El Gavilan by Craig McDonald

My review of Craig McDonald's El Gavilan is up at spinetingler.

Check that shit out HERE.

If you're not up to speed with McDonald's shit, hit up his name in the labels and learn a thing or two.

One True Sentence by Craig McDonald

My review of Craig McDonald's One True Sentence is up at spinetingler.

Look it over HERE.

Or read it very carefully.

I can't control your reading approach to online magazine books reviews - nor would I want to.

Print the Legend by Craig McDonald

My review of the latest entry in the Hector Lassiter series is up at spinetingler.

In case you can't read post titles, the name of said Lassiter book is Print the Legend.

The author of said novel is Craig McDonald.

The link for said review is here.

This is historical fiction the way it should be written: with the boring shit left out.

Ruminating In My Pants #7: Best Books of 2008

Okay so I have thought long and hard (ha!) about this and have finally come up with my own little categories for the best books of twenty-aught-eight. Yeah, I know: I'm fucking awesome, but I pale in comparison to these books, these tomes of blood, guts, and - above all - massive fucking cojones.

Enjoy, discuss and fucking COWER in fear at the powerful prose that is about to singe your fucking eyebrows and smooth out your wrinkly, demented brains!

Best New COMIC series: SCALPED by Jason Aaron, R.M. Guera

There ain't much going on in crime comics at the moment (hopefully that will change with Vertigo's Crime Line in 2009) but what's there is fucking CHOICE. Scalped is not just the best thing going in comics but the best thing in crime PERIOD. This stuff is raw and completely uncompromised. Every character gets their time to shine and none of their storylines disappoint at all. If this were even half-way properly adapted into a television show it would hold its own with Deadwood, The Sopranos, and The Wire without a fucking doubt.

Best New STANDALONE Crime Novel: Savage Night by Allan Guthrie

Yeah, my love of Guthrie peppers every line of this little blog so this is probably no surprise - shit, I even predicted this would win back when I first reviewed it - but god damn this book kicked my ass. Guthrie is leading the pack as far as going all the way, taking the genre farther than we ever thought possible. Savage Night is extremely violent, agonizingly suspenseful, pathetically tragic, and absolutely hilarious. It seems the only way he could shock me next go around would be to write a sunny little book about an old lady and her crime solving cats. That said, he'll probably prove me dead-fucking-wrong.

Best New SERIES Crime Novel: Toros & Torsos by Craig McDonald

The Hector Lassiter novels are so ambitious, so meticulously researched, so ingenious that just about anybody who enjoys good fiction can appreciate them. Thankfully for hard-ass pulp fans like me, McDonald also fucking BRINGS IT with the noir goodies as well. For all its scope and history, Toros & Torsos never forgets to first and foremost entertain sick fucks like the Nerd with it's badass lead character, its shocking violence and its twisted, dread-filled plot. This guy covers all the bases in an unforced, refreshing, beautiful way. Hector Lassiter LIVES!

Best NEWLY DISCOVERED Crime Novel: Black Friday by David Goodis

It is always exciting to pick up an old gold standard of the genre and find that yeah, it actually IS a fucking gold fucking standard! The only thing about Black Friday that makes it stick out amongst the great novels of the present is an overall lack of cell phones and the word "fuck," otherwise this shit is as badass as a crime junkie could ask for. It hums along at a breakneck speed with a tight plot and gives you tons of fantastic, darkly shaded characters along the way. Kudos to Serpent's Tail for making more of Goodis's shit available. Keep that shit up!

So there you have it, my meaningless-yet-apparently-necessary list of the best crime novels I read in 2008. Naturally, if you've even glanced at this site before you can tell that I loved the shit out of a ton of other novels last year, but these are the greatest of the great, if such a distinction is possible. I didn't bother with honorable mentions or any of that shit because the Nerd's time is precious...which is why he has a rinky-dink blog...

