New Tight, Dark Canadian Hard-Boiled from Vern Smith, SCRATCHING THE FLINT

Run Amok Crime Fiction releases today/tomorrow a new hard-boiled detective novel from Vern Smith. SCRATCHING THE FLINT continues to wind his dark twists tighter, until explosion is inevitable. Set in pre 9/11 Toronto, the book opens with a grim killing of a squealing witness that implicates a sleazy lawyer in the messy patterns of mob execution.

Hard-boiled as a genre is saturated with rage and impulse; Smith takes it a layer deeper by leaking the real precursor to rage, the inner morass of doubt and shame invading lives spent avoiding human connection. Here's Gordon, for instance:

First came Gordon's return to drink, falling down after last call in front of the Bovine Sex Club, breaking his wrist, claiming he did it rollerblading. The emergency doctor prescribed enough painkillers to kill all kinds of hurt. Then Gordon was hooked on those, too. Luckily, the cops didn't bother with a blood test three weeks ago, relying only on his breathalyzer reading, 0.81, which was bad enough. That made him not just a bona fide boozer, but a bona fide boozer inside the small world of Toronto journalism. ... Did that make Gordon lowlife? ... And did he even want to know?

Meanwhile, anti-fraud team Alex Johnson and Cecil Bolan (from Smith's earlier short story collection The Gimmick) try to break into the mobbed-up crime ring that Gordon wishes he were good enough to expose — and Gordon sneaks up on their investigation. Not surprisingly, he digs himself into deeper messes, while the detectives circle around the same swamp. At times it's hard to tell the good guys and their guilt from Gordon and his shame ... except Gordon's making worse mistakes because he's so darn scared. 

If you cut your reading teeth on Los Angeles noir, or Donald Westlake's series under his Richard Stark pen name, here's a great chance to step deeper (or, considering Gordon, higher) and grab the bitter disillusionment of modern police challenges and the messy choices that power provides. Oh, and that title? Think a Zippo lighter ... and all the steamy and screwed up moments likely to follow that scratched flint.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

New Bibliomystery: THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, Eva Jurczyk

Poisoned Pen Press has cleverly caught a new bibliomystery, written by a Toronto librarian and book reviewer. In THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, Eva Jurczyk offers a glimpse into the high stakes of university funding, and at the same time provides a classic "follow the money" mystery with a strong-getting-stronger protagonist.

Liesl Weiss hasn't been able to get a top position at her university's most prestigious library—the special collections one, with the irreplaceable manuscripts. As an assistant to the amazing Christopher Wolfe, who manages both big-money donors and the collections themselves, she's been under a lot less stress than if she'd been at the top. So she was actually on sabbatical with a year off from responsibilities, when her boss lost the capacity to manage anything: 

Before Christopher's brain had set itself on fire, he had lacked a talent for details and had been reliant on Liesl to keep him to schedules and plans. Which was why ... she had called Christopher three weeks ago to remind him that the combination to the safe was scheduled to be changed. He was supposed to call her back once it was done and tell her the new code because it was prudent to make sure it was stored in more than one place. But Christopher and details being what they were, the call had never come.

Though Liesl can't open the safe for the university president, she quickly comes up with an alternative for that very day, to distract donors with another flashy item. "Another book was what Christopher would have proposed, Liesl was sure of it. As sure as she was that [university president] Garber didn't want a creative solution from Christopher's second-in-command. He wanted Christopher."

Though her distract-the-donors maneuver functions well enough for the moment, she's got to get the priceless manuscript out of that safe. And once the combination is discovered, she expects some relief. Unfortunately, the safe turns out to be empty. Surrounded by colleagues eager to see her fail, with one in particular ready to shove her down any handy staircase of issues, rediscovering the purloined "Plantin Polyglot Bible" is essential for her self-esteem and any hope of keeping the job she's temporarily holding down.

From here on, scholarly intrigue and greed run rampant. Swinging from one fraught situation to the next, Liesl is forced to set aside her mild and bookish approach. At least, in public. In private, in a moldy bathroom in the history department, she'll ball up a wad of paper towels, crush them against her face, and let loose a scream ... then gets back to a truly Sherlockian process of eliminating all possible suspects, until the one left is, let us say: highly improbable. At least, at first glance.

A true bibliomystery, rife with manuscript details and odd end of binding minutiae, is rare enough. Coupling it with a determined and maturing amateur sleuth doubles the achievement. Although this is Jurczyk's debut novel, her many articles and reviews have clearly honed her skills, and the pace is excellent, the writing smooth and exhilarating.

THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS will be released January 25, so this is an excellent moment to pre-order a copy for a very good read, indeed.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.