Roadkill Review: The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell

This is a curious novel. Short, but not at all to the point. As you would expect from Daniel Woodrell the writing is largely superb. His prose is more lyrical here than in previous outings, and while generally suited to the tone of the book there were places where it was in danger of overshadowing the story. That in itself is a minor grumble, a bigger issue for me is the wandering narrative, which often dead-ends in vignettes of bit-part players and robs the book of any real momentum.

The Maid’s Version is not a bad book. It’s just not my kind of book. I am not really one for musings and metaphors. This is as close as Woodrell has come to writing an out-and-out literary novel. I have a horrible suspicion that may prove to be his ultimate objective. If that is the case then I wish him well, but I don't think we can remain friends.

Roadkill Review: Joyland by Stephen King

Part mystery, part horror and part bittersweet coming of age drama. Joyland tries to be a lot of things at once and while overall it largely succeeds as a novel, it fails to do most of those individual elements any real justice.

 

Mystery aficionados may feel this Carny whodunit has a faint whiff of the Scooby Doo about it (I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you medalling kids!) While traditional King fans will no doubt be disappointed with the under-developed Shinning-esque sub plot. It’s the nostalgic, last summer of innocence feel to the narrative that works best out of the three, and in spite of a lot of foreshadowing it had me invested and even left me feeling a little wistful toward the end.  It might not be Stand by Me, but it ain’t too shabby either.

 

“When it comes to the past everybody writes fiction.”

 

While lines like that may give you reason to pause and consider your own rose colored glasses you can argue that others such as, “It was the best and the worst autumn of my life,” do nothing for you and I’d have to agree. If anyone other than King had written that one I would have probably ditched the book on principal right there and then. But over the past 30 years Steve and me have reached an understanding. I overlook these odd literary indulgences and he usually repays me with a pretty good story, and although flawed Joyland really is just that.  

Roadkill Review: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

I must be one of the few people over the age of forty who had never read this book. At this distance it would be easy to dismiss Fear & Loathing as nothing more than a drug addled romp through the desert--a coked-out fuck up of a book throwing up on its own shoes in some dingy back alley--and maybe it is. But it's also a lot of fun and it says much about the time in which it was written.

In 1971 America was at war, not only in Vietnam but also with itself. The sixties were over. Peace and love had been replaced by something else. The American dream was still out there, somewhere, but the idea of exactly what it should be was now up for debate. As Thompson puts it, “Consciousness expansion went out with LBJ, and it’s worth noting historically that downers came in with Nixon.”

The times were indeed a-changing. Dylan might have gone electric in 65, but it took a little longer for the world at large to realize the age of innocence was over and plug in. From then on it was every man for himself and to hell with the rest; to hell with consequences too. 

Thompson's tale of manic excess encapsulates that brave new dawn and then proceeds to burn it up with mescaline and a wry smile. But hidden in the dope haze, behind the bloodshot eyes of a four day bender lurks an unrequited longing for a simpler time when Scott McKenzie advocated no trip to San Francisco would be complete without flowers in your hair and John Lennon claimed that love was all you needed.

If Kerouac was the voice of the post war beat generation, then Hunter S. Thompson speaks for all those who came down from the summer of love and spent the rest of their lives wondering just where the hell it all went wrong.

Does any of that make Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas great literature? Probably not. But it does make it worth your time.

Roadkill Review: Wake Up Time To Die by Chris Rhatigan

WAKEUP TIME TO DIE is a stunning collection of shorts from author and All Due Respect front-man Chris Rhatigan. I had the privilege of reading this long before its summer release date, but being a lazy SOB it has taken me this long to getting around to reviewing it.

WUTTD is a hard book to slap a label on so I’m not going to try. The stories in this collection run the gambit from crime to horror to something else entirely.  Chris Rhatigan has the wonderful knack of making the familiar seem strange and the strange appear down right odd. These 12 superbly crafted tales are full of loners and losers that exist in the space between the edges. Their world is a place where Furbies pack heat and nothing is how it seems.

Rhatigan cuts his noir with Novocain, his prose is sharp as a junkie’s needle and his premise as hazy as the morning after. WUTTD is by turns darkly humorous, somewhat disturbing and always entertaining. Read this and I guarantee you’ll be jonesing for another hit. The highlight for me was “The Things I Need To Be A Hitman” which may just be the best short I have read this year. This is one habit you need. Go buy the book, you can thank me later.

