Category Archives: crime thriller

Review: Mr Suit by Nigel Bird

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Liza is a gangster’s wife who has tired of taking care of her husband Archie, who has been suffering from Locked-In- Syndrome due to a kidnapping that went badly wrong (for him at least). She asks Mr Suit, the crime boss who accidentally shot Archie, to put him out of his misery. He does as he’s told, but various complications, such as Archie suddenly remembering where he’s hidden the proceeds of the kidnapping, result in the world’s slowest getaway, in a canal boat along Regent’s Canal, but events soon catch up with Liza and she’s forced into a showdown with Mr Suit and his henchmen.

Mr Suit is a bit of a departure for Nigel Bird, whose short collection Dirty Old Town rather impressed me last year. It’s a blackly comic noir tale with barely a likeable character in sight (they’re all trying to get one over on each other) and its tongue firmly in its cheek. This novella is short and snappy and good fun while it lasts. It isn’t as deep or layered as many of Bird’s shorts, but it races along brightly and will definitely keep you glued to your Kindle for its short duration. Highly recommended.

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Review: We Are The Hanged Man by Douglas Lindsay

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When the perpetually depressed DCI Jericho is asked to get involved with ailing reality show Britain’s Got Justice he is less than happy but he goes along with it because he’s given no choice. While this is going on he is being sent Tarot cards featuring various images of a hanged man. The show goes as disastrously as expected, with Jericho being made to look as incompetent as possible by the show’s makers, particularly as one of the show’s contestants has been kidnapped by a killer who rather enjoys performing torture experiments on people (just to see how much of it they can take). As more Tarot cards arrive Jericho realises that they have a link to some mysterious deaths that, in turn, are linked to him by blood. As the show progresses things get worse for Jericho and when a colleague that he is having an affair with disappears, leaving him as a suspect, he goes on the run in a desperate attempt to prove his innocence and work out who and why he is being targeted, setting up a final confrontation with the murderer.

This is the first Douglas Lindsay I have read and it won’t be the last, because I like his prose style and his facility with storytelling, both of which are excellent, but it will be the last DCI Jericho story I read. As much as I tried to warm to Jericho I simply couldn’t. His depression makes him surly and rude, and he spends much of the first half of the book just staring at people he doesn’t like (more or less everyone), which would be fine if he had other elements to his character that made him compelling – a way with words, a sense of duty, a brilliance of detection, or even a certain amount of self-deprecation – but he has none of these. Alas, he is a charisma vacuum throughout the entire novel.

Being a noir person, I can deal with detestable protagonists as long as there’s something about them, however minor, that I can warm to. I just couldn’t warm Jericho at all. Normally this would be the kiss of death to me finishing the story, but I have to say that Lindsay’s narrative was beautifully paced and his writing style is as smooth as warm butter, and these were enough to keep me flipping the pages. The last quarter of the book is a lesson in how to keep a story driving forward at an ever greater pace, at which point the last of my objections to Jericho became null and void and I just enjoyed the story.

I can’t highly recommend WETHM because of my issues with the character of DCI Jericho, but I can recommend it because Lindsay’s narrative and smooth prose style are excellent and he does know how to tell a story well.

Review: Hogdoggin’ by Anthony Neil Smith

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The sequel to Yellow Medicine finds Billy Lafitte, former police officer, suspected traitor, and full-time bad guy, riding with a biker gang led by the brutal and savvy giant Steel God. Lafitte has worked his way up to second in command and has God’s respect. But when a call comes in about his ex-wife, Lafitte decides to turn his back on the gang and go and find out exactly why he’s been called back.

Meanwhile, his nemesis, Agent Rome, an FBI agent with a serious grudge against Lafitte, is still trying to pursue his man despite being warned off the case by his employers and his wife. But Rome doesn’t listen and decides to use Lafitte’s emotionally fragile ex-wife as bait to lure him in.

After an ill-fated trip back to Yellow Medicine, Lafitte decides to get back to his family by any means possible, but things go increasingly wrong. Leading to his capture and torture by some idiotic rednecks.

When he decides to call on Steel God for help everything gets really bloody, leading to a showdown, and serious carnage, at a hotel surrounded by the police, with Agent Rome in tow.

Smith’s sequel improves on Yellow Medicine in a number of ways. Firstly, in dispensing with Lafitte’s first person narration it broadens the scope of the story. Rome is no longer the one dimensional FBI guy he appeared to be in the first novel – his run-in with Lafitte at the end of the YM has affected him both professionally and personally and his reasons for pursuing the man seem more believable this time around. Other characters get the opportunity to breathe and Smith does a good job of bringing them to life. Also, the use of multiple character perspectives propels the tale at a faster clip than the first novel managed, especially during the final chapters, which are superbly paced, and Smith’s muscular, clipped prose helps bring it all together in fine style. Fans of noir and hardboiled fiction will find plenty to enjoy here, but it’s written in such a way that fans of more ‘mainstream’ thrillers will get a kick out of it, too. Recommended.

