Category Archives: novel

Dead Man Upright – review

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Until a year or so ago I didn’t realise that Derek Raymond had written a fifth novel in his superb ‘Factory’ series of novels set in London. I had always thought that the series ended with I Was Dora Suarez, which would obviously seem a natural place for the series to end – the nameless hero seems damned literally and metaphorically.

However, I kept hearing about a fifth novel, so after a bit of looking around I picked it up on Amazon and started reading.

The action picks up about a year after the events in Suarez. Nameless is still working in the A14 department of the Met, still insubordinate and still just about hanging on to his job. He gets a call from Firth, an ex-colleague who was kicked out of the Met because of alcoholism, about his neighbour – a man Firth suspects of some kind of wrongdoing, but he doesn’t know quite what. Middle-aged women turn up at the neighbour’s flat for a few months at a time only to seemingly disappear very suddenly.

Nameless is initially dubious but after further consideration he decides to look into Firth’s suspicions and finds that something is wrong. The neighbour appears to be living rent free at the expense of a property rental company that appears to have no owner, or at least not one who can be easily traced. Also, the neighbour appears to have more than one name. And he also has designs on another woman, one who Nameless tries to save in spite of herself. As he progresses his investigation, using methods that could him in prison, with opposition from nearly all of his colleagues, he comes to realise just how bad a man Firth’s neighbour is…

Dead Man Upright is a strange novel. It is often superbly written and some sections practically rise off the page they are so well realised, and Nameless is such a compelling narrator, but the ending is odd. It continues a theme from the earlier novels that killers, especially those of the serial type, are dull facsimiles of the rest of humanity, far from the Hannibal Lecter ideal envisaged by Thomas Harris and other similar crime writers. Derek Raymond’s killers are much closer to the shabby reality.

The problem with the novel is the ending, which climaxes with a letter and an interview with a killer. By this point the story is done and we are left with a boring, self-regarding man recounting his theories and his methods. It simply doesn’t work, or at least not very well; mostly because there’s nothing particularly interesting about the man being interviewed. Dramatically it is inert and in terms of character progression it really adds nothing that hasn’t been described better by Nameless earlier in the novel.

For four-fifths of the novel it is a decent if unspectacular addition (albeit with a few superb moments) to the Factory series, but the final fifth really takes the lustre off the work.

The received wisdom is that most series-based novels usually have one or two books too many and Dead Man Upright falls into that category. It’s not a total failure – as Raymond is too good a storyteller and stylist to write a failure – but it’s not the novel I so wanted it to be either. It’s worth a read, but if you’re expecting another Dora Suarez or How The Dead Live then prepare for disappointment.

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My Favourite Crime Novels – No. 19

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Shoot – Shoot, by Douglas Fairbairn, is one of those novels that was a bestseller in its day but was slowly forgotten by readers until it eventually stopped being reprinted (in the UK, at least). Frankly, it deserves better than languishing unread on the bookshelves of second-hand bookstores.

Shoot is a strange novel, almost too difficult to categorise, which might account for its current out-of-print status. It is a crime novel, yet not a crime novel – it deals with a crime and its aftermath, setting the reader up for a bigger crime at the climax, but it doesn’t have the feel of crime fiction, even if it does have the spare, clipped prose; It is more suspense than thriller, although ultimately it isn’t quite either – the finale is pure thriller, but the lead-up is all about suspense, and yet it isn’t really either, it seems to be something else entirely; it isn’t strictly a character study, more a study of America’s odd relationship with guns – Rex Jeanette, the narrator, is the only character we really get to know and even he remains mired in obscurity, only really coming alive when he’s discussing guns or previous exploits.

If I had to classify Shoot I would call it Gun Noir. Jeanette and the rest of the characters are unsatisfied with their middle-aged lives; financial success, women, children, sex, consumerism, none of these things quite fill the void that seems to have been left by their wartime exploits. In fact, you get the feeling that none of these men really like each other, despite the fact that they have been friends for years. The only common bond they share is their war exploits and a love for guns.

