SAFER by Sean Doolittle

Sean Doolittle’s Safer is one agonizingly intense motherfucker of a crime novel. To give you an idea of what kind of sack-shrinking scariness is in store for you should you pick up this novel, you just have to read the first chapter. What happens in the first chapter, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you because, you know, I’m such a swell fucking guy.

Paul Callaway, the English professor hero of Safer, is arrested on kiddie porn and stat rape charges by the Clark Falls, Iowa police department in the middle of a faculty party. It’s such a ball-breaker of a scene, so direly embarrassing and quietly horrifying. Not to mention a ballsy-ass way to open a book.

When Safer is really getting it right (and for the most part, it gets shit really fucking right), it plays like an “urban yuppies move to the scary countryside” horror novel more than anything else. Thing is, instead of being harassed by hillbillies who like to rape and maim, they are harassed by a security obsessed neighbor with major police ties.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself. Safer is the story of Paul and Sara Callaway, two Boston academics who move to the Midwest when Sara takes a major administration job at a large public university. Due to a run-in with an intruder in their house their first night in town, the two join the neighborhood watch patrol run by security consultant neighbor Roger Mallory. But as they settle into their new neighborhood, they start to learn that Mallory, an ex-cop whose son went missing ten years previous, may be taking neighborhood security a little too seriously…

Now you’re thinking, What the fuck Nerd? You have a fucking vague-ass plot description after the big kiddie porn reveal up at the top? Well, impatient fucking reader, I did not fuck shit up because you see Safer is not told strictly in chronological order. Doolittle has Callaway tell the story (who is more up to the task than an English professor, after all) and Callaway has a tendency to show off his storytelling skills – fucking with chronology, pointing out literary tricks to the “class” from time to time, shit like that. But don’t let that worry you – the po-mo shit in Safer is an extremely low-key. You won’t get “smugged-out” by it like in most self-reflexive novels.

So anyway it’s a simple story told in a complex way and that really tends to work for the novel. Things are always tense and generally organic and Doolittle’s prose style is always tight and flows well. Everything about this book is just kicking your ass until towards then when….

!!!!SPOILERS!!!!

I had some problems with how big the conspiracy gets in Safer. I mean, it makes sense and everything and it is pretty clever but this is Sean Fucking Doolittle, a guy up there with Pelecanos when it comes to making “believable” crime novels. For him to have the neighborhood conspiracy get so big and even do the traditional “connecting the crime from the past to the present events” thing? It was kind of discouraging, honestly, but only kind of because it is handled really assuredly. It just seems a little obvious when coming from the guy who did Rain Dogs and other incredibly original crime novels.

!!!!END SPOILERS!!!!


But like I said earlier, what makes Safer work is when it plays like a brilliant horror novel of small relatable fears. The fear of being watched, of being accused of a horrid crime you didn’t commit – it’s all handled in a way that makes sense, a way that makes you think it could happen to you. There is no doubt that this is Sean Doolittle’s most intense and suspenseful novel to date. No matter what my problems with the wrap up towards the end are, I for sure fucking got there in record fucking time, with sweat down my back and my nerves fried to shit.

Catching Up #25: Ryu Murakami' In The Miso Soup

If you ever wanted to know what Jason Starr would be like if he was born and raised in Tokyo instead of New York City (and you know you've wondered, dear reader, you can't fool my ass), Ryu Murakami is about as close as you're gonna get. Murakami has a style as simple and direct as Starr's and is just as willing to take his heroes all the fucking way. Not only that, Murakami also has Starr's sly, sick way with satire to boot.

Don't believe me? Well, then fuck yourself, I guess. Nobody's forcing you to read this shit, after all.

Now that I've lost the nay-sayers, we can get down to brass fucking tacks, faithful reader.

In The Miso Soup is the story of Kenji, a young unlicensed tour guide of Tokyo's sex-for-sale districts. Kenji hires out to English-speaking tourists who want his assistance while navigating the Kabuki-cho, a place where anything you desire is available, but where the locals are often wary of gei-jin (white folks). As the book starts out, a weird lard-ass American named Frank has hired him for three nights - December 29-31 of 1996.