Review: City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance

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Anybody who has read this blog over the past year knows that I’m rather a big fan of Heath Lowrance. The Bastard Hand and Dig Ten Graves are up there with the best I have read this year, so I had high hopes for his latest crime thriller City of Heretics. I interviewed Heath in September about his new novel for this blog, which you can find here.

The story concerns Crowe; an ageing mob enforcer who is fresh out of prison with some scores to settle with some colleagues who got him sent up and tried to kill him. Before he can settle those scores Crowe attempts to find and take care of a serial killer. This leads Crowe to the front door of a strange and secretive Christian society with some very Old Testament notions about the word of God.

Heath Lowrance’s second novel is a different beast to The Bastard Hand. For a start, it’s a much tighter, shorter affair; the prose is leaner, the pace faster and the protagonist a whole lot meaner. Richard Stark’s Parker novels spring to mind when thinking about the feel of this book (the earlier novels, that is, not the later, weaker, ones). Lowrance paints some memorable images using very few words (particularly concerning the Ghost Cat – a dream figure that weaves its way through the novel). Also, his ear for dialogue remains as sharp as it did for TBH, though, again, the dialogue is shorter, more direct. What makes it really work is Crowe. He’s a hard-ass, a tough guy, a smart operator, ruthless and single-minded. He drives the tale forward, propelling it like rocket-fuel. Despite the beatings he takes, Crowe never gives up, never takes his eyes off the goal. He is a first-class character, a character most writers would love to have created. But, the thing is, they didn’t, Lowrance created him, along with a world that leaps off the page. It’s superbly written and confirms the abundant promise that The Bastard Hand announced to the world. Highly recommended.

Review: Driven by James Sallis

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For anybody who doesn’t already know it by now, Driven is the sequel to the utterly brilliant Drive by author James Sallis. Unlike a lot of Sallis’ previous work it was released with quite a bit of fanfare. Firstly, because the announcement followed in the wake of Nicholas Winding Refn’s excellent adaptation of the original and, secondly, because Drive is considered by many critics to be one of the finest crime novels to be released in recent years (and my opinion of it can be found here).

It begins several years on from the original book, in mid-action. Two men attack Driver, who has now become a businessman called Paul West, and his wife. Driver kills the two men, but not before one of them manages to murder his wife. Driver doesn’t hang around. He immediately drops out of sight, with the help of his war veteran buddy, and starts to hunt those who would hunt him. The harder Driver looks the worse his problems seem to get. The more hit-men he kills the more questions their deaths seem to throw up. Soon he finds himself threatening a succession of lawyers, looking for the man who put the initial hit out, and he finds that it all has to do with the past, though not necessarily in the way that he thinks…

After the relative disappointment of Sallis’ The Killer is Dying , which I read earlier this year I was hoping for a return to the kind of form that made Drive, Death Will Have Your Eyes and the Lew Griffin books such treats. So, did I get what I wanted?

Well, it has as good a start as one could possibly hope for, and throws the reader straight into the action, as hitmen attack Driver and his wife. And from here the pace is relentless, as Driver goes on the run from those who want him dead. Sallis’ prose is as pitch-perfect as ever – pared back, razor-sharp descriptions that spring off the page – and the dialogue crackles, but somewhere along the way it loses this momentum and becomes humdrum.

Drive balanced its action set-pieces and moments of philosophical reflection perfectly, and the narrative drive was spot-on. Driven, however, doesn’t work anywhere near as well. Themes that Sallis touched upon in The Killer is Dying and, to a lesser extent, Drive, concerning mankind’s need for connection and the dehumanising nature of the modern world, reappear here, but sometimes seem to dominate the page rather than weave themselves into the fabric of the story. The number of times I felt jarred out of the narrative because of this was far too many, and after a while I started losing interest.

Then I realised that all these hitmen seem to find it awfully easy to locate Driver, despite the fact that he does his best to drop off the radar again, but not one of them manages to land a single blow on him. This serves to make Driver seem more superhero than noir protagonist. This means the threat and menace that shimmered off the pages of the original just isn’t here, and you feel somehow cheated.

The end of the novel has a nice play on the nature of Chinese whispers. Driver finds out that the initial attack wasn’t exactly what he thought it was, but realises that it no longer matters, because he’s marked for death regardless of what he does. But even though this idea is well implemented it still feels like a false note, because the threat of the hero failing just isn’t there.

