The Serialist

The Serialist is one of the most unusual and entertaining books that I've read in a long time. The protagonist and narrator is Harry Bloch, an aspiring writer who barely eeks out a living by grinding out pulp novels in a variety of genres under various pseudonyms. One of his most successful is a vampire series that he writes under his mother's maiden name, Sybilline Lorindo-Gold. Harry gets his mom to pose for the author photo and then, when his mother dies, he has no choice but to don a wig, put on his mother's clothes and begin posing for the photos himself.

Harry supplements his income by writing term papers for wealthy students he is supposed to be tutoring. This aspect of his career is managed by a precocious and very appealing teenage girl named Claire who was the first student to be tutored by Harry and who conceived the idea of expanding the enterprise. Before long, Claire is managing most other aspects of Harry's life and doing a much better job of it than Harry had done himself.

Then, apparently out of the blue, Harry get a chance to take a gigantic step up in the writing biz when serial killer Darian Clay, who is a little more than eighty days away from being executed, asks Harry to ghost his memoir. Given Clay's fame, and the particularly sensational nature of his crimes, the book would doubtless be a huge best seller with all sorts of ancillary benefits. Harry has some reservations about accepting the offer, but Claire beats some sense into him and Harry begins visiting the prison to meet the brutal killer and get his story.

As the price for his cooperation, though, Clay demands that Harry visit some of the women who have been writing him in prison. Harry must then craft stories for Clay's amusement, describing the sort of lurid sex that Clay would have with the women if only he were free. Slimy as the task is, Harry agrees, but then the women he visits begin turning up dead, murdered in the same gruesome manner that was Clay's signature.

Harry now finds himself caught up in an enormously creepy and dangerous mystery. His own pulp novel detective hero would naturally break the case without breaking a sweat. But this is real life and Harry hasn't a clue as to how to proceed. The only thing he knows is that needs to come up with an idea ASAP or he may well become the next victim of a very disturbed killer.

It's impossible, really, to convey in a review the full measure of this very clever and appealing novel which is, as the cover suggests, a love letter to books and especially to genre fiction. The author, David Gordon, sprinkles through the book sample chapters of Harry's genre novels which are absolutely hilarious. Through Harry, he also has some very wise things to say about the reasons why so many readers love these books.

At one point, Harry notes that, "In its tropes and types, genre fiction is close to myth, or to what the myths and classics once were. Just as a century or two ago, one could refer to Ulysses or Jason and hid a deep vein of common understanding in your reader, now we touch that place when we think of a lone figure riding in the desert, or a stranger in a long coat and hat coming down a corridor with a gun, or a bat wheeling above the city at night. Reduced to their essence, boiled down, the turns and returns of genre unfold like dreams, like the dreams that we all share and trade with one another and that, clumsy and unrealistic as they are, point us toward the truth."

This book was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and is sure to delight anyone who can easily lose an afternoon or stay up half the night devouring a genre novel.(

The Two Minute Rule

Robert Crais is best known for his series featuring L.A. private-eye Elvis Cole and Cole's partner, the inscrutable Joe Pike. But while I like those books, this stand-alone, originally published in 2006, remains my favorite of Crais's novels.

Two thugs named Marchenko and Parsons are stricly amateur, if brutal, bank robbers. They do not know the Two Minute Rule, which holds that a robber only has a two minute window to be in and out of a bank before the law is almost certainly going to be on the scene. The two get lucky long enough to score almost $17 million in a string of robberies, but their luck runs out when they walk out of their last bank into a hail of police bullets.

Max Holman is, or was, a professional bank robber who knew and scrupulously observed the Two Minute Rule. But in a moment of weakness, he broke the rule and was arrested in the middle of a robbery by a team led by FBI agent, Katherine Pollard. Ten years down the road, Max is finally being released from prison and his dream is to be reconciled with his son, Richie, who in rejecting his father has gone all the way in the other direction to become an L.A. cop.

Just as Max is being processed out, though, he receives the worst possible news imaginable: Richie has been murdered, along with three other police officers. The detectives investigating the killings quickly pin the crime on a gangbanger who then conveniently commits suicide, closing the case--at least as far as the cops are concerned.

A devastated Max, thinks the whole package is all too neat. His cursory inspection of the murder site convinces him that the killings could not have occurred as the police have theorized and he is determined to find the truth. For help, he turns to Katherine Pollard, the agent who arrested him. Pollard has left the Bureau and is now a widow with two small children. Reluctantly, she agrees to assist Max and it quickly becomes apparent that their efforts to discover what really happened the night of the murders is stirring up the proverbial hornets' nest. The cops and the Feebs insist that Max and Pollard step down and accept the police version of the crime. When the two refuse to do so, they suddenly find themselves in very grave danger with no apparent way out.