Kneel before AMAZOD

Roadkill Review: The Big Rain by Paul D. Brazill

Luke Case is a down-at-heel newspaper hack with a nose for trouble and a taste for strong drink. In this, the forth installment of his story we find him walking the dangerous back streets of a rain-washed Toulouse. Just like Luke’s earlier European adventures in Warsaw and Madrid and Grenada, THE BIG RAIN is chocked full of seedy characters, double dealing and old scores that bleed like open wounds.
Paul Brazill is a writer who knows his business. He delivers the kind of dark and gritty story that ticks all of the boxes. His easy style and wry sense of humor make THE BIG RAIN a very enjoyable read.

All of the Luke Case stories can be read as standalone works, but if you want to really immerse yourself in Luke’s world of dive bars, bad deals and dead ends, I recommend starting with, RED ESPERANTO and going from there. If you like your noir dark and moody with plenty of style then you won’t be disappointed.   

I haven’t reviewed anything on here (or anywhere else) for a coon’s age. I’m going to make an effort to review more regularly from now on, but I ain’t making no promises!

Roadkill Review: Wake The Undertaker by Joe Clifford

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Here is the last of my favorite reads from the first six months of 2013. Wake The Undertaker is a gloriously atmospheric slice of noir from the irrepressible, Joe Clifford.

Most people would be content just to sit back and take the plaudits after reaching such a literary high, but Joe Clifford isn't most people. His introduction to Zelmer Pulp's Hey That Robot Ate My Baby! may be viewed by many as his finest work to date, but hold the phone, he has another novel out.

Wake The Undertaker is actually Joe Clifford’s first novel. It beat the much-admired Junkie Love to the punch by a couple of weeks. When that autobiographical tour de force showed up fashionably late with huffing candy around its nose and a sly grin on its face, it immediately set about stealing the thunder from its elder sibling and has been hogging the limelight ever since. While there is little doubt that Junkie Love is a damn fine book, Wake The Undertaker is no ugly sister and it’s high time we showed it some love.

Nineteen year old Collie Spector is a nightclub singer on the up. He’s got the looks and the voice, but he’s also got the boss’s girl, Zoey, and when that boss is Gabriel Christos, the son of Bay City’s crime overlord Cephalus “the Old Man” Christos, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the fall Collie is headed for is going to be a big one.

Gabriel orders a beat down, which includes ending Collie’s career by cutting his vocal chords, and with the help of Bay City’s crooked cops, Gabriel frames the singer for a crime he didn’t commit. Collie does time in the City’s Island prison of Rockville, working on his upper body and trying to come to terms with the fact he will never sing again. When he comes out, he is twice the man he was, but Collie isn’t the only one who has changed during those seven years.

Gabriel is now estranged from his old man and trouble is brewing between them. Collie soon finds himself sucked into their murky underworld of drugs and politics and ends up working for the very man who orchestrated his downfall.

Bay City is a dark and rain-swept place where the hoods date strippers and dirty cops are on the take from nightclub-owning crime bosses. Here, the washed up newspaper men tell it like it is, everyone drinks their bourbon straight and nothing is quite as it seems.

Joe Clifford has delivered an exceptional pulp novel that reminded me of Frank Miller's finest, but without the pictures. If you were to cut Wake the Undertaker with a knife it would bleed with noir. It would also jump back up and shank you with a rusty screwdriver. I really hope that it isn’t destined to become Joe Clifford’s “other novel." Wake The Undertaker deserves much better than second billing and is a true star in its own right. Part of me hates Mr. Clifford for being this good, but most of me can’t wait to read his next one.

My original review of Wake The Undertaker can be found at the online supermax for offensive fiction: Out Of The Gutter

No Batteries Required - FREE Analog Robots

Hey look, free shit!

One thing I've noticed recently is that 97.6% of all giveaways on Goodreads etc. are limited to those who reside in the good old US of A. So just for a change, here's one for this side of the pond (that's the side that drinks tea with milk and drives on the left).




If you live in the UK and would like to own a print copy of HEY, THAT ROBOT ATE MY BABY, but are too skint or tight to buy one then listen up, because I'm giving one away for free. 

When Orson Scott Card, author of the bestselling sci-fi novel ENDER'S GAME was asked to comment on Zelmer Pulp's science fiction magnum opus he had this to say: "This is private property, get out before I call security. And put your pants back on."

So there you have it. I'll even spring for the postage and sign the damn thing if you want me to, although I should point out that my signature will put a significant dent in any potential resale value. 

To be in with a shout of winning this magnificent tome, just leave a comment on this post. Let's make June 16th the cut off date, after which time I will pick the winner at random, possibly from a hat. In the (quite likely) event of nobody bothering to comment by the 16th, then forget about it, the deals off.  Got it? Well then, what are you waiting for?

