Short Story Wednesday: Weird Detectives

Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations, edited by Paula Guran, is another anthology from my son's book collection. This one was loaned to me and I am checking out the stories. The detectives in these stories are in some way involved with the supernatural. I have read cross-genre novels combining mystery and either fantasy or science fiction, and enjoyed them, but I wasn't so sure about short stories in that area.

I skipped the first story in the collection, "The Key" by Isla J. Bick. It was about a dead baby, and I wasn't reading that type of story on that day. Maybe I will come back to it. 

I moved on to the second story, "The Nightside, Needless to Say" by Simon R. Green. This was a story from Green's Nightside series, which stars John Taylor. The author describes the Nightside as "the secret, sick, magical heart of London. A city within a city, where the night never ends and it's always three o'clock in the morning. Hot neon reflects from rain-slick streets, and dreams go walking in borrowed flesh. You can find pretty much anything in the Nightside, except happy endings."

Taylor does not show up in this story but another character from the series does, Larry Oblivion.  Larry Oblivion is dead; he wants to figure out who killed him, and seeks revenge. This was a brief story (10 pages) and it was light, clever, and fun.

I skipped "The Adakian Eagle" by Bradley Denton, because it was novella length, but I will definitely come back to that one. It appears to be a World War II detective story with a supernatural element.

I then read "The Case of the Stalking Shadow" by Joe R. Lansdale. I have only read one short story by Lansdale, and none of his novels, but I have heard a lot of praise for his writing. I did enjoy this one a lot. The author's style of storytelling drew me in.

The main character is Dana Roberts; she tells about her first encounter with the supernormal, which lead to her becoming a detective of the supernormal. She and her cousin Jane both sense an evil presence in the woods near their aunt's house when they are children. When they are in college they return to the site of that experience to see if it is still there. 

The last story I read was "Hecate's Golden Eye," a novelette by P. N. Elrod. It stars Jack Fleming, a vampire detective, who has interesting gifts that he can use in detection. His partner, Charles Escott, is just a normal man, but they work well together. In this case they have been hired to recover a valuable pendant that has been stolen from their client. The setting is 1937 Chicago; I liked that, and the story has good pacing with several twists and surprises. 

There is a series of novels by Elrod featuring Jack Fleming which I would like to try some day. 

So, having tried several stories in this book, my reaction is positive. I did not run into one I did not like.

The stories were introduced in a way that did not tell too much about the story. In one or two sentences, the case is described. This is followed by a brief description of the detective(s). 

And each story is followed by some notes about the author, which I always like to read. 

Reading Summary for April 2017

April was an incredible reading month for me. I read ten crime fiction novels. I also read a non-fiction book, but the author of that book was a crime fiction author.

The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany is a collection by Donald E. Westlake. Foreword by Lawrence Block. Cover illustration and design by Darwyn Cooke, who adapted some of the “Parker” crime novels as a series of graphic novels.

The pieces were written at various times in his career. They include appreciations of other crime fiction authors, interviews (of Westlake, by others), and letters. There is a wonderful essay by his wife, Abby Adams Westlake, about "Living with a Mystery Writer." I enjoyed reading about his experiences with having his books translated into film, and his experiences as a screenwriter. No matter what he is writing about, Westlake is entertaining. I loved reading this book.



Following are the crime fiction books I read in April:

The Blackhouse (2009) by Peter May

A murder investigation set on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. In Part 1 of a trilogy, Fin Macleod, a detective from Edinburgh is sent to the Isle of Lewis because of previous connections to a similar crime. The story is powerful and well told. My review here.

Death on the Move (1989) by Bill Crider

Dan Rhodes is the Sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas. In this fourth book in the series, jewelry is disappearing off bodies prepared for burial at the funeral home in Clearview. There is also the problem of a rash of thefts at some homes built around a nearby lake. This is one of my favorite contemporary series. Full review here.