From the get-go, Frank is one weird fucking dude. He lies all the time and he just plain looks fucking spooky, but money is money and Frank seems to have a fair amount of it. But the weirdest thing is, there has been some brutal murders as of late, and Kenji gets the sneaking suspicion that maybe this strange American might have something to do with them. But that's just Kenji being paranoid, right?

What makes this novel move - before the sex gets titillating and the violence gets crazy fucking brutal, that is - is Murakami's deft way with the travelogue shit. He enlightens the reader and explains a lot of shit about Japanese culture/sex culture via Kenji's first-person perspective, but it never bogs down the story, never fucks up the freight train pace. There all kinds of insights tossed off, customs of different types of sex clubs revealed, but it is always completely fascinating. It's not like those shitty historical novels you've read where the author insists on explaining boring-ass shit like why they tie the robe this way and not that way for five fucking pages. No, the info you get here is fucking gold, but you assumed that already didn't you? I mean, come on, it's about sex clubs so why wouldn't you be interested?

And not only do we get insight into how all this sex club shit works, but we get a wonderful peek into why modern Japan is what it is and why everyone is just so damned lonely. And that's really what the book is about, Japan's culture of loneliness, this loneliness that has lead to a booming sex industry. And Murakami both satirizes and sympathizes with this culture in equal measure, if you can believe that. Also, Murakami is not a sensationalist or a damning moralist - he does not blame the sex industry for the violence and horror that happens in this novel. Or well, maybe at the.... never mind.

But you're thinking to yourself, "Never mind all the hoidy-toidy shit about Japanese culture and travelogue bullshit and themes and satire and whatever the fuck, Nerd. You're not impressing anyone, here. Tell me about the crime goods, tell me if this shit delivers or not."

Well, impatient reader, I can tell you whole-fucking-heartedly that In The Miso Soup delivers like a motherfucker. There is a scene in this book that was so brutal I could not believe I was reading it. Murakami does not practice restraint in the slightest and thank the fucking stars for that. Rarely do I ever want to look away from a good macabre scene of violence, but the big one in Miso? Jesus. Guy's like a Japanese Allan Guthrie for fuck's sake.

So I really don't know what the fuck you're waiting for, dear reader. The pace is quick, the violence is sick, there's a ton of sex stuff, it's an easy-to-read introduction to a foreign culture, there's sly satire and hoidy-toidy themes, and did I mention that this thing is super short? It's honestly like a one-sitting read - and I never say shit like that. So for fuck's sake, you can't fucking lose with In The Miso Soup. It will shove a fist full of wasabi up your ass and gut you with a samurai sword, but you'll love every dark, fucked up minute of it.

PALEOFUTURE "CHUCKLES" #1: PERSHING F. GOOSEBERRY (The Third, My Dear Boy)

Matt Novak, the wunderkind behind the nerd-tastic Paleofuture blog, recently asked me to write a piece for a new section of his blog entitled "Chuckles."

I took him up on the offer and thus Pershing F. Gooseberry III was born. Pershing was an infamous hedonist who wrote lascivious, opium-clouded articles for the early-20th Century men's magazine The Merry Fornicator.

If this experiment is popular with his readers, I will dutifully unearth more Gooseberry articles from my collection of dusty old copies of The Merry Fornicator. Or maybe I'll write something completely different for the site.

Matt is still tinkering with the section, but I have assured him that I will contribute shit to the "Chuckles" page whatever direction it goes.

Whenever some shit goes up over there, I'll give you a heads-up here at the home-base, the safe-haven, the dank-and-dingy basement that is Nerd of Noir.

Beast of Burden by Ray Banks

My review of the fourth Callum Innes novel Beast of Burden by Ray Banks is up over at Bookspotcentral.

If you're not reading the Cal Innes shit, you are no shit missing out on the most original PI series running.

Beast of Burden just came out in UK so it probably won't get to the US for two whole fucking years or some bullshit, but you can still check out the great Saturday's Child and Sucker Punch.

Catching Up #24: Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard

Snitch Jacket will undoubtedly make you want to punch Christopher Goffard in the balls.

Shit, it's the dude's first novel and he's just got ideas to burn. And he does, over and over. He just tosses off ideas on page after page, usually through dialogue but sometimes through description, tosses the fuckers out on the scrap heap like they're nothing.

