My Crime/Thriller Picks of 2010 (part one)

Everybody and their granny is getting in on the act, so I thought, why not, Michael me lad? Anywho, for what it’s worth, here are some of my favourites of the last year.

In no particular order...

Don Winslow – Savages

It’s fair to say that Everybody and Their Granny have included this book in their top ten and no wonder, it’s the dawg’s bollocks.

The story: Part-time environmentalist and philanthropist Ben and his ex-mercenary buddy Chon run a Laguna Beach-based marijuana operation, reaping huge profits from their loyal clientele. In the past when their turf was challenged, Chon happily eliminated the threat. But now they may have come up against something that they can't handle - the Mexican Baja Cartel wants in, sending them the message that a 'no' is unacceptable. 

When they refuse to back down, the cartel escalates its threat, kidnapping Ophelia, the boys' playmate and confidante. Ophelia's abduction sets off a dizzying array of ingenious negotiations and gripping plot twists.

The verdict: As I said over at crimesquad.com – “The book is laced with dark humour, the action is tight, controlled and utterly believable and the dialogue is so hip it feels that Winslow is setting the trend. We need to get the word out there; Winslow deserves to be one of the genre’s favourite sons. Buy a copy and demand all your friends do so as well.”

Footnote – my new favourite author, Mr Winslow, is going Trevanian (and if you don’t know who Trevanian was, do yourself a favour and look him up) on us next year. Look out for SATORI. Fantastic stuff.

R.J. Ellory – Saints of New York.

Regulars of this blog will know I hold Roger’s work in high esteem. This is what I said over at crimesquad.com

“Dark and intense, Saints of New York opens, quite literally with a blood bath and from there you are in the master’s hands and he’s not letting go until that last satisfying page is turned. Saints of New York is a novel of corruption and salvation, of the unshakable persistence needed to uncover the truth and of one man's pursuit for meaning hidden among the phantoms of his psyche.”

Eeesh, I’m coming over all hyperbolic at the end there. Had to go and lie down in a dark room after writing that review.

Roger Smith – Wake up Dead

The synopsis: It’s a hot, dry night in Cape Town when gun-runner Joe Palmer and his ex-model, American wife Roxy are car-jacked, leaving Joe lying in a pool of blood. As the thieves, meths addict Disco and his sidekick Godwyn, make their getaway, Roxy makes a split-second decision that changes her life forever.

This decision brings her on a collision course with Billy Afrika, a mercenary to whom Joe owes money, Disco's prison-loving gangster “husband” Piper, a would-be African insurgent leader, and a dirty cop determined to use Roxy to escape his dangerous Cape Flats beat. 

The review: It simply doesn’t get more “noir” than this. This is easily the most violent book I’ve read this year, with a degree of carnage that could almost push this book into the horror genre. However, it is a violence that is germane to the characters and springs from the author’s understanding of the people he is writing about, rather than violence just for the sake of it. 


With his neat prose and breakneck pace, Roger Smith has conjured an excellent read. I’m guessing that this is not a book that the South African tourist board will be touting; it is undoubtedly a book that will place this country’s thriller writers in the forefront of a world readership.

John Connolly – The Whisperers

Our John (I’ve met him once, so I feel a degree of familiarity is not stretching things. Hi, John – remember Glasgow. A bar full of booksellers? No. Oh well *hangs head*  never mind.) Where was I? Yes. Our John is one of those writers whose careers I’ve followed from day one.

Synopsis: The border between Maine, USA and Canada is leaky. Almost anything can be smuggled across it: drugs, cash, weapons, people...

Now a group of disgruntled former soldiers has begun its own smuggling operation, and what is being moved is infinitely stranger and more terrifying than anyone can imagine. Anyone, that is, except private detective Charlie Parker, who has his own intimate knowledge of the shadows that reside in men's hearts.

My Crimesquad.com Review: John Connolly is quite simply one of the best thriller writers around. He’s the kind of writer who not only opens the door to his imagination, he pulls up a chair and plumps up the cushions first. The Whisperers is quite simply an excellent addition to the man’s oeuvre.  As always the prose manages to be both muscular and lyrical, the plot deals with the macabre and the emotional and the characters are as finely drawn as any you’ll come across in literature. My only complaint was that at times in the beginning of the book there was a wee bit too much exposition - you know the bits you skim over - but this could have been sorted with some judicious editing. In any case JC can get away with this sort of thing, where lesser writers might not, because everything else is just SO on the mark. This is me counting the days till the next one.

Cross Country Murder Song by Philip Wilding

Synopsis: On a journey from the Jersey Shore to the Pacific Ocean, the driver makes his way across an America distorted beyond all recognition, as if in a fevered dream. He is accompanied by ghosts of his traumatic past and pursued the police, who have discovered the alarming secret in his basement.

