My Favorite Reads of 2011

Over at Pulp Pusher, I named Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana as my favorite book of 2011.  Now, I'd like to mention a few other books that I think were among last year's best.

The Adjustment by Scott Phillips.  Post-war America as experienced by a jaded veteran with a penchant for hookers, booze and putting the hammer down on anyone who crosses his boss...until the boss fucks with him. 

Choke Hold by Christa Faust.  Angel Dare is back.  'Nuff said.  Read it.

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock.  This one made me feel the same as when I first read William Gay.  Violent.  Sad.  Gut-wrenching.  I read it twice.

Road Rules by Jim Winter.  I'm not much of an e-book guy, but Road Rules was worth a bit of eye-strain.  Winter has served up a tasty slice of gonzo noir.

El Gavilan by Craig McDonald. This might be 2011's most relevant crime novel.  The battle over immigration rages through a small Ohio city.  I don't know of any other writer who had tackled the issue in such a clear-eyed, compelling manner. 

As Noir As It Gets

Poets are sick.

Sick.

Every fucking one of them, going all the way back to Homer—and still countless generations before that blind old fart set the standard for Western literature, some Cro-Mag with a rancid animal hide swaddling his junk stood up beside a campfire and wove stories about a great hunt or the cruelty of gods or the downright fun of slamming a handaxe into your enemy’s face.

Get it now?

Poets are bat-shit crazy because more than anyone else, they feel the power of words.

And poetry is the world’s oldest form of storytelling.

Embrace these simple concepts and we'll get along just fine.

Which brings me to volume four of The Lineup: Poems on Crime.

As someone who had a small hand in shaping the first two anthologies, I’m proud to say The Lineup gets better every year. This time around, we see a man haunted by war crimes (Reed Farrel Coleman’s “Slider, Part 7”), a woman getting revenge on her dead lover’s ex-wife (Germaine Welch’s “Houston Oil Man Missing”), the cold lives of prostitutes (“Street Girls: Selected Memories” by Stephen Jay Schwartz) and the beginning of a rape victim’s endless nightmare (J.D. Smith’s “From a Deposition”). Kieran Shea (“In Oaxaca, 2006”) and Keith Rawson (“A Story to Tell Our Daughter”) deliver the goods, too. From Ken Bruen, whose novels are epic noir poetry disguised as prose, we get “Funeral: Of the Wino”:

For far too long
I’d lived
a lithium above despair.

Which brings me back around to my point about poets being sick.

These poems are as noir as it gets, buddy. Each one is a distillation of pain, greed, loss, false hope, betrayal, desperation and death. The poets themselves are hard men and dangerous women. The difference between them and the rest of the tribe? The poets don’t turn away from the darkness. Poets don’t flinch.

Crime poetry seeks an understanding of what drives us to rob, cheat, torture and kill each other. Some of the stories in The Lineup are true. Others are made up. But every one of them is real. Editors Gerald So, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez and Richie Narvaez have put together a crew of poets who aren't fucking around. Charles Bukowski would have felt right at home in these pages. Not to mention Johnny Cash and Bon Scott.

Poets are sick.

And it's a good fucking thing for all of us.

The Obligatory Top Ten List

I actually got a request for this, which means at least one person is still following the blog. So, it's time to list my favorite down-and-dirty crime reads of 2010. Most of these were new releases, but a couple of the books came out in 2009. Hey, my list = my rules. Ya gotsa problem widdat?

These are in no particlar order, but I will say that Benjamin Whitmer's Pike was my absolute favorite novel of the year. To paraphrase the great Nigel Tufnel: "It's like how much more noir could it be? And the answer is none. None...more noir." If you haven't read Pike yet, do yourself a favor and snag a copy right away. Rural noir at its hardscrabble finest.

Okay, now for the rest of the list:
The Ghosts of Belfast (aka The Twelve) by Stuart Neville
Kings of the Earth by John Clinch
Young Junius by Seth Harwood
Criminal Volume 5: The Sinners by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
A Bad Day for Pretty by Sophie Littlefield
Thunder Beach by Michael Lister
The Deputy by Victor Gischler
The Devil by Ken Bruen (even though the supernatural aspect felt out of place)
Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark

Discuss...

In Which the Errant Writer Returns, However Briefly

Eight months without a blog post. And yet--somehow--the world keeps on doing its collective thing. So just for the record, I'm not dead and I didn't go off to walk the Earth like Cain in Kung Fu.

Or is it Kane? I dunno.

Even though it's been quiet here, I've had plenty to keep me busy: promotions at work, trips to camp, parting ways with my agent and getting turned down by another, revisions and even some new writing.

New writing?

Oh, yeah. I've been working on nasty little bit of country noir that's almost ready to rear its ugly head. Ever seen road-kill used as a boxing glove? Yep, I went there.

And I'm reading.

Lots of reading.

Always reading.

If there was one thing guaranteed to piss off my old man, it was the sight of me sitting down with a book. But he was a prick and I hardly spoke a word to him during the last ten years of his life. So there you go. To this day, I just can't bring myself to trust anyone who dislikes books.

So read something.

I'll be back later.

Chris Holm Springs into Action

I'm not a regular reader of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but I do pick it up whenever it featured work by writers whose work I admire. Like Chris F. Holm. He writes memorable short fiction and it's only a matter of time before some publisher snaps the two novels he's completed so far.


The May 2010 issue of AHMM kicks off with Chris' latest story, "Action." If you enjoy Donald E. Westlake's Dortmunder* series of novels and short stories, then "Action" is your bag, baby. It's a funny, fast-paced heist story. The May AHMM is on the newsstands now, so rush on out and buy a copy.


*Bonus points if you can spot Chris' little tip o' the hat to the late MWA Grand Master.

Deep Thoughts from Tough Guys: The Blacklin County Leads the Way Edition

The saddest words of all were "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
--from Of All Sad Words, copyright 2008 by Bill Crider

Guest Blogger: Stephen D. Rogers

The Shot to Death Blog March

"I am so going to fuck you up"

--from "Tenant at Will"

So begins one of the 31 stories in Shot to Death (ISBN 978-0982589908). Within that beginning lurks the ending to the story and everything that happens between the beginning and the end. Or at least it seems that way to me.

I love the emphasis created by the word "so." That first line shows me a real can-do attitude that I have to admire. Just as long as the person talking isn't talking to me. This time.

An opening like that, with no clear directive, forces me to forge a framework. Immediately I can scrap all characters who could be expected to utter such words as well as all characters who might expect to hear them.

"I am so going to fuck you up." So says a mother to her daughter.

That daughter is a tenant at will, free to leave at any time, and yet she listens to such abuse. Maybe she kicks it back, but she's there to hear it in the first place.

Can she not afford to leave or does she feel obligated to stay? What would change either of those two possibilities?

Maybe both are true. Maybe she can't afford to leave and she feels obligated to stay, although perhaps her mother's attitude is chipping away at the latter.

The former would change if the daughter was offered somewhere else to live. Perhaps love is on the horizon. Or at least a relationship that isn't so acidic.

She has, however, been in a dysfunctional situation, and those have a tendency to cling. She might escape. She might even find love. Even so, I fear her mother is going to get in the last word.

"I am so going to fuck you up."

All that remains is the writing.

For a chance to win a signed copy of Shot to Death, click on over to stephendrogers.com and submit your completed entry.

Then visit the schedule to see how you can march along.

And then come back here to post your comments. Phew.