Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

The past year seems to have been a bonanza for short story collections, and editor Luca Veste proves that last is certainly not least with his collection Off the Record, which was released at the end of November.

Featuring a mind-boggling thirty-eight stories from a who’s who of the crime fiction community, Off the Record is structured around the clever premise of taking a classic song title and writing a story inspired by it. To avoid making this review ridiculously long, and to leave you plenty to discover fresh for yourselves, I will just mention a handful that stood out to me for one reason or another.

“Light My Fire” by AJ Hayes is an incredibly dark tale of a love triangle gone awry. What could have been a run of the mill story of revenge instead turns into a truly disturbing look at how one man’s journey out of the mouth of madness ends up being another’s entrance into it as they both seek answers to the murderous events of the past.

Ian Ayris’ “Down In The Tube Station At Midnight” features a working stiff bloke in the London Underground on his way to the daily grind. In what turns out to be an interesting twist, however, the grind in question isn’t quite what you may be expecting.

Iain Rowan tackled a biggie when he chose the legendary “Purple Haze” as his track, and he more than lives up to the challenge in this story of three well-to-do college boys who head into the projects looking to score drugs only to discover a high they never anticipated. (more…)

Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing Eric Beetner’s novella Dig Two Graves, just one of the numerous works from Eric which readers were treated to in 2011. In fact, if 2012 is anything like this past year was for him, Eric better be resting up because he’s going to be a busy boy.

As 2011 comes to a close I find myself not in the middle of a writing project. This is only worth mentioning because in 2011 I wrote 3 novels, a novella, about a dozen short stories and decent amount of blog posts. Not having some sort of deadline, even the self-imposed ones, is a bit of a change for me. I’m trying to take the rest of December off, but I have a few pages of handwritten notes for something I’m very excited about that keep staring at me. We’ll see if I make it to New Year’s.

Now, I say I wrote all that stuff, but the sad truth is you can’t read most of it. The blog posts are out there and the novella is out, along with another one I wrote in 2010 so I’m not including that here. The three novels – about 200,000 words worth – won’t be coming your way for a while. And when or if they will at all isn’t up to me. Someone needs to agree to publish them first. But, hey, fingers crossed and all that.

And on one of those I cheated. It would be the third of my collaborations with JB Kohl. We left the 1940s world of our first two books, One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble, and went modern and topical. We love the book and hope it is around for you to love someday. But the cheating part is that when I write with Jen I only have to write half a book. So, there you go. I’m a slacker. (more…)

Well, folks, this is probably it on the site for a few days until the jolly old fat man has done his thing. So I thought I’d leave you with a heartwarming* Christmas tale courtesy the lovely Julie Morrigan. Oh, and be on the lookout for Julie’s newest short story collection, Show No Mercy, which should be available in the next couple of days. Enjoy!

*Ok, it’s not exactly heartwarming, but it is a Christmas tale and Julie really is very lovely.

‘Oooooarrrrghhh!!!! Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph!’

It wasn’t how I would have chosen to spend Christmas Eve.

‘It fucking hurts! Get that fucking thing out of me! Oooooaaaaarrrrghhh!!!!’

On the plus side, Jenna wasn’t having any more fun than I was. I reckoned the whole thing was overrated.

‘Peeeeeeeeterrrrr!!! Fucking do some fucking thing!!! Pleeeeeeease!!!!’

That was new: I’d never heard her beg before.

‘Come on, Daddy. Mummy needs you!’ The midwife had an expectant look on her face. She nodded at Jenna, looked back at me. So I did something: I went out for a smoke. As I headed down the corridor I could hear Jenna cursing and screaming. I hoped the midwife wasn’t easily offended.

Outside, among the other addicts, my breath smoked as much as my cigarette. It was bitterly cold, frosty, a few stray snowflakes drifting down from above. The pavements and driveways around the hospital sparkled in the lamplight. It was beautiful, provided you ignored the piles of dog ends and the motley assortment of people in pyjamas, coats and boots, closed your ears to the wheezing and the hacking coughs.

