Getting Off

Getting Off: A Novel of Sex and Violence by Lawrence Block

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Kate Tolliver's life has been a never-ending cycle of sex, murder, and robbery since she was a teenager. Only five of the men have lived to tell the tale and that's something Kate means to remedy in the only way she knows how...

After a long hiatus, the Hard Case Crime series returns with a bang. Or, more appropriately, a long series of bangs. What better way to mark the return of the line than a tale from the man who kicked it off in the first place, the esteemed Lawrence Block.

Right off the bat, I have to say this is my favorite cover yet in the Hard Case line and possibly my favorite cover of all time. Take a few seconds to give it a closer look. I'll wait...

As the subtitle indicates, Getting Off is indeed a novel of sex and violence. Lots of sex, lots of violence. The thing that keeps it from straying into Cinemax territory is the ability of Lawrence Block. The man can spin a yarn, that's for sure.

Even though Kate's a psychopath, Block had me rooting for her the entire time, hoping that's she'd be able to cross the five guys off her list. While her back story is dark, Block doesn't play it up for sympathy. It's the character of Kate Tolliver that got me in her corner. She's foul-mouthed, violent, and sometimes hilarious. Also scary, primarily because she's so believable. 

Any complaints? Not really. There was a spot that I thought dragged near the end but I think that may have been due to me really wanting to see the last name get his hash settled. While this isn't a complaint for me, there's a lot more sex and profanity in Getting Off than all of the other Hard Case books not written by Christa Faust put together. I had no problem with any of it but I could see how some people would find it off-putting. Then again, people who look at the cover have some idea what they're getting into.

Welcome back, Hard Case! Don't be a stranger.



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This Song is You

The Song Is You : A Novel by Megan Abbott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In October, 1949, actress Jean Spangler disappeared, leaving behind a daughter in the care of her cousin, a broken-strapped purse, and lots of dark rumors. Two years later, PR man Gil "Hop" Hopkins tries to piece together what happened to the rising star. Can Hop navigate the web of sex, drugs, and blackmail and find her killer or killers and still retain his sanity?

Kemper and I met Megan Abbott at BoucherCon 2011. Aside from a funny series of events that led to her signing my copy of this book Megan "The Bitch" Abbott, the main thing I remember from he experience was Kemper saying "That's Megan Abbott? She's tiny!" Tiny she may be but Megan Abbott can noir it up with the big dogs any old day of the week.

The Song Is You is a bleak tale of murder, sex, drugs, and blackmail behind the scenes of the motion picture industry of the early 50's. Hop is as in dark about Jean Spangler's true fate as the reader for most of the book. For a slim 250-ish pages, the plot is surprisingly intricate with more than its share of twists and turns. I had no idea what I was getting into when I first cracked it open.

Gil "Hop" Hopkins is a pretty good noir lead. He's a womanizing PR man for a film studio, a former reporter who still has a knack for ferreting out information. He's far from a golden boy and his slide toward madness as he tries to figure out what happened after Jean Spangler disappeared was very believable. The supporting cast is just as good. Iolene, Jean's best friend, Franny, the reporter gunning for a story, and Jerry, Hop's best friend and the man his wife Midge left him for. The apparent villains of the piece, a musical comedy duo, seem like degenerate bastards but still quite believable.

As I mentioned before, the twists kept on coming. I have to confess that I quit trying to figure out what happened about halfway through and just leaned back and let Megan Abbott drag me through the muck of Hollywood along with Hop. The ending was pretty satisfying. Even though it was a pretty slim book, I had the same worn out feeling I had after reading The Black Dahlia by the time it was over.

It's an easy four star read for noir fans. I'm not sure if I like it more than the other Megan Abbott book I've read, Queenpin, or not. It's damn sure worth a read, though.



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Eyeballs Growing All Over Me...Again

Eyeballs Growing All Over Me ...Again by Tony Rauch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A man comes home to find a smelly bigfoot in his living room. A paperboy's curiosity gets the better of him and investigates an odd neighbor's house. A giant robot tears the roof off a couple's house. A man goes to a parallel dimension to hook up with an ex-girlfriend (nice Philadelphia Experiment reference!). A new kid starts school. All of these tales and more can be found inside Eyeballs Growing All Over Me ...Again!

