Year-end wrap-up time, that special time of year that I expose just how closed a circuit I operate one. The ignorance is revealed, the self-importance is palpable and I inflame your sense of injustice, perhaps correctly. So, here at the beginning of this piece I extend the offer to you – let your voice be heard. Don’t let blow-hards like me be the only opinions expressed. Please contradict me in the comment section below. Please expose how unqualified I am to hold forth on all of this.
But first: My favorites of 2010 in alphabetical order:
Citrus County by John Brandon. Skirts awfully close to precious at times, but the realistic atmosphere and the confusion felt by the teenagers at the book’s center inform the dread and consequences this kidnapping story. Also check out Brandon’s debut, Arkansas.
The Cold Kiss by John Rector. One good turn is all it takes to completely unravel the plans of young lovers looking for a fresh start. When they agree to give a ride to a stranded traveler about to be overtaken by a bad snowstorm, they’ve already ruined their lives, it just takes a few days to catch on. Claustrophobic, snowblind and haunted – a great debut. Rector had a great year by releasing his second book only a few months later – The Grove is also available.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. Like Citrus County, this one is a southern novel that owes not a little bit to To Kill a Mockingbird. The Boo Radley archetype is given Franklin’s unique, (and apparently biographical), treatment that takes turns as unexpected as they are humane, hilarious or tragic. Also check out Hell at the Breech and Smonk.
Late Rain by Lynn Kostoff: The first book in over fifteen years from Kostoff, but the second I read this year. His debut, A Choice of Nightmares, was reprinted in the spring and had me anticipating the summer release of Late Rain which proved to be a slippery story related through the skewed and sometimes warped perspectives of one of my favorite character ensembles in a long time.
Misadventure by Millard Kaufman. Only the second, but sadly the final novel from the octogenarian screenwriter Kaufman who passed away during the editing of this one. A darkly comic tale of schemers, married and otherwise each chasing their own ambitions at the expense of everyone else.
Nobodys Angel by Jack Clark. Chicago cab driver Eddie Miles isn’t anybody’s hero, but his survival instincts have been honed razor sharp from years of driving fares through the dangerous nighttime streets and when fellow cabbies and streetwalkers start dying at alarming rates, his spidey senses are trumped only by his humanity. When it would do Eddie well to look the other way and mind his business, he just can't. Burdened with very real problems Miles is a fantastic character and the most believable everyman I've met in a long time. I'd would love to spend an evening trading stories and pitchers with.
Pike by Benjamin Whitmer. A concrete-hard criminal and a brutally bent cop on a collision course in twenty-first century Cincinnati - it only feels like the Wild West, and that's no accident. The pitiless world is coming after twelve year old Wendy, and she may be better off without the help of her cold-granite grandfather or the ruthless policeman who both seem more interested in the demise of her junkie-prostitute mother than her well-being. Harsh, bleak and without remorse, this modern day western is a ridiculously confident debut.
Print the Legend by Craig McDonald. Chapter three of a proposed eight installment series featuring the fictional 20th century pulp writer Hector Lassiter. This one focuses on the death of Ernest Hemingway. Notice I didn’t say suicide. McDonald has created a three-dimensional character in Lassiter and an intricately layered mythology of the twentieth century for him to inhabit. Print is the third Hector Lassiter book - catch up with Head Games and Toros and Torsos.
Rut by Scott Phillips. After The Ice Harvest, a debut that took place at the tail end of the 1970s, Phillips went further into the past with his next two, (1950s in The Walkaway and 1870s in Cottonwood). With Rut, he takes a look at where we’re headed in about thirty years. The near future of Phillips’ mind is inhabited by hucksters, self-interested civil servants, soldiers of fortune and wild mountain outlaws whose fates intertwine around the mystery of a toxic waste dump in Colorado.
The Wolves of Fairmount Park by Dennis Tafoya. When two suburban teenagers are shot on the front porch of a drug house in Philadelphia everyone thinks that Manny has something to do with it. Except Manny. Yeah, he’s a junkie who lives a couple blocks away, he’s also the half-brother of a cop and the uncle of one of the victims. Cops, a cold-blooded private investigator and ruthless criminal gangs are just a handful of the problems he’s got to contend with as he tries to figure out why his nephew was gunned down. Wolves follows up Tafoya’s knockout debut Dope Thief and sets the bar untenably high for whatever he does next.
So, that's my list. What're yours? C'mon, don't let my high I.Q. and good looks intimidate you, your opinions are as valid as mine.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
