Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 12/01/12
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*** Bailey Cates, Brownies and Broomsticks, Obsidian, $7.99. A cozy mystery set around a bakery run by witches is about as lightweight as crime fiction gets. The heroine is, in fact, named Katie Lightfoot. But I couldn't help but smile all the way through Katie's antics as she tries to open a new business and solve the murder of the curmudgeonly community leader who wanted to close it down, all the while discovering her covenous family background. An enjoyable first-in-a-series by Cricket McRae (writ- ing as Bailey Cates).
*** Lisa Lutz, Trail of the Spellmans, Simon & Schuster, $25.00. Document #5 of the Spellman Files series continues to follow the misadventures of Isabel "Izzy" Spellman, the thirty-something slacker who probably wouldn't be in her parents' detective business if she didn't do it so well. Her younger sister is now in college, her brother married with a child. The family takes a series of separate cases that seem to be at cross-purposes. Lutz's style is offbeat and unique, but very accessible, making this series one of my favorite guilty pleasures.
Lutz and ex-boyfriend David Hayward worked together on another off-beat project, Heads You Lose, which recently was released in trade paperback (Berkley, $15.00). The result is a tag-team collaborative novel about a headless body that won't stay put. This modern-day "Trouble With Harry" echoes the affectionate rivalry between the two authors.
**** Jess Lourey, November Hunt, Midnight Ink, $14.95. I've been following Lourey since her 2006 debut, May Day. Lourey's heroine, rural Minnesota librarian and accidental detective Mira James, worked her way through eight months of sleuthing. The series started off on a high note and has only gotten better. November Hunt opens with a fatal hunting incident; but the victim's daughter suspects it was not an accident. Mira wades through a field of local pot growers, a library fundraiser, and a long-kept community secret. A good story told well, with solid writing.
***** Howard Shrier, Boston Cream, Vintage Canada, $17.95. Shrier is my top find of the year. The Toronto-based author is not well known below the Canadian border, but his excellent P.I. series deserves much wider attention. Hired by an Orthodox Jewish couple to travel to Boston to locate their medical-student son, P.I. Jonah Geller and his partner Jenn cross paths with an evil but altogether believable criminal consortium. Geller is an exceptionally well-drawn character, a true man of peace who is forced to harness his own inner violence.
***** Ariel S. Winter, The Twenty-Year Death, Hard Case Crime, $25.99. At 672 pages, The Twenty-Year Death is the biggest book yet from Hard Case Crime. Contained in this first novel are actually three separate interconnected novels, each set a decade apart. Malniveau Prison, set in 1931, is written in the style of Georges Simenon. The Falling Star (1941) is modeled on Raymond Chandler's work. Police at the Funeral (1951) is an homage to the dark style of Jim Thompson. The entire volume, which bears some comparison to Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, is a dark, affectionate tribute to the genre.
There's been an upsurge in the number of novellas and short novels published recently. Some may blame it on the short attention spans of electronic-age readers. But I welcome it as the return of a neglected literary form.
James Sallis, Driven, Poisoned Pen Press, $19.95 (HC), $11.95 (TPB). This sequel to Sallis's 2005 novel Drive (the basis for the 2011 film starring Ryan Gosling) follows the semi-fugitive former stunt driver as he's pursued by vengeful gangsters. When they kill his fiancée, he sets out on his own quest for vengeance. While it's not imperative to have read Drive, an important aspect of the plot hinges on a character and event from that earlier novel. Sallis has created a starkly heroic anti-hero.
Melodie Campbell, The Goddaughter, Raven Books, $9.95. Canadian publisher Orca Books, in an attempt to aid adult literacy, publishes a series of "Rapid Read" novels through their Raven Books imprint. Melodie Campbell tells a hilarious story of the goddaughter of a mafia leader drafted into a jewel-smuggling operation. The caper goes bad when high heels containing the contraband are stolen.
Max Allan Collins, Triple Play: A Nathan Heller Casebook, Thomas and Mercer, $14.95. In his introduction to this collection of three of his novellas, Collins discusses the short novel and its place in detective-fiction history. He rightfully mentions that it was once not uncommon to find a 40,000 to 50,000 word "novel" published in Manhunt, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, or EQMM. Collins has gathered three such novellas, in the style of Rex Stout, featuring P.I. Nathan Heller, each set amidst actual crime cases from the 1940s, '50s, and '60s.
Collins has also teamed up with James L. Traylor to produce Mickey Spillane on Screen (McFarland www.mcfarlandpub.com, $45.00), which chronicles the many film and TV adaptations of Spillane's work, in-cluding details on the cast and crew, episode guides to four different Mike Hammer TV series, and multiple TV movies. The book, throughout, is filled with black-and-white photos.
Finally, I couldn't let another column go by without making mention of a collection of stories by one of our favorite EQMM contributors, Melodie Johnson Howe. Shooting Hollywood (Crippen & Landru, $43.00 HC/$17.00 TPB), contains nine stories about aging starlet Diana Poole, eight of which originally appeared in EQMM.
Copyright © 2012 by Steve Steinbock
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by Bill Crider
Andrew Nette lives Down Under. He's one of the editors of the Crime Factory webzine and the blogger who produces Pulp Curry (www.pulpcurry.com), a "blog dedicated to crime fiction and film from all over the world." I always enjoy the "Pulp Friday" post, which recently presented a lot of paperback covers from novels about mercenaries. The previous Friday's topic was Chester Himes. On other days there are book reviews, ruminations on e-publishing, and movie reviews.
When it comes to classic detection, Jeffrey Marks knows the territory. He's written a series of biographies of crime writers from the 1940s and '50s and is currently working on one about Erle Stanley Gardner. His blog is The Corpse Steps Out (thecorpsestepsout.blogspot.com). If you're looking for reviews of the classics, this is a great blog to read. Reviews of Hammett's The Dain Curse, Tey's Brat Farrar, and Carr's The Burning Court are currently on view, and more will have come along by the time you make a visit, which you really should do.
I think of Michael Bracken as the hardest-working guy in the short-story game. His blog is CrimeFictionWriter (crimefictionwriter.blogspot.com), and the apt subtitle is "A Writer at Work." As of the time I write this column, he's had a short story published every month for nine straight years. Not a bad record. Not all of these have been mysteries, because Bracken writes for all markets, but many of them are. If you're interested in keeping up with a writer's sales, finding out how his e-books are doing on Amazon, and other aspects of a writer's life, take a look at Bracken's blog.
This column began with a blog from Australia. Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan (mysteriesandmore.blogspot.com) is from another part of the world. The blogger is Bill Selnes, a lawyer, who says that his blog "includes my reviews, information on and interviews with authors, and descriptions of mystery bookstores I have visited." I'm a sucker for bookstore stories, and there are some good ones here. You'll also find thoughtful reviews of books, mainly fiction but including an occasional nonfiction title. Because Selnes is a lawyer, his reviews of legal thrillers will now and then contain a comment on the legal realities as opposed to the fictional presentation.
Copyright © 2012 by Bill Crider
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