While we are on the subject, HEY, THAT ROBOT ATE MY BABY, has received a couple of killer five star reviews recently (take a look HERE if you don't believe me). But we can always use a few more, so belly up to the bar people.

Roadkill Review: True Grit by Charles Portis

I’ve been spending a lot of time out west lately, at least inside my head. I’m currently working on a western for the next Zelmer Pulp release. I’ve also been doing a little research and toying with the idea of trying to write a western novel.

Anyway, while I was trawling through my bookshelves, (for bookshelves read: that big pile of boxes in the garage) looking for a  civil war reference book that I last remember seeing two house moves ago, I came across my copy of True Grit by Charles Portis. 

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 40 years, you will have heard of this novel. You may not have read it, but the chances are you have seen one of the two film adaptations. My mom loved “The Duke” and Henry Hathaway’s 1969 version loomed large in my childhood. More recently and in line with the current Hollywood trend of refusing any original ideas, the Coen Brothers re-made it. In doing so they once again posed the tricky question of how many Coen brothers does it take to write a screen play?  The answer of course is two - one to read the novel aloud and the other to type it into a computer (also see No Country For Old Men.) Now to my mind that's not necessarily worthy of an Oscar nomination, but in respect to True Grit it is probably a good thing; their movie sticks a lot closer to the book than Hathaway’s did. I guess a slightly happier ending was the order of the day back in 1969, although it's strange that Hathaway saw fit to kill off one major character who survived in the book.

For those rock dwellers amongst you, True Grit is a simple story about the murder of Frank Ross by one of his hired hands, and of his daughter’s fight to bring the muderer, Tom Chaney to justice. There are two things that put Portis’ novel on a different level to the thousands other western tales out there with similar themes. The first is his 14 year old protagonist, Matti Ross. The book is written from her POV and rarely have I ever come across such a brilliantly drawn female lead. Portis somehow manages to make her both smart and neive, feisty and venerable, all at once. The only other character I have read that comes close is Daniel Woodrell’s Ree in Winter’s Bone. The second stand-out for me is the the narrative itself. It's a wonderful mix of old west colloquialisms and wry humor, overlaid with some great period dialogue.

While the Coen Brothers managed to give a much better visual rendering of the book than Hathaway did, neither movie really comes close to capturing the charm of the written work.  And as Lucky Ned Pepper said,“I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.”

 

Roadkill Review: Manhunter's Mountain by Wayne Dundee

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Manhunter’s Mountain is a novel or perhaps more accurately a novella, featuring Edward A. Grainger’s outlaw marshal, Cash Laramie. This time Wayne Dundee is the word slinger holding the reins.

Cash Laramie is in the small mining town of Silver Gulch, hot on the trail of the fugitive Lobo Ames. It’s a race against time to get Ames and get off the mountain before snow closes the pass. The Marshall gets his man alright, but that’s only part of the problem. Winter is hard in Silver Gulch and Cash isn’t the only one desperate to get out. Faye and Little Red are the town’s only entertainment and by agreeing to take them with him, Cash doesn’t exactly endear himself to the locals.

This is a strong, gritty story with plenty of action. While I’ll admit to preferring Edward Grainger’s own take on Cash, Wayne Dundee delivers a solid narrative. The pace never lets up and there are some great set piece showdowns.

Cash Laramie and his sometimes partner Gideon Miles are inspired creations. They are exactly the kind of hard, edgy characters I love to read and to write. For me, their brand of rough justice always makes for a fine hard-boiled western.

Review: Joe Clifford's Junkie Love

Buy It Here

I don’t ordinarily do this, re-blogging part of my book review from Out of the Gutter. But Junkie Love is no ordinary book.

Junkie Love is Joe Clifford’s second novel and as he says in his introduction, one way or another it has taken him most of his life to complete. It is indeed a love story, although not necessarily in the conventional sense, a junkie romance is never that straight forward.
 
This is ten years of Joe’s life laid bare, at times both brutal and horrific, but always compelling. He is not ashamed of his past and nor should he be. Everybody fucks it up to a greater or lesser degree, but not everybody has the strength of will required to pull back from the brink or the stones to write so honestly about it. Junkie Love is a hard book to read and an even harder one to put down. We already knew that Joe could write; that fact was never up for debate. Here he does something that goes way beyond just putting words on the page. He tells it exactly like it is and more importantly what it was like to live it.
Junkie Love is a hell of a book and Joe is a hell of a writer. You can read my full review HERE and you can buy the book at Amazon or B&N.