By Design.
I picked up the first novel having watched the first season of the TV show and it was OK, I decided to give the second one a chance and am glad I did. As the series develops they definately get better as the peripheral characters become more involved.
Just started David Mendell’s “Obama: From Promise To Power” and while it’s good to have to have an objective account of the Presidents earlier years Mendell does seem to be leaning pretty heavily on President Obama’s own two volumes of autobiography - I’ll stick with it and see if it picks up.

I read that Obama book and liked it. There’s enough fly-on-the-wall stuff to keep you turning pages.

If you want a great Obama read, try this excellent article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201679.html

Maraniss wrote “First In His Class,” a terrific book about Bill Clinton. He’s writing one now about Obama. The above article makes clear his book will be THE book on Obama.

Jade - 07 March 2009 05:00 AM

Nice one, I’ll try to track it down.
This forum is a great place to exchange views on books/authors.

I fear that I may incur some kind of stress-related illness very soon, though, as my ‘to read’ list grows much faster than my time to read them all. Plus, I might have to indulge in some kind of ‘Frank and Ernest’ caper, just to fund my increasingly more expensive book-purchasing habit!

I know what you mean when you have several writers who you really like its hard setting aside money for their books.

So when i finished Goodis i thought damn another quality writer i must buy more

Next month its enough with new writers.  I will spend money on Westlake,Leonard,Jim Thompson,Bruen,Pelecanos,.  Thats enough to cost me.
Thats why when i find cheap second hand books of fav authors randomly in a store i think like its the luckies day ever.

LACrimAtty - 07 March 2009 02:46 PM

I read that Obama book and liked it. There’s enough fly-on-the-wall stuff to keep you turning pages.

If you want a great Obama read, try this excellent article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201679.html

Maraniss wrote “First In His Class,” a terrific book about Bill Clinton. He’s writing one now about Obama. The above article makes clear his book will be THE book on Obama.

Thanks for the link, great article, I’ll have to keep an eye out for the book.

Parker - 07 March 2009 03:48 PM

Jade - 07 March 2009 05:00 AM

Nice one, I’ll try to track it down.
This forum is a great place to exchange views on books/authors.

I fear that I may incur some kind of stress-related illness very soon, though, as my ‘to read’ list grows much faster than my time to read them all. Plus, I might have to indulge in some kind of ‘Frank and Ernest’ caper, just to fund my increasingly more expensive book-purchasing habit!

I know what you mean when you have several writers who you really like its hard setting aside money for their books.

So when i finished Goodis i thought damn another quality writer i must buy more

Next month its enough with new writers.  I will spend money on Westlake,Leonard,Jim Thompson,Bruen,Pelecanos,.  Thats enough to cost me.
Thats why when i find cheap second hand books of fav authors randomly in a store i think like its the luckies day ever.

Yesterday I found a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, in a book store here. Only ?200 ($2.00), so I’ll start on that today. A rare find as the store usually only sells Japanese books.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins.
Good so far; not a wasted word.

Jade - 09 March 2009 05:50 AM

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins.
Good so far; not a wasted word.

Curious what that one set you back, and where you found it?
Guessing not a Japanese bookstore.

I will be needing a look at that one when you’re done with it, Jade.
I’ll send you one of mine in exchange.
Can’t imagine what postage to/from Japan may be.
I paid around $10 last time I shipped a book to China.

Jade:  Yesterday I found a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, in a book store here. Only ?200 ($2.00), so I’ll start on that today. A rare find as the store usually only sells Japanese books.

I read A Farwell to Arms in high school, followed sometime later by For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Good stuff.  Of course, the images of Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman holed up on the mountain are far more deeply ingrained in my dome than Hemingway’s words ever were.

I just finished reading TRINITIES, by Nick Tosches, originally published in ‘94.

It’s an extruciatingly well researched crime drama pitting the traditional New York Italian mob against the Chinese Triads, for control of the world’s heroin market. Extremely far fetched and a hundred pages too long. Plus, the dialogue is pompous and ridiculous. Sorry, I grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan, but I never met a wiseguy who could quote both Dante and Confucius in the same sentence.

Tosches is obviously a gifted writer, but to what end? Your plot can be meticulously researched, your vocabulary can rival Barack Obama’s, but if your dialogue doesn’t ring true, you’ve got nothing. I’ll give it 2 stars, only because of the laborious research that must have been involved in fleshing out the history of the Chinese Triads

Scrum - 09 March 2009 02:22 PM

Jade - 09 March 2009 05:50 AM

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins.
Good so far; not a wasted word.

Curious what that one set you back, and where you found it?
Guessing not a Japanese bookstore.

I will be needing a look at that one when you’re done with it, Jade.
I’ll send you one of mine in exchange.
Can’t imagine what postage to/from Japan may be.
I paid around $10 last time I shipped a book to China.

It was through Amazon JP. About ?1500 ($15).
Send me your address via e-mail, and I’ll send it to you as soon as I’m finished.

Gregg Sutter - 25 February 2009 07:04 PM

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.

I dont know if i think its great taste in having Richard Stark in 3th place or i think its wierd he doesnt know the real title of it being The Hunter.

Point Blank is only a lame movie to me.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle was a very good read; quite an inspiring novel. The remaining work of Mr. Higgins will now join the list of ‘must read’ books, for me. One problem I can forsee is this: not many of his books are listed on Amazon JP, apart from a few ridiculously priced second-hand copies. A quick gander on Amazon UK didn’t lift my spirits, either; it was pretty much the same situation. In a week or so, one of my brothers from England will be visiting me. I thought I could use that to my advantage by getting him to bring some over .  Nevermind.

The novel I’m starting now is the first book by Thomas Harris, Black Sunday.