Normally, I subscribe to Johnny's Law when it comes to short story collections. “Short stories are like lap dances—short and unlikely to engage you emotionally.” Eyeballs Growing All Over Me ...Again makes me think of changing Johnny's Law into Johnny's Guideline.

Tony Rauch presents a wide variety of tales in this slim volume. Aside from the ones I already mentioned, there's a sexy robot, a man who's head grows to gigantic size, a girl who gets sick and has her head replaced by a goat's, and all kinds of other oddities. You get a good dose of humor and a near overdose of strangeness. The writing style is very accessible and somehow makes the absurd assault that much more effective.

None of the tales wear out their welcome. In fact, the opposite is true. Rauch has a knack for ending his stories in such a way that you continue thinking about them after you're finished. Some stories end with a question, others just before something horrendous is about to happen. Yeah, Rauch's kind of a tease that way.


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Plugged

Plugged: A Novel by Eoin Colfer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Bouncer Daniel McEvoy's life spins out of control when the girl he loves winds up dead, his friend turns up missing, thugs all over town are gunning for him, and his crazy neighbor may be in love with him. Worse yet, he's going bald...

I heard Eoin Colfer speak at BoucherCon 2011 and he was so hilarious I had to immediately snap this one up. I was not disappointed.

Plugged is a damn fine adult novel from Colfer, much better than the Hitchhiker's Guide sequel he wrote a couple years ago. Daniel McEvoy is a great lead character; funny without being a smart ass, not particularly handsome or bright, and more than a little worried about going bald, hence his hair transplant. See, the title has more than one meaning. Plugged as in shot or as in hair transplant. Get it? Nevermind.

The characters other than McEvoy aren't as well developed but are still an interesting bunch. There's Zeb, the unlicensed doctor, Mrs. Delano, Daniel's crazy neighbor, Detective Deacon, Vic, Irish Mike, the list goes on and on. For most of the book, the reader is as much in the dark as Daniel.

While Plugged is a good mystery with plenty of twists and turns, the humor is by far the draw. It's chock full of dark Irish wit and self-deprecating humor. I could easily see it being optioned for a movie starring Simon Pegg.

Plugged is an easy four star book. However, it wasn't without some rocky patches. The who killed Connie subplot seemed forgotten and the bit with Irish Mike wasn't quite firing on all cylinders. I also have an issue with a floppy disk being able to hold an entire video of a hair transplant operation. It seems like Colfer should have used a thumb drive or similar device to serve as the McGuffin.

Like I said, Plugged is an easy four. I'll be watching for more novels by Colfer in the future.



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Not Comin' Home to You

Not Comin' Home to You by Lawrence Block

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Jimmie John Hall was a no good drifter and irresistible to Betty Dienhardt, friendless high school girl. It was just too bad about the killing spree...

First off, Lawrence Block is the man. His Matthew Scudder series is in my crime series top three, along with Richard Stark's Parker books and Joe Lansdale's Hap and Leonard series. When I stumbled upon this, a book of his I'd never heard of, I snapped it up.

Not Comin' Home to You, named after a line in a Waylon Jennings song, was inspired by the true story of Charles Starkweather, one of the first spree killers. From what I've gathered, Starkweather was also one of the inspirations for Natural Born Killers, if anyone still remembers that flick.

The tale is a pretty simple one. A sociopath that takes a hell of a lot of speed meets up with a lonely girl and does a lot of driving and killing. The thing that raises this above lesser killing spree books and movies is the way Block tells the story. While the chapters are pretty straightforward, they are separated by one or two page accounts by people who were involved with the events years after they occurred. Most are of the "He seemed like such a nice boy, always kept to himself" variety but they do a good job of foreshadowing of the coming shitstorm.

There isn't much else I can say. It's a slim book about a killing spree. Not that complicated. Lawrence Block's talent is what keeps it from being a two star book. Not my favorite Block but it's definitely worth a rainy evening's reading time.



