Pulp Fiction discussion

I finished:


Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


Die Trying by Lee Child

Have started A Red Death, 2nd in the Easy Rawlins series. It's been awhile since I read Devil in a Blue Dress.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Have started A Red Death, 2nd in the Easy Rawlins series. It's been awhile since I read Devil in a Blue Dress."

I really enjoy that series. Last year I read A Little Yellow Dog which might be my favorite of the series so far.

I think it's interesting that all of the titles have a color in them.

I finished:


The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 edited by Jonathan Lethem and Otto Penzler

In an elegantly crafted guest appearance in Barry Gifford’s Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango is rumored to have killed her own child. As a getaway driver, Perdita observes the slapstick death of her boyfriend as he manages to shoot himself in the head while escaping. One would anticipate her career in her own eponymous thriller to be an old fashioned roller coaster ride between Amarillo and the Gulf of Mexico, with bonus fracases as far west as LA. It doesn’t disappoint.
Gifford’s ear for down home sardonic humor includes the local name for the Angola prison’s electric chair: “Gruesome Gertie,” where the social isolate rapist killer Bubba Ray Billy (“I am a cold person”) gets his. His father, feeling his son deserves to die, sleeps trough the execution. The name of the attractive young woman Perdita and her partner Romeo kidnap is Estelle Satisfy. They kidnap her and her boyfriend because are sexually attracted to them: not for ransom, but for their bodies. Perdita tells Estelle that “Girls like you got a kind of sickness, and the only way to cure it is to kill it. Always talkin’ about what’s good, love and that shit, when you’re same as me, just no particular piece of trash.” This is stated matter-of-factly, as a law of nature,

Gifford’s objective point of view on the people and events he depicts is perfect for allowing his readers to accept his story with a chuckle soon turned to a gasp. Allusions to mass market popular entertainment take people deep into their own existence, surprising and delighting them. Charles Boyer, Lupe Velez, Ava Gardner, Randolph Scott, “Saint” Henry Fonda, The Red Raiders of Texas Tech, and Russ Meyer (for his Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill!) have bit parts, while in the foreground horrific acts of violence force the reader to adjustments s/he would have to make if Jim Thompson (Savage Night) and William Kotzwinkle (Fan Man) had collaborated on a fusion of both novels for a movie by Quentin Tarentino.
Perdita to Romeo: “The only two real pleasures left to man on this earth are f---ing and killing. When these are gone, guapito [sarcastic for “handsome”], so are we.” Romeo, a Santeria priest, is a fan of mayhem, sadism, human sacrifice, and the indifference of the perpetrator both to his own fate and those of his victims.

Earlier, when Perdita spots two pre-teens in “tight, short, black skirts, expensive-looking blouses and large gold hoop earrings, she felt for a moment like stabbing them each in the back and chest and throat dozens of times. She imagined their blood running black, dripping down their smooth golden legs. Just as suddenly the feeling passed…” This flash of hatred does not seem like resentment, not only due to its brevity but because it is devoid of envy. Resentment is what we all feel when something or someone offends us, and we cannot directly strike out against it or him/her. Perdita and Romeo are active adventurers, striking out with anarchistic vitality..

I planned to read these Sailor and Lula books years ago, but I got distracted along the way.

Now I've started "Snow" by John Banville. I love the prose, but it is closer to a classic detective mystery instead of noir.

I finished:


Die Trying by Lee Child
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


The Hot Spot by Charles Williams

I finished:


The Hot Spot by Charles Williams
Rating: 5 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


Big Trouble by Dave Barry

I finished:


Big Trouble by Dave Barry
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

Finished The Executioner Weeps by Frédéric Dard. Noirish psychological novel.

My review

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Finished The Executioner Weeps by Frédéric Dard. Noirish psychological novel.

My review"

Somewhere on my book shelves I have The King of Fools and Crush waiting to be read...

As I say, I hope to read others by him. Bird in a Cage is the one I have marked, but if others crossed my path on the cheap, I'd probably snap them up.

I finished:


Books of Blood: Volume VI by Clive Barker
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

which is the final volume in this omnibus collection:


Books of Blood, Volumes 4-6 by Clive Barker
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Not really mysteries of course, but it's worth noting that the final story in the collection "The Last Illusion" introduces detective Harry D'Amour who has also appeared in other works by Clive Barker.

and I started reading:


The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

I finished:


Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth

Yesterday I finished Maigret in Court by Georges Simenon.

My review

Currently, about halfway through Black Hornet by James Sallis, and I shouldn't be surprised but, Damn!, this guy is so good it's almost as if he's in a class of his own: hardboiled with a nod to Camus and Borges, so stylized and atmospheric it puts the reader smack down in the middle of decrepit New Orleans around the time of the Civil Rights movement. Chester Himes just made a cameo appearance at a book reading downtown.

I'm glad to read more praise for Sallis in general. This week I picked up The Long-Legged Fly as part of a generous Kindle offering from Amazon.

I think I first heard of James Crumley in this group. In any case, last night I finished The Wrong Case.

My review.

My review of Madame by Phoebe Wynn.5/5



https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished:


The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth, a terrific Cold War-era thriller that will resonate even more for those of us who remember the Soviet grain deals and OPEC oil drama of the 1970s.
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


The Kings of Cool by Don Winslow, which is a prequel to Savages

I also started reading, for our group discussion:


Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham which certainly deserves its stellar reputation.

I finished this roman noir classic (a new film version of which is coming to theaters this December):


Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham
Rating: 5 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished a stunning Pulitzer-Prize winning non-fiction book about the birth and rise of Islamic fundamentalism:


The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Rating: 5 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen E. Ambrose

because I'm a male over the age of 50 so genetically this is the time in my life where I become fascinated with WWII.

