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.

Guthrie's New Novel Announced: SLAMMER

Allan Guthrie's new novel has been announced over at his site!

Here's some descriptifying for your reading pleasure:

"Young prison officer Nicholas Glass is finding the stresses of the job increasingly hard to handle. Bullied and abused by inmates and colleagues alike, every day is getting longer than the one before. When a group of cons use outside help to threaten his wife and daughter, Glass agrees to help them out with a ‘favour’. But, as their threats escalate, and one favour leads to another, Glass grows ever closer to breaking point.

And when Glass breaks, he shatters..."

It's got a March release in the UK, but what does this mean for us hard-working Americanos?

It's a prison novel so I am expecting rampant butt-fuckery/shankery. In other words, a grand old time shall be had!

Friday's Forgotten Books: DARK RIDE by Kent Harrington

"The things they used, the ropes, the safety handcuffs, Eve's special leather halters and hoods, the leashes, were all hung up neatly in the walk-in closet in the basement. Eve had a girl clean up afterward, so that when they first arrived, the house was always spotless and smelled of disinfectant. It was always the same. They met in the afternoons. There was very little talking, really; she didn't like to talk much before. They would do the drug; it was part of the ritual; it gave them the power to leave the normal and reach the other side. Speed made hours and hours of sex possible. It also made you mean. It was then, if you'd been in the alley on the second day, or even the third day (no one lasted longer than three days, even with the drug), you would have heard something, certainly."

That beautiful little paragraph does not appear half-way through Dark Ride like it would in your normal novel - no sir. It is on page three. Insurance salesman Jimmy Rogers and Eve, the wife of his boss and friend Phil, are that fucking awesomely depraved at the beginning of the novel. You know right off the bat that these two are gonna do some fucked up shit to keep this thing they got going, that their obsession is gonna take them on, you know, a dark ride.

1996 gave the world two great debuts from authors that would go on to have great careers in crime fiction: Miami Purity by Vicki Hendricks and Dark Ride by Kent Harrington. Thing is, both novels are classic James M. Cain-style noirs about sexual obsession. What was the fucking deal? I mean, we can't put it all on Clinton but...come on. What are the odds that two amazing sex-crazed crime classic debuts would come out at the same time? Oh, and by the way: Grad students looking for an awesome thesis - you're welcome.

Dark Ride is a classic story of a sleazy guy whose involvement with a sexpot makes him into an even sleazier dude, involving him in murder, blackmail, corruption and all kinds of other dark awesomeness. Think of Body Heat, Double Indemnity, Postman Always Rings Twice - all those "let's kill my husband and live happily ever after together" stories - then turn that shit up past eleven and you come somewhere in the vicinity of how bat-shit this stuff is. There's twisted and sick and then three miles after that you find Dark Ride.

And the book would be just fucking golden if it was nothing but a revamping of a classic story, but thankfully it is so much more. With the town of Clarksville, California Harrington has created a frightening little hamlet where the ugly past seems to raise it's head and bite you in the ass every couple of hours. Because you see, Jimmy Rogers isn't just fucked because he's boning a psycho - he probably would have been fucked simply for being the son of an influential evil politician. Clarksville isn't in California, it's in the darkest depths of fucking Hades.

Okay, but I'm still just talking about plot shit, getting caught up in the moment. Sorry, it happens when the Nerd gets worked up. I could talk about the impeccable, delicious prose that Harrington just seems to shit out on the page, but you read that awesome paragraph up top so you can tell that this dude can write like a fucking demon dog. I could talk about the sneaky little surprises Harrington reveals about his beautifully conceived protagonist Jimmy Rogers, but then I'd be spoiling the fun. I could talk about the careful attention to detail, the great supporting cast of characters, the horrifyingly rendered violence, the perfect unraveling of the plot, the ridiculous depravity of Eve - but all my lizard brain can think to rave and rant about is just how crazy fucking DARK this shit is, how Harrington never lets up, how he never fails to go absolutely all the goddamn way.

This is the kind of crime fiction that makes me want to shout "I CAN'T BELIEVE SOMEBODY ACTUALLY WENT THERE!" to anybody that will listen to my insane ramblings. This is the stuff that makes me thankful that a publisher had the huge fucking brass ones to let a book like this see the light of day, thankful that this crazy-ass manuscript is not getting moldy in some cardboard box in a dank basement. This is the kind of pulp I am constantly searching for - challenging, unrelenting, alarming. Dark Ride reminds me that somebody out there must like their entertainment as ape-shit as I do.