And these are ideas to base entire books around, little nuggets of information, pieces of lore, small scams and tall tales that are just fucking gold, and he just uses them to pass the time, to build characters, not as the basis for a plot. Guy's a show-off and frankly I want to punch him in the balls and then give him a sharp kick to the sternum while he's down.

But long ago I made a promise to my sensei only to use my ball-punching skills for good, not out of bitter fucking jealousy. And Snitch Jacket makes my ass fucking green.

It's the story of Benny Bunt, an ex-tweaker in a shitsville part of Orange County with a dumpy wife and a shit job as a dishwasher. He's also a shameless follower who serves as a hanger-on to both an obviously-full-of-shit-Vietnam-Vet-Hitman named Miller and an obviously-full-of-shit-corrupt-cop named Munoz. For Miller Benny serves as an attentive ear for Miller's bullshit war stories/contract killing stories at their local, the Greasy Tuesday. For Munoz Benny serves as a snitch, ratting out all the other patrons of the bar for things like stolen tennis balls and other lame scams.

But then one day Miller puts his money where his mouth is and asks Benny if he'd be up for coming along on a hit with him. Benny naturally obliges, then naturally tells Munoz about the hit, leading to some fucked up situations, naturally.

Now I should say right now that this is a lazy little book. Truth be told, the plot doesn't even really move until about two-thirds the way through the book. Until that point it's all just Benny's crazy memory spouting facts and talking to bar bums and being generally pathetic. At least that's what it looks like.

It turns out in the end that what seemed like a shambling, lazy old slice of life of a book was actually a rather complex crime story where every event that came before has a purpose for being in the story. Now I say that not to be a douche and spoil shit, but to lay to rest any fears you might have about reading a slow-paced crime novel. Personally, if the book hadn't been anything more than it was on surface level, just the reader following Benny Bunt, the lamest criminal anti-hero in the history of anti-heroes, I would have been fine with it.

Because this book has a sack hanging off the spine, no fucking doubt.

Snitch Jacket is in a lot of ways a sort of anti-crime novel. The narrator's voice is not clipped and economical but colorful and windy. The main character is not someone whose badassery we admire but whose cowardice we detest. The world of the story is not one where danger lurks around every corner but where it can be easily avoided - shit, Newport Beach is right around the corner, for christ's sakes. The plot is not an adrenaline-charged super-sprint but an aimless stroll on Venice Beach - the particularly bum-riddled stretch.

But despite of all that - or fucking because of all that - I dug the shit out of this book. Snitch Jacket is its own thing and there is most definitely something to be said for that.

I hope Goffard continues to do crime and I hope he returns to the world of the Greasy Tuesday. Shit, I hope his next book elaborates on one of the billions of ideas he fucking drops throughout Snitch Jacket.

Fucking show-off.

The Coldest Mile by Tom Piccirilli

Even if Piccirilli never did another Cold novel (and with the way he ends The Coldest Mile, his sequel to last year’s The Cold Spot, you fucking well hope he’s got another one coming our way), I fucking pray he sets another book in this world that he has created. It is one of the most nerd-boner-inducing places a noir fan can go, where gangs of thieves are called “strings” and they’re always “grifting” and looking to set up another “score” and keeping tabs on other strings through “drops.” Yeah, the players in The Coldest Mile talk like that - no joke. But it’s not in a self-conscious sort of way like something Tarantino or Frank Miller would dream up. It actually feels kind of authentic in a crazy-ass sort of way.

In other words: Piccirilli has some fucking chops.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, letting shit get away from me. I’ve got to tell you just what the fuck you’re dealing with plot-wise if you smartly choose to pick up Pic’s brand-spanking new novel, The Coldest Mile.

The book picks up a few weeks after ending of The Cold Spot with top-notch wheelman Chase signing on with the Langan syndicate for what is apparently more of a chauffeur gig than his usual getaway driver stint. The Langans are a decidedly WASP-y crew in the NYC area that is on the decline. The boss is about to check out and his kids, Jackie and Sherry Langan, are scrambling for the top seat and organizing a move to Chicago where they hope they’ll gain some much-missed respect. Since there’s no score to be had and Chase is more of a string man than a syndicate soldier, he decides to rip off his new employers instead to raise some money before heading off to find his young aunt Kylie and wrest her away from his hard-ass grandfather Jonah.