It is a superb piece of work – a novel that makes you think, a novel with an ending that stays with you – but don’t necessarily expect it to fulfil your expectations. In some respects it reminds me of Harry Crews’ A Feast Of Snakes, but without the element of the surreal which makes Snakes such an original. If you can get hold of it, please read Shoot – it’s definitely a one of a kind.

Take a gamble…

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If you fancy a prime slice of gritty, urban noir and a fast-moving good read, then The Gamblers is still for sale. Imagine Ted Lewis crossed with Jim Thompson updated to the 21st century and you’re getting close to what The Gamblers is all about…

Get it on Kindle in the UK for 99p here:
http://amzn.to/muNLwa

Get it on Kindle in the US for $1.99 here:
http://amzn.to/liVZLs

For those who prefer their books printed rather than digital, get the paperback for 10% off at Barnes and Noble:
http://bit.ly/pjbnn0

Go on, take a gamble…

My favourite crime novels No.16

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Shoot the Piano Player – David Goodis’ novel is a dark affair. It’s the story of Eddie Lynn, a man who at the beginning of the novel barely exists at all. He plays piano in a rundown dive in Philadelphia for a pittance of a salary, wears raggedy clothes and pretty much avoids contact with his fellow humans (other than to make mild small-talk and smile at people absentmindedly). His little bubble is well and truly punctured when his loser of a brother turns up at the bar whilst being chased by crooks. Eddie interrupts his habit of watching passively and intervenes on his brother’s behalf, so that he can escape, and in the process is forced to wake up from his self-imposed torpor. The two crooks chasing his brother suddenly take an interest in Eddie, and a waitress from the bar (who Eddie befriends because of his intervention on his brother’s behalf) also becomes involved. From here the plot involves kidnapping (one of the funniest kidnap sequences ever written, I might add), Eddie’s backstory, which pays off beautifully with one of the finest bar fights in crime fiction, and a heavy dose of tragedy.

Shoot the Piano Player (Down There, to use its original title), is probably Goodis’ finest work. By turns, exciting, tragic, heartbreaking, exhilarating, it showcases the strength of Goodis’ best writing without any of the weakness’ (Eddie isn’t pathetic, which is sometimes the case with Goodis’ protagonists, just a man down on his luck; the slender angel/fat whore dynamic that Goodis normally uses for his female characters is seriously toned down here; and the story is as tight as a snare drum). This novel is both a brilliant introduction to Goodis and, if you aren’t a noir reader normally, a brilliant introduction to the genre.

My favourite crime novels – No. 15b

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The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett’s fourth novel is arguably the most ambitious of his books. It works both as a traditional mystery and as a political thriller. It is also one of the finest novels about loyalty and friendship that you’re ever likely to find.

The hero, Ned Beaumont, investigates the death of a senator’s son not because he is a detective, he isn’t, he’s a political fixer for his boss and friend Paul Madvig, but out of loyalty. Initially Beaumont wants to use the murder to sink Senator Henry, but Madvig is in love with the senator’s daughter and wants him to do what he can to interrupt the investigation. From here it takes the reader on a lot of detours, false trails and political intrigue, and sends Beaumont on a chase for the victim’s hat (I won’t bother to explain, better for you to actually read the book).

The third person narration style that Hammett developed in The Maltese Falcon comes to its zenith here; the prose is tight, hard-boiled, camera-eye stuff (you never learn what a character is thinking), and the only physical descriptions (something Hammett was always brilliant at) are those that serve the novel, with not a word wasted. The character of Ned Beaumont was groundbreaking for the time. He’s an everyman, not a tough detective. He’s got brains but no luck. He’s got attitude but he’s not exactly handy with his fists (which explains the many beatings he gets during the course of the novel). He’s got loyalty to Madvig, but has enough moral ambiguity to take something that Madvig desperately wants from him before the novel is over. This is joint fifteenth with Falcon because it’s practically impossible to separate them – it’s just as brilliant. It should be compulsory reading for all those who are interested in crime fiction. And not because it’s a piece of hard-boiled ‘history’, but simply a bloody fantastic read.