I really wish I could recommend Driven, because I so wanted to like it, but I can’t. In all honesty, it didn’t work for me, didn’t take me there. Despite the fluency of the prose, despite the fact that it has been put together with care by a serious artist, I just didn’t feel the story connect with me.

A huge disappointment.

Review: Wolf Tickets by Ray Banks

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Farrell has problem. His girlfriend, Nora, has stolen his twenty grand stash. But, worse still, she’s also taken his Italian leather jacket – the one that makes him look like Franco Nero, at the right angle and the right light. She’s left him a note telling him that if he’s smart he won’t go looking for her.

He ignores it.

He ropes in his mate, Cobb (a flabby,  lightfingered Geordie whose as fast with his lip as he is with a battery-filled sock) and they go looking for her. The path leads them to a crippled drug-dealer, a stolen gun with dodgy bullets, a murdered girl, and a psychotic Irish ex-con with a nifty and nasty line in torture and disfigurement.

Wolf Tickets might not be very long but this novella is a prime slice of crime fiction. The writing is superb – slang driven, tightly knitted prose told from the POV of Farrell and Cobb (alternating a chapter each) – and the story screams along like a nitro-powered race car. Every character is fully fleshed-out (even the minor characters) in a few sentences or lines of dialogue, which, as always with Banks, is flat-out superb. When the book was over I felt sad because it’s a masterful ride while it lasts. If it hadn’t been for Roger Smith’s Capture this would have been my favourite read of the year. Still, it’s a seriously good piece of writing: exciting, frightening, funny and as brutal as Cobb’s battery cosh. Highly recommended.

Review: Beautiful, Naked & Dead by Josh Stallings

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At the beginning of Beautiful, Naked and Dead Moses McGuire is one seriously damaged man. He’s in debt, works as a bouncer in a lapdancing bar, can’t afford alimony payments to his bitch of an ex and would rather eat a bullet than go on with this life. His suicide attempt is interrupted by his friend Kelly, a waitress at the club where he works, who leaves a message asking him for help. When he eventually catches up with her it is too late, she has been raped and murdered by persons unknown. He puts aside thoughts of suicide and replaces them with ones of revenge. Initially, McGuire thinks it may have been Russians but eventually the clues link her death to the Italian mob. The path leads him to Kelly’s sister, Cass, pornography, and some unpleasant gangsters who want to turn McGuire and the girl into target practice. But McGuire is tough to kill and an even tougher opponent to cross wits with and decides to hunt them instead. Leading to several bloody showdowns…

Man, Josh Stallings can write. Creating a good first-person voice is difficult to do (particularly if you misjudge the tone). Stallings gets McGuire’s voice spot-on from the get-go: a combination of Chandleresque asides and observations, spare but vivid scene-setting and a keen eye for nailing his characters dead-on (even the minor ones). Also, he’s no slouch at the action stuff, which comes in handy because there’s plenty of it, particularly later in the tale. On top of this compelling voice he builds a strong narrative that drives forward at ever increasing speed; not once does it flag. I raced through it in a couple of days, which seems to be a rarity for me nowadays (as my time is at a premium). If you fancy a top-notch read with zero flab then get yourself Beautiful, Naked and Dead today. You won’t regret it. It comes highly recommended.

Review: Capture by Roger Smith

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Last year I was lucky enough to discover the writing of Roger Smith when I bought Dust Devils, which was one of my favourite novels of 2011. It was dark, fast-paced, superbly written and featured, in the character of Inja Mazibuko, one of the most despicable villains ever to grace the pages of a crime thriller.

Then I read Ishmael Toffee, his excellent novella about a reformed gang killer who is forced to go back to his old ways when he discovers that the daughter of a man he works for is being sexually abused. Like Dust Devils it was dark stuff, but treated the thorny subject of child abuse with a lot of sensitivity.

In short, he’s become one of my favourite authors in the space of two books. I have Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead in my collection, but I just need to get around to having the time to read them.

However, I have just recently finished Capture, his latest and, in my humble opinion, greatest work. The story begins with a former policeman now rent-a-cop, Vernon Saul, watching a young child wander into the sea where she drowns. He has the chance to save her but chooses not to because he sees no benefit in it. The parents, Nick and Caroline Exley, are being too selfish to notice and when they do notice it is too late. Despite this, Vernon Saul puts on a show of trying to save their daughter’s life, because this is where he sees a benefit, due to the fact that it makes him look like a hero. He uses the child’s death to inveigle his way into Nick’s affections and convince the wealthy motion capture system designer to let him help in various ways. Too consumed by grief, Nick let’s Vernon help in the belief that he is a good man. Of course, Saul is nothing of the sort. He is the kind of man who loves to be in control of people. He is damaged by events in his childhood (sexual abuse and mutilation by his father) and can only really get enjoyment by making people dance to his tune,  especially when they suffer. Slowly but surely, and with great glee, Vernon turns life Exley’s life into a nightmare, leading him down a dark path that includes murder. As Nick realises that his life is spiraling out of control he tries to cut Vernon out but that just makes things worse…