I finished two books yesterday:


The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 edited by Jonathan Lethem and Otto Penzler, the annual mystery/crime anthology series which isn't quite as good as usual in this edition
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


The Kings of Cool by Don Winslow - the prequel to Savages, the film version of which was directed by Oliver Stone
Rating: 5 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, her first novel and the first appearance of Hercule Poirot


Old Venus edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, a follow-up of sorts to their anthology Old Mars, containing stories styled after the Golden-Age idea of the solar system (little green men, etc.)

I'm reading The Hiding Place by C.J. Tudor

I finished


The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie - Christie's first novel, Hercule Poirot's first appearance...
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith - book 2 of "The Ripliad" (or, the sequel to The Talented Mr. Ripley if you prefer)

So. Catching up on the poll losers, ;-)

I finished Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler. I loved being back with the master, but as I say in my review, I think I like him better in novels rather than in stories.

I finished the second book in the "Ripliad" - the sequel to The Talented Mr. Ripley:


Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading the first book in another series (as part of a group read for the Mystery, Crime and Thriller group here on Goodreads):


The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri

This afternoon I finished The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith. My review

Have we had a month where the poll was for women writing pulp fiction? Not just Highsmith, but Dorothy B. Hughes, Vera Caspary, and others I'd like to know more about.

Here is a sample: https://www.feministpress.org/femmes-...

Keira has amnesia, and finds herself in Blighty. Oh, and she also sees ghosts. 3/5

Below is my review



https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Michael wrote: "What pulp/crime novel are you currently reading or just finished"

A Recent Noir Writer Who Uses Thompson-esque Pulp is
Breece Pancake, whose 1983 _The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake_ won praises from the likes of Joyce Carol Oates. “The Honored Dead” presents a narrator who is haunted by the sight of his best friend shopped home from Vietnam in a body bag, and also by his father's ignoring of orders during WWII, when he found food for a Russian soldier. In “Trilobites,” a husband shoots his wife after she ran off with her foreman; then he commits suicide. In “The Salvation of Me,” a false claim of success in the big city is spread in a small southern town by a liar who lost all his savings there. The first few townies who left for New York killed themselves rather than come back. “In the Dry” is about a foster child whose dog is brutally slaughtered by the natural, much favored, son of both boys’ father. Later, a horrible car crash leaves the favored boy a paraplegic. The foster son’s guilty paranoia is fired by the father cursing and banishing him. This prevents the survivor, out of shame and self-hate, asking a local girl to marry him. Instead he drives a semi, wandering dark highways. Looking for trouble, he becomes a scab driver for bosses trying to break strikes.
Oates compares Pancake to Hemingway, obviously a deep influence on 1950s pulp crime stories.

I am reading Leonora Carrington's short story collection House of Fear, which is surrealistic supernatural horror/fantasy not realistic crime fiction as this group specialises in but quite excellent nonetheless.

I finished The Bookwoman's Last Fling , a Dick Francis thriller written by John Dunning, whose real speacialty is the book world. He's not too bad when he decides to write about horses instead.

I started reading:


Psycho by Robert Bloch

...which I heard they made a movie out of a few years back?

Bloch could certainly write a scary story. The film was well done, although I haven't seen it in decades. I'm not much of a horror fan & it's a 'watch once' movie for me. I particularly liked the short stories he did with Ellison in Partners in Wonder. They were about Jack the Ripper getting sucked through time to become the plaything of Juliet, a very sadistic lady.

Jim wrote: "Bloch could certainly write a scary story. The film was well done, although I haven't seen it in decades. I'm not much of a horror fan & it's a 'watch once' movie for me. I particularly liked the s..."

I would like to read some of Bloch's short fiction.

Christopher Brookmire's new book The Cut exceeded my expectations, and made me put all the other projects on hold until I could finish it. Very good mix of investigative journalism (his former occupation) with horror movie trivia, special effects make-up, heavy metal and a kick-ass seventy-two years old leading lady, delivered with his usual mix of black humour and Scottish idiom

The Seventh Horse And Other Tales by Leonora Carrington. Just like "House of Fear" it's surrealistic fantasy/horror not crime, I guess those two are technically speaking still "pulp" genres.

I finished reading the first in the Inspector Montalbano series:


The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

OUTRAGEOUSLY POGO and after that, THE LAST THREE MILES (the building of New Jersey's Pulaski Skyway in the early Thirties).

I started reading:


Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

I finished


You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading


Choke Hold by Christa Faust

I finished reading:


Psycho by Robert Bloch - yeah, the book that was the basis for the movie. Mother?
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading:


The Shining by Stephen King - All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy....

Currently reading . chronologicallly first in the Hector Lasseter series. Having read most of the ten books in this series, i can recommend them all.

I finished reading


Choke Hold by Christa Faust - the second installment in the exploits of Angel Dare
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading


Hungry Men by Edward Anderson - the author of noted depression-era crime novel Thieves Like Us

I am currently reading Kill Creek by Scott Thomas.

I finished


Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - the first in the Jackson Brodie series
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I just finished the "other novel" by the author of Thieves Like Us


Hungry Men by Edward Anderson
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading another Depression-era classic


Little Caesar by W.R. Burnett

I started reading a mystery/suspense book from Down Undah:


Crimson Lake by Candice Fox

I finished the original gangster novel:


Little Caesar by W.R. Burnett
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and I started reading the second Mike Hammer novel:


My Gun Is Quick by Mickey Spillane