Tag: American Crime Novels

I Have Some Questions For You- Rebecca Makkai (Fleet 2023)

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I first discovered Rebecca Makkai in 2020 when I read her 2018 AIDS-era novel “The Great Believers” in one of the grimmest periods of lockdown.  I described the sensation of “feeling purged by the end but with the sense that I had received a tremendous reading experience.” It ended up as my Book Of The Year.  This, her 5th novel is the first since then.

It features a first-person narrative by Bodie Kane, a girl who found herself, due to unusual circumstances, as an outsider in an elite boarding school in the 1990s.  Her narrative is set in the present day and is addressed to one of her old teachers.  As an adult Bodie has never been able to move far away from the murder of an ex-room-mate, found drowned after a late-night visit to the pool.  Twenty-three years later she is back at the school teaching a podcast course and one of the students is manipulated by Bodie into re-examining the case.

This is a privileged American academic world largely within two time-zones, when Bodie was a student and then as a visiting staff member.  Since then, much has happened- different attitudes, MeToo and cancel culture means the later intake are a very different set of students, less accepting of the young Bodie’s environment and in the meantime a black man has been languishing in prison accused of a murder that an online community, which Bodie is very much a part of, seems never totally convinced he committed.

The three time settings gives a clever slant.  The three levels of looking back all presented in a form of an address to a member of staff Bodie had not seen since schooldays provides a fascinating set of perspectives.  As this structure demands, it is a very tight, controlled piece with lots of ruminations of the same events all stemming back to one night after a school production of “Camelot”.  I can, as a British reader, find writing set in American educational establishments rather distancing- it’s such a different world and there was a point where I felt my interest would wane but a leap forward to the post-Covid world regained my enthusiasm.

Within the narrative there is a nifty use of references to cases of abuse and murder, in an off-hand, suggestive manner, for example, she relates listening to a radio news item at one point and mentions was it the one where such and such happened, or the one where…or the one where.. This happens quite a few times within the text and is a sobering reminder that the case that Bodie experienced is one of so many where violence has destroyed lives.

I was impressed and involved but not in the same way as I was with “The Great Believers” where I felt a great emotional pull.  This is a very different book and is a highly contemporary and relevant one.

I Have Some Questions For You is published in the UK by Fleet, an imprint of Little Brown Viking on 23rd February 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy. 

All The Dangerous Things – Stacy Willingham (Harper Collins 2023)

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Stacy Willingham impressed with her debut “A Flicker In The Dark” (2022), a twisty Louisiana-set thriller with skilful misdirections and careful plotting.  All this is evident in her second novel which I think I enjoyed even more than the debut.

Isabelle Drake, a freelance journalist, is facing a year since her three year old son was snatched from his bedroom by speaking at a true-crime convention in the hope that someone might come up with unforseen evidence.  On the way home she meets Waylon, who can provide the opportunity for new perspectives on the case.  Isabelle’s family has been shrouded in secrets, from her childhood and her relationship with the husband she separated from since her son’s disappearance.

This is an intense thriller with the author drip-feeding us information which shifts almost continually how we perceive events.  The author states she has written it as an acknowledgement of the weight of motherhood, having to go it alone with feelings that might not feel normal but are in terms of blame and guilt and responsibility. 

I like the Southern setting, the characterisation, the touches of gothic, neighbours who seem to appear out of nowhere, the stifling heat and the boggy marshes.  This is a strong second novel.

All The Dangerous Things will be published by Harper Collins on 2nd February 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Black- Eyed Stranger – Charlotte Armstrong (1955)

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I encountered US novelist Charlotte Armstrong (1905-69) within the pages of Christopher Fowler’s “The Book Of Forgotten Authors”.  With some 29 novels under her own name and as Jo Valentine her speciality was “to portray women locked in psychological warfare with the members of their extended families and male-dominated workforces” which sounds as if her work should still be commercial and relevant today.

The title I chose to read feels more like she is following a male style of writing and so not typical of what might be expected from her. I associate the clipped dry tones with the hardboiled crime fiction of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and the type of film that might have starred Humphrey Bogart but she does do it with a lighter touch and many of her turns of phrase are appealing; “But it would be better if he took the car.  It couldn’t answer questions three days later.” “It was like watching a petal spin on the skin of a wave, a pretty petal that could never sink.”