Capture is the best thriller I’ve read this year, thus far. It has a complex character driven plot that interweaves numerous lives and deaths into its tapestry. Smith’s lean, muscular prose paints plenty of unforgettable images with an economy that is a joy to behold. It has lots of incident for those who like a body count. Also, it isn’t afraid to give the characters flaws and make them seem selfish or petty or even nasty despite the fact that they are fundamentally decent. However, its trump card is the character of Vernon Saul, a villain so Machiavellian that one is surprised that he doesn’t twist himself inside-out. He’s a murderer, a manipulator, a parasite, and also very human – a monster created by tragedy rather than a two-dimensional uber-criminal. Personally, I think the key to Roger Smith’s success is that he writes villains better than anybody else out there, and Vernon Saul is arguably his finest, even better than Inja Mazibuko, which takes some doing.

If you’ve not read any Roger Smith before you’ll be in for a real treat once you’ve loaded this into your Kindle . Capture is an excellent read by an excellent writer at the top of his form. Like all great thrillers, it grips from the first page and cranks the tension up until it reaches breaking point, particularly the finale, which left my nails pretty well shredded from biting them too much.

In all honesty, if I read better crime thriller this year then it will seriously have to be really bloody amazing.

It’s that good.

My Favourite crime novels no 23.

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Kiss Me, Judas by Will Christopher Baer -
Anybody ever remember those stupid book clubs in the 80s and 90s? You got a selection of books for about 50p each but then you had no choice but to buy 6 full price hardback-sized softcovers over a twelve month period or rue the day.

With one exception the books I ended up getting via this stupid method were either dull or just plain shit (because I don’t remember a single title I bought). And that exception? Well, in my opinion it was worth all five of the other books, because that’s how I got hold of Baer’s masterpiece.

Kiss Me, Judas is probably the druggiest piece of crime fiction since Hedayat’s stone-cold classic The Blind Owl (even though it’s not really crime fiction). And like that work of genius it features, in Phineas Poe, one of literatures most unreliable narrators (a man who might be capable of truth if he was sober enough to know what it was).

The novel begins with ex-cop Poe, just out of a mental institution, hooking up with a woman he suspects to be a prostitute. She takes him to his hotel room for a night of passion. When he wakes up, he’s in a bathtub filled with ice, minus one kidney, with a note tells him to phone 911 if he wants to live.

Poe checks himself out of hospital perilously early in order to find the woman, called Jude, and take revenge on her. The problem is that when he finds catches up with her he falls in love instead. This leads to a cross-country trip with the haggard, still very sick, Poe riding with a woman he loves but can’t really trust. Along the way they meet various people who might not be who they initially appear to be.

Kiss Me Judas is a head-trip in the best sense. It veers from crime fiction to drug induced dreamscape to gothic horror with an ease that few writers in the genre could ever master. It takes the reader on a wild ride that has the twisted quality of the best or worst nightmares (depending on your point-of-view). Poe is a fantastic character who you simultaneously want to hug and slap – he does so many things that are wrong and yet he’s still very likeable. But the thing that really makes Judas work is the prose. It’s beautiful. Baer’s writing has a sensuous, sinuous quality that somehow renders the horrors within Judas’ pages palatable. There really aren’t many crime writers around who can come close to Baer in terms of prose. Hell, not many literary writers can touch this prose when it’s at the top of its game:

…I can see the boat. Adrift, barely moving. A woman’s arm dangling over one side. Her fingertips gliding at the surface of the water like the legs of a spider, leaving no trace.

There are stunners like this liberally peppered throughout the novel:

I pull off my clothes and stand before the mirror. Every bone in my body pushes at the surface of my white skin. I can see veins and tendons and unprotected muscle. My face is a grinning mask.

Baer’s prose and narrative trickery get us inside the head of his main character and push the boundaries of crime fiction in a way that very few writers do. At its best it’s a truly stunning performance. Baer followed Judas with Penny Dreadful and Hell’s Half Acre, which further Poe’s story. They’re both good, but neither has the power or precision of this classic.

Do yourself a favour. If you haven’t read this before, then buy it today. And if you’ve only read it once, then do yourself a favour and read it again!

The Gamblers special offer – half price on Kindle

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For those of you who don’t already have it, The Gamblers will be half price from now until the end of the month. This means it’s $1.50 for those who wish to buy it at Amazon US and it is currently 96p for those who wish to buy it at Amazon UK.

This special offer is for a short time only and ends on May 31st, when it goes back to its usual price of £1.99/$2.99.