Speeding past and stopping off along the way, the driver meddles, mixes and murders, heading towards the edge of the New World and to his own sick realisation of the American Dream.

An excerpt from my crimesquad.com review read thusly: Philip Wilding has created a uniquely disturbing and visceral novel that will haunt you for days after you have finished the last page.

This is not a book you can carelessly skim; every word demands your attention as Wilding creates a patchwork quilt of experience moving from the past to the future to the present with a searing detail that burns into your conscience.

The main character is someone we come to know only as “the driver” and as he moves from one dreadful act to the next you feel yourself hoping he evades capture to find out what else he will get up to.

Even the secondary characters, each deep in a well of their own unhappiness are prone to act in ways that surprise and shock. This work is almost certainly destined to become a cult classic and if you are ever stuck as to how to offer the definition of “noir” I suggest you point to this book.

The writing is hypnotic and carries the lyricism and precision of a poet.  “Cross Country Modern Song” is a 21st-century road trip that will grip you in the heart of its darkness forcing you to think about our world and it’s excess.

Old Dogs by Donna Moore

Our Donna (again with the familiarity, sheesh) is a pal and this is not the reason why I’m giving her a mention. The reason is because she’s damn good!!! End of!!! (So deserving of 3 exclamation marks)

Synopsis: OLD DOGS is a crime caper set in Glasgow. It features an elderly Italian Countess and her sister who are actually ex-hookers turned con artists, who decide to steal a pair of golden, jewel-encrusted Shih Tzu dogs from a museum. Unfortunately, there is something of a queue of undesirables after the same loot – including the elderly ladies’ dodgy chauffeur who is desperate to get in on the action, a pair of Glasgow neds who dream of buying their own pub, an out of work insomniac bent on revenge, and an innocent young Scottish islander who wants the dogs returned to the Buddhist monastery they came from.

My Crimesquad.com review: With care and precision Donna introduces her main players and their foibles and then very cleverly drops them in and out of the action to maximum effect.  How she orchestrates her comic set-pieces is nothing short of genius and designed to eke out every last piece of humour.

If Alexander Pope was here to turn his attention to crime writing rather than philosophy he might have said, to laugh is human; to make other people laugh is divine. Donna Moore shine your halo

I kind of ran out of energy there, people - besides you can only deal with so much awesomeness at the one time. So come back another day and I'll give you the rest of my faves.

Laters,

M 

Book awards up the wazoo...

A wee toot for friend of this blog, wonderful writer and all-round good guy, R J Ellory.

Roger’s novel A Quiet Vendetta was recently awarded the – let me get this right – Prix Des Libraries Du Quebec Laureat 2010.

Go, Roger.

This places him in excellent company. This prize was won previously by Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Dennis Lehane with Mystic River.

Mr Ellory is fast winning himself a loyal fan base in the French speaking parts of the world. A Quiet Belief in Angels won The Inaugural Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur Prize 2008 and Le Livre De Poche Award 2010.

(He has also won awards in USA and the UK, but I’m liking the whole French connection.)

A Quiet Vendetta is a fantastic read with one of my favourite ever bad guys in fiction; Ernesto Perez. Here’s a look at the blurb.

A Quiet Vendetta by R.J. Ellory

When Catherine Ducane disappears in the heart of New Orleans, the local cops react rapidly - she is the daughter of the Governor of Louisiana after all. But the case gets very strange, very quickly. Her bodyguard turns up horribly mutilated in the trunk of a beautiful vintage car and when her kidnapper calls he doesn't want money: he wants time alone with Ray Hartmann, who works for a Washington-based organised crime task force.

All Ray wants to do is get this over with quickly, and go home to try and repair his broken marriage. Instead he must listen to the mysterious kidnapper, an elderly Cuban named Ernesto Perez, who wants to tell him his life story. It's only when he realises that Ernesto has been a brutal hitman for the Mob since the 1950s that things start to come together. But by the time the pieces fall into place, it's already too late...


A QUIET VENDETTA is both the epic novel of one man's life in the Italian Mafia - a story that ranges from Cuba to Las Vegas and from L.A. to Chicago - and equally a powerful thriller of rage, love and loss.

This is me talking with Roger at a recent writers' conference. He doesn't look bored. He's not bored, is he? Tell me I'm not boring him.

Weekend Writer

The people leave. .. the mists form and close like a veil. The world is shut off from that magical venue until the same time next year when the chosen will return and congregate as if the months were mere moments.

See, I can do fanciful.

It would have been more accurate just to report that a good time was had by all at the Scottish Association of Writers’ Annual Conference, but that would have been a tad cliché and as you know we writers avoid them cliché things. Like the plague.

