Missing Westlake's Richard Stark Crime Novels? Try Charles Salzberg, MAN ON THE RUN

 

[Originally posted at New York Journal of Books]

“Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists.”

 

How do you like your noir crime fiction served? If you mark the checkboxes for unpredictable, twisty, fast-paced, wry, mocking, and “with a side of dark humor,” by all means order up Charles Salzberg’s mystery Man on the Run.

 

If fact, the humor is much more than a “side” for this seasoned author. Even the premise, revealed in alternating points of view, comes with a feeling of “how come nobody thought of this sooner?” And there you have it—even the review begins to sound like Francis Hoyt, an expert in burglary and pressing the “scary psycho” buttons when he wants to spook someone and get them to leave him.

 

But that’s not really his motive in ambushing a true-crime podcaster as she’s coming out of a California coffee shop. Francis is turned on by the off-beat confidence he sees in Dakota Richards (and her lack of a bra, her pixie features, that hint of a previously broken nose). Francis Hoyt is a predator at heart, but his decision to tease this would-be journalist means he gets a new kind of attention, and frankly, he wants it.

What about Dakota? Sure, she recognizes the mythically capable criminal and fugitive. It’s her business! But she knows enough to play it cool. Besides, she’s already fascinated by what he’s like in person. Small, neat, compact. And she should be careful:

 

“He’s also got this palpable sense of danger thing about him. And it’s not because I know who he is and what he’d done. He’s just, like, like dangerous looking. And there’s something else. It’s in his eyes. Intelligence. … There’s something going on behind those eyes, something that only adds to this sense of danger that surrounds him.”

 

If that sounds like a classic tough-girl-lusts-after-bad-boy plot opening, you’re underestimating Salzberg: He’s in here for the darkness, the quirkiness. And how do you ramp that up? First, add a job, a bank to rob where even thinking about the task could get you into the crosshairs of the mob bosses who own it. Next, in the tradition of pushing your protagonists to their limits, Salzberg drops a retired state investigator, Charlie Floyd, into the middle of it all.

 

Actually, credit Dakota with both appearances, since she deliberately involved the two antagonists in her plans for a compelling podcast: She trailed hints about doing a piece on Francis, to the point where she knew he’d want to get into the reality show. Plus, she tracked down Charlie Floyd with every intention of aiming him at Hoyt. And as her own fascination with Francis Hoyt balloons, she clear-sightedly scolds herself for becoming “that sad, pathetic, desperate woman who falls for the guy in prison.” Except she’s actually fallen for risk and danger, the ultimate comeback to her mother’s snarky criticisms. She knows she’s got a hot podcast already: “I was stalked by Francis Hoyt and lived to tell the tale. How’s that for a show-stopping teaser?”

 

Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists, all the way to the very delightful finale. 

 

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

Brief Mention: SHUTTER, a Haunted Crime Novel by Ramona Emerson

Fans of Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo crime novels have a new direction for their reading, as Diné writer and filmmaker Ramona Emerson offers SHUTTER, a thriller set in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The book offers a forensic photographer, Rita Todacheene, whose childhood with her grandmother on the Navajo reservation included a gift that nobody around her wanted her to have: She's an access portal for the dead. When contributing to an investigation, that gives Rita an occasional lift toward what's important in the crime evidence that she captures with her beloved cameras. But in her personal life, it's a harrowing experience, one that puts her at risk and even distances her from her grandmother and other support.

Consider  Rita's grandmother's explanation:

"But what always confused me was that death was so evil. It was as if when we died, we went to hell. I didn't want my mom to go there, so I cried and cried to keep her here. I watched in the moonlight as my mom parted this world in the summer night."

As a crime novel, SHUTTER is first rate: effective trains of evidence, rapid twists of the plot, and highly believable motivations and process. As a replacement for the Hillerman series, Emerson's work has the very necessary plus of being written from within tribal experience, rather than alongside it. The Leaphorn/Chee mysteries conveyed a maturing serenity that Rita Todacheene can't yet reach, although the intergenerational affection displayed is potent. Some readers may also feel torn between accepting the haunting here as a cultural reality, versus questioning whether Emerson is trying to build a set of metaphors to help non-Native listeners into her narrative. 

SHUTTER is well worth reading as both crime novel and cultural exploration. It's good to see this kind of writing skill applied to the tangled history and present grief of the American West.

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

Rock Music, Suspense, Dark Thriller: HOLD ME DOWN by Clea Simon

Clea Simon's deep dives into the crime, pain, and heroics of Boston's club music world gave a fierce and dark passion to her crime novel World Enough (2017). With HOLD ME  DOWN, Simon goes multiple layers deeper and darker—thanks to the persona of Gal, a scarred and angry woman who has held crowds in the palm of her hand as she belted out the lyrics of her own top songs, mic stand and the strings of the bass as much a part of her as her own vocal cords and rough screams of rage and sexuality.

