3 Fast, Funny & Sharp Thrillers

It feels like I've broken through a logjam in my reading this summer, and I'm back to cranking through books like I used to be able to do. At least, I'm cranking through the books that have the magical qualities that I look for in my fun reading: a great plot, a likeable lead character, a swift and sassy writing style. In short, I'm always on the lookout for a new writer who has stepped into the shoes of Elmore Leonard or Lawrence Block or Thomas Perry.

Through some combination of luck and fate and sharp-eyed bookshop spotting, I've just read three new-ish books in the past couple of weeks that brought to mind all three of those landmark thriller & mystery writers. If, like me, you are a fan of all three of those writers, this post is going to fill your weekend with great reading.

   

The book for fans of Lawrence Block:
Something Missing
by Matthew Dicks
Broadway | 9780767930888 | $22.95 | July 2009

I should preface this by saying that my favorite Lawrence Block character is not Keller, the sardonic hitman, nor is it sad-eyed alcoholic ex-cop Matthew Scudder.  It's always been that light-hearted scamp, the gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr (newbies should begin at the beginning: Burglars Can't Be Choosers.). 

Like Bernie Rhodenbarr, our hero in Something Missing is a careful, meticulous burglar with a few personality quirks.  For his entire adult life, Martin has been supporting himself in a cautious manner by stealing small quantities of household goods and precious items that won't be missed from a "client list" of families that he burgles repeatedly.  He's so careful in his planning and execution that he is able to go back time and time again.  He has worked out a series of rules that guide his daily rounds:

• If the missing item will be noticed, don't acquire it.
• Never spend more than 15 minutes in a house.
• Never fall into a routine for entering or leaving the premises.
• Never, ever run on the stairs lest you break a leg and have to call 911 from inside a home.

He's been making these rounds for so many years that Martin has begun to feel a kind of kinship with his "clients".  When Martin accidentally knocks a client's toothbrush into the toilet, his OCD traits and his feeling of responsibility to the clients force him to deviate from the rules and his careful planning.  And that small accident sets him on a whole new path of rule-breaking and risk-taking.

A speedy read, a fun tour through an ethical burglar's brain, a surprising thriller.

The book for fans of Thomas Perry:
Beat The Reaper
by Josh Bazell
Back Bay Books / Little, Brown | 9780316032216 | $14.99 | paperback coming Sept 2009

The first Thomas Perry novel I read was not one of his Jane Whitefield thrillers, though I do love his elaborate descriptions of how Jane helps her clients disappear.  It was a story of a disappearance gone awry: Sleeping Dogs, the sequel to The Butcher's Boy.  In Sleeping Dogs, Perry related the adrenaline-revved, bloody tale of a mob hitman who just wanted to stay retired and hidden.

Beat The Reaper is an updated take on the same basic plot - an incredibly talented hitman goes undercover after a double-cross, spends the next 8 years in Witness Protection learning to be a doctor.  And one day, while making his rounds at the grungy New York hospital where he's working, a former associate ID's him.

The best thing about this story - aside from the inventively imagined scenes of mayhem - is the narrator's voice.  Dr. Peter Brown (formerly Pietro Brnwna, mob hitman) tells his own story of violence, love, betrayal, and revenge in a wry, knowing first person. 

And Josh Bazell has layered his story with an insider's knowledge of the ugly side of hospitals, internecine mob warfare, Witness Protection schemes and medical mysteries that could be ripped right out of House.

Leonardo DiCaprio has been mentioned as a likely lead in a film adaptation of Beat The Reaper.

The book for fans of Elmore Leonard:
Starvation Lake
by Bryan Gruley
Touchstone / Simon & Schuster | 9781416563624 | $14 | March 2009

Right off the bat, there were a few clues that had me thinking of Elmore Leonard as I started reading Starvation Lake.  First, it's set in Michigan, longtime home and setting for some of Leonard's most memorable novels.  Partly Detroit, but mostly the tiny northern vacation town of Starvation Lake. 

Second, our narrator of the novel is that beloved Dutch Leonard character type, the disgraced pro on the run.  Think of Get Shorty's Chili Palmer. 

Third, Gruley mentions Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing in his afterword, referencing his dictum against an author's perpetrating "hooptedoodle": "Try to leave out the part readers tend to skip".  Gruley likes to keep it plainspoken and fast-paced, just like Leonard.

So, the book opens and it's dead of winter in Starvation Lake.  Crack reporter Gus Carpenter is back in the town where he grew up, just ahead of a whole chain of lawyers and lawsuits resulting from an investigative series he wrote for a Detroit paper.  He's gotten a job as editor of the local paper, but even with his big city experience, for most of the locals, he's still just the former goalie who blew the big championship game

When the snowmobile that once belonged to the hockey team's long-missing coach turns up on the shores of Starvation Lake, a whole lot of the town's ugly history is about to be brought back to the surface with it.  And Carpenter and his star reporter are either going to blow it all out in the open, or they're going to be forced to bury the lead one more time.

I always like to be surprised when I'm reading a mystery like this.  Another great writer I thought of while I was reading Starvation Lake was Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series - buried secrets, missing family members, and wealthy men with motives.  But Gruley found ways to surprise me, and keep it from just being an iced-over Lew Archer mystery.