Review – Yellow Medicine by Anthony Neil Smith

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At the beginning of Anthony Neil Smith’s Yellow Medicine its anti-hero narrator, Billy Lafitte, is in serious trouble; he’s in prison on charges of being a traitor, a murderer and a terrorist. His interrogator, Agent Rome, seems to have a personal beef with him and his options are less than zero. From here the novel moves back in time to what got Lafitte in prison in the first place, other than himself.

Lafitte is a very bent cop. Kicked out of the force in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he gets a second chance in the very different environment of Minnesota. Here he doesn’t change so much as get worse. He takes backhanders from meth cookers and dealers, he’ll quite happily lean on those who get in his way. He gets asked by a previous sexual conquest, who he would like to turn into a more permanent thing, to help her drug dealing boyfriend with some trouble from what appears to be outside dealers looking to muscle in on the local action. Lafitte agrees but soon finds out that what he’s dealing with is something more horrific than this, an enemy that cares little for the rules, an enemy looking to do a lot more than just muscle in on the drug scene, an enemy that knows exactly how to push Lafitte’s buttons; leaving him flailing desperately to try and dig himself out of an ever deepening cesspool…

Yellow Medicine has superb pacing and is served up in choppy, stripped-back prose, which serves the story excellently. Lafitte makes for a complicated anti-hero. He’s happy to bribe, steal and coerce and gain sexual favours from his profession, but at the same time he’s the kind of guy who won’t miss an alimony payment to his wife and kids. He’s a man almost without a home, but at the same time he’s prepared to defend his country from a much worse threat than drug dealers when pushed. My favourite character though is actually Lafitte’s brother-in-law, the sheriff who offers him a second chance. At the beginning he seems a bit of a ‘pussy’, but at the end is prepared to risk it all to help Lafitte and his family when things go very badly. He’s a excellently realised character.

The one character who didn’t quite do it for me was Agent Rome. He seemed a bit one-note, but it’s a minor complaint, because everything else is so nicely handled. Plus, I think Rome’s character will undoubtedly be fleshed out further in Hogdoggin, the sequel. I enjoyed Yellow Medicine and recommend it to all those who like their crime fiction served dark and as cool as Minnesota field in winter.

Best.Cover.Ever

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Seriously, how good is this cover? If this was the cover for your book you’d love it, right?

A couple of women (one scantily clad, the other not so much), some Jack Palance-looking geezer with a machine gun and a dodgy barnet, an exploding car, the Miami coastline and a humungous fucking 8. You have no idea how much I love seventies book covers. And this one rocks!

My favourite crime novels – no. 13

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White Jazz – The last novel in James Ellroy’s LA Quartet is like a literary kick to the swingers. And what a way to sign off one of the great series in all of crime fiction. The formal language experiment that Ellroy began with LA Confidential, with the use of staccato sentences that get rid of all those pesky adverbs, really came into its own here. Hell, Ellroy pretty much invented his own language in this novel. White Jazz is like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. It moves at a rate that makes LA Confidential seem like a slow-burning cosy in comparison. It meshes a complex, satisfying plot (and Ellroy is the supreme plotter in crime fiction) with a captivating anti-hero in Dave Klein. It also sets the groundwork for Ellroy’s next great novel American Tabloid. Pure brilliance.

The second novel, or the second novella…

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…which one will get there first?

I’m 44,000 words into my second novel (roughly halfway, by my current calculations), which will be the first in a series of three novels featuring a pair of Teesside thieves who steal only from drug dealers and other criminals. These novels are very much in the hard-boiled mould rather than noir. They are also in the first person, which is a new one for me (as third person is normally my thing).

However, they are also the stars of a few short stories that I have written recently and a novella, which is currently about 5,000 words in and moving at a faster pace than the novel in terms of words per day.

I hope to have first drafts of both done by mid-August. With draft revisions through August and September and a tentative publication date (for the novella, at least) of early October. The second novel will probably have to wait until

In the meantime, I will make the short stories available for free as and when they have been proofed and edited.

I intend to go travelling in October, and this is a deadline set in stone (the tickets are booked, for one thing), so I know I need to pick up the pace. I want to have another piece of writing available for sale by the time I go travelling, so I can enjoy my travels without fretting about the stuff I haven’t finished.

Exciting times!