For Gal, a Boston return, 20 years later, is fraught with potential failure. Taking a cameo role in a club performance, she falters at first, realizing the guitarist is "all metal and speed, still" -- can Gal keep up? But she finds out right away: "The move centers her ... belting out the chorus as well as she knows the tattoo on her wrist—an F clef, faded blue—as the song pours out of her, the words coming easily now. Winding up to the hook. The line with the hiccup. One extra beat that makes the rhyme different." And she's back in charge of the image she's been ready to project, of a woman and a band grown tougher with age, "blooded, in ways they can only imagine." It's about power, sexuality, control.

And then, with one tricky glimpse for a moment of a face in the crowd, she's rubbed raw again, and in danger.

Scenes of touring, of the drug-supported physical challenge of performing for one crowd after another, clawing up the charts, the band becoming a life form of its own: Simon peels these like layers of a sharp onion, tears and rage starting to flow with Gal's slow recognition of the deep punishment she's sustained in her life. Her best songs—including the iconic "Hold Me Down"—root in that festering pain and anger that only her closest friends have even a hint of. 

"That song, 'Hold Me Down,' had been their breakout. Their hit, even in the rough four-track version they'd recorded down at Randy's, burning up the college stations with a waiting list for the single. Fans asking at the record store whenever she dropped back in to pick up a shift. It was why the suits had come calling, taking the shuttle up from New York to hear them at the Rat, the Channel, Taji's."

With the "suits" had come the controllers, the people who shoved the band at a pace beyond human capacity, drugging them as needed, pressing them into alcohol and drug abuse and a demand for performance that's deadly in its effects.

As the 20-years-later brutal murder of one of the team confronts her, so long after the band's success, Gal slowly admits to herself why the killing happened and who has deliberately done damage to her and the others. Then the police get involved, demanding that she reveal information she's barely coming to terms with. "You could come in and speak with us, if you'd like. Or should I send someone to get you?" That's the investigator. And Gal replies that she'll come in, without being dragged—admitting, in that moment, that her choices are "all about control."

But you can't control what brutal crime does to you. You can only cling to your friends and what's left of who you thought you were, and keep going. Or not. 

Simon's pacing in this crime thriller offers more than plot and character: She reincarnates the demanding sexuality of the rock underground with the costs of fame and addiction. Page by page, scene by traumatic scene, there's no guarantee that Gal can even perceive a safe harbor. 

Anyone who's dreamed of the power of being a rock performer will get double the emotional kick from this raw and compelling suspense novel. Simon's particular genius in HOLD ME DOWN is shining her light into the world of tough, struggling, and brilliant women—a side of the rock world rarely acknowledged or envisioned. HOLD ME DOWN is a heartache packed into 248 pages, with the possibility of breaking always just within reach.

After multiple genres of mysteries and crime novels, this Boston-area author has come into her own, so that Gal yells the words so many have had in the back of their throats, an accusation: "You wanna, you wanna hold me down." It's all about how we fight back. Can Gal do it—and survive?

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

Brief Mention: Fine Caper Crime Novel, LITTLE SIBERIA by Antti Tuomainen

A would-be race-car driver attempts suicide by fast car on a winter road in Finland, when instead of crashing the way he'd planned, his car is ripped apart by a random meteorite.

Now that's an opening that no crime novel has ever come close to! And from here, award-winning Finnish suspense author Antti Tuomainen rolls his snowball through one caper twist after another. For instance, there the value of the meteor—and the people who want it. Not to mention the small town where it gets placed temporarily and notoriously.

Here's a sample of Tuomainen's mid-novel explication, from the local pastor's point of view—a man with serious doubts about his own life:

The meteorite will be in the War Museum for a further two nights.

The list of people keen to get their hands on it seems to grow as time runs out. As for Leonid, I am in no doubt. He wants the meteorite. Karolina wants the meteorite and is apparently willing to collaborate with me — the guard on the night shift — to get it. Leonid is in love with Karolina, a matter that raises a number of questions.

Is Karolina employing Leonid's help in order to achieve her goal? If she is, why does she want to involve me in her plans? And if she isn't, why has she stared a relationship with a man for whom she feels no attraction? ... I feel as though I know them too well to think of them as my pursuers, and too little to know what really moves and motivates them. Of course, that applies to everyone I know, including my own wife. I don't even know the people I know.

Two more nights.

If you've had enough of the depressive side of "Scandinavian noir," here's your opportunity to snicker, guffaw, smirk, and otherwise enjoy a lively, fast-moving crime novel of marvelously black humor. Hurrah for Orenda Books bringing Tuomainen across the ocean, and for the deft translation by David Hackston.

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

Crime Novel from Calabria, Italy, BLACK SOULS, New from Soho Crime

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

Across the decades of the narrator’s life, Black Souls becomes as mysterious as a set of cave paintings or yesterday’s “tags” on a building.

Nordic noir, French crime fiction, Japanese, South African—none of those are as surprising as the new crime novel from Calabria, Italy, Black Souls by Gioacchino Criaco. Deep and slow, it ranges over the youth, coming of age, and violent criminality of a nearly nameless narrator. His love for the landscape and the men in his family is a warm and restless ocean in which the crimes of the book roll, surge, and multiply. From early kidnappings and killings that balance the powers around the farming family, they ease toward urban connections and at last the cream of the crime crop, the drug trade.