For those not in the know...you poor people...the event is a glut of competitions, workshops, readings and inspirational talks all crammed in to just a few hours from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon.

I was the judge for the poetry competition and I had 62 entries. I waited for people to spill wine over me, push me out of the way or issue veiled threats. But they didn’t. Everyone seemed to appreciate what I had to say... if you’re interested I may post my overall comments in this blog. Wanna see?

And I was able to deliver it all from the podium without too much coughing and sniffing.

(I have a cold type thing going on. Coughing so forcefully it feels like my eyes are going to pop out of my head. Is that sympathy I can hear up the back?)

Conference highlights?

- Friend of this blog, R J Ellory was a knockout! He went out of his way to speak to as many people as possible and each of his three talks was inspirational. I overheard a number of people saying to each other that he was the BEST speaker they had ever heard. You just can’t say any better than that.

His story of struggle, persistence and drive was something that everyone in the room could relate to and aspire to...and to make it even better it all has had a happy ending. It’s wonderful to see the good guy get the rewards for all of his hard work and talent. Let’s hope his career continues to go from strength to strength. If you haven’t read any of his books, do yourself a favour toot sweet and buy one. Or all of them.

(Such was Roger’s drive that while he was working an 80 hour week – yes, that’s an 8 and a 0 – he would come home, do the family man thing and then go to his writing space from 10pm till 1:30.)

A couple of the ladies were spotted swooning and passing comments like – he’s rather attractive.



- Finding out who had written which poem was cool - ‘cos my nose was bothering me.



- Many of the same ladies alluded to above were also swooning over the basketball team who were also staying in the hotel. There was a lot of swooning going on, let me tell ya. But in a non-clichéd way of course. The basketball players were from Trinidad and Tobago and all of these handsome, tall, athletic black men were almost too much for our ladies. Can’t remember how many times I whispered to someone – take a shower. Still, the guys took it all in their stride and were very helpful in carrying suitcases, etc. Women who were seen entering the hotel in a robust manner were suddenly all fluttery and incapable and requiring “assistance” whenever a team member was nearby.



- Seeing one of my favourite people on the planet - Margaret Thomson Davis. She’s approaching her 84th birthday and has just embarked on her 42nd novel. That has a nice symmetry about it, no? Let’s hope there are many more.



- The guest speaker on Saturday night was Alan Taylor, Literary Editor of the Sunday Herald. I was quite prepared not to like him – he and his paper are quite sniffy about the whole genre fiction thing - and I sat with arms and legs crossed to listen. However, he was excellent. Quite the raconteur. His talk was effectively an exercise in name-dropping, but what names! You name them... he’s wined, dined and holidayed with them. All the greats of modern fiction are in his address book. Gore Vidal, Muriel Spark, Toni Morrison etc etc etc. He was even invited to fit a truss on John Irving, but we’ll draw a veil over that. Maybe Alan will talk about it one day in his biog.



- Giggling up the back of the conference hall with Gillian Philip and Keith Gray. I mean, honestly. They are supposed to be examples of propriety and models of good behaviour given that they write (very successfully) for “young adults”. It doesn’t matter a jot that I may have started them off. They should still know better.



What were we laughing at? Well. They announced the winner of one of the categories and the title of the piece took me aback. Did I hear that correctly, I asked Gillian? Eh? She answered while taking a BIG slug of wine. This winning story was a heart-warming tale of a struggling church community who had brought in a new minister. He’d started off this group hug thing at the church. Which was shortened to The Church Hug ...which was felt to be a bit of a mouthful...and from there it was merely a hop, skip and crazy-assed jump to...and the title of the story... “The Chug”.



If you are as clueless as Gillian and Keith you won’t know that in these here parts a “chug” is that solitary activity that causes the early onset of blindness, hair to grow on the palm of your hands and prompts much guilt and wearing of itchy shirts as a form of penance. At least, that’s what the nuns told me. Definitely not something one does as part of a church led activity. At least not in any church I’ve ever attended.



It may have been at this point that Gillian leaked some wine down her left nostril. And very fetching it was too, Toots.



The next giggle-fit came when Keith was quizzed about one of the competition entries he judged. This was a story about a magic iron – of the hot plate, pressing variety. What was wrong, we asked with such an item having magical properties? It then all got a bit crazy and alliterative (well, we are writers darling) when we asked if he would have preferred a Fucked Up Fridge, or an Arsey Aga. That might even have been me.



So next time you go to one of those writer events and you see all those prim and tidy authors giving it the butter wouldn’t melt thing, you know what they are really thinking.



Especially if I’m sat beside them.



It was just a wee shame that I didn’t get my horse out of its packet on Saturday night. And no, that’s not a euphemism.

