"Edge of Dark Water" by Joe R. Lansdale (2012)

Imagine the literary love child of Carson McCullers and William Faulkner, but way more twisted, with a penchant for dismemberment, and a hell of a lot funnier. That's Joe R. Lansdale's Edge of Dark Water (2012) in a nutshell. Lansdale's teenage narrator, with her blend of youthful naivety and old-before-her-age-wisdom, recalls Frankie from The Member of the Wedding, while the overarching sense of history and Southern mythology recalls Faulkner's geographic and genealogical sensibility.

Set in the swampy backwaters of East Texas during the Great Depression, Edge of Dark Water tells the story of Sue Ellen, a teenage girl who uncovers the bloated, rotten corpse of her friend May Lynn while fishing with her father. The prettiest girl in town, May Lynn always dreamed of making it to Hollywood. Dead set on making that dream come true, Sue Ellen and her two best friends plan to exhume May Lynn's corpse (in multiple pieces, mind you), burn it, and take the ashes on a river-and-road trip to Hollywood. They plan to finance their journey with May Lynn's cache of stolen money, and that might just be their undoing. Soon they find themselves on the run from May Lynn's greedy family, as well as a mythic tracker named Skunk, who smells of death and wears his victims' body parts as jewelry.

"Damn Near Dead 2: Live Noir or Die Trying" edited by Bill Crider (Busted Flush Press, 2010)

A strikingly unusual anthology is Damn Near Dead 2: Live Noir or Die Trying, a collection of twenty-eight tales in the self-defined niche of "geezer noir." Edited by Bill Crider and published by the small-but-ambitious Houston-based Busted Flush Press, this follow-up to 2006's original Damn Near Dead, manages to avoid the trappings of "gimmick" anthologies. The contributors clearly have fun with the "geezer" theme, but they focus on the story rather than the shtick. Stories range from the satiric