But Jonah isn’t an easy man to find or, you know, wrest shit away from, and the mob, as all good readers know, doesn’t take betrayal lightly…

So if you don’t know who the fuck Jonah is and what that whole back story is about, fucking read The Cold Spot already. That shit rules and will make your enjoyment of The Coldest Mile increase ten-fucking-fold. The mythology that Piccirilli is creating with this series is what it’s all about anyway and yeah, like any good novel you don’t have to read the predecessor but shit, once you read this one you’re just gonna go back and read the first anyway so fucking do it up right from the start - read The Cold Spot first.

But as good as Spot was, Mile truly ups the ante. In Spot Pic had to get some heavy exposition out of the way for the first half of the novel so that we could really see how much Chase loved Lila and how far he fell once she was murdered, seeing what it would take to actually him to go back to the life. With The Coldest Mile Chase is in the life the whole fucking time, beating ass or racing down the freeway on ever other page. I’m not fucking around when I say that The Coldest Mile runs on equal parts dread and adrenaline for three-hundred some pages.

And this book really brings it with the action, showing that Piccirilli is one of the new masters of the action sequence, on par with the likes of Huston and Swierczynski - no fucking lie, dear reader. His violence hits hard and hits often, making you feel every busted molar and desperate eye gouge. Also, as with the terms and organizations that I mentioned admiring above, even the rules of combat in Piccirilli’s world seem both grittily authentic and classic-film-noir-bat-shit crazy at the same time.


I haven’t ventured much beyond Piccirilli’s very recent foray (ha! I’m a douche!) into straight-up crime/noir, but the guy writes the genre like he’s been doing it since the Gold Medal days. Here’s hoping he keeps running with it for a long-ass time. And if there’s not another Cold book sometime in ’10, the Nerd is gonna be hunting down some motherfuckers, Chase-style. Bank on that.

Catching Up #23: TRIGGER CITY by Sean Chercover

Sean Chercover deserves every bit of praise that is rained down upon him with the force of a fucking tsunami. His Ray Dudgeon PI series is shaping up to be something totally its own thing. And not only do I love the shit out of this series, but my mom does too!

Okay, so that isn't exactly high praise on this site, I know. You come here because you want the Nerd to talk about the down-and-dirty, to convince you that yes, this book he is reviewing is up your sick, dark fucking alley and that you, fucked up noir crazy that you are, should read said book. But don't stop reading, dear devoted reader, don't shake your head and say, "This book is for the cat cozy set, and I shall look elsewhere, thank you very much." Don't do it, I say! Just fucking don't, reader-who-talks-to-themselves-for-some-reason-while-online.

Because Chercover's Dudgeon series walks that fine magical line that I happen to love just as much as the crazy, seems-like-it-was-written-just-for-a-psycho-like-me stuff. I don't mean to blaspheme but I think that Dudgeon will soon be likened to Patrick Kenzie of Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro books, a character also beloved by my mom. See, Dudgeon just sprints down the same high-wire that Kenzie did. He's a violent man who all too often embraces his violent side, but he's also looking for love and trying to do the right thing. He's just dark enough that I love the hell out of him, but not so dark that my mom - who is a fanatical mystery reader but not much for male writers - can't follow him as well.

In other words, Trigger City deserves to be read by fucking EVERY genre fan.

The book picks up many months after the end of Big City, Bad Blood. Dudgeon and his british ladyfriend have called it quits and now Dudgeon is hiring his own apprentice, ex-mob thug Vince from Big City, to keep an eye on her new beau. Yeah, it's creepy, but Ray's lovesick. Lay off him.

He's also taken a new case, one that should be open and shut (but if you've read a book before, you know it ain't that easy). A woman was murdered by a crazy co-worker who then took his own life. There's no doubt that he did it whatsoever, not even in Ray's mind. But regardless, the woman's father, an ex-military man of great wealth, wants Ray to look into it, even gives Ray fifty grand flat if he'll take the case - and no others - for six weeks straight. Ray, whose rep has been tarnished since a bunch of folks around him got killed last go around, needs the money and it seems like an easy gig - just let the old man know what he discovers about his daughter.

But of course, it turns out there was more going on here than what the cops came up with. Turns out the woman and her co-worker both were previously employed together at a Blackwater-like military corporation. So it's cover-ups and conspiracies galore and this shit goes all the way to higher-ups, I tells ya! But this is a Ray Dudgeon book, so it never gets too crazy, never gets too implausible.