A cowboy and injun themed disco was arranged for Saturday after the award ceremony. Unfortunately, this was on at the same time as the poetry reading, which I was asked to M.C.

The plan was to go to the poetry event in the “Penthouse” on the top floor of the hotel, do the mc thing and then run down to my room, pop into my inflatable horse costume and then boogie on down to the disco, which was helpfully sited in the ground floor. However, the poetry thing went down rather well - standing room only dontcha know - and people ended up flitting there from the disco.

A word on the inflatable horse...well, two words. Comic genius. It defies description so I won’t even bother trying. I borrowed it from a pal at work – She Who Must Not be Named – and I feel that I let her down by not wearing it.

Anywho, as it ‘appens...hotel staff closed the disco bar at midnight and some of the hardier souls present came in search of more excitement ...to find that the poetry event was still running. Don’t let anyone tell you that we poets don’t know how to have a good time...it was 1:30 before we ran out of steam.

Then it was off to bed, perchance to dream without coughing up chunks of my colon. Thankfully that cool wee dude, Keith Gray turned pusher and provided me with some flu remedy. The kind that you wake up from a week later wondering what the feck happened.

Maybe that explains the mists.

Crimesquad in September

It's that time of the month. The beginning...in case you've had your head up your ass and you're wondering. What this means is that the guys over at www.crimesquad have put up their reviews for the month. Some of which I have slaved over. Worked my fingers to the bone over. Sweated blood over. Go on, read them. You know you want to.

There's one such review that I wanted to draw to your attentions. (I use the plural for any multiple personality types out there. May Contain Nuts is an inclusive blog)This is my review for R J Ellory's latest book, The Anniversary Man.

The review also includes a question and answer session we set for Roger about his book and his writing. In my view it is required reading for any pre-published writers, and curious readers out there. You will find it at the following link. Fingers crossed it actually works. Frankly, I could be better at the technological aspect of blogging.

Well I would if I could be arsed. Frankly. (Who is this fella Frank and why do we give him a name check when we want to assert our honest credentials? What is the etymology of Frank?)

I'm all about the words. And the occasional picture. And the comments. I LOVE comments. Leave me more comments. Makes me feel less like I'm involved in some form of literary masturbation. Which is good for you, my friend's 13 year old son told her to excuse his use of a certain website on her work laptop. Which is a whole other blog, that I ain't going to write.


Eeesh - now I'm worried about what adverts will appear down the right side after using the word "masturbation". No, the other right.


Anyhow, I digress. Which I'm allowed to do cos this is my blog, innit.


You'll find the excellent R J Ellory if you go to crimesquad He's about to be launched stateside, so the good people over there should be rushing to a bookshop asap.

Laters
M

Crimesquad.com

I want to take this opporchancity to highlight a must read website for fans of mystery/ thriller books. If you are ever at a loss for an idea of what book to buy next then visit the site at http://www.crimesquad.com/.

By way of a taster, I've added here a review "wot I wrote" for the site, for the excellent book shown here (one of my favourite reads for last year) which is now available in paperback.

A Simple Act of Violence by R J Ellory

Synopsis
It’s modern day Washington, murder capital of the USA and serial killers are passé. However, when the Ribbon Killer slays a fourth woman and his actions are detailed in the media, it is decided that he can no longer be ignored, particularly given that in this city of politicians, the mid-term elections are looming.

Detective Robert Miller is tasked with finding the killer before more women are murdered. As experienced as he is, he had never come across a case quite like this. He can find no trace of the most recent victim in the system. Then they find her social security number, but it is linked with a different name. The name of a mountain range in Nicaragua. Miller tracks down the earlier victims and finds out that none of them officially exist either. Clues mysteriously appear and Miller can’t help but feel that he is being led by the nose. He also can’t help but feel he is being watched every step of the way. What is the significance of Nicaragua? Who is watching and just who is setting up the trail of clues?

The more Miller uncovers, the more complicated and unsolvable the case of the Ribbon Killer appears.


Review
This is a book with everything that a fan of modern mystery fiction could hope for; a labyrinthine plot, unbearable tension, controversy and a social conscience. R J Ellory has come up with a meaty book where he takes a serial killer novel and shapes it into a barbed comment on American foreign policy and a criticism of the God complex of the CIA. That he does this while never dipping on the entertainment value is a compliment to this writer’s consummate skill.

Talking of skill, Ellory’s is never more evident than when he is turning his charged and hugely effective prose onto his bad guys, in this case his sacred monster, Jon Robey. There is one scene where Ellory is writing from Robey’s perspective that almost had me in tears. I’m saying nothing more. You need to read the book.

For many readers R J Ellory might have just arrived with A Quiet Belief in Angels, this book proves that he is here to stay.