This is a book with well-developed characters and a fast-paced plot that seems perfectly believable. Readers who have enjoyed Crais's Cole/Pike books will certainly want to look for this one.(

Another Gem from George Pelecanos

This is another excellent novel from George Pelecanos who demonstrates once again that he knows the seamier side of Washington, D.C. inside and out and can portray it better than anyone else. Even better are the characters who populate this novel--some good, some bad, some still making up their minds, but virtually all of them struggling in one way or another.

The main protagonist, Lorenzo Brown, once ran with a rough gang headed by his best boyhood friend. But after serving eight years in prison on a drug charge, Lorenzo is back on the street, determined to stay on the straight and narrow and make a new life for himself. He finds a job as a "dog man," working for the Humane Society, attempting to rescue mistreated dogs.

Lorenzo must report periodically to his parole officer, an attractive but troubled woman named Rachel Lopez. By day, Rachel is very conscientious and does her job well. But by night, she drinks too much and picks up strangers in hotel bars for rough sex. Outside of their scheduled sessions, Lorenzo and Rachel also occasionally run into each other at a mid-day meeting of a Narcotics Anonymous chapter.

Lorenzo is doing well, content in his humble job and steering clear of his former bad associates, when a simple mistake by a stupid gang banger threatens to set off a conflict between two of D.C.'s major drug lords, one of whom is still Lorenzo's friend. The incident threatens both Lorenzo and Rachel and forces Lorenzo to make an agonizing choice.

These characters are beautifully drawn and their story pulls you in from the first page. These are real people in a setting that is totally believable and flawed or not, you can't help but sympathize with virtually all of them. Certainly you won't soon forget them.

Doors Open

Ian Rankin's Doors Open is a stand-alone, set in Edinburgh that does not feature the author's long-time protagonist, John Rebus. It originally appeared as a weekly serial in the New York Times Magazine, and was perhaps inspired by Rankin's enthusiasm for heist films. (He lists ten of his favorite such movies at the end of the book.)

The book opens at an art auction where three friends meet. Not surprisingly, they all share an interest in fine art. Mike Mackenzie made a fortune with his software company, but after selling the company he finds himself bored and looking for some excitement in his life. Robert Gissing is an art professor who is miffed by the fact that so many pieces of great art are hidden away in private collections, unavailable to the general public. Alan Cruickshank is a successful banker with a taste for art that he can't afford.

Over drinks after the auction, Professor Gissing suggests that it would be enormous fun to "liberate" a few priceless works of art from the National Gallery's storage warehouse. Mike Mackenzie, in particular, is intrigued by the idea. He's rich enough to afford virtually any painting he might want, but he particularly covets a portrait that is in the Gallery's collection and that he knows will never come up for sale.

Before long, a discussion that apparently began as a light-hearted fantasy evolves into a serious plan to steal a handful of priceless paintings from the Gallery. Mackenzie brings into the scheme an old high school mate who has grown up to become a local crime boss, and the game is on.

The men construct what they hope will be a fool-proof scheme to steal the paintings without getting caught. But as complicated as the plan is and with as many people as there are involved in its execution, the potential for disaster looms large.

This is a very enjoyable book with lots of twists and turns. It's not as dark as most of the books in the Rebus series, and fans of great heist movies like "The Thomas Crown Affair" will probably enjoy reading it almost as much as Ranking obviously enjoyed writing it.        

Parker with a Getaway Face

This is the second book in Richard Stark's series about the amoral criminal, Parker. At the end of the first, The Hunter, Parker is on the run from the organized crime syndicate, the Outfit. At the opening of this book, he has made his way to Nebraska, where he successfully undergoes surgery to change his face to such an extent that even his old associates don't recognize him.

At the conclusion of the operation, Parker returns to the East, desperately in need of a score. An old acquaintance proposes an armored car heist, but Parker is extremely leary of the job. He's not all that confident in the old acquaintance and he likes even less the fact that the job is the bright idea of a waitress that the old acquaintance is living with. Parker's even more discouraged once he meets the woman in question, but he really needs the money and so agrees to the plan. He brings in another old friend, one in whom he has complete confidence, and redesigns the plan in the hope that he can get away with the loot before everything turns to crap.