But in Criaco’s hands, this becomes a literary exploration of a timeless land where fathers and sons form the ultimate bonds of the community. Calabria is one of the “oldest” occupied parts of Italy (today the label is for the “toe” of the nation’s “boot” shape), with some 700,000 years of human presence. Once redolent with many languages and histories, it has become both more Italian and more intensely occupied by the ‘Ndrangheta, a family-based crime network now darker and larger than the Mafia.

Criaco binds this criminal nature to the natural landscape and the eons of myths that permeate the consciousness of the peoples there. When the novel’s narrator slaughters a wild bull, he spends a harrowing night in and out of sleep:

I thought I could hear a mournful bellowing. I saw the bull’s head staring at me with that terrible, artificial eye in the middle of his forehead. … An immense pain overtook me, I was aware that I was trapped in a nightmare, I tried to wake up and couldn’t, I got up and fell back down, and only when the pain had traveled to my core could I shake myself awake.

I found myself sitting up in the dark. Bino tenderly pressed a cup of hot coffee into my hands. "Did you hear them? … We are a part of the mountains, not their masters. Sometimes practicing evil is necessary to survive. Taking a life is always wrong But if you don’t give your conscience an alibi or a decoy, it will scream at you every night. Come, we have to appease them."

This mythic connection to centuries of choregraphed murder and revenge echoes through the book. “Black souls” are not cleansed, but held in balance, and evil is negotiated. Some innocence is allowed to remain, protected, and begins to represent the reason to struggle to reach that balance in each new round of crime and punishment.

Across the decades of the narrator’s life, Black Souls becomes as mysterious as a set of cave paintings or yesterday’s “tags” on a building: The connections among people matter here more than anything else, even more than avoiding evil itself.

There are few comparable crime novels today. Stuart Neville’s haunted fiction set in the Troubles of Ireland may come close; so, however, does Dostoevsky with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Make room for this book in the form of the “precious gift” that this criminal’s success is finally able to give to his father: “That money, even if it came late, too late for me, restored my father’s dignity.” 

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

Anne Perry, DARK TIDE RISING (William Monk #24), Deep, Dark, and Satisfying

There are two components that make many a crime novel memorable over the long haul: the twists of the plot, and the way the crime's investigator stands up as a person—his or her courage, integrity, sense of humor, intelligence, and most of all, capacity to care.

That last aspect may seem a bit out of place at first. But it's what makes Louise Penny's Armand Gamache seem "known" to his legions of fans; it's what carries Carol O'Connell's prickly and dangerous Kathy Mallory into the hearts of her colleagues and readers; it's the part of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, and even Lee Child's feckless Jack Reacher, that pulls us to the next title, and the next.

And it's what makes Anne Perry's police Commander William Monk someone you might want for a neighbor, or on your local police force, in spite of his location in 1881 England.

In DARK TIDE RISING, Monk accepts a mission to protect the life of a wealthy real estate developer racing to ransom his kidnapped younger wife. Harry Exeter has a marriage Monk can connect with, because it's so much like his own: an unexpected and intensely valued relationship discovered against the odds, with a woman whose life is clearly worth sacrificing a fortune to save.

The protection effort and would-be rescue is going to have to take place at Jacob's Island, though. It's a location Monk knows far too well: a desperate slum of 1800s London, permeated by deadly tidal surges and even quicksand. He's witnessed death there: "He could still see the fat man sinking slowly into the tidal ooze, his mouth open, screaming, until the mud cut him off, and inch by inch he disappeared from sight." How can Monk organize his team to prevent such a disaster, while also bringing back the kidnap victim, Kate Exeter? Immaculate organization and planning must take place.

But Monk's efforts, with his men, the River Police, go quickly awry, and he's plunged into a very different and equally disastrous situation:

What he had not said, and what weighed on Monk's mind with further pain, was the thought that the kidnappers had known so much about their plans. There were five or six different ways the River Police could have got in, but the kidnappers had known precisely which ones they were going to use, how many man, and where they were along those tunnels and passages. What he forced himself to wonder was, who had told them?

It hurt even to think the words and yet they were there, whether he said them or not.

Perry's drama takes place in a setting where the gap between wealth and poverty set up extremes that were, in themselves, life-threatening, and the amount of effort for policing as she portrays it is accentuated by the absence of modern crime-solving tools and techniques. What Monk and his friends, including his insightful wife, must depend on is their sense of geography, their probing of human nature, and, in this rapidly developing and often twisting case, the classic threesome of crime: means, motive, opportunity. Here, the motive must somehow involve finances, as more threats and a whistle-blower's death are added to the events. But why?

Watching Monk sort out the motives of both the criminals and his own team members is fascinating, and emotionally compelling. Leadership, the power of friendship among men, struggles for the sake of each other ... these, as much as the sucking force of London's tides, deepen DARK TIDE RISING and make it one of Perry's best books.

No need to read the preceding Monk titles before plunging into this one, although of course they'll enrich the perspective on the characters. But Perry's a pro, laying out her characters and their past anguish with spare, quick details, making this a wicked good read. The publication date is September 18, from Random House. Pick up the hardcover first edition as a treat to yourself, an anchor of hope in humanity in this politically fraught season.

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