I’ve spent an awful lot of time at the swimming pool this summer with my kids and I’m always paying attention to what folks are reading. They’re reading in droves too, which is fantastic news, tho I think that of the fifty titles I’ve witnessed people digging through – thirty-five have either been E.L. James or Suzanne Collins. The rest of the devastated print pie goes to James Patterson, Brad Thor, Terry Goodkind, Charlaine Harris, Anne Rice and Jodi Picoult.
However… lots of folks with eReaders and since there’re no tell-tale book spines to lemme know what they’re into, I’m going to use my ESP to deduce that digital content – (or maybe just look on mine and assume that’s what everybody else is reading too).
I gotta believe that everybody’s jumping all over Dave Zeltserman’s new hardboiled novella series (that’s right – novella… series.) I love that concept. Straight to the point hard bitten crime and conspiracy/espionage stuffs somewhere south of a fifty thousand words and in a Richard Stark Parker mode (How much in a Parker mode? – Goodness, the first one’s called The Hunted as opposed to The Hunter being the first Parker title). Also look for book 2 – The Dame.
In an earlier post I expressed my love for Les Edgerton’s ill at ease con noir The Bitch, but I’ll recap here - this one rocks. Nuff said. Okay, I'll say just a bit more. For an ex-con who's finally put his life on track, (a decent job, a home, a wife, a child on the way) - nothing is as frightening as a figure from his criminal past looking to collect on a debt. Especially when, if caught, our twice previously convicted protagonist faces The Bitch - a mandatory life sentence for third time ha-BITCH-ual offenders. With no right choice to make and everything to lose, this one's a downward spiral you won't put down till it's over.
Laura Benedict’s Isabella Moon and Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts are now available for your Nook, but her latest (and my favorite of hers so far) Devil's Oven is mostly playing on an eReader near you (though, it is available as a paperback, now – hot dog!). She’s doing her genre-mixing (horror, mystery, crime, thriller, romance) thing again and it’s good for chilling your over-heated spine this summer. Sort of an updated with a twist, twisty, twisted take on Frankenstein. Puttin the romance in Necromancer and the app in Appalachia… wait, no – it’s an Appala-CHIA-pet. Yup.
And ho-there, Roger Smith has got another eBook?!? After Dust Devils made my best of 2011 list, you can bet I’m all over Capture like a fungus of some sort that covers things and spreads quickly. And itches. And you will be too. In fact, I predict somebody in major US publishing grows a pair and puts out more of Smith’s hardcore South African books in print around the time Phillip Noyce’s adaptation of Mixed Blood is putting holes in the multiplex screens with Samuel L. Jackson as Disaster Zondi. Or maybe it’ll be Mark Tonderai’s adapting Wake Up Dead – one way or another Roger Smith is simply too good to ignore for long.
And if you've been ignoring other classics (and future classics) chances are you can rectify that cheap-like on your NOOK. Oh, look Mulholland books has digitized a whole mess of Jim Thompson titles. Why not start where I did in my Thompson obsession - Wild Town? Or how about Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgins? Get it read before the Brad Pitt/Andrew Dominik movie version - Killing Them Softly wins a ton of Oscars. Maybe you're digging Ace Atkins' Quinn Colson books (The Ranger, The Lost Ones) and you're looking for his earlier Nick Travers series - not in print any longer, pardner, but you can start with Crossroad Blues reaaaal easy.
What's on your NOOK this summer?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