As readers of this series will well know, that's never going to happen. Complications arise at nearly every turn and, as always, much of the fun in reading these books is watching the way in which Parker deals with one crisis after another. At this point, Stark, a pseudonym for Donald Westlake, was just beginning to hit his stride with this character. Happily, the series would run for a good number of years and nearly twenty-five books. This one, though, contains perhaps the best description of Parker, who "looked like a man who'd made money, but who'd made it without sitting behind a desk."

This book will appeal to any fan of crime fiction who likes his or her books lean, mean and captivating.(

Introducing Dave Brandstetter

Originally published in 1970, this was the first book in Joseph Hansen's series featuring private eye Dave Brandstetter. The series would ultimately run for twelve books, through A Country of Old Men, which appeared in 1991. Dave Brandstetter was an insurance company investigator, but, inevitably, he wound up investigating a murder or two in each of the books in the series. What set this series apart was the fact that Brandstetter was, if not the first, then certainly one of the first openly gay detectives to populate the world of the private eye novel. At a time when the genre was still populated by macho, tough guy and often homophobic detectives like Mike Hammer, Brandstetter stood apart as a tough, smart private dick whose love life was a major theme of the series.

Entertainer Fox Olson had just achieved his life-long dream of success with a successful radio program and a certain best-selling book in the offing when his car plunged off a bridge during a violent storm. The car is found under the bridge, but Olson's body is not. Olson's widow insists that the body has simply washed down the river and will be discovered in due course. She adamantly insists that Dave Brandstetter's company should pay the insurance benefit. Virtually everyone agrees with the grieving widow, but Dave is reluctant to pay a claim when there is no body. Brandstetter ultimately comes to believe that Olson is still alive and that his death was faked. And in spite of the obstacles that virtually everyone places in his wake, he is determined to find the truth at the bottom of Fox Olson's disappearance.

At the same time, Dave is grieving the death of Rod, his long-time lover, who has recently succumbed to cancer. The question becomes whether Dave can fight through the pain and heartache that threatens to immoblilize him to follow the threads of a complicated case. This is a book that should appeal to anyone who enjoys private-eye novels and who is looking for a well-written and unique approach to the genre.

A (True?) Confession

In The Appeal, John Grisham took on the important issue of electing state judges and allowing them to collect huge campaign contributions from people and institutions who might have business before the courts to which they are elected. Now, in The Confession, he takes on an even more important issue in the death penalty.

Keith Schroeder, a Lutheran minister in Kansas, is working in his study one morning when Travis Boyette, a career criminal currently out on parole and residing in a local half-way house, asks to see him. Boyette had attended services at Schroeder's church the previous Sunday and had been impressed by the minister's sermon on forgiveness. Boyette claims to be suffering from a terminal illness and has something that he'd like to get off his chest before he shuffles off into that long good night. He's decided that Keith is the man to hear his confession.

Boyette claims that nine years earlier, he had kidnapped, raped and murdered Nicole Yarber, a popular high school cheerleader in the small town of Sloan, Texas. He left Texas shortly thereafter and then was arrested, convicted and imprisoned for a subsequent crime. In the meantime, officials in Sloan arrested a young black man, Donte Drumm, a classmate of Nicole's, who confessed to the murder that Boyette claims to have committed. Complicating matters is that fact that Nicole's body was never recovered.

Donte Drumm quickly repudiated his confession, claiming that it had been coerced. He was defended by a bulldog of an attorney, Robbie Flak. But in spite of all of Flak's efforts and in spite of the fact that there was no body and no proof that Nicole was even dead, a judge and jury convicted Drumm of the killing on the basis of his confession and sentenced him to death. For the last nine years, Flak has done everything possible to delay the execution, but all of Donte's appeals have been exhausted and he is scheduled to die within days.

After his confession to Keith Schroeder, Boyette suggests that he might be willing to go to Texas and tell his story in the hope of saving Donte. But then again, maybe he wouldn't. He vacillates back and forth while the minister attempts to determine whether Boyette is telling the truth or if he is just another one of the nutcases or publicity seekers who turn up on such occasions looking for their fifteen minutes in the limelight.

The story takes off from that point as the clock rapidly ticks down toward Donte Drumm's execution, and as the story progresses, the reader gets a vivid look at the death penalty and the machinery by which it operates, especially in the state of Texas, which executes far more people than any other state in the Union. Irrespective of how one might feel about the issue, this book is bound to provoke some soul-searching on the matter.

In truth, while this is a very good book, it does lag at some points. Grisham obviously feels strongly about this issue and he sometimes overloads the reader with a bit too much detail and slows the momentum of the story. Some of the characters are also a bit one-dimensional in service of the argument that Grisham wants to make. Still it's a compelling story and once it grabs your attention, you're likely to keep reading well into the day or night in order to see the conclusion.