Catching Up #20: Voluntary Madness by Vicki Hendricks

Vicki Hendricks is fucking nuts in the best possible way. She fuses James M. Cain-style noir with hardcore erotica without missing a beat and - here's the thing, dear reader - it seems completely fucking natural. And I'm not talking about like, fucking Evanovich uses erotica in her bounty hunter books (where she lamely talks about Ranger's taut muscles and steely eyes and all that lame-ass bullshit) - no sir. This stuff is "thrust his cock in her pussy" kind of stuff, no "engorged members entering her womanhood" neutered crap that wouldn't even make a Quaker read one-handed. This is FUCKING, this is PORNOGRAPHY, this is...fucking awesome. But naturally, The Nerd wouldn't even give a shit about any of that stuff if it wasn't at its heart, stone-cold noir.

Voluntary Madness is indeed that. But you knew that, didn't you reader-who-is-looking-at-a-site-called-Nerd-of-Noir. You knew the Nerd would not bend the rules just so he could talk about stroking it to some book. That's not his style, that's not why you're here. So let's just walk away from the steamy stuff and head towards the fucking BLOOD. You want tits and asses, might I suggest looking JUST ABOUT EVERYWHERE ELSE ON THE INTERNET.

Voluntary Madness is about Juliette and Punch, a star-crossed couple in Key West looking to live it up for a few months before they end it all at Fantasy Fest, go out in a blaze of glory befitting their crazy love. Before they off themselves the mission is simple: Punch will write an amazing book and the two of them will do crazy shit to "inspire" his creative process. Also, they'll fuck a lot and Punch will get drunk off his ass most of the time. Not a bad plan, but yeah, they are some crazy motherfuckers.

Their forced adventures start out simple enough. Juliette decides to flash people late at night. They break into Hemmingway's house to fuck. Shit like that. But as their final day approaches, the stakes are raised and the shennanigans start to get pretty fucked up - like batshit stupid violent fucked up.

What makes such a nutso story work is how deeply Hendricks is able to get inside of Juliette's naive little brain. She is our narrator and we come to see why she likes a puke like Punch, see how intense her love is, how ignorant and unworldly she is. It's a helluva trick to pull off and Hendricks succeeds beautifully. As the book goes on and shit gets crazier and crazier, we almost grow to sympathize with Punch when at first such a thing doesn't seem remotely possible.

Hendricks also packs the book with great Key West shit too - a town that she renders as both extremely appealing and pretty much as annoying as you thought it was (no matter what lame-ass Parrothead shitfuckers tell you). There's also great supporting characters like a hot lesbian Wiccan named Isis who wants some sweet Juliette ass and an overly friendly cop named Woodly...who wants some sweet Juliette ass as well...pretty much everybody is running around with their pelvises leading the way in Hendricks' Key West.

And that's the way it should be. The only thing more powerful than money in the noir world is sexual obsession. Hendricks knows that better than anyone currently writing crime and Voluntary Madness is a prime example of her wonderfully dark world view. I can't wait to dip into my handsome copy of Iguana Love for another sweaty, sick ride.

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...

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.

Ruminating In My Pants #6: Best Music of 2008

The list-making continues. Why? Because the Nerd has to feed the monkey, let you lot out there know that he is more than just a dude who likes crazy-ass crime shit - much fucking more.

I'm a guy who likes indie rock and independent film and HBO shows and...

Okay, so I'm basically every other educated twenty-something white dude - stuffwhitepeoplelike.com has my fucking number. But I do make LISTS about that shit. How novel!

Music! Gee-whiz!

1. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver

Okay, so it has a lame-ass "story" behind it about some sad bastard going off alone to make an album in the woods of Wisconsin (a story which no doubt helped sales, mind you), but come on, this thing is fucking beautiful. This album puts Justin Vernon up there with singer-songwriters like Eric Bachman and Bonnie "Prince" Billy - no fucking lie.

2. The Midnight Organ Fight - Frightened Rabbit

Great pop album - has all the traditional highs and lows you expect from a rock-solid rock album but done so goddamn well it seems unique, fresh. Main attraction here though is definitely the lead singer's crazy-ass voice - scottish lilt, voice-cracks and all.

3. Dear Science - TV on the Radio

Yeah, I know - real original, right? Look, I wanna be unimpressed by these dudes, but the Rich Man's Gnarls Barkley are just too fucking awesome. They just keep hitting that right balance of experimentalism and pop sensibility over and over, upping the ante with each album - these guys are gonna be fucking legendary toot-fucking-sweet.