Now you're thinking, "A somewhat plausible conspiracy book, you say Nerd? I don't believe you."

Well, believe it, skeptical-douche reader. Chercover never steps wrong in Trigger City, gives you just enough crazy but not so much that you guffaw out loud (GOL anyone?). Like I said above, dude knows how to walk fine lines, and his ability to make the PI novel into something of the real world is one of said fine lines.

But again, you don't read the Dudgeon books for the plots, good as they may be, but for Dudgeon himself. This time around he's even more tortured than usual, not just because he fucked up his love life but because he was well, tortured last time around and can't get through the night without a fucked-up nightmare. He also straight-up murders another person in this book with truly sick results that will no doubt come back around to haunt him in the next book. It's a great twist that will leave you reeling, no doubt about it

So grab yourself a copy of Trigger City and then lend it to your mom. And no, that ain't a slam. This is the good stuff, the dark stuff, the cream-your-pants awesome stuff...that EVERYONE should be reading, fan of the site or not.

Ray Dudgeon LIVES!

Catching Up #22: SMALL CRIMES by Dave Zeltserman

Dave Zeltserman has just blown my fucking mind. Small Crimes is unlike anything I have read in the noir genre since the Goodis days (not that I was alive in those days or anything, just, you know, it's similar to stuff written from...you know what I mean!). What the hell am I talking about, you ask? Example henceforth, motherfuckers!

So the plot synopsis is something like this: Ex-cop Joe Denton has just been released from county lockup after serving seven years of his sentence for mutilating DA Phil Coakley while on a coke binge. Yeah, that's right: county lockup. Dude held onto some friends tight enough that he didn't have to leave the county to serve out his sentence, just sit and play checkers with the sleepy old officer on duty day-in-day-out. No butt-rape for Joe Denton, no sir.

So Denton gets out and is immediately accosted by Coakley, whose face is now a disgusting mess thanks to Joe. Coakley says that Joe shouldn't get used to freedom because he's not long for it. See, Coakley's been talking to the local mob boss Manny Vassey, who isn't long for this world. Coakley's been reading the bible to him and is just days from getting him to give a deathbed confession implicating Joe in all kinds of shady shit. So much for a homecoming.

Then Denton talkes to his old boss, Sherriff Dan Pleasant - the shadiest of the shady - who says that it's up to Denton to take out either Vassey or Coakley in the next few days so that he doesn't bring down the whole fucking Bradley PD, Pleasant especially.

And then he meets Vassey's psycho son, who is taking over for his father, and wants Joe to pay up some old gambling debts toot-fucking-sweet...

So yeah, from that description you would expect a rip-fucking-roaring crime novel, ticking-clock shit and shoot-outs and murders and all kinds classic crime novel shit like that. Well, you'd be right to expect that - Small Crimes delivers on the pulp goods for sure - but this book has so much more subtle, painful themes going through it. It's both a devastating character study and slam-bang hum-fucking-dinger of a book. It has its cake and eats the shit out of it too.

See, what makes this bitch really sing is the smaller troubles Denton has. Yeah, he's got the crooked cops, the legit cops, and the mob out for his blood (even some really pissed off women get some licks in), but that's nothing compared to the horrible greif he gets from his family.

Denton's interactions with his parents are absolutely heart-breaking. They never visited him once in prison - not in seven years - but they let him shack up at home until he's on his feet again. But don't mistake this for a good thing. The pain he feels when talking to them, seeing the disappointment in their eyes, what's said and what's left unsaid - it's just so bleakly depressing and realistic that it is staggering.

Then there's his encounters with his estranged wife and kids. She doesn't want anything to do with him and he's not even allowed to get a fucking glimpse of his daughters. Thing is, Joe knows that she's right, but that doesn't mean he's not going to make a go of it, that he's not going to try and be a better man for all the people he has let down, his daughter especially.

But then, you know, there's this hit he has to do...with a deadline hanging over his head...

Small Crimes is basically a quest for redemption by a person we're never sure deserves it, but who you root for nonetheless. This book is a goddamn triumph for the genre. It will satiate ANY reader who likes good storytelling (and if you don't like good storytelling, then why the hell do you read novels?), but also please the nutjobs who like their genre shit to go to eleven.

