#34: Money Shot by Christa Faust

A former porn star stumbles into a secret, illegal side of the sex trade and winds up--after a murder attempt--seeking revenge against those responsible.

Christa Faust's Money Shot is a contemporary tale in the Hard Case Crime series, a pulpy paperback line which, for the most part, features lost noir classics with retro covers. Faust's storytelling stands up well alongside her peers and is even more hard-nosed than some; and in the Hard Case Crime line, that's saying something. Like most of the line, Money Shot is not for the faint-hearted, but is well worth reading.

I read this on the recommendation of my pal Michael, who is a fan of Faust and loaned me his copy.

#33: The Wheat Field by Steve Thayer

A small-town deputy in rural Wisconsin finds himself the main suspect in a double homicide that leads him to become an unwilling accomplice to a larger conspiracy in Steve Thayer's riveting thriller The Wheat Field.

I picked this up on a whim at the Farmland Public Library and found myself an instant fan of Thayer, an author I had not heard of before. Deputy Pliny Pennington is a resonant character, a dark angel with sexual hang-ups and killing urges but his own moral code. The early 60s locale is strongly rendered as well. There are plenty of shocks in the storytelling, both pleasant and unpleasant. I enjoyed Thayer's writing style, probably most reminding me of Jim Thompson or James M. Cain.

I had been moseying along with fun, good enough reads for a while until this one jolted me into wakefulness again. I would strongly recommend The Wheat Field to thriller fans and will be nosing around for more of Thayer's writing.

#32: You Could Call It Murder by Lawrence Block

British ex-pat Roy Markham looks for a missing girl in a small, snowy New England college, quickly peeling back the veneer and exposing dark doses of blackmail and scandal.

An early detective yarn from Lawrence Block, this one featuring another one-off P.I. Curiously, a little googling turned up that the novel was a tie-in to an ill-fated television show that went off the air before the book came out.

Perhaps because I read this back to back with another Block in a matter of days on vacation (see previous entry), I saw a lot of connections between Markham and the other protagonist, Ed London. Both are more highbrow detectives not afraid to get their hands dirty, both centered in New York but frequently traveling.

In the end, a pair of entertaining novels in a collection called "Five Great Novels by Lawrence Block" that I purchased for five dollars on the specials rack at a San Diego bookstore.

#31: Coward's Kiss by Lawrence Block

Mystery writer Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder mystery series is a notable achievement (with When the Sacred Ginmill Closes being one of my favorite mysteries of all time), but back in Block's peanut-butter days he penned this potboiler with P.I. Ed London. London is a somewhat highbrow detective who, in the end, isn't above helping his brother-in-law ditch a dead mistress. Naturally this becomes more complicated, and London gets drawn into the dead woman's web.

Coward's Kiss is a muscular, fast-moving detective novel, but to date London has unfortunately never returned in a follow-up case.

My wife spotted this one in a bookstore in San Diego, in a collection of "Five Great Novels by Lawrence Block" at the good-bye price of five dollars. I am starting on the next one right away on this sunny vacation.

#30: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

Trippy sci-fi, with religious overtones, as a man returns from ten years in deep space with a new drug he is eager to try on the gloomy, drafted colonists of Mars. A precog working for a rival company may be the only person able to stop the spread of the drug, which has possibly alien origins.

I decided to take a break from reading the great work of Samuel R. Delany and refresh my palette with another worthy contemporary, Philip K. Dick. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is one of Dick's notable works that I had missed to date. It features a lot of Dick's themes and plotting, notably his ability to take everyday people and set them against larger events. There is also a character in this novel that is similiar, in name and mannerisms, to a character in A Scanner Darkly. Some of the religious thinking of Valis and other work is meditated on here. But I would definitely say Three Stigmata is one of the more hallucinatory Dick novels I have read to date, and PDK fans know that's saying something.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana. It was part of the Library of America's excellent Philip K. Dick edition, a present I bought for my son and friends this past Christmas, in the way that people buy presents for others that they secretly want for themselves.

#29: Guns at Q Cross by Merle Constiner

A cattleman comes to town ahead of his herd, planning to sell to a prosperous Idaho rancher, and almost immediately draws the ire of every local resident, culminating in a shootout the first night. Our cattleman hero, with his own sometimes peculiar pride and code of honor, bulldogs along until he busts open a rustling gang, breaking its grip on the town.