Craig McDonald's Toros & Torsos

About a year ago, it seemed anybody with even the slightest interest in crime fiction was talking my ear off about Head Games, the debut novel from Craig McDonald. When it finally reached the top of my TBR pile, I quickly realized why. Head Games was fast, funny, original, violent, well-researched, and a fucking hoot to boot.

A few months back marked the arrival of McDonald's Toros & Torsos, the prequel to Head Games, and I barely heard shit about it. The fuck is up with that, reading public? How'd you drop the fucking ball so quickly, how fickle can you faceless masses be? Because, no goddamn joke, T&T is even better than Head Games, a feat that I didn't think possible until, you know, I read it.

So if you're not familiar with Head Games you have to do two things for me:

1) Pull your head out of your ass.

2) Read the shit out of that motherfucker toot-fucking-sweet.

We last saw Hector Lassiter, the crime novelist protagonist of Head Games, shooting the minions of Prescott Bush to keep Pancho Villa's head out of the hands of a bunch of Yale alumnis. In Toros & Torsos Hector is a much younger man of thirty-five, hanging out in Key West with Hemmingway, sipping Mojitos and seducing women. This simple life of writing, drinking and fucking is rocked by the arrival of the stunning Rachel Harper, a huge fucking hurricane, and a bunch of butchered bodies that resemble certain works of surrealist art....

From there story spans over a quarter of a decade and along the way we meet tons of famous figures - the names of which I will not reveal because, well, it's a major part of the fun of the book. I will say that we do get to hang with Orson Welles once more, only younger, thinner, and apparently involved in one of the most famous murders of all time (it's a fucking brilliant plot twist).

T&T definitely does the alternative history thing a la James Ellroy, same as Head Games, and the book is just as much fun as it predecessor, but in different ways. Head Games was sort of like if McCarthy's No Country For Old Men had a sense of humor and a bunch of fun noir pop culture mixed into the plot. Toros & Torsos takes its time compared to Head Games, but it is a better novel for it. Also, there is not nearly as many bloody action sequences either. And it's more of a mystery/serial killer thing than a crime novel.

Yeah, I know. You're wondering, "Well, Nerd, if it's a mystery, a (sigh) serial killer thing, not as violent, and has a more deliberate plot, just why the fuck are you telling me that this a better novel than Head Games?" Fair question, imaginary, highly-incisive reader.

Fair question indeed, old friend.

The answer is actually a disgusting cliche that the Nerd fucking hates more than Dane Cook:

"Toros & Torsos is a novel one savors."

I fucking know, right? That word "savor" just makes you want to stab someone (well, I admittedly have a problem with nearly every word that is involved with food, but that might just be me). Anyhow, it's true. This book was just like getting a chance to spend time with a bunch of awesome historical characters from the literary, art and (especially exciting for The Nerd) cinematic worlds of the past.

McDonald has clearly researched a shit ton and it pays off - there is never a moment where you say "Hem wouldn't say that" or "Orson wouldn't do a thing like that." Though they may not have actually done and said the things they do and say in Toros & Torsos (at least let's hope not, anyway), you don't ever doubt that they could have.

But not only is there an all-out fucking buffet of cool characters for any geek to shit their pants over, but there's this fucking genius mystery plot holding it all together, this just brilliant, un-forced way to allow the reader the opportunity to be in all these awesome places in these amazing times with these iconic characters - it's a pretty fucking astounding feat, really.

And it's not like we're not in Forrest Gump-land either where we just drift along until someone else cool runs into Gump. No, there's this fucking tightly constructed, bloody thriller plot holding it all together. And then the horrible, shocking, satisfying, disgusting choices that Lassiter eventually has to make at the end? It's just so quietly brilliant, so fucking subtly bold an ending. But it's all just the fucking icing, man.

So yeah. Toros & Torsos is ridiculously awesome and I have my fingers and fucking toes crossed that McDonald will do at least one more Lassiter book because I'm not done hanging out in his beautiful, dark, violent world.