There’s a lot of dialogue and it is a fast-paced novel that can be polished off in a couple of sittings.  I can’t help but think it could be faster-paced if characters said what they actually meant rather than talking in riddles to one another.  Kay Salisbury meets this black-eyed stranger at a party.  He is crime reporter Sam Lynch, who mixes with certain undesirables including the vengeful Ambielli and his muscle-mountain henchman Baby Hohenbaum.  When Lynch hears of a plan to hold Kay to ransom he takes matter into his own hands.

All the characters here become confused as to each other’s motives.  It really isn’t that deep in terms of characterisation, plot or themes but Armstrong weaves an involving enough tale.  From what Christopher Fowler says of her I would imagine that the more typical work would have more resonant characters and relationships but this is an example of a technically proficient, tightly-written short novel.

The Black-Eyed Stranger was first published in the UK in 1955.  I read the Head Of Zeus ebook edition from 2012.  

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter- Tom Franklin (2011)

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This is a book which passed me by until I saw it recommended by US author Attica Locke as an example of Southern Gothic claiming it to be “everything Southern Noir should be”.  It also won the UK Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger Award in 2011 given for the best novel of the year.  I was also a little fascinated to discover that an author who received such fulsome praise for this, his third novel, (there was also a short story collection in 1999) has only produced one book in collaboration with his poet wife in the decade since.  I don’t know why this is.

My initial impression was that it was a very dense novel and despite the prestigious British award I found it as a British reader to be a bit of a struggle to find points of common ground in terms of cultural references, characterisation and attitudes.  In a quiet Mississippi town, there’s a continual macho undercurrent of violence and a real love of guns.  As the plot builds I did find myself enjoying it more.

Is history repeating itself when a teenage girl disappears?  The main suspect is a man who close to twenty years before was implicated when another girl vanished without trace.  His life since has been made a misery by the locals but he has stuck it out, alone and vulnerable now his mother is in a home with dementia.  A Black cop, Silas, known as 32 because of his baseball shirt number when he played back in the day, has returned to the area and discovers an ex-team mate, latterly a drug-pusher, dead in a swamp.  A violent attack on the town scapegoat follows.

Much has been concealed from the past which may have some influence in the present crime-wave.  There’s a lot of hostility in the town tied up in past and present responses to the two main characters.

I enjoyed this book.  It’s technically very strong and tightly written.  Unlike most crime novels the tension comes out not in the situations but with the characters’ relationships with one another which gives this depth and emotional resonance.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter was published in the UK in 2011.  I read the Pan paperback edition

A Flicker In The Dark – Stacy Willingham (Harper Collins 2022)

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I highlighted this debut in my “Looking Back Looking Forward post”, a Louisiana set thriller described by top crime writer Jeffery Deaver as “an unstoppable journey through the psychology of evil, and of courage (in many senses), all told in a pitch-perfect literary style.”

I don’t read many psychological thrillers nowadays, the market seems flooded with them and I find them a little samey but here we have a strong example.

Psychologist Chloe Davis is our damaged first-person narrator.  Keeping herself well-dosed with prescription medication she is facing the twentieth anniversary of a case she helped to crack as a 12 year old when, horrifically, her father was imprisoned for the abduction and suspected murder of 6 teenage girls.  All this happened in Breaux Bridge, “the Crawfish capital of the world”, a small-town environment Chloe had to escape from after the disintegration of her family.

Now in Baton Rouge and on the verge of marriage her world crumbles again when it looks like a copycat killer is murdering in her local area.

Chloe is implicated, needs to clear her name and takes too long to involve the police (which is so often the case in this sort of book).  Three quarters of the way through the tension is ramped up by unforeseen (by me) twists which continues to impress to its conclusion.  It was a resolution I saw coming early on, then didn’t, then forgot all about as Willingham skilfully misdirects with careful plotting.  It reads well, the Louisiana setting effectively makes its presence known and I am not surprised that options for a TV adaptation have reputedly been picked up.