4. Wrecking Ball - Dead Confederate

I remember having My Morning Jacket's sound explained to me before I ever heard their music and getting really excited. Then I heard the music and...they sucked. Dead Confederate is what I'd hoped they would sound like. If you like the Black Angels, you're gonna shit your pants when you get your gnarled, sweaty mitts on Wrecking Ball.

5. In Ear Park - Department of Eagles

I was a huge fan of Grizzly Bear's last album and this band is primarily those same dudes, only with a more radio-friendly sound. There's still some weird Beach Boys shit going on in the production, but now it's more like Pet Sounds than Smile.

That'll do it for music, expect my extremely well-thought-out books list to come out soon, gentle, impatient readers. EXPECT THAT SHIT!

Catching Up #18: PYRES by Derek Nikitas

So this beast right here, Pyres by Derek Nikitas, could be classified as more of a Crime-Centered-Literary-Thriller than a straight-up noir, but once you get to the last hundred pages, when it is just one awesomely violent action sequence after another, there is no denying that the book deserves to be reviewed on Nerd of Noir. This is tough stuff, dear reader, child-and-pregnant-woman-in-peril-type tough stuff. But there's weird little Nordic trolls and shit in it too so...there's that...

Yeah, you read that right, reader-who-doesn't-trust-his-own-fucking-eyes: there are fucking creatures from Nordic mythology in this book. Weirder than that - it actually worked for me instead of making me want to shoot myself in the face. But I'm getting ahead of myself, getting excited. Let's do that whole plot summary bullshit thing so you can keep the fuck up.

Pyres is set in upstate New York in the earlier nineties, weeks before young Lucia Moberg's sixteenth birthday. Lucia's life seems fairly typical until the day her professor father - who specializes in, you guessed it, Nordic mythology - is shot dead right before her eyes in a mall parking lot.

Greta Hurd, a middle-aged detective for the Rochester PD, takes the case which, you know, eventually gets personal. Hurd's messy personal life - which involves an estranged daughter about to be married to a schlub Greta doesn't approve of - seemingly can be redeemed if she could only figure out this case.

Also thrown into the mix is another woman named Tanya, an extremely pregnant Whiskey Tango (see Generation Kill for an explanation of that reference) girl whose violent boyfriend Mason just got made a member of the Skeleton Crew, a dangerous motorcycle club run by sinister bearded lard-ass Buck Hanson. If you don't think the Skeleton Crew is mixed up somehow in Oscar Moberg's murder, you don't read much.

Pyres is successful in large part due to one of my favorite, sly conventions in crime fiction. It is a very simple story, but because of the way and order information is revealed to the reader, it seems like a very complicated plot (For a great film example of this, see Eastern Promises). The storytelling is so fucking assured, so sly, that what eventually turns out to be a classic crime story seems at first to be ridiculously complex - and this is Nikitas's fucking debut!

And then there's the fucking Nordic trolls or tomte, as they are known in the book. The tomte show up once in a while to help Lucia through a tough spot - help her find something important or see something that helps move the plot along. It sounds completely gaytarded, as Brian Posehn would say, but it makes sense within the reality of the book, with how Nikitas depicts the events. Are there actually little creatures running around helping out Lucia, or is it just the delusions of a girl whose father - a father violently murdered in front of her eyes just days previous - drilled these stories and myths into her head from an early age? It's pretty ingenious, actually.

But what really makes this fucker hum is the action. This is some of the most intense violence you will read anywhere, depicted on a level that is arguably McCarthyian - no shit. If they were to adapt this novel for the screen, it could never keep the violence true to the book and still come away with an R-rating. Some shocking stuff happens in this motherfucker and when it isn't completely disgusting, it is absolutely riveting.

I can't wait for Nikitas to pump out another book. This dude has the chops to intrigue both the beret-wearing totebag-carriers and the folks like you and me who want our pulp to go all the way. He's fighting the best fight and I support the shit out of him for that.

Ruminating In My Pants #5: Doing the Whole "Best Of 08" Thing on TV, Movies

So the Nerd is most certainly not immune to sharing what his favorite shit of the year was. There is something just so fucking deep within him that cries out RANK YOUR FAVORITE SHIT IN NUMERICAL ORDER! Because we all like lists like that, don't we? When you get your local paper (assuming you don't scream PRINT IS DEAD like some people...) towards the end of the year and some critic puts up his top ten movies or books or concerts - it's fun to make fun of them, pretend like you're better than them. He liked THAT movie? What a douche!

Naturally, then you go check out THAT movie because it might be pretty good...

