Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

I always was a sucker for a good cause. – Eddie Perlmutter

Eddie Perlmutter is not your typical Boca Raton retiree. While most of Boca’s citizens find themselves preoccupied with things like golf, bridge tournaments, doctors appointments, and early-bird specials, former Boston detective turned private investigator Eddie tends to find himself caught up in slightly more serious matters.

During his brief time in Boca, Eddie has taken on the Russian mafia and run a group of neo-Nazis out of town on a rail (the cases that earned him the nickname “The Boca Knight”), solved the mystery of a haunted elevator, shut down a cyber-criminal (who’s since become Eddie’s partner), busted up a kidnapping/identity theft ring, and parlayed the financial results of one investigation into a health care clinic for a low income community (Boca Mournings).

Not bad for a sexagenarian with arthritic knuckles, two bum knees, and a pesky prostate.

Boca Daze finds Eddie dealing with a blast from his Boston past when old school criminal Doc Hurwitz, also now retired to Boca, reaches out to Eddie for help. Doc’s granddaughter, Shoshanna, recently overdosed on OxyContin pills she obtained from one of Florida’s infamous “pill mills,” places that churn out thousands of prescriptions for painkillers under questionable – but legal – circumstances. Doc wants Eddie to get the evidence needed to prove the clinic where Shoshanna got her pills is dirty and shut the place down.

Just let me wake up. Let this be a nightmare. – Josie Ash

At the end of Project Eden series opener Sick, Daniel Ash knew the nightmare that had been dodged by the resistance’s victory in preventing a global pandemic was only temporary. After all, the virulent Sage Flu was not a natural phenomenon, but rather a genetically engineered virus produced by a group known as Project Eden, whose mission is to bring about a “reboot” of the human race by killing 99% of the population and starting over with a select group of the best and brightest the world has to offer.

As Exit 9 opens, Ash and his two kids have assumed new identities and are doing their best to have as normal a life as possible given their knowledge that Project Eden still exists. It’s a difficult situation, one which is not made easier when members of the resistance show up on Ash’s doorstep, once again calling upon him for help. The countdown to the day they’ve all been fearing, Implementation Day, has begun.

Now Ash and his team must race against the clock to discover Project Eden’s secret base of operations Bluebird, believed to be located in the extreme northern reaches of Canada inside the Arctic Circle, before the group can unleash its “final solution” on the world.

…the killing is easy. It’s the getting away with it that’s a bit more problematic. – The Commissioner

The job of a sports league’s commissioner, while not easy, is relatively straightforward. Generally speaking, they oversee the teams and competition, deal with administrative details and rules governing league play, and generally seek to ensure the health and success of their league. The commissioner in author Dani Amore’s newest book is no different. Well, except that he’s not in charge of the NBA, NFL or some other league you’re familiar with; no, he’s commissioner of The Killing League.

Like any other professional sports league, The Commissioner has recruited only the best of the best to participate. It just so happens that all the players in The Killing League are active serial killers, and The Commissioner has devised a single elimination style tournament for them to test their skills. Each person will be assigned a specific target to kill per round of play, with the targets’ level of difficulty increasing the deeper into the tournament the players get. If you don’t get your target – or they get you – you’re eliminated.

And so, players with monikers like Blue Blood, The Messiah, Florence Nightmare, and The Butcher, among others, are turned loose across the country, each determined to win the grand prize: a shot at renowned FBI profiler Wallace Mack, and a woman named Nicole, who escaped from and killed the serial killer who abducted her three years ago. Of course, Mack didn’t get to be renowned based on his good looks, and Nicole has dedicated her life to two things since her ordeal: becoming a chef and martial arts. Mack quickly realizes what’s going on, and the only place Nicole’s better with a knife than in the kitchen is in the dojo. Game on.

It’s almost midnight. I’ve been dead almost twenty-four hours. I’m not sure how I feel about that. – Joe Sunday

Joe Sunday always figured his life would end violently. After all, when your occupation is thug for hire to a mid-level mafioso things tend to get pretty nasty at times, even if you are working the glamour filled streets of L.A., not the mean streets of New York or Chicago.

What he couldn’t possibly have realized, however, was that when he finally was killed, well, that he wouldn’t stay dead.

Sunday does realize something is very wrong with his latest assignment, especially when the guys his boss previously sent out on the job either turned up dead or not at all. So when he and his partner, Julio, fail in their attempt to obtain the specific item they were sent to retrieve – a gemstone of indeterminate origin – he figures at least they’re ahead of the game by still being alive. That is until Julio unexpectedly, and quite violently, kills himself in front of Sunday.