Apparently this is the first in a "man just out of prison" trilogy by Zeltserman. You better believe I want a copy of Pariah in my grubby mitts like fucking tonight. Zeltserman, you've deservedly won yourself another die-hard fan in the Nerd of Noir.

Sucker Punch by Ray Banks

All right, you should know the drill by now, dear readers:

I did a review and it's up at Bookspotcentral.

For those of you too lazy to, you know, type in the words bookspotfuckingcentral (I wish it was spelled like that) and add a "dot com" to the end of said fucking phrase, you can just click right fucking HERE.

Don't say I never looked out for you.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

You kind of want to hate the shit out of Josh Bazell.

Dude’s a goddamn doctor and a badass crime novelist with a debut to beat the fucking band? If I were the envious type (and I am), I would hate the holy hell out of the man.

But I can’t. Beat the Reaper kicks too much ass to be petty about it.

I mean, this thing is just so fucking aggressive in its badassery that you can’t help but take notice. You know it’s hardcore shit from the very first sentence:

“So I’m on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me!”

That awesomeness right there precedes a fight where our hero, Dr. Peter Brown of Manhattan Catholic, disarms the mugger, snapping the guy’s arm like a twig and forever turning the poor bastard’s nose into a mere memory.

It’s obvious that Dr. Ross Peter Brown ain’t.

In fact, his real name is Pietro Brnwa and he was a vicious hit man for the mafia before he went into witness protection and became a doctor. If you think that all that shit’s behind him, you don’t read much.

There are two stories going forward in Beat the Reaper and they’re told in alternating chapters. The primary one is that of a hectic day at Manhattan Catholic where Brown comes across a possible epidemic in his ward and also is made by an ailing patient with mob ties (You better believe some crazy motherfucking mob dudes show up on his ward toot-fucking-sweet!). The alternate chapters fill you in on Brown’s past, how he became a hit man, how he ended up a doctor - all the juicy back story shit.

You’d think that the lengthy back story would get in the way of the Duane Swierczynski- style-ticking-clock plot but you’re dead-fucking-wrong, dear ridiculously-skeptical-reader. Bazell is such a natural at pace that he keeps you riveted through it all. It’s like - Tired of the medical drama shit? Then here comes some crazy mob stuff in the next back story chapter. - and so forth.

But the real reason to pony up the bucks for this beast is Brown/Brnwa/”Bearclaw” himself. He’s a killing machine who looks like a dumb brute but is as actually as sharp as they come. Not only does he tell a hell of story and do some badass shit, he also informs. Yes, dear reader, there are crazy facts up the ass in Beat the Reaper. Shit about anatomy, healthcare, the holocaust, Romanian politics, mafia history - it’s all here, often related by way of footnotes.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re all, “If I want to fuck around with footnotes I’d take another crack Infinite Jest, thank you very much.” Again, you’re wrong, dear reader. These are footnotes like your po-mo lit 232 class professor has never fucking encountered. They are hilarious and informative and fucking disturbing (in other words, you won’t skip over them like you did with your American History text.)

But I have to admit: the biggest draw here is the last fifty pages or so. There is some violence in here that I just want to fucking scream about from the rooftops, a certain weapon that is so fucking ingenious that I tell random people that I know for sure will never read the book just because it blows my mind so fucking much!

It’s turned me into the worst kind of fan boy, into that guy, the guy-who-keeps-talking-to-you-about-a-movie-you-haven’t-seen-nor-do-you-want-to version of that guy. But seriously, you’ll know what I’m talking about when you come to it. It’s taking me a lot of will-power right now not to type it - I swear it’s that fucking awesome (not to build it up or anything…).

So don’t hate on Bazell. Show the dude and his kick-ass debut some love. So what if he’s a doctor and an exciting new noir novelist? As Dirk Diggler said, “Jealousy will get you nowhere.” I mean, he may save lives or whatever, but he also sure as shit is willing to warp some fucking minds.

Catching Up #21: Big City, Bad Blood by Sean Chercover

First off, yeah, I know. I'm late to the party with this one. All the cool kids got their mitts on this bitch eons ago. But I, the Nerd of Noir, am not a cool kid. I wasn't even invited to the party, didn't even know there was a party to be late to. Okay, that's a lie. I've been hearing about Sean Chercover's debut for a long time. The Great Richard Katz at Mystery One in Milwaukee tried to stuff the fucker in my hands before it was even for sale, but I opted for the other Chicago-centered novel making its glorious debut at that time, Marcus Sakey's The Blade Itself.

