Queenpin

Where to begin, Queenpin is brilliant, crafty, slippery, sweet, splendid, soft, buttery, sharp, icy, fun, shivery, sordid, and fantastic! Bravo Ms. Abbott, this book rocks!

Queenpin follows the story of a young woman from a stint cooking the books at a small time bar to her “promotion” as the assistant of an infamous female mob boss, Gloria Denton. After becoming Ms. Denton’s “girl” our protagonist, whose name is never mentioned in the entire book, adapts nicely to her new lifestyle of cash pick-ups and nights at casinos followed by 3 AM steaks at Googie’s. That is until she meets Vic Riordan, a losing gambler with a winning smile. She falls hard for Vic but keeps her relationship a secret from her boss. When Vic inevitably asks her to help pull off a scam to get him out of debt she considers a Judas move that puts her job and life in jeopardy, unless she can con the one woman who taught her how to con the world.

Queenpin is classic noir in its best form, twisted and dark with a sense of humor and an even better sense of style. This book is worth reading just for the descriptions and dialogue. I mean, does it get better than this, “Play it nice and easy, I told myself. Bing Crosby on a hammock,” or “The things I did for you in there, when we were all alone, didn’t they show you I didn’t need to be played like a country girl in petticoats waiting for your traveling show?” or “ You look like you slept with your face mashed into a carpet.” Just perfect. Megan Abbott has an expert sense of timing and rhythm and creates vivid pictures of the people, places, and events she describes.

This book is a great weekend read, it’s short, hard to put down, and loaded with great plot twists. The three main characters are expertly drawn and complex; it’s impossible to know who is scamming who and to predict who will make the next move. And as mentioned before, stylistically this one you don’t want to miss, Ms. Abbott writes like smooth jazz on cocaine. Rich.

The Living Room of the Dead

I recently joined the website Crimespace which opened me up to a whole new slew of crime and mystery authors. That’s how I discovered Eric Stone, whose first novel Living Room of the Dead (Ray Sharp Novels) sounded enticing with its exotic locals of Hong Kong, Macau, and Russia. The book is the first in a series of mysteries revolving around Ray Sharp, journalist for a Hong Kong based business magazine and weekend dabbler in the local Macau market of massage parlors and female companionship. One unfortunate weekend he bumps into an unlikable co-worker who confides that his brother has fallen for a Russian prostitute and wants to buy out her contract from the local Russian mobsters, then asks if Ray can find out if this is a good idea or not. Against his better judgment Ray asks his “girlfriend” Irina, an independent prostitute living in Jakarta after a stint in Macau, if she knows anyone he can talk to, she mentions her friend Sasha, whom Ray contacts, and thus begins this story delving into the Russian underworld in Asia. Despite warnings, Ray begins to poke around and meets a dubious cast of characters, from strung- out prostitutes in an underground pool house to a “nice” pimp who refers to his girls as stupid whores to a beefy Russian femme bodyguard, all the while getting himself into deeper and deeper water (literally).

What I liked about this book were the wonderful descriptions of the places and people. Mr. Stone has a keen eye, the book is peppered with imagery you won’t forget, though the grisly stuff you might wish you could. That said, the book didn’t engage me at first, there was a lot of fluff building up the friendship blossoming between Ray and Sasha. And I didn’t buy the premise that Ray wanted to continue poking around the underworld for a co-worker he doesn’t even like. Once Sasha went missing however, things got interesting. After that I was definitely absorbed in the story, wanting to see where the next part of Sasha’s trail might lead. The story doesn’t disappoint if you like the gruesome, if you suspected that things in exotic Asian locations could get pretty crazy, you are right. I also liked the way the story wrapped up, without spoiling it the author didn’t cave into the happy ending, things go better than expected but there is still tragedy, and the recap of all the players and what happened to them at the end was nice touch.

What I didn’t like about the book was that most of the female characters are hookers and the few that aren’t are poorly developed. I took away from it that a man can’t travel in Asia and Russia without being solicited for sex at least several times a day, and that partaking in their services is completely commonplace, like going to a movie here the U.S. Not having been to any of places described, this may very well be the case, but for female readers, it’s sort of disappointing to know how little respect is paid to women throughout the world. Ray Sharp himself gets into the game, the way he looks at women is chauvinistic even though he spends most of the book trying to help a number of females. This criticism is obviously coming from a female perspective, these things probably won’t bother male readers but the book definitely left a bad taste in my mouth about women’s place in the world.

Pulp Fiction on NPR

I love it when my two loves collide: NPR and crime fiction. Check out today's story on the new Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps. Can't wait to read it!

The Weeping Buddha

Happy New Year! The Weeping Buddha was a fitting book for the holidays as it revolves around two incidents that occurred on wonderful New Year’s Eve. The first incident is based on the author’s true-life experience, the disappearance of a friend from a New Year’s Eve party in the 1980’s, and who is never ever seen again. The second incident is the murder of a Hamptons power couple, a well-known artist and his professional dancer wife, Beka. Devon Halsey, a detective for Suffolk County Homicide and our protagonist was Beka’s best friend, and is put in the difficult position of grieving her friend’s death as well as trying to find her and her husband’s killer. The murder scene leads to the initial impression that Beka murdered her husband then killed herself but Devon doesn’t believe this scenario. Tying back to the early story, Devon and Beka had been part of a crowd of friends living in a loft in New York City in the 80’s and were the last people to see their friend Todd Daniels before he disappeared into the night for good. The friends were haunted by his disappearance for the next 18 years and on the night of her death Beka called Devon to talk about Todd. Along with detective Lochwood Brennan, also Ms. Halsey’s lover, Devon searches for the real perpetrator, investigating old friends and the couples’ numerous associates, and begins to believe that Todd Daniel’s disappearance is tied to the current murders.

Both stories are great mysteries in and of themselves and I could not wait to see how they would be intertwined. The resolution however doesn’t live up to the hype. This is a warning, there is some spoiler info coming…. if you don’t want to read it skip to the next paragraph…For one thing I am not a fan of serial killer stories unless they begin as just that, a series of crimes, like Michael Connelley’s Echo Park and The Poet. I found the eventual discovery that murdered is a serial killer and a friend of Devon’s kind of silly. How many friends do you have who kill other people for a hobby/art? I also thought there were certain revelations in the book that deserved more fanfare, I couldn’t be sure at some points whether the detectives were just ruminating on possible discoveries or if they had just put the actual pieces of the puzzle together. The book also devolves into a sort of And Then There Were None premise with a hokey night gathering of all the suspects and a fourth murderer that doesn’t altogether fit the storyline. Towards then end you can almost guess the killer's identity because it must be the person you least suspect, right? Right, it is. I also felt too many interesting storylines were left hanging about many of the suspects explored. Lastly, I wasn’t impressed with the romance between the main characters, it was a bit too flowery for my tastes and bogged down the story.

I realize I’m ripping up this book without mentioning that I couldn’t put it down. Despite all its flaws it was a page-turner, one you want to finish fast because it is written with an enthralling style. Ms. Macadam obviously wrote about things she knows well, the book is full of vivid descriptions of people and places. I loved the descriptions of New York in the 1980’s; as a former New York City dweller it reminded me of all the fantastic nooks and crannies of the city. Overall I would recommend this book if you want a more fluffy romance/mystery novel, but probably tell those looking for hard-boiled crime fiction to pass.