Flicker In The Dark is published on 3rd February 2022 by Harper Collins in the UK.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Yes, Daddy – Jonathan Parks-Ramage (HMH Books 2021)

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I’m a sucker for any title marketed as “Modern Gothic” and I was also tempted into reading this book as the author and I share an unusual surname.  He is no relation, however, this is an intriguing debut from an author from Los Angeles.  At times I thought it was stunningly powerful and gripping but for me it ran out of steam meaning I finished the book feeling a little flat from an author with so much potential.

This is the tale of Jonah, an aspiring playwright who sets his sights on seducing an older, successful dramatist who then finds he gets considerably more than he bargained for.  As a character his motives are often very questionable which is no bad thing (see John Boyne’s “Ladder To The Sky”, for example, for another ruthless lead ) but some readers’ responses to this book may be affected by his limited likeability.

We begin at a trial so we know from the start that something has gone awry in their relationship, there’s an early twist and then a shuffle back in time to relate the whole story in a first-person narrative by the ambitious, emotionally damaged younger man.  It’s not that long before it gets really good, at a point where Jonah feels woozy at a dinner party and although there’s not a hint of demonic possession here the tension of the writing and the surface of respectability hiding much darkness reminded me of Ira Levin’s “Rosemary’s Baby”, a book I love.

There are many plot turns along the way but the last third feels as if the build-up dissipates greatly to find an acceptable resolution and I rather think that this resolution might feel more acceptable to an American audience.

There are issues raised which are relevant to the #MeToo campaign and LGBT considerations here given a powerful, fresh dimension and I’m not sure how Parks-Ramage could have otherwise found his way out of the plot he has weaved but I feel he might have let his dramatic peaks appear too early in the narrative denying me the really splendid reading experience I thought I was going to get with this book.

Yes, Daddy was published on 18th May 2021 by Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Books.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Whites – Richard Price (2015)

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I have  read one other Richard Price novel, his 1974 debut “The Wanderers” which when I discovered it in 2014 I made my Book of The Year.  This tale of a teenage gang in the Bronx in the early 1960’s I described as “unsympathetic, gritty and yet touching”. It was published when Price was 25 and 41 years later came his 9th novel originally written under the pseudonym Harry Brandt, although this edition puts Price’s own name to the forefront.

The title refers to the nickname given by a group of NYPD members past and present to those individuals who literally got away with murder, whose obvious guilt in the execution of terrible crimes becomes an obsession to the detectives – becoming their own personal nemesis.  Still serving in the Night Watch is main character Billy Graves who regularly meets up with ex-colleagues “The Wild Geese” where their Whites are often a topic for conversation.  When bad things begin to happen to those they obsess over is it karma kicking back or is someone taking the law into their own hands?

Alongside this we have sections devoted to another serving policeman, Milton Ramos, more obnoxious and obsessed with revenge, which is a major theme of the novel.  This begins to infiltrate the lives of Billy, his ER nurse wife Carmen, their two children and Billy’s Alzheimer’s stricken father, himself an ex-cop.

This is very much a hard-boiled crime tale but it really works for me as it is so character led.  It is hard to initially warm to all the characters, but Price, as he did in his debut over 40 years before, does draw the reader in.  These are undoubtedly flawed individuals but you still end up caring.

In the intervening years between “The Wanderers” and this, apart from the 7 other novels, Price has written Hollywood screenplays for movies such as “The Sea Of Love” (1989 starring Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin) and “The Color Of Money”(1986 with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, for which Price was nominated for an Oscar) and also wrote episodes of “The Wire”, rightly regarded as one of the best written crime TV series ever, so you can see the credentials right away.  There is no doubting his ability in getting the feel of authenticity in his writing.

The day to day (or night to night) crimes in Billy’s professional life go on in the background in an unrelenting, grinding, life-sapping way which is very effective and shifts the novel in a direction I was not really expecting when I started it, when I felt that it would be this aspect which would take centre stage. 

This is impressive writing and I think, that especially here in the UK, this writer is under-valued.  Stephen King described it on publication as “the crime novel of the year, grim, gutsy and impossible to put down.”  I would find it very hard to disagree.

