Gak! The St. Louis Cardinals are really messing with my late 2011 reading plans. Seems like a month ago I was comfortably ahead of my mystery reading list, then you know, a little travel with some non new-release titles for leisure and pleasure on the plane, (and what a pleasure, kids - Roger Smith's harrowing and gritty as hell Dust Devils on the way there and Simon Logan's tart slice of industrial decay crime tale Katja from the Punk Band for the return trip), then came a solid week of non-reading with Bouchercon activities and their subsequent hangover consequences, followed by a quick detour into motor-reviving re-reads, (The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain and Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train) and suddenly, the end of the calendar year is nigh and I'm screwed. Soooo much to catch up on. Seriously, 2011 has been a great year for literary crimes and mysteries and I'm gonna have a really hard time getting to everything I'd like to by year's end.
And now... Now, the Cardinals keep refusing to roll over (12-3 folks!) and I'm giving up a lot of precious reading time to watch them. We better get a championship out of this.
Anyhow, here's what's looming largest on my horizon:
Headstone by Ken Bruen. I know I've spent some time being hard on Ken for keeping the Jack Taylor series going past three or four books, but, but, but, it's Jack effing Taylor, friends, I've simply got to read it. Plus, I keep expecting the next book to be the final installment in the series, soooo... is this it? Will Jack meet his end or find peace at last? Will this be the big wrap? Don't tell me, I'll get there.
Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville. Keeping to Ireland for one more title with the one by the author of The Ghosts of Belfast and its psuedo-sequel Collusion (go back and read those for sure). This time the subject matter is modern slavery in the first world - one of great interest to me - and based on his previous work, I think I'd have even read a cook book by Neville.
El Gavilan by Craig McDonald. McDonald's first novel Head Games was an instant classic, a terse, two-fisted, bullet-riddled and amphetmine-fast introduction to his fictitious mid-century American pulp writer Hector Lassiter. Three Lassiter books later, he's sidestepping to a new stand-alone and modern day tale of border tensions in... Ohio? Man, this looks fantastic with its James Ellroy-esque three-cop structure and lurid, ripped from the (tabloid) headlines, bloody tale of "shifting alliances and whiplash switchbacks." Can't wait.
Nairobi Heat by Mukoma wa Ngugi. What do I know about this one? You mean, aside from it's publisher, (international flavored crime stylings steeped Melville House - y'know those cats reissuing Derek Raymond's whole Factory series?), setting, (Kenya - whether it's as fertile a killing field as South Africa remains to be seen - have you caught up with Caryl Ferey's Zulu yet? - but I am sooo ready to find out), and its sweet cover art? Nothing really. But man, those three things highly recommend it to my sensibilities. What's this, you say? You say this book came out last year? Well, I just found out about it and I need to read it like now. Know you the heat?
You Will See Fire by Christopher Goffard. Staying in Kenya, but sticking to the facts this time. Goffard (whose debut novel Snitch Jacket - not only knocked my socks off, but they were never recovered) tells the tale of a shotgun-wielding missionary opposing a dictator and a Kenyan lawyer's fight "to unravel the mystery of his death." Sold.
At the End of the Road by Grant Jerkins. Jerkins' first novel A Very Simple Crime caught me like surprise left hook earlier this year. It was nowhere on my radar when I picked it outta the stack of books beside my bed, but the narrative voice of his character Adam Lee was so fresh, fetid, innocent and terrible that I couldn't look away even as the most atrocious things happened. I may have audibly gasped a time or two and that's rare, kids. I've purposely NOT looked at any descriptions of this one. I prefer to be taken completely by surprise by Jerkins, who undoubtedly will... (surprise me).
Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes. Thousands of acres of Georgian woodland are about to be submerged when the new dam on the Oogasula River goes into effect in 1955, but the residents of the affected area have not yet tied up their loose strings. I love stories of the chaos and anarchy so barely concealed in society and under human skin spilling over in times of great upheaval like natural disasters, battlefields or occupied territories - the impending flood sounds perfect for this sort of thing. Plus I'm a sucker for good Southern set writing. You too? Also check out Starnes' first novel Calling.
That's it for me, how about you? Go Cards!
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