Events had conspired to bring me to this place at this time. Bad stuff, mostly. I mean, I’d always reckoned me and Jenna would have kids one day, but not now, not like this. I lit a second smoke from the first, dropped the butt and ground it out with my heel. (more…)

Tomorrow I will be reviewing J.D. Rhoades’ latest thriller, Gallows Pole. Today I’m pleased to welcome him to the blog for a guest post, in which he shares the story behind Gallows Pole.

It’s a question we’ve wrestled with in America since the terrible events of September 11, 2001. Occasionally couched in what is known as the “ticking bomb” scenario, it goes like this: a bomb which could kill thousands is hidden somewhere, about to go off. You have, completely in your power, a person who knows where it is. That person refuses to talk. Is it lawful to torture him to get the information? Would it be lawful to torture his family in front of him, including his children? Even if lawful, would it be morally permissible?

The debate over this question has consumed uncountable column inches in newspapers and untold amounts of bandwidth on the Internet since thousands died on 9/11. It was revived shortly after Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALS on May 2d of this year.

People’s answers have varied wildly. Some say “no, never, torture is always wrong.” These people are on what is usually described as the left, with the notable exception of John McCain. Then you have people on the far right like Pat Buchanan, who, shortly after the apprehension of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (aka the Undiebomber), was demanding that he be tortured even though he was, at the time, cooperating with investigators. Some people have posed creative solutions to the dilemma, like Harvard Law professor Allen Dershowitz, whose often misunderstood theory is “yes, we can torture, but we need clear rules and a warrant procedure for the President to authorize it.” (more…)

The interwebz is a strange and wonderful thing, where places like Twitter and Facebook make it easy to connect with people who share your interests and passions. One such person I was fortunate to meet this past year on Twitter is The Scottish Scribe, Fiona “McDroll” Johnson. At first I thought we merely shared a love of all things crime fiction, but came to realize McDroll was quite the budding author herself…if a bit reluctant initially to post her stories online. With much well deserved encouragement from her friends far and wide, however, before we knew it she’d gone from reluctant writer to author with three short story collections available! In addition to that, she helped organize, and contributed to, the wonderful anthology The Lost Children, all the proceeds of which benefit the children’s charities PROTECT (US) and Children 1st Scotland. It is truly my pleasure both to call McDroll (sorry, Fi, you’ll always be McDroll to me) a friend as well as to give her the keys to the joint for a guest post.

As we draw ever nearer to Christmas the battle of ‘Buy My Book’ on Twitter and ‘My Top 5 Reads of 2011’ on Facebook is hotting up nicely with constant reminders of all of the great, and occasionally not so brilliant, fiction that is out there in the digital marketplace.

If you are anything like me, you will have developed a worrying habit with ‘1-click’ buying over the past year and now dread to look at your monthly bank statement to actually discover how many 86p or 99 cent purchases you’ve actually made. Frightening!

I used to arrive home from my Saturday trawl through the second-hand bookstores and sneak 3 or 4 new titles onto my TBR pile beside my bed which, when it finally toppled over, would be redistributed around
the house so that my ever-growing compulsion for crime novels couldn’t be detected.

Now of course, life is very different as my purchases are made in secret as my darling little kindle, that I love so much, can hide a multitude of my sins which are even purchased when I’m in bed after midnight when they can silently, as if by magic, arrive to be added to the ever increasing list that never topples over.

I’m really hoping for an explosion in the Kindle market, this festive season, (other ereaders are available), not only because I would love more people to buy my darling books, but also I would love a much wider audience to be able to access a higher quality of new writing from brilliant contemporary writers than is currently generally available in paper format.

Walk into any of the chain store bookshops or look on supermarket shelves in the UK and you will see a wide collection of well known names. Great writers, yes, but do you really want to only read the blockbusters, the familiar? (more…)