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Has anyone read Ace Atkins' Devil's Garden? It sounds really interesting, it has Dashiell Hammett as a POV character while he's working the Fatty Arbuckle case as a Pinkerton. I've read some of Atkins' Quinn Colson Mississippi Sheriff books and he's pretty good at writing in the crime/detective genre, I just never remember to get his other standalone books.
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Aug 15, 2014 08:18
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 02:28 |
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I just started the James Ellroy book that just came out. It's called Perfidia and is so far set in LA right before the US joins WWII. Buzz Meeks and Lee Blanchard made cameos in the first chapter. I had no idea this was coming out til I stumbled across it earlier in the week and I'm psyched to be reading some new Ellroy crime fic.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:29
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OilSlick posted:I've been meaning to read Gone Baby Gone. I understand it's the fourth book in a series about a pair of private investigators. Do I need to read the first 3? Are they any good? You don't have to read the previous ones but they are worth reading to various degrees. Don't read Moonlight Mile, it's really bad.
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Sep 29, 2014 05:21
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TomViolence posted:While we're on the subject of unrelentingly bleak catalogues of atrocity, I finally finished David Peace's Red Riding Quartet. Dunno if it really fits into the detective genre, though, since it's so grimdark and nihilistic that nothing really gets answered or resolved in a satisfactory sense and it's written in such a borderline-incomprehensible stream of consciousness style. Nonetheless, can anyone recommend me something similar in tone? The only comparable stuff I've read in the crime genre's a bit of James Ellroy's earlier output. Yeah the Red Riding books are some of my all time favorite crime fiction, just so well-written, complex, and brutal. As far as similar recommendations, there's the two already released books in Peace's Tokyo Trilogy. They're crime fic set in Tokyo during the American occupation of Japan right after WWII and just as bleak and brutal as Red Riding, though the writing is even more stylistic and dense. Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings is one of the best books published last year imo. Its set in Jamaica in the 70s, has the attempted assassination of Bob Marley as a center piece and largely concerns Jamaican criminal gangs, political corruption, CIA fuckery, and the flourishing of the Carribean to US drug trade. James has another great novel titled The Book of Night Women that could be considered similar in narrative style and the brutality of it's subject matter, but its about slavery on Jamaican plantations back in the day instead of a modern crime novel. Also, have you read later James Ellroy(especially his Underworld USA Trilogy)? I like it even more than his earlier stuff and it's probably the closest you'll get to Red Riding.
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Jun 18, 2015 01:36
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I'm reading Denis Johnson's Nobody Moves right now, about halfway through and it's awesome so far. Well-written, great memorable characters, and it's got some great dark humor, highly recommend for anyone looking for something in the Elmore Leonard vein of crime fic.
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Sep 19, 2015 22:01
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I've been reading The Far Empty by J Todd Scott and it's such a great crime novel. It's set in a small Texas border town, is told from a large number of POVs, and despite having so many different viewpoints, it still manages to build a ton of character for each of them. It's very well written, with a heavy Cormac McCarthy influence but with a more straightforward narrative that leaves you jonesing to find out more and more about the central mysteries, characters, and town itself. Based on the roughly half I've read so far I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new gritty crime novel to read.
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Aug 21, 2016 21:41
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 02:28 |
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Coca Koala posted:I started out reading the Spenser novels, by Robert Parker a couple years ago, and I've been steadily plowing through them. They started out so good! I had the same type of experience with James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheuix novels. They're such great well-written noir detective novels, with characters and a place(in this case a Louisiana very reminiscent of True Detective's first season, down to having mild supernatural elements and all) you become very attached to. But, oh boy, do they overstay their welcome after a certain point. I remember reading one of the later novels in the series and thinking "I already read this one, but how, it just came out". I swear the author had to be so obviously not giving a gently caress anymore that he was just copying whole plots and relationship arcs from earlier, better books. He also just froze the main characters' development and aging at a certain point, but didn't do the same for the world they live in, so it feels very weird to have two guys who have Vietnam flashbacks and must be in their 70s at the least still solving cases by just kicking rear end and intimidating everyone involved. I think they may have gotten some of the "grumpy old author" syndrome too, where the main character too often blatantly acted as a mouthpiece for what the author hates about the modern world(ugh, that last Dennis Lehane Kenzie/Gennaro one is terrible for this too). I loved that series too, they were automatic reads for me whenever a new one was released. I still highly recommend any noir or crime lit reading fan to read them til you get to your own burn out point. Mine was probably a book or two after he touched on Hurricane Katrina in them. I thought the one set during the hurricane was probably the last one worth reading, where Burke was actually invested in what he was writing. I haven't read any of the Ace Atkins' Parker books, but he's a good crime author when writing his own, original IP. His Quinn Colson series has been great so far, I know I've recommendeed it itt before. He's also written some historical crime fiction that've gotten some acclaim. I know I have a copy of his one centered around the Fatty Arbuckle case that has Dashiell Hammett as a main character when he was with the Pinkertons I still have to read.
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Jun 13, 2017 20:44
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