So yeah, make fun of my choices, call me a douche or just be confused why I'm doing this so late in the fucking game (it's because I'm in a middle market and certain movies take a few weeks to get to the Twin Cities). But do you know who I fucking am? I'm the goddamn Nerd of Noir and I know what good looks like and I have an even better fucking idea what great looks like and this fucking list coming up right below this fucking sentence looks good-goddamn-fucking-great to me:

Movies! Hoo-ray!

1. In Bruges - Martin McDonagh

No movie was more surprising, more exciting, more hilarious, more sad, more violent, more...fuck it, the list goes on. In Bruges is a cult classic, a movie I shouldn't have to explain, you should just pop it in and be awed. I can't even fathom what McDonagh will do next, I just hope he does it with Farrell. Somebody's gotta keep that dude's career on track.

2. The Wrestler - Darren Aronofsky

So The Wrestler is full of cliches and lacks the scope of Aronofsky's earlier efforts, but man does this movie hit me hard. Mickey Rourke just fucking IS Randy "Ram" Robinson and if he doesn't win an Oscar I'll shit in my hat. The final minutes of this movie just fucking haunt me.

3. Rachel Getting Married - Jonathan Demme

I've had many arguments over this movie with people as of late asking me why I thought it was so great. Well, fucking look at it! Rachel Getting Married just drew me in and made me part of the family, part of the great big emotional party in a way few movies have ever tried for. Even the structure of the movie is based on a certain "partying" logic, hence why it sort of tapers off...

4. Snow Angels - David Gordon Green

I've already talked about my love of the CCAHT in an earlier Ruminating so this one should come as no surprise. It's just a simple story of domestic strife in a small-town and how simple things can escalate to terrible extremes. This movie is for sure a bummer, but it's also agonizingly intense and sometimes even pretty funny. Sam Rockwell is a genius, too.

5. Let The Right One In - Tomas Alfredson

Last year's best horror film was from Spain (The Orphanage) and this year it was from Sweden. Right One is deliberate and strange and completely original while somehow actually following all the classic vampire rules. If you don't get creeped out by this one (or laugh your ass off during the infamous cat scene), you probably eat babies (speaking of eating babies, what happened to The Road coming out this year? I was so pumped for that and now...what?)

Television! Yippee!

1. Generation Kill - David Simon

This is the most refreshing war story ever told. It's so simple yet so complex. We hang out with a bunch of AWESOMELY foul-mouthed Marines as they do a recon mission through Iraq, ultimately ending up in Bagdad in the early days of the latest Iraq war. Through this small band of people, we see exactly how hard it is to do something really good in modern warfare. This shit is just so fucking ALIVE.

2. Mad Men - Matthew Weiner

After the show settled the whole "Will Don Draper Be Found Out?!" storyline in season one, many fans were left wondering just what the fuck we'd all care about in season two. Well, like in season two of The Sopranos, Mad Men chose to just expand our knowledge of the many great characters populating its cool-ass fucking world, and good God did it ever feel right.

3. The Wire - David Simon

Before you Johnny-Come-Lately Wire fans crawl up my ass about not putting this as number one, let me establish my impeccable Nerd cred by saying I was in the story from the beginning so don't you NPR folks who came on-board just because you heard season four was talking about "the children" (oh! What will happen to the children!?) get up my ass about this ranking. Season Five tried too hard and enlightened too little in its chosen subjects (print newspapers) and for that it ends up below these two. But still, there was plenty of greatness to be found, just not GREATNESS as with all the seasons before it.

4. Elvis Mitchell: Under The Influence - Elvis Mitchell

Though I also loved Elvis Costello's Spectacle show on the Sundance Channel, Elvis Mitchell's TCM interview program just felt more intimate, more real. Plus, he had better guests. Joan Allen, Tarantino, Sydney Pollack (right before he died!), Bill Murray - all of them talking about the movies that inspired them and shaped their career paths. Yeah, this show is for the nerdiest of nerds, but it also beefed up the Netflix queue (as if it needed any help).

5. The Paper

There was actually a reason to watch MTV in 2008! Shit, there was actually a reality-TV show that I kinda loved. That's a fucking miracle right there! The cuddly kids of Cypress Bay High in Weston Florida won this crotchety nerd's heart as they tried to put together something as earth-shattering as gasp! a school newspaper. There is really no accounting for why I loved this white-bread little show so damned much. Do I have what you humans call...feelings?

Jesus, this list-making is making me thirsty. I'm gonna hit you back later with book and music lists real soon. The Nerd's vacation is officially over!