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Voice of the Whirlwind

Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The clone of a mercenary named Steward wakes up and is tasked with finding out who killed the original. The only problem is his memories are fifteen years out of date. The Beta Steward wanders through his Alpha's former life, piecing together the last fifteen years in an effort to solve his murder. His search takes him from the earth to far flung colonies. Can Steward find his own murderer without being killed himself?

Voice of the Whirlwind, while on the surface is a combination of cyberpunk and space opera, is really a layered murder mystery. Steward wanders through the wreckage of his Alpha's former life and gradually pieces things together. Twists and turns abound. Since this wasn't my first invite to a detective party, I had a lot of the angles figured out by the end but not nearly all of them. This thing has as many angles as a dodecahedron. It's a real word. Look it up!

The world Walter Jon Williams has created is a step beyond the other cyberpunk stories written in that bygone age of 1987. While Steward is a fairly typical cyberpunk protagonist in most respects, most of the story takes place on space stations.

The best part of the book is the background Williams serves up, namely the Alpha Steward's stint with the Icehawks, a mercenary army, during a conflict called the Artifact War, a war over caches of alien artifacts littering other planets, notably a fateful ball of ice called Sheol. The aliens, simply called The Powers, aren't just humans with rubber masks. They're sort of centaur-amoeba things that I have difficulty describing. Needless to say, they are very alien aliens.

The tech level was pretty standard cyberpunk stuff: mirror shades, leather, monofilament, exotic firearms, cybernetics. Actually, Williams threw in a lot of gene splicing and his science regarding living in space and space travel was actually harder than I thought it would be.

I'm nearing the end of my book report here and can't decide how to rate Voice of the Whirlwind. I enjoyed it quite a bit but I wouldn't say I thought it was amazing. I will say that it has aged a lot better than many of its contemporaries. While I smiled when Steward had to use phone booths, Williams manages to keep most of the computer details pretty high level, unlike William Gibson in Neuromancer. Hell, I'll give it a 4 but that's in and of itself, not a reflection on the rest of the books on my shelf.




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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Jobless, Toru Okada spends most of his days searching for his missing cat. Until his wife goes missing as well. Why did she leave? Did she ever love him? And can Toru navigate an ocean of strangeness to get her back?

Back when I first joined Goodreads, one of the first things I noticed was how a novel I'd never heard of, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, got so much praise from Goodreaders. Was it hype? Or worse, was it just hipster bullshit? You know what I'm talking about. "I only read novels that have been translated from foreign languages. Now let's go watch a foreign film and pretend to understand it."

At the insistence of a Goodreads compadre who seems to have deleted his account since I bought this, I decided to plunk down my money and give it a shot. What did I think? I dug it but don't start fitting me for skinny jeans and a distressed faux-vintage t-shirt quite yet.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a very breezy read, surprisingly so since it was translated from Japanese. It tells the story of Toru Okada's disintegrating life, from his quitting his job at the law firm, to the family cat, Noboru Wataya, named after his wife's brother, going missing, to his wife Kumiko disappearing one morning. From there, things get stranger by the minute. Toru gets entangled with a sort of psychic therapist, Malta Kano, and her sister Creta, as well as striking up an unusual friendship with the unusual girl next door, May Kasahara. And that's before the really weird things start happening.

Weird books are my bread and butter so the weirdness didn't impede my enjoyment one iota. A lot of crazy things happened and the book held my interest the entire time. The writing is wonderful. I felt Toru's emotions as he felt them and I found his reactions to be really believable. When I read Kumiko's letter about why she left, I felt as betrayed as Toru must have felt.

Like I said, I dug it but I didn't love it. There were a lot of weird things happening and a lot of it was never resolved. While I enjoyed the WWII digressions, they felt unnecessary to me. I guess my main beef was that I didn't understand what all the hype was about. Sure, it's very well written but it doesn't have a lot of substance to it, not for being 600 pages long. It reminds me of Douglas Coupland and/or Neal Stephenson once they had achieved the editorial freedom to write whatever they wanted to. Not once did I contemplate taking days off work just to read it, nor did I feel like it was a life changing event.

That's about all I can articulate about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at this time. Good, not great. Not as pants-shittingly awesome as I've been lead to believe. Definitely still worth a read, though.



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