When Sunday seeks answers from his boss, he’s informed that the man they tried to steal the stone from has been alive for far longer than should be possible, especially since Sunday’s boss claims to have personally killed him decades ago. The stone isn’t a jewel, he tells Sunday, but an ancient object that has the power to grant immortality. Riiight. Just as Sunday’s about to write off his boss as a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal, he gets a frantic call from Julio’s widow asking for Joe’s help. Seems Julio is home and acting odd. Considering Sunday just watched Julio kill himself only hours ago, he finds that quite odd indeed.

Welcome to author Stephen Blackmoore’s L.A., the City of the Lost, a place where the magic that occurs isn’t accomplished by computer geeks in the offices of Industrial Light & Magic or Pixar.

“It doesn’t matter how you got here, because you in it.” – Freeman

Ex-action movie star Jack Palms seems to find himself “in it” quite a bit. When we last saw Jack in series opener Jack Wakes Up, he had barely managed to extricate himself from between a rock and a hard place in the middle of a Bay Area drug war.

As we catch up with Jack in This Is Life, he has just returned home after a long cross country motorcycle trip he used to clear his head and get back on track. Unfortunately for Jack, his attempt to pursue a low key life is about to be derailed once again. While standing in his living room on the night of his homecoming contemplating the charred remains of his bed that awaited him upon his return, someone takes a shot at Jack through his patio door. He gives chase, but is only able to catch a glimpse of the shooter’s car as it speeds away.

Jack heads to SFPD headquarters the following morning to report the incident to his frenemy Sergeant Mills Hopkins, but instead of taking his report Hopkins recruits Jack to look into the killing of an SFPD officer. Turns out the officer was involved in questionable activity, and someone high up in SFPD bureaucracy doesn’t seem to want the crime solved and is hampering the investigation. How other than a cover-up to explain an official report of “suicide” for a corpse whose head was nearly obliterated by what was obviously a .50 caliber anti-tank gun based on the other holes that riddle the vehicle? This doesn’t sit well with Hopkins, who wants Jack to use his hard earned recent experience of how to work the angles between warring factions to get to the bottom of things.

Today reformed pyromaniac Stephen Blackmoore stops by to share a little about how the dark side of the City of Angels shaped his novel City of the Lost, which I’ll be reviewing tomorrow. And if you’re in the LA area, be sure to check out Stephen and a horde of other authors reading their work at Noir at the Bar on Jan 22nd.

In January of 1934 G. Warren Shufelt, a mining engineer, believed that a race of lizard people were living in tunnels underneath Downtown L.A. Not only did he think these lizard people were there, but he also believed that they had gold and other treasures in their underground city. He even said he had photographed some of these treasures with “radio X-rays”. Four foot long gold tablets upon which 5000 years of ancient lizard man lore was written.

He dug a shaft on North Hill Street in an effort to find the entrance. He even made a map of it showing the tunnel locations, various rooms and their dimensions and where all the gold was supposed to be.

Could it be true? Could there be a race of Lovecraftian lizardmen living under the streets of L.A.?

Well, no, of course not, but for a while somebody believed it. The L.A. Times even printed a front page story about it. Showed the map and everything.

L.A. can be a weird, funny and truly creepy place. Lizard people, the curse of Griffith Park, haunts a-plenty. Horrors and weirdness of the more mundane variety, too. There’s The Black Dahlia, Charles Manson, The Night Stalker, The Grim Sleeper.

Hell, just the other day a couple hikers found some Armenian guy’s head in a bag in Bronson Canyon. No word yet on where the rest of him is. I don’t think they’ll find him.

Come on, it’s just a grade school. This stuff isn’t supposed to destroy people’s lives.

Richard Gray thought he knew what he was getting into when he accepted the position of PTO President at “four-star school of excellence” Malliford Elementary. He would have done well to adopt General Sherman’s attitude about the presidency: “If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.”

Instead, Richard quickly finds himself at war with Malliford’s ancient and entrenched principal, Estelle Rutherford, and her hardcore supporters among the faculty. For that matter, a vocal group of his fellow parents are also less than pleased with his reformist ways, especially when he challenges them on the basis for their opposition to a redistricting plan which would bring an influx of students from a low-income apartment complex into Malliford.

It’s Rutherford’s implementation of “forced labor” during detention that really escalates things to the next level, however, earning Malliford the scandalous nickname “Chain Gang Elementary,” as well as an exposé in the local paper and Richard’s outspoken criticism. Rutherford is less than amused, and brings in outside reinforcements in the form of two (because one apparently wasn’t enough) school psychologists and the founder of a prominent right-wing “family first” type group to bolster her position, and to help oust Richard…at any cost.