You see, PI novels don'y usually turn my crank.

At least that's what I always said, anyway.

You see, I had long been of the belief that the PI novel was dead, and that Lehane's Kenzie/Gennaro books and Pelecanos' Strange/Quinn books had put the corpse in the ground. I would smugly say to myself, "What more can be done with the form that those two titans of crime haven't already covered?" and then I would retire to my study and smoke a pipe in front of the fire.

But then Bruen started doing the Jack Taylor novels, fucking with everything you've ever known about private dicks. Then Michael Koryta's Lincoln Perry books just did the form so goddamn well - so much so that I didn't even balk at the lack of effenheimers (and the Nerd likes him some "swears," in case you couldn't tell). Then Dave White's Jackson Donne books just kicked so much fucking ass and Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt books rocked my shit. Then Ray Banks punched me in the balls with his extremely intelligent Callum Innes series...

So basically, I've come back around on the tried-and-true old bitch.

But why-oh-fucking-why did I shit on the PI novel for so goddamn long? Well, let's investigate that little question, dear reader. Let's investigate like...a fucking private eye, I suppose. Shit.

My aversion to the PI novel is primarily because so many of the fuckers are just rehashes of the same thing. Plenty of writers do it plenty-well, but it's just the same old story over and over. Even dudes who are - no doubt - good writers and bona-fide noir badasses like Andrew Vachss (and the villain is...an exploiter of children. Yet again. Oh.), they get pretty old pretty quick.

What Pelecanos and Lehane did was yeah, they had a series and certain familiar things would happen in each novel and whatnot, but the SERIES had a beginning, middle and end, not just one after another of the same old shit like a Lawrence Sanders book (oh, he fucks a hot chick and acts suave. Sweet.). The characters changed, the novels had an arc and the SERIES had an arc as well. It's kind of like how on The Shield those just tuning in can enjoy Dutch and Claudette getting some sort of case that'll probably be wrapped up by the end of the episode, but for the long-time fans you have the more serialized elements of the Strike Team's shady doings. It's THAT SHIT that floats my boat.

And all those dudes I mentioned above GET that and do it right. I don't feel like any of them - though none are done with their series yet - are gonna stretch this shit out to Grafton-like lengths.

I've only read the first of Sean Chercover's series, but I already feel like he'll be one of the good guys too.

From the first pages of Big City, Bad Blood, we learn toot-fucking-sweet that Chicago private dick Ray Dudgeon is a fucking badass to beat the band (though speaking of bands, Dudgeon does love jazz, the genre of beret-wearing-finger-snapping-prentention-oozing-hep-cats, which knocks him down a few pegs in the Nerd's book). We meet Dudgeon as he is arranging a meeting with Outfit boss Johnny Greico on behalf of his client, Hollywood locations manager Bob Loniski.

Loniski is in town working for a studio called Continental Pictures, and his job took a turn for the worst when he rented a location from an Outfit hood running a scam where he rents to people month-to-month, no lease, to cover up the fact that he doesn't actually own the place he's renting out. Now Loniski is set to testify against the hood but needs protection to survive the ordeal. Dudgeon tentatively agrees to the job. But first, he's gotta check something with Greico.

You see, what's so awesome about this opening meeting is Dudgeon straight-up tells the reader that if the gangster in question is protected by Greico, he'll back off. He'll just say fuck it, let poor old Bob get whacked. That is ridiculously awesome. It sets Dudgeon up as a flat-out badass, a realist, jaded as all hell. You can't help but get a hard-boiled boner (that sounds painful) right from the start with this one.

Thankfully, Greico says the dude is of no concern to him so that, you know, we can have a story.

And from there Dudgeon only proves himself more awesome with every page. He is a hard man, with no qualms about killing a guy in cold-blood - not self-defense - if it's for the good of a case. The guy is stone-cold cool.

