The Fever by Megan Abbott

My review of Megan Abbott's The Fever is up at spinetingler.

Check that shit out HERE.

Hit up the labels below for reviews of all of Abbott's books.

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

My review of Megan Abbott's Dare Me is up at spinetingler.

Give that shit a peek over HERE.

I've got reviews of all her novels on this blog so hit up her name in the labels below this page if you're unfamiliar with her kick-ass bibliography.

Crime Factory Vol. 2 No. 10

The new Crime Factory is up and yours truly has a new Crime Sleeper Double Feature on the films Sorcerer (1977) and The Brink's Job (1978) in it called "Friedkin's Follow-Ups Far From Flops."

You can find it on pages 50 through 55 of the magazine HERE.

Linger on that shit for a while too, dear reader, because there's an interview with Megan Abbott in there along with a piece on Willeford by William Boyle and much, much more.

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

My review of The End of Everything by Megan Abbott is up at spinetingler.

Check that shit out HERE.

Read my reviews of her four previous novels here at the NoN blog by hitting up her name in the labels.

Or do something else - I'm not trying to be controlling, here, just making conversation.

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott

My review of Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep can be found HERE.

If you've been reading this site a while you'll know that I dig Abbott's shit a whole helluva lot.

That said, I think you'll be surprised by what I have to say this time around...

Nah, I'm just fucking with you. It's awesome.

Ruminating In My Pants #8: The REAL Crime Summer Reads

While pissing away the evening on twitter, I found out from the always informative Sarah Weinman that NPR has put up a summer reading list on their website. How nice of them, right? I checked that shit out, found that they had a section for mystery/crime novels.

A quick peek at that list and you can tell that the Nerd's blood was no doubt angried up toot-fucking-sweet.

After voicing my disappointment via the sad soapbox that is twitter, short story wunderkind Keith Rawson suggested that I do my own anti-NPR summer reading list. I, you know, fucking concurred and lo, here is the fucking list.

The Nerd Pimpeth Thusly:

1. FAKE ID by JASON STARR (Hardcase Crime, May 26. 2009)

Now you're thinking, Nerd, doesn't Jason Starr have a book coming out in August called PANIC ATTACK? Why isn't that one on your list? Well, dear reader, I'm sort of excited about that one, but Fake ID is one from Starr's early period where he was just letting it rip. After The Follower I have begun to fear that Starr has moved too far into the main stream with his fiction. I mean, The Follower had some great frat boy douchebag characters in it, but the overall story was much more pf a traditional thriller than noir ass-kicker. I've been waiting for Fake ID to hit America for years now, and thanks to Charles Ardai and the Hardcase crew, the dream is fucking well realized at last.

2. HOGDOGGIN' by ANTHONY NEIL SMITH (Bleak House Books, June 1, 2009)

Unlike everything else on this list, I've read Hogdoggin' already. Hell, as you well know I've fucking pimped for it already by participating in Smith's kick ass HOGDOGGIN' VIRTUAL MOTORCYCLE RALLY. My review of the book will be up on Bookspot Central on June the fucking first, also known as HOGDOGGIN' MONDAY. In other words, I've supported the shit out of this beast of a book. Well, dear reader, I've said it before and I'll say it a-fucking-gain: I don't pimp for shit I don't fucking straight-up love. Order that shit now, thank the Nerd later.

3. BURY ME DEEP by MEGAN ABBOTT (Simon & Schuster, July 7, 2009)

I've reviewed all three of Megan Abbott's books here at the site and she started out super fucking strong and has only gotten better as she goes along. Not to put the pressure on, but hopes are sky-fucking-high for her latest. Abbott's one of the true originals working today, and her take on the forties and fifties that has been covered in countless films is unlike any Widmark or Mitchum black-and-white classic you'll ever see.

4. THE DEPUTY by VICTOR GISCHLER (Bleak House Books, August 2009)

Gischler's Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse sure as shit kicked my ass and I'm definitely pumped as all hell for Vampire A Go-Go to drop on September 1st, but I'm even more excited for Gischler's return to crime with The Deputy. Expectations are high, but fuck, this is the dude that wrote The Pistol Poets. You better believe his ass is gonna deliver the goods like fucking John Holmes...before coke and AIDS and all that shit did him in, that is.