“I’m not the problem, man. The story’s the problem.”
- Billy Karlsson

I seem to have a penchant lately for choosing books that make my head explode. First it was Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat by Andrez Bergen, then came The Office of Lost & Found by Vincent Holland-Keen.

I now add Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke to the list, and apart from the rather messy cleanup required of repeated head explosions, I must say I am quite enjoying the stepped up game these authors have been bringing into my reading world.

While at an artists’ retreat, our unnamed narrator, an author (is he or isn’t he Declan himself?), is visited by a man calling himself Billy Karlsson, which just happens to be the name of a character in one of the manuscripts the author has long since set aside. And while it’s all well and good that the author has moved on to a successful career writing comedic crime novels, Billy complains that he’s been stuck in limbo the past five years and would like very much to move the show along toward being published.

Not only that, Billy is no longer satisfied with his original incarnation and has some suggestions on which way his story should go. Bemused by this person who has taken on the persona of one of his characters, the author patiently explains that as a new father and somewhat successful author he’s in a much happier state of mind than he was when he initially drafted Billy’s dark tale of a hospital porter performing euthanasia on elderly patients, and as such isn’t really sure he can recapture that vibe… or that he wants to.

Tomorrow I will be reviewing Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke. Today I’m pleased to welcome Declan for a guest post, in which he ruminates on violence in crime fiction and the author’s “right” to write about it, and comes to a rather unexpected personal conclusion.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so busy. Really, Elizabeth’s gracious offer to host a guest post by yours truly couldn’t have come at a better time.

Seriously.

Right now I’m supposed to be doing a final redraft on my latest book, Slaughter’s Hound (it’s a sequel to my first book, Eightball Boogie). And I am. Except I’m so busy fiddling with a word here or a comma there, an entire paragraph over there and three pages of exposition virtually everywhere, that I don’t have time to think about the bigger picture, and about what the book is really saying. So I’m very grateful for this opportunity to type out loud, as it were, and discover a thing or two about where the story is going.

I hope.

Anyway, as you can probably appreciate from the title, Slaughter’s Hound is not a cosy in which the mystery of the missing mittens is solved by a cat detective (note to self: sketch out synopsis for story about a serial-killer rabid dog who hunts down cat detectives). No, Slaughter’s Hound is old school. In fact, it kind of harks back to the Old West, and a time and place where the law was what the man with fastest draw said it was. In essence, it’s an eye-for-an-eye retribution tale featuring a protagonist who is, politically speaking, perhaps just a little to the left of LA Confidential’s Bud White.

This didn’t happen by accident, of course. I deliberately set out to write a right-wing treatise, mainly because Irish crime fiction, while offering virtually every other kind of variation on the crime / mystery novel, has yet to unearth its very own Mickey Spillane or early James Ellroy. Consciously or otherwise, most Irish writers cleave to the liberal model of the crime novel, which is to say that evil is not just always defeated, but is seen to be defeated, and generally as a result of the hero’s innate goodness, which usually manifests itself as a superior intellect and emotional intelligence, both of which the dastardly criminal lacks, being working class and stupid and starved of affection because his parents were working class and stupid and emotionally stunted. And on it goes.

Everything had been blown apart the day two boys decided it might be something to show the world the power of their savagery.

Located in the mountains of North Carolina near the Tennessee border, the sedate town of Rockville is rocked to its core when two students pull a Columbine-style shooting at the local high school early one morning.

Though three are killed and five wounded, the final toll would have been much worse but for the efforts of teacher Jessie Conway, who rushes into the cafeteria and confronts the shooters. When the dust settles both shooters lie dead, one at the hands of Jessie, who is also injured in the confrontation.

And while the shooting may be over, the fallout and healing are just beginning. Even after her physical wounds heal, Jessie continues to struggle to come to terms with the lingering psychological trauma from seeing people shot around her… and having taken a teenager’s life herself.

That kind of stress would be difficult enough even if Jessie and her husband, Mike, had the luxury of regrouping at their own pace, but the local media, desperate to exploit the “big city” tragedy for paper sales and TV ratings, relentlessly hounds Jessie for her firsthand account of events. Frustrated at her lack of cooperation, one local reporter digs into Jessie’s history and publishes a story with inflammatory information about Jessie’s past. And just when Jessie thinks things can’t possibly get any worse, she finds out how disturbingly wrong she is.