Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

Though I initially earmarked only my Top 5 Reads of 2011, I ultimately decided I really needed to expand that to ten selections given the ridiculous amount of stellar books I was fortunate to discover this year.

To narrow things down somewhat, I arbitrarily decided to select my Top 10 only from full-length novels and not include any anthologies or collections. And I’ll tell you what, even with the herd already thinned picking only ten was still excruciating.

So many authors gave me hours of reading pleasure this year through their amazing abilities, and I am grateful to each and every one of them. For writing what turned out to be my favorite reads of 2011, I am especially grateful to Andrez Bergen, Vincent Holland-Keen, Grant Jerkins, Lynn Kostoff, Bill Loehfelm, Matthew McBride, Steve Mosby, Josh Stallings, Urban Waite, and Benjamin Whitmer. Thank you.

Presented in reverse order by date of review, my Top 10 Reads of 2011.

“I don’t believe some higher force is planning this life for me. If I did, I’d give up, lay down and die right now. Because it would be clear, that fuck in the sky hates my ass.” – Moses McGuire

Well, even if there is no “fuck in the sky” that hates Moses’ ass, there are plenty of people right here on terra firma ready to step up and fill that role. It’s not that Moses tries to piss people off, he just can’t help it.

As he remarks at one point in Out There Bad, Josh Stallings’ mind-blowingly spectacular follow up to Beautiful, Naked & Dead, “You know me, if there’s any shit in a ten mile radius, I will step in it.” And, oh my, has Moses stepped in it this time.

When we last saw forty-three year old suicidal strip club bouncer Moses McGuire his life looked like it had finally turned a corner. He’d avenged the death of his best friend and, along the way, fallen in love with her twin sister. Off to Baja they went to settle down and live happily ever after. Yeah, well, life doesn’t work like that for Moses.

As Out There Bad opens Moses is once again alone and working as a bouncer in that same old strip club in LA. When a misunderstanding – one involving a patron’s broken jaw and ribs – lands Moses temporarily out of a job he decides to go hit another strip club and see how things are going on the other side of town. And that’s when Moses’ cosmically bad karma kicks into high gear. (more…)

Last week I reviewed Josh Stallings’ powerful debut, Beautiful, Naked & Dead. Today I am pleased to welcome Josh for a guest post which shows that sometimes inspiration strikes pretty close to home.

Petty thieves, women who take their clothes off for money, small time criminals, big time mobsters, these are the characters I embrace. I write hard-boiled crime fiction. But the why of the matter is a mystery.

Fact: my grandfather sold bootlegged whisky on the Pike in Long Beach California. In the sixth grade his teacher said, “Harold Stallings, you will spend your life behind bars.” He did, he became cop, spent his later life as Chief of Corrections, behind bars. He also spent his first forty years at bars as often as possible. He was long time sober when he passed.

What does this have to do with my writing? Wait. My father stole his first car at 16. It was a Ford coupe. Black. Sexy. He did it to impress a girl who sold lemonade on the boardwalk. As he tells it, the keys were in the ignition. The car was in the driveway. The owner could be seen washing dishes. Pop took off the brake and let it roll down to the street. He then drove to the beach and parked in plain view of the boardwalk. It was important the girl saw him get out. He knew this would cinch the deal with her. He walked down an incline and was almost to her. She was smiling. He swallowed and started to speak, “Hi I saw-”

“Hal, you best come up here.” His father stood between the patrol car and the stolen Ford coupe. Busted. (more…)

“I guess the truth is, there’s only so much you can let pass, then you start drawing the line. Don’t draw the line somewhere, it all turns to shit.” – Moses McGuire

Moses McGuire knows a thing or two about life going to shit. Forty-three years old, he wakes up every day with a decision to make: go to his job as a bouncer at a strip club, or kill himself? The job at the strip club is relatively new, he got that shortly after being released from prison, but the thoughts of suicide aren’t. In fact, as Moses recalls it he was six years old the first time the thought seriously crossed his mind.

Somehow he made it another thirty-seven years down a rugged-ass road without topping himself, but not without hitting a few major potholes along the way. Medically discharged from the marines for “almost constant drinking and general insanity,” Moses has served time, picked up more than his share of battle scars from bar fights, is in debt to his ex-wife and his bookie, and has been cut off by his dealer for passing a bad check. (“Hell, what kind of dealer takes checks anyway?”) That suicide option looks better every morning.

And the morning we meet him at the start of Beautiful, Naked & Dead may well have been the day, until Moses gets a phone call from one of the girls at the strip club asking for his help. Not just any girl, actually, but the one person in the world Moses considers a friend. When she doesn’t show for their scheduled meeting Moses goes to her apartment, where he finds she’s been brutally tortured and murdered. The one good thing in his life having been taken from him, there’s going to be Hell to pay for those responsible, as well as anyone foolish enough to get in his way. (more…)