5. STAIRWAY TO HELL by CHARLIE WILLIAMS (Serpent's Tail Press, August 20, 2009)

Charlie Williams hasn't given us a book since 2006 when he wrapped up the Mangel Trilogy, one of the most fucked up and hilarious series in recent years. Stairway to Hell marks his triumphant return. It's got soul-swapping and David Bowie and Jimmy Page and...it sounds fucking insane is what I'm trying to say. Here's hoping it kicks more ass than Royston Blake on a crazy night bouncing at Hopper's.

So there you go, dear readers, my list to cancel out the lame-fest that is the NPR list. Granted, that won't hold your noir-craving junkie ass for the three whole fucking months of summer, but it's a damned good start. Expect reviews of all of the above as I catch 'em, dear reader.

Expect it like death and fucking taxes. And pledge drives.

Catching Up #26: The Song Is You by Megan Abbott

The Song is You is not just a great Old Hollywood novel but a great journalism novel. Megan Abbott captures a time when studios would bend over backward to keep even the slightest indiscretion by their contract talent under wraps - and the great yellow journalists of yore were trying their damnedest to uncover every last slip-up. To keep said journalists from succeeding, the studios had smooth-talkers like publicity man Gil "Hop" Hopkins on the payroll, men with the magical ability to spin every shameful event into a glowing piece of positive press.

As our story begins, Hop is in some hot water. It is 1951 and it has been two years since B-girl Jean Spangler mysteriously disappeared. Thing is, Hop was with Spangler that night and knows for a fact that she went to a shady sex club with the song-and-dance movie duo Marv and Gene, men who are infamous for their violent sexual proclivities. Other thing is, Hop jump-started his publicity career that night by helping to erase the connection between Marv and Gene and the Spangler disappearance. Now that career high(low)point is coming back to haunt him in the form of the beautiful Iolene, a beauty who is asking the wrong questions about what happened that night.

And so begins Hop's journey to uncover what really happened to Jean Spangler. Whether he'll use what he finds out to cover his and certain studio players' asses or to bury all their asses is another matter...

Because that is really what is at the center of Abbott's novel - Hop's final shot at redemption. Sure, you've got a tight mystery plot and tons of great lore about fifties Hollywood, but what it all comes down to is Hop's very soul. He's a great fucking character. A man so pretty and smooth he can get his joint copped by a gorgeous starlet with a wink and a smile, but who is tortured by the many horrible mistakes he has made in the past. Shit, he makes plenty of them in the present, too.

And if that ain't the stuff of classic noir, I couldn't tell you what the fuck is.

But shit, if you've read this site even a little bit, you know how enamored (Wow, I just typed "enamored." I am king of the douches) I am with Abbott's work already. She is one of the true originals kicking ass in the crime fiction world today, an author whose work is both wonderfully classic and soberly modern at the same time. This Song Is You is an old Hollywood/yellow journalism novel to set on the shelf next to Ellroy's LA Confidential.

Yeah, I just said that shit. Fuck, I would even shout it into James Ellroy's crazy brilliant face.

Okay, no I wouldn't. Dude scares the shit out of me.

Catching Up #19: Die A Little by Megan Abbott

It is alarming what Megan Abbott can do with the noir genre. And I’m not saying alarming like “oh bother that dislodged my monocle” alarming but like “let’s head to the fucking shelter” alarming. James Ellroy should thank his fucking lucky stars that he is supposedly no longer a writing crime after the last Underworld U.S.A. novel because Abbott’s ‘50’s L.A. gives his a goddamn sprint for its fucking money.

Now I know you’ve figured this shit out dear reader. You’re thinking, Okay Nerd, you’ve made your shocking statement, now explain the plot and then try and back up your boldness.

Well, ridiculously-perceptive-clearly-autistic reader…I guess I’ll go ahead and do just that. Here I fucking go. You happy now, smart-ass? No wonder the other kids think you’re weird.