The Whites was published by Bloomsbury in 2015.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle – Shirley Jackson (1962)

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I’ve always been a bit sniffy about the novella.  As recently as June this year in my review of Adam Mars-Jones’ “Box Hill” I said; “My main quibble comes with the novella form.  I end up feeling slightly short-changed”.  Could this be the book which has at last caused a change of heart?  Over 146 pages in the Penguin Classics paperback edition Shirley Jackson creates a superb, unsettling Gothic tale with an unreliable narrator and a series of beautifully written set-pieces which will forge this book forever in this reader’s memory.

I have never read American author Shirley Jackson (1916-65).  I know her career was established by short-stories and short form novels where a surface respectability hid tales of darkness.  In a superb opening we meet 18 year old Mary Katherine Blackwood (known as “Merricat”) negotiating her twice weekly trip into her local village as a kind of board game where her fate may be decided by a roll of the dice.  She perceives great hostility from those she encounters before returning to her sizeable family home now occupied only by her sister and an ailing uncle who do not leave the premises.  The veneer of respectability is tested when neighbours come to take tea in what is almost a parody of a familiar social situation.  We know something is very awry with this family and that the girls’ parents, brother and aunt all died on the same night within this house.  Merricat herself is happy with the unchanged world of isolation which has become the norm the last six years until a cousin comes to visit which makes things fall further out of kilter.

There’s a menace throughout which is stifling but that runs alongside Merricat’s often simplistic observations.  Even though none of the plot twists are surprising we end up with an extraordinary work where the lines between innocence and guilt are blurred, where the narrator continually disturbs and the horror story and fairy tale lay side by side without either becoming more than subtle.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and feel that I have discovered a writer who will continue to resonate strongly with me.  Length-wise it was perfect and I don’t think I have often said that about a novella before.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle was first published in 1962.  I read the 2009 Penguin Classics paperback edition which has an afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.

One For The Money – Janet Evanovich (1994) – A Murder They Wrote Review

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Selected because I drew “Read A Book From A Female Point Of View” from the Sandown Library Russian Roulette Reading Challenge this is my first Janet Evanovich.  It is also her first book to feature Bounty Hunter Stephanie Plum – a series the author certainly decided to run with as there are now twenty-four novels together with four which fall out of the numbered sequence of the main series (at least the reader will know what order to read them in!).  Book #25 “Look Alive Twenty Five” is due in November 2018.

Back at book number 1 we meet an unemployed Stephanie persuaded by her mother to go for a filing job at her cousin Vinnie’s Bonding Company.  With that position unavailable Stephanie persuades her relative to take her on as a “skip tracer”, tracking FTA’s (individuals who have failed to appear at court).  At this point I thought I was going to be thrown by the complexities of the American legal system but here we get a somewhat hapless inexperienced but enthusiastic bounty hunter attempting to find her place in this dangerous environment.

Cousin Vinnie gives Stephanie a week to track and capture New Jersey’s currently Most Wanted, cop Joe Morelli who has gunned down a man in suspicious circumstances and gone on the run.  The potential pay-off for finding him will sort out Stephanie’s financial problems.

Her main difficulty is that she is clueless about how to proceed and this sets up much humour alongside the crime which is a good part of this series’ appeal and is the reason this author gets such good feedback from crime readers of both genders.  I was concerned, especially with the cover of this Penguin reprint that it might be fairly standard chick-lit with a gun and although Stephanie’s ineptitude does mean she has much in common with many light romantic fiction heroines the crime aspect is well done, actually really quite thrilling which gives the whole thing a different and very satisfying complexion.

I’ve never been a huge fan of first-person American crime fiction when that first person has been some macho action or hard-boiled detective but Stephanie’s point of view is irresistible as her attempts to convey crime noir falls apart as she gets herself into deeper and deeper scrapes.  I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. although I should have known this was Evanovich’s strength and that she really wins readers over.  I often see library borrowers bring back the one book they’ve tried and then check out an armful from the series.  I will certainly be interested in finding out how Stephanie gets on.  Don’t be put off by what might on the surface seem formulaic, this is a winner both in terms of commercial sales and critical acclaim (this first book won the Crime Writer’s Association John Creasey Award).  It all starts here……..

fourstars

One For The Money is published by Penguin Books in the UK.  Originally appearing in 1994 I read the 2004 paperback version.