Update on August 21, 2009 by John Mesjak

Some added links:

• Bryan Gruley maintains a blog at his own site.
• Matthew Dicks is blogging here and is active on Twitter, too.

New fiction picks from 3 Consortium publishers

I've been making lists of potential blog post topics since before I started publishing my3books, and I've been making further lists of possible books that would fit the potential blog post topics, too. One of the most challenging lists that I've been working on, adding to, subtracting from, editing, restarting, etc was the possible fiction picks from the Consortium catalog.

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution is the home of more than 100 great independent publishers, from established indie icons like Seven Stories, Copper Canyon, and Feminist Press at CUNY to brand new startups like the (previously featured on my3books) Exterminating Angel Press and Two Dollar Radio.

Every season, I get manuscripts and galleys and sales kits for hundreds of their books. It's far more than any one person could read, really. So now it's a kind of parlor game, trying to spot the books that will make for the most entertaining reading. It's like walking into the backroom of any bookstore and gazing upon the bookshelf of galleys in miniature - there's literally something for every taste.

These are three of the many, many books coming this fall from Consortium's publishers, three that caught my eye, and kept my attention.

The Cry of the Sloth
by Sam Savage
Coffee House Press (Consortium) | 9781566892315 | $14.95 | Sept 2009

From Sam Savage, the author of Firmin, the tale of a rat who learned to read by digesting his way through his cozy nest of books, comes the story of Andrew Whittaker, another type of lowlife. After reading Firmin, a reader coming to The Cry of the Sloth might well suspect it's the story of another kind of rat - a pack rat. It's a shocking understatement to call this an epistolary novel - it's told by way of letters, yes, as well as shopping lists, angry notices to tenants, complaints to the local paper, pieces of Andrew's attempted fictions, and entries from his diary.

Andrew Whittaker is the ne'er-do-well editor of a midwestern literary journal that he's struggling to keep afloat. He's also a poorly financed landlord of a depressing assortment of rental units, a sad sack ex-husband, and the would-be artistic eminence behind a not-yet-launched literary festival that he hopes will save his career and his standing in the local arts scene.

Over the course of an increasingly frantic few months, we read over Andrew's shoulder as he accepts and rejects queries from potential contributors to the journal, sends pitiable letters to his ex-wife, tries to rope in possible big name authors for his literary festival, and tries to fend off the amorous advances of one of his tenants.

Andrew Whittaker is a character ripped from the Community News pages of any small town's newspaper, a man who bears the weight of the local arts scene on his thin shoulders and his outsized ambition. I loved The Cry of the Sloth for bringing such an unloveable character to life with such honesty and charm.

***

How to Rob an Armored Car
by Iain Levison
Soho Press (Consortium) | 9781569475997 | $15 | Oct 2009

We've all seen hundreds of hours of Law & Order and watched the films of Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino dozens of times, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when one of your friends thinks he could become a crime kingpin. We all know what NOT to do - don't leave your uniquely identifiable shell casings at the scene, don't charge the getaway car to your credit card, don't blab to your girlfriend in Queens, etc. The only question left, of course, is coming up with the right plan - what TO do and how to do it.

Mitch is the "brains" of the operation, of course, as he is the one who had the assistant manager job at Accu-mart until he quit. Kevin is the recently-paroled buddy who's running a dogwalking business to give him an excuse to get away from the disappointed gaze of his wife. And Doug is the shy one who holds down a job as a line cook in a ratty diner. Though they dream of a big score, all they really want is enough money to keep them well-supplied in pot and video games. Of course, they end up in way over their heads.

Watching these three smalltown Pennsylvania friends make all the classic mistakes and still soldier on cluelessly is what makes this new novel from Iain Levison (author of Since The Layoffs and The Working Stiff's Manifesto) so darkly funny and disturbing.

***

The Poison Eaters And Other Stories
by Holly Black
Big Mouth House / Small Beer Press (Consortium) | 9781931520638 | $17.99 | Feb 2010

How does Holly Black get everything done? She's behind two big-time fantasy series (her urban faerie trilogy that began with Tithe, and a little something called The Spiderwick Chronicles), a graphic novel series from Graphix/Scholastic called The Good Neighbors, and she's edited a new anthology for YA readers called Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd (with Cecil Castelluci). Oh, and there's this collection of her short fiction, The Poison Eaters.

I've read a few of her short pieces already, some from anthologies like The Restless Dead and some in the advance materials that Small Beer sent me for this collection. The Poison Eaters also features two stories that bring readers back to the world of Tithe.

The standout story so far is "In Vodka Veritas," which was first published in the anthology 21 Proms in 2007. If you've ever wondered what might happen when a rogue Latin teacher and the Latin Club decide to make a private school's prom a LOT more like a true Roman Bacchanalia, then you'll want to read The Poison Eaters. It warmed this former high school nerd's heart to see a member of the gaming club save the day.

***

> Consortium Book Sales & Distribution distributes the books that these publishers create to bookstores around the US. You can download their Fall 2009 catalogs here. Follow them on Twitter and befriend them on Facebook.
> Coffee House Press is on the web, on Twitter, and on Facebook. 
> Soho Press is on the web, on Twitter, and on Facebook.
> Small Beer Press is on the web, and on Facebook.  Holly Black is on the web and on Twitter, too.