So Die A Little is about a woman named Alice Steele whose sister-in-law Lora King is a nosy little bitch in 1950’s Pasadena. Well, actually Lora is right to be suspicious. Alice Steele is a lady with a past so seedy it could never stay hidden forever. She isn’t good enough for her straight-arrow husband Bill, an investigator with the D.A.’s office and his sister (who is yeah, a little too close to her brother…) is willing to dig through the muck, even if it costs her her life….or maybe even her soul (man, The Nerd really sucks at taglines).

Like any good story, what makes this one stick out particularly is the little details. There is tons of attention to appliances bought and usd by the newlweds and what everybody is wearing and the food they prepare for parties and all kinds of shit that normally bogs down a lesser novel. In Die A Little it serves as a hilarious contrast. These people all live buttoned-down boring-ass consumerist 1950's lives, no wonder it comes as such a shock - and thrill - to Lora that there is this whole other world outside of her own normalcy, that Alice comes from such ill fame. It's only natural she'd be up for hanging out there...just a little couldn't hurt, right?

As with my previous Abbott experience, Queenpin, the book goes all the way, gives the reader the most satisfyingly dark resolution they could ask for. Also, aside from a couple well-timed uses of the word "fuck," this one feels like it was actually written in the fifties while somehow not feeling neutered by the style choice either. It's a feat that never ceases to make my nerd-boner rage.

If you haven't checked out Abbott yet...jesus, I don't know what the fuck to tell you. I mean, do you have something better to do? It's a fucking blizzard out there - unless you're living in L.A. And even if you're living in L.A., why wouldn't you want to visit the town back when it had some class, when the secrets seemed dirtier, the movie business seemed exotic instead of something obsessed over on DVD extras. That is where Abbott takes you in Die A Little. I'd like to go back to that world real soon.

That's why I ordered The Song Is You.

Catching Up #17: QUEENPIN by Megan Abbott

The crazy thing about Megan Abbott's Edgar Award-winning Queenpin is that it reads like it could have actually been written fifty years ago. Take out a couple F-words and this baby could have been written back in the good old days of crime pulp, no sweat. But the crazier thing is this: Despite its prose style and lack of swears (I'm five years old), it doesn't feel neutered or cozy in the least. In fact, this book hits hard and it hits low and it hits fucking often. It's a doozy-and-a-fucking-half.

The plot is simple in the way the best noirs always are (as in it isn't really simple at all, but it seems simple enough initially). We follow a young woman as she is taken under the wing of a legendary (and legendarily violent) moll named Gloria Denton. She used to hang with Luciano and the rest back in the early Vegas days, has a big-time rep.

Anyhow, Denton takes this young woman - our unnamed narrator - in and shows her the ropes of collections and numbers running, shows her how to be tough and professional in a man's world. She gets her some nice clothes and sweet digs and turns her into a younger, prettier version of herself. Thing is, our young heroine can't keep her legs closed, despite her mentor's persistent warnings. So when she falls for a low-life gambler named Vic who's in deep to a local boss, she decides to do the unthinkable - cross the volatile Gloria to save her boyfriend's ass.

Abbott is obviously a student of old pulp and classic film noir as Queenpin is drenched in hipster lingo from a by-gone era and brimming with the sass of every great femme fatale ever projected on a silver screen (see, I can write the purple shit when I have to). But as with the best in the noir tradition, her stylistic choices only serve to enhance the storytelling, not bog down the pace. This mother is as tight and sleek as a Boetticher western (the fuck did that reference come from?).

Queenpin is unlike anything I've read in quite sometime. It is simultaneously an exciting original in the genre and a reverential homage (GENRE and HOMAGE in the same sentence? Double your French douche-ery!). It is both a restrained exercise and completely unbridled darkness. Why Abbott wasn't interviewed by Terry Gross or Michael Silverblatt or some other yuppie culture icon after this book came out is beyond me. This is the cross-over book of the decade - something for both the NPR set and the hard-core-lone-gunmen-noir-crazies of the world.

In other words, you should read the shit out of it, dear reader. Read the shit out of it but good.