Forgotten Books: Backfire -- Dan J. Marlowe

Marty Donovan is a cop who happens to be in love with Lenore, his partner's wife. When the two cops can't crack a tough case, Lenore suggests a stakeout that's not approved the the department. Her husband is killed, and Marty begins a complicated cover-up as the tries to find the killer.

There's plenty of action and atmosphere, some nice old-time procedural details, and enough red herrings to keep you guessing about the outcome. While Backfire isn't up there with Marlowe's best work for Gold Medal (it reminded me a bit of his early Avon books), it's still an entertaining crime novel.

Forgotten Books: Cases --Joe Gores

When Joe Gores passed away, I looked on my shelves to see what unread books I had by him, and there was Cases. It's the story of Pierce Duncan, called Dunc, who graduates from Notre Dame in the early '50s. He wants to be a writer, so he sets out to get some experiences to write about. And he certainly haves them. A Georgia chain gang, fixed boxing in Las Vegas, a southern California religious cult, and finally a job working for Drinker Cope, a San Francisco private-eye whose morals are his own. All along the way, Dunc, who wants to be a writer, is putting things into his notebooks.

The book is obviously based to a certain extent on Gores' own life. He says in the preface, "In Cases I have tried to mix fact and fiction so thoroughly that nobody -- not even myself -- can now untangle them." I think it's pretty easy to untangle them in some instances, but if I say too much about that it might spoil some of the fun of the book, which is a wonderful depiction of the time and the places (especially San Francisco) that Dunc describes.

This is a fix-up book, and a lot of it was published as separate stories in various places, but don't let that fool you. Everything is connected, even a lot of things you might not expect, and it all pays off with a series of little explosions in the final chapters that are hardboiled to the core. Great stuff, and it proves again, as if any proof were needed, how much we lost when Joe Gores died.

PaperBack

Peter Packer, Bitter Fruit, Popular Library, 1959

The Dead Man's Brother -- Roger Zelazny

I'm a big fan of Roger Zelzany's work, or at least a lot of it, so I was prepared to love The Dead Man's Brother, a unpublished novel unearthed by Hard Case Crime. According to the "Afterword" by Zelzany's son, the book was written around the time of Today We Choose Faces and the connected novellas that make up My Name is Legion, both of which I enjoyed, so I was hoping for the best. I didn't quite get it.

Ovid Wiley was once a criminal, an art smuggler, but now he's reformed and has his own gallery. Things are going all right until his old partner in crime turns up in the gallery, dead, with a knife sticking in his back. In short order, Wiley's arrested, then recruited by the CIA. He finds himself first in Italy, where there are millions missing from the Vatican's accounts, and then in Brazil, where more millions have gone missing.

It's all very fast and slick, but the whole thing seemed more like a first draft to me than a finished novel. A lot of things that seemed to me to call for further development were forgotten or dropped. The explanations at the end were tedious and not entirely convincing. The supposedly clever narrator does some pretty stupid things. The magic I'd found in some of Zelazny's writing was, for the most part, missing. I'm glad Hard Case published it, and I'm glad I read it, but I was hoping for more. Maybe my expectations were just too high. Or maybe I'm completely wrong. Hey, it could happen. Anyway, I'd give it a C+.

Update: For a more positive take, click here.

Lost Echoes -- Joe R. Lansdale

Joe Lansdale's back with a new novel, and it's about time. For many of you, that's all you needed to know, and you've stopped reading this and gone out to buy the book. But you can't get it yet, heh heh. Release date is Feb 13, and only powerful and influential bloggers such as myself have been able to get a look at it. Let's just say that I read it straight through in one sitting and that when you're lucky enough to join me in reading it, you won't be disappointed.

Oh, what the hell. Let's say more than that. Let's say that Harry Wilkes, because of a childhood illness, is left with the ability to "hear" the past, the violent past, that is. "It's like I hear and see ghosts in sounds," he says. This is a curse, of course, and Harry eventually becomes a drunk to avoid the visions.

After a while Harry meets another drunk, Tad, who's a former martial arts teacher. Together they try to get sober and find their centers. This works out pretty well, until the past shows up again, this time in the form of Kayla, a cop who knew Harry when they were kids. She wants him to use his ability to help her find out the truth about her father's death. Eventually Harry gives in, and what he "sees" doesn't improve things at all, certainly not for Harry, Tad, and Kayla.

Like the best of Lansdale's work, this book has all the moves: action, humor, political incorrectness, and fine storytelling. Check it out as soon as you can, and you'll see what I mean.

Dead Horse -- Walter Satterthwait

Raoul Whitfield is known to many of us as one of the Black Mask boys, author of classics like Green Ice and Death in a Bowl. He was at one time the most highly paid mystery writer in the U.S.

In 1935, however, his writing career was not going well, and his wife died under mysterious circumstances. How mysterious? Well, that's what Dead Horse is all about. Was her death suicide, as it was declared to be, or was it something more sinister? That's the question that Walter Satterthwait tackles in this novel, with his usual panache.

Fine writing, tricky plotting, great characters, meticulous research: those are the things you expect in a Satterthwait novel, and Walter delivers in spades. You don't want to miss this one. Check it out.