Guns at Q Cross is the slender side of an Ace Western double that I picked up for a shiny quarter at a library book sale. I had never heard of author Merle Constiner, but a little googling led me to find out he was a well-regarded midwestern pulp writer (from the neighboring state of Ohio) who, late in the life, turned to westerns. This one featured some interesting writing and some stretches of slapdashery, which I suspect was from having to write at a pretty good clip for Ace. Overall a solid oater with some interesting Idaho locations.

On the other side is a longer western novel by Tom West, who some people suspect was actually Merle Constiner as well. I will flip it over and keep reading.

#28: The Marshal of Pioche by Nelson Nye

This Western yarn was the other side of an Ace Double from Ray Hogan's Panhandle Pistolero (reviewed earlier) and was the first book I read from prolific writer Nelson Nye. The cover promises a "lead pay-off for a tin star in this silver town," which in and of itself is hard to resist.

But a bit hard to live up to. Nye writes this one in a first-person dialect as young, hotheaded Arnie Page drifts into town looking for adventure and promptly gets off a lucky shot at the town's top gun. Suddenly Arnie is the new town marshal, and he spends most of the rest of the book's brief page count trying to keep from getting killed while helping out a fiery redhead (as if Westerns boast any other kind).

Agreeable enough, but not much to it, and your mileage may vary with Nye's dialect as Arnie uses his shootin' irons 'gainst a bunch of owlhoots and sidewinders. I bought this one for a shiny quarter at a library book sale. I have a couple more that feature Nelson Nye's work, so I will see what I think as I work my way thr0ugh them.

#27: Limitations by Scott Turow

Drowsy legal thriller from Scott Turow, whose Presumed Innocent was an early, and perhaps best-known, work. Turow has been hammering out solid mysteries featuring lawyer protagonists ever since, including this one, which was serialized for a magazine and then expanded into a novel.

A judge is hearing arguments in a brutal gang rape, and soon begins to recall some repressed memories of an incident he was involved with himself in college. Meanwhile, his wife is fighting cancer and a mysterious stalker is sending the judge threatening emails.

Despite the description, the storytelling doesn't retain a lot of dramatic tension, though is certainly interesting (and, for fans, features characters and situations from earlier Turow novels). Probably more for followers of Turow (which I have been one, more or less) and of passing interest to others.

I listened to this on a good audiobook given to me by a friend.

#26: Resolution by Robert B. Parker

Hard-bitten follow-up to Parker's western Appaloosa features our two tarnished but honorable former lawmen, Virgil and Everett, getting caught up in a war between farmers, miners, and townspeople in a fledgling town.

Robert B. Parker's latest has the trappings of a standard oater but is written in an engaging style with interesting characters. The easygoing Everett Hitch is our narrator, watching as his friend Virgil Cole, legendary with a gun but susceptible to the p-whip, struggles with morality after shooting a man in anger.

I was eager to find this sequel and read it at a very fast clip. To say Parker wrote this one in a laconic style is an understatement. The chapters are short and the dialogue terse, to say the least. A very muscular Western, and apparently one more is on the way to make a trilogy. I have always liked Parker's Spenser detective novels and this is a nice change of pace.

I checked this one out from the Farmland Public Library.

#25: Nova by Samuel R. Delany

I didn't plan it this way, but I'm glad my 25th book--halfway there--was by Samuel R. Delany, who I discovered, more or less, this year and has quickly become one of my favorite sci-fi authors.

Nova is another one of his award-winning novels from the 60s; the last one he wrote, after a prolific bout of writing, before falling silent for a number of years. And I would have to rank it, along with his Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, as one of my favorite sci-fi novels.

This one features a rag-tag spacefaring crew under the sway of a half-mad captain who has the seemingly crazy idea of flying straight into the heart of a nova. As usual Delany is brimming with ideas and includes his usual, rather curious motifs (an obsession with chewed fingernails, rope belts, people who only wear one shoe). But this sweeping space epic also includes brushstrokes from the hunt for the Holy Grail and the Tarot.

In doing some research into the history of Nova, it seems that the book was rejected for serialization in a leading sci-fi magazine of the time because it features a black protagonist and several other multi-ethnic characters. A real shame, as I found it to be a great read.

Somehow, in my 40s, I have begun to embrace hot foods, rare meat, and the previously-scorned "hippie-fi" of the 1960s. I find Delany's writing highly engaging and full of unique ideas, with the added benefit, in this case, of Nova being flat-out fun high adventure. Recommended.

I read this from a big lot of Delany I bought off of ebay, and I am sure I will grab another out of the stack.