Cold Comfort (2012) by Quentin Bates

This is the second book in a police procedural series set in Iceland. Sergeant Gunnhildur has been promoted from her rural post to the Serious Crime Unit in Reykjavík. She is working on two cases, locating an escaped convict, Long Ommi, and investigating the murder of a fitness guru. I have found this to be a very enjoyable series, with a great main character, who has a realistic life, a single parent raising a teenage daughter.

Burglars Can't Be Choosers (1977) by Lawrence Block

Bernie Rhodenbarr is a burglar; when he attempts to steal a blue leather box from an apartment, the police walk in on him and a dead man is discovered in the bedroom. Bernie successfully eludes the policemen but they think he killed the man in the bedroom; he then has to prove his innocence. This is the first in a series about Bernie Rhodenbarr. A humorous mystery that was a lot of fun. My review is here.

Badge of Evil (1956) by Whit Masterson

Rudy Linneker, a very rich man in a large border town in California (San Diego?), is blown up by sticks of dynamite thrown into his house. The immediate suspects are Linneker's daughter and her fiance, since Linneker was dead set against their relationship. But Assistant DA Mitch Holt insists that the case does not feel right, and starts investigating in a different direction. This is the book that Orson Welles' 1958 film Touch of Evil was based on. 

Wall of Glass (1987) by Walter Satterthwait

Joshua Croft is a Santa Fe private investigator working for the Mondragón Agency, owned by Rita Mondragón. The case in Wall of Glass centers on a valuable piece of jewelry which was stolen from the house of a wealthy Santa Fe family. The setting was lovely and the story was entertaining. See review here. 

A Fountain Filled with Blood (2003) by Julia Spencer-Fleming

This is the second mystery in the Reverend Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series. As the small town of Millers Kill, New York heads into the July 4th weekend, two gay men are severely beaten in separate incidents. Clare urges the police to notify the public; Russ feels like this could lead to copycat incidents. When another man, also homosexual, is killed, Russ must figure out if the crimes are connected. Mixed in with this are conflicts within the town over development of a luxury spa and environmental issues. Although I have some reservations about this series, I finished this book in a 24 hour period and could hardly put it down, which puts it high in my ratings.

Something from the Nightside (2003) by Simon R. Green

This is a cross-genre novel, blending fantasy and mystery. John Taylor is a private eye in London and his specialty is finding things. He originally came from the Nightside, a hidden part of London where monsters and demons reign. A woman comes to him as a last resort to find her daughter. The only clue she has is that she could be found "in the Nightside." John agrees to help her. This book was light and entertaining, a good read.

The Butcher's Boy (1982) by Thomas Perry

This was Thomas Perry's debut novel; it won the Edgar for Best First Novel of 1982. The two main characters are a professional killer with no name and Elizabeth Waring, an analyst for the Department of Justice. They are both very good at what they do. Full review here.

The Likeness (2008) by Tana French

This book is the sequel to Tana French’s debut, In the Woods. That book featured two detectives in the Murder Squad in Dublin, Ireland, Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox. The Likeness continues Cassie's story. Cassie is now working in Domestic Violence at police headquarters, but a unique opportunity arises for her to go undercover, taking up an identity she used previously when she worked in the Undercover division. This is not a perfect book but very close. Also a Chunkster (466 pages).

In April, I read more contemporary novels than usual. I only read one novel written before 1960. There was one written in the 1970s and three from the 1980s. The remaining five books were published after 2001. Regarding authors, only two of the authors were female. In May I am endeavoring to remedy that and focus on female authors.

Planned Parenthood Book Sale 2015 (Part 3)

Today I feature books purchased by my husband and son, providing a bit more variety. My husband likes and reads mysteries, but he reads a lot of non-fiction also. My son reads non-fiction, science fiction and fantasy, with an emphasis on fantasy. They are also much more controlled in their buying than I am.

From my husband's book haul:

From the book flap:

From one of our leading film authorities, a rich, penetrating, amusing plum pudding of a book about the golden age of movies, full of Hollywood lore, anecdotes, and analysis. 

My husband is reading The Star Machine right now and these are his thoughts on the book:

Jeanine Basinger's long and - in the best sense - rambling work is less a history of golden age Hollywood star making machinery than it is the stories of a select group of actors who were created (although some came to it of their own efforts) and maintained by this machinery. Nearly everyone of star level in 1930s-40s Hollywood gets mentioned (at least in passing) but great attention is lavished on ten of varying types (for it was types that Hollywood excelled at creating): Tyrone Power, Lana Turner, Errol Flynn, Deanna Durbin, Jean Arthur, Loretta Young, Irene Dunne, Norma Shearer, Charles Boyer, and William Powell. Of these, Basinger seems especially interested in (and thrilled with) Tyrone Power and Deanna Durbin, two huge stars of their time who also come off particularly well as people. A good read but perhaps - at over 550 pages - too long.

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris

In Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris turned the story of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 into a landmark work of cultural history, a book about the transformation of an art form and the larger social shift it signified. In Five Came Back, he achieves something larger and even more remarkable, giving us the untold story of how Hollywood changed World War II, and how World War II changed Hollywood, through the prism of five film directors caught up in the war: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens.

From the Feral House website:

DOPE MENACE collects together hundreds of fabulously lurid and collectible covers in color, from xenophobic turn-of-the century tomes about the opium trade to the beatnik glories of reefer smoking and William S. Burroughs’ Junkie to the spaced-out psychedelic ’60s. We mustn’t forget the gonzo paranoia brought on by Hunter S. Thompson in the ’70s, when anything was everything.

Author Stephen J. Gertz is a well-regarded authority on antiquarian books and contributor to Feral House’s Sin-A-Rama, an award-winning visual history of sleaze paperbacks from the sixties.

Brian Busby at The Dusty Bookcase covers this book in a post titled Dope, Danger, and Dolls.



Summary of The Intern's Handbook by Shane Kuhn at the author's website...

John Lago is a very bad guy. But he’s the very best at what he does. And what he does is infiltrate top-level companies and assassinate crooked executives while disguised as an intern.

Interns are invisible. That’s the secret behind HR, Inc., the elite “placement agency” that doubles as a network of assassins for hire who take down high-profile targets that wouldn’t be able to remember an intern’s name if their lives depended on it.   At the ripe old age of almost twenty-five, John Lago is already New York City’s most successful hit man. He’s also an intern at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, clocking eighty hours a week getting coffee, answering phones, and doing all the grunt work actual employees are too lazy to do. He was hired to assassinate one of the firm’s heavily guarded partners. His internship provides the perfect cover, enabling him to gather intel and gain access to pull off a clean, untraceable hit.   Part confessional, part DIY manual, The Intern’s Handbook chronicles John’s final assignment, a twisted thrill ride in which he is pitted against the toughest—and sexiest—adversary he’s ever faced: Alice, an FBI agent assigned to take down the same law partner he’s been assigned to kill.




Some of the books my son picked up at the book sale:

From a review at the Postmodern Mystery website:

Our story takes place at an undetermined date in the
future, when police functions have been taken over by public inquisitors, but a few P.I.s—private inquisitors—are still allowed to represent clients and do their gumshoe trade. Our hero Conrad Metcalf learns in the opening pages that his latest client, a prominent doctor, has been murdered in a sleazy motel. But here’s some consolation: he soon finds a new person seeking his services—the man who is being set up by the Inquisition as the fall guy in the crime.

I was already interested in this book, but after looking into it further, I am definitely going to read it.






Description of Jennifer Government by Max Barry at the author's site:

The world is run by American corporations; there are no taxes; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; the Police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms; the government can only investigate crimes it can bill for.

Hack Nike is a Merchandising Officer who discovers an all-new way to sell sneakers. Buy Mitsui is a stockbroker with a death-wish. Billy NRA is finding out that life in a private army isn't all snappy uniforms and code names. And Jennifer Government, a legendary agent with a barcode tattoo, is a consumer watchdog with a gun.

I have yet to find a brief description of Railsea by China Mieville that adequately describes the book. From what I can glean, it borrows from Moby Dick by Herman Melville and references works by other authors. It is sometimes billed as a YA book, although many say it is for readers of all ages. It is definitely in the fantasy genre with elements of steampunk.

From a description at Goodreads:

On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt.

The giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory are extraordinary. But no matter how spectacular it is, travelling the endless rails of the railsea, Sham can't shake the sense that there is more to life. Even if his philosophy-seeking captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-coloured mole she’s been chasing – ever since it took her arm all those years ago.

My son and I have both been interested in trying the Nightside books by Simon R. Green. Something from the Nightside is the first in the series.

Description from a review at trashotron.com:

John Taylor, the protagonist of 'Something from the Nightside" is the classic, struggling P.I., a loner with a dark past, tough and romantic, working and living in a seedy office complete with opaque glass door, peeling paint, second-hand furniture and girly calendar. ...
The "Nightside" is the dark and malevolent netherworld of London ("London is the smoke, Nightside is the fire') where the evil, the wanton, and the weird live in a strangely beguiling world of perpetual darkness and glaring neon. Taylor's gifted with a special ability to find things, a third eye he calls his "private eye" (I kid you not) that serves him and saves him in this fantastic netherworld. The quest is an Indiana Jones meets Farscape romp down streets that are not only mean, but streets that sometimes completely disappear, complete with aliens, time warps, time travel, people-eating houses and really creepy bugs.

The Dark Side of the Road: Simon R. Green

Brief introduction at Goodreads:

A Country House Murder Mystery with a Supernatural Twist

Ishmael Jones is someone who can't afford to be noticed, someone who lives under the radar, who drives on the dark side of the road. He's employed to search out secrets, investigate mysteries and shine a light in dark places. Sometimes he kills people. Invited by his employer, the enigmatic Colonel, to join him and his family for Christmas, Ishmael arrives at the grand but isolated Belcourt Manor in the midst of a blizzard to find that the Colonel has mysteriously disappeared. 

Simon R. Green, the author of this book, is a very prolific science fiction and fantasy author. Many of his series also have an element of mystery.

I have enjoyed several books that mix mystery with fantasy or science fiction. Green's books are a little too heavy on the fantasy side for me, but I still found this to be a very enjoyable  read. I love the way Green tells a story, and I have no problem suspending my disbelief. In The Dark Side of the Road the pacing was good; the story never drags. There are touches of humor, although not the laugh out loud type. However, the story does turn dark fairly quickly. There was too much of a romance element for me, but it did not take over the story. A plus is that it is set at Christmas, and I always love a Christmas story, even in mystery novels where the crime usually overpowers the joys of the season.

I have read two other books by Green, both from the Secret Histories series. The main character in that series is Eddie Drood, a secret agent also known as Shaman Bond. My review of Daemons are Forever is here. I liked this book better than the book in the Secret Histories series, probably because of the setting, a large mansion out in the country in the middle of an impenetrable snowstorm. They are similar in many ways. This book is not totally serious, but it relies a lot less on humor than the Eddie Drood books.

This is the first book I have read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge, hosted by Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings. 

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Severn House, 2015
Length:      224 pages
Format:      e-book
Setting:      UK
Genre:        Fantasy /  Mystery
Source:      Provided by the publisher for review.

Daemons Are Forever: Simon R. Green

The first line in this book is:

The name's Bond. Shaman Bond. The very secret agent.

This should give the reader a hint: This book spoofs the James Bond series, and it is going to be humorous.