I could go on and on about Dudgeon but what I also like about this book is that it isn't really a mystery. We know who all the bad guys are and there are little turns here and there but no big reveals, no crazy-ass twists (it was Dudgeon's best friend all along! Noooo!!!). We just follow Dudgeon as he tries to keep his client alive and fuck over enough of the higher-ups so that he can save his client's skin, not to mention his own. It's a nifty plot (I'm a 1930's paperboy) and it honestly never feels too big, too over-the-top. Also, we get to see all kinds of PI tricks that Chercover himself, a former PI, has most-likely used in the past. There are techniques and devices in this book that I have never heard of and it made it all the more refreshing (whenever I write that word a picture of a can of Sprite appears in my head. I don't even like Sprite that much. Dammmmn youse ad-ver-tis-ingggg!!!).

But the capper, the icing on the proverbial-fucking-cake, is Chicago itself. I can't say I've been to Chicago a billion times, but I recognized a lot of places as I read this book and Chercover's perspective is similar to my own. He paints Chicago as a place of corruption, history, and working-class badassery that is being coated in Disney safety plastic every day. We get to see the town warts-and-all, the only way it should be seen, and damn if it doesn't just feel so fucking right.

So yeah, this bitch turned out to be more of a journey of self-discovery (the most boring journeys to be had) than a review but I think you can tell that I dug the shit out of Big City, Bad Blood. Will I read Trigger City?

In the words of Omar Little, "Oh in-deed."

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

It must be said that The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death ain’t your typical Charlie Huston novel – whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Yeah, it has the blood (tons of the stuff), it has the kick-ass dialogue, the one-of-a-kind stream-lined prose, and it moves along like a motherfucker – but this is no doubt a major departure for Huston. Shit, I’d argue that Mystic Arts isn’t even noir.

Yeah, I fucking just said that. Deal with that shit.

That said, it certainly still kicks some major fucking ass.
Mystic Arts follows Web Goodhue, a smart-ass slacker who seems content to mooch off his best friend Chev and sleep away most of his days. He’s a dick to anybody who cares about him and an even bigger dick to those who don’t, but he’s got a reason for his attitude: a sad, nasty event has rendered him unable to deal with life.

Regardless of all this, fat-ass trauma cleaner Po Sin has decided to take him on board as an apprentice in his dirty business. First gig: cleaning up shit (literally) in a long-dead shut-in’s place. It’s a baptism by blazing fucking fire and he does a good enough job to garner a second day of work, this time cleaning up after the grisly suicide of a wealthy Malibu man with a smoking hot daughter, Soledad. Soledad and Web hit it off and soon the grieving woman asks Web to clean up after a more private, more illegal violent act…

After this encounter with the sexy femme fatale Web gets involved with deadly smuggling hicks, dumb-ass Hollywood wannabes, and rival trauma clean-up businesses – the makings of an awesome wild ride in Huston’s violent funhouse world, right?

You’d think so, but no, dear reader. It’s…different.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death has a crazy crime plot, but it isn’t about its crazy crime plot, you dig? The book is actually more of a probing, aching character study of Web, a man forced to come to terms with the pain of his past. Yeah, I know – doesn’t sound like good old-fashioned pulpy fun, right?  Sounds like a fucking Cheever story or some shit like that (not to say Cheever wasn’t awesome but still, this is Charlie Fucking Huston we’re talking about here, the modern master of down-and-dirty noir!).

A more accurate way to describe Mystic Arts would be to compare it to the great novels of Sean Doolittle. Like Doolittle, Huston uses the crime plot as an excuse for some action to move the story forward while the real business, the real meat of the book is simply getting to the bottom of a great central character. We get deep inside Web, know his family, know his past, know his pain – know him.

Yeah, there’s hilarious line on every page and the caper shit is rock solid, but it all comes back to Web’s internal journey, his personal growth. The climax is not one of Huston’s amazing, horrifically ape-shit violent action scenes – though there is some good violence, no doubt – but Web starting to get his life in order. And Web is not a tortured killing-machine like Hank Thompson or Joe Pitt – he is a regular guy who will do anything he can not to kill someone.


So basically, don’t go into Mystic Arts expecting a violent thrill-ride with a body count to rival Predator like his previous novels. This beast is a bit more tame, a bit more humane. Shit, it may even win the guy some well-deserved new fans. But still, we’re talking tame for Charlie Fucking Huston, people. It’s like saying The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is just a vicious crazed junkyard dog instead of a fucking rabid feral dog.