Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog commences. No promises on the quality of my next ten or so reviews. I just want to get them done. (This will probably unfortunately result in subpar reviews for books that deserve much better.) Let’s start with a book I finished over a month ago, Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. First things first, this book was incredibly well done. It’s a crime book set in Texas, featuring a black Texas Ranger as its protagonist. I knew that going in. […]
“How do you feel?” “Terrible. I must have gone to bed sober.” Few runs can compare with it: five novels in five years, lean and mean books that exited the ring with victory assured: no one afterward could say that hard-boiled novels couldn’t be great art, at least nobody worth taking seriously. Then, just forty years old and for reasons still speculated about and still unknown, he stopped writing. The Thin Man was final book. The protagonist is Nick Charles, a private detective remarkably perceptive […]
Forget it, kid, it’s non-canonical X-Men.
I’ve reviewed Raymond Chandler on CBR. I’ve reviewed X-Men on CBR. I’ve even reviewed comic book noir on CBR. You would think X-Men Noir would be perfect for me. At least, that’s what I thought. After all, the pitch for X-Men Noir is great: Drop the X-Men, and all of their drama, into a gritty mystery from the past. Shuffle the players. Shake it up. See what pours out. Smooth right? Sadly, it ain’t smooth. It’s a kick in the pants. Jean Grey is dead. She […]
Marlowe Sassily Fights Crime in Nighttime LA Again
If you look through my previous Raymond Chandler reviews, you’ll see that I’m a massive fan of Chandler and his famous Los Angeles private eye, Philip Marlowe. The setting, the sassy dialogue, the day drinking at work – it’s all awesome. Unfortunately, while it is still enjoyable, this third book in the Marlowe series is the least-memorable of the series. In this story, Marlowe is hired by a cantankerous battle-axe of a wealthy old matriarch to find a missing rare coin. She’s the perfect client […]
Twelve metres of shorn grass
Darren Keefe is “…a talented freak with no mooring,” a bad boy cricketer that never quite reaches his potential. As a young player rocketing towards the pinnacle of Australian cricket, Darren had little oversight or true coaching – no one wanted to change what was working, and if a coach tried to reel him in, his mother switched him to another team. When he starts making money, the troubles start: drugs, drinking, corruption in cricket, toxic masculinity, and so forth. There is a noir mystery […]
Too Bleak for Me
Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable, and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us. – Georges Bataille Thus begins’ Dark Horse’s Noir. The book, as the title and the cover suggest, is dark. Dark Horse’s mixtape of thirteen diverse stories from diverse writers and artists fixates on one theme – people are awful. Contributors include such big names as Brian […]
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