Shaman Bond is the assumed name of Edwin Drood when he is living in London, in what we know as the real world. Edwin comes from a very large clan, the Droods, who live in a compound outside of London.

As Edwin, or Eddie, describes it:

The world isn’t what you think it is. Hell, even London isn’t what you think it is. There are monsters around every corner, creatures in every shadow, and more dark conspiracies and secret wars going on than you can shake a really big stick at. You never get to know about this because the Drood family has field agents everywhere, to keep the lid on things and make sure everyone plays nice. When they don’t, we kill them. We don’t believe in second chances; we believe in stamping out fires before they can spread.

My family has been keeping the world safe for almost two thousand years. We’re very good at it.

Daemons Are Forever (2008) is the second book in a series of seven books (the Secret Histories series). This is the type of series where a lot happens in the first book, and if I describe much of what happens in the second one, it can spoil the story for you.

On the other hand, this book can easily be read as a stand-alone. There is plenty of rehashing of the history of Edwin Drood and his family, and what has happened in the last book. I was grateful for all of that because it had been years since I read the first one and I needed a refresher course. Others who have read the books closer together have complained about this very element.

I found this to be a very entertaining book, and I do admire Simon R. Green's storytelling. But I will be honest and say that fantasy is just not my thing.

I did some research into the elements of fantasy fiction to try to understand why I don't generally care for fantasy. I have a wonderful book called Genreflecting: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests (Sixth Edition), which is a 500 page overview of various genres and their elements, and suggestions for reading from these genres. It is aimed at librarians, of course, but I love browsing through it.

Genreflecting (and other sources I read) defines fantasy works as being set in an internally consistent created world and including magic or paranormal elements. In some cases, the created world may be hidden from the real world setting (as much as possible); in other cases, it is the only world.

Both Daemons Are Forever and Rivers of London (which I reviewed recently) are cases where the real world exists pretty much like our world, and the world with fantastic elements and creatures is separate, or at least hidden.

I preferred Rivers of London because the protagonist is of the real world and just getting introduced to the idea that there is a world with magic, ghosts and vampires that needs to be controlled. In Daemons Are Forever, Eddie Drood's world is teeming with supernatural creatures, and he coexists and makes deals with them to save the world. But that is just me; I think a lot of people who enjoy fantasy would really like this book and the series.

My son introduced me to this series. He thought I might like it because of the James Bond element. I will be continuing the series through the third book, because I have it in house. My son is that far into the series. From what I have read, the series was intended to be a trilogy, but was popular enough to justify adding more books to the series. If we find more in the series, we will continuing reading it further.

I will leave you with this description of the Secret Histories series, from a review at Tor.com by Michael M. Jones. The review is of the 6th book in the series, and the reviewer is a big fan of all of Simon R. Green's books:

The Secret Histories has always been Green’s attempt to blend his usual urban fantasy material—the Nightside books, Ghost Finders, Drinking Midnight Wine, and so on—with a James Bond attitude. Rather unsubtly, Eddie Drood’s secret identity is “Shaman Bond,” and the book titles are also a dead giveaway. However, Live and Let Drood doesn’t just evoke James Bond, it also conjures up the spirit of The Avengers (British version) with the Department of the Uncanny. (Characters named Patrick and Diana show up, obviously named for Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg, AKA Steed and Peel and even I noticed that…)

I’ve long held that Green’s books make for excellent popcorn reading. They’re widescreen adventures, blockbusters with unlimited budgets and absolutely no restraint or sense of decorum. The body counts are high, the stakes higher, the sense of wonder undeniable. They defy genre, incorporating elements of science fiction, fantasy, espionage, mystery, and more. Green’s characters always have the best lines, the best toys, and the best poses.

This was my fourth book for the Once Upon a Time Challenge at Stainless Steel Droppings. I had committed to reading five books for the challenge, but did not make that goal. I did discover more about what I like and dislike in fantasy fiction, and have a lot of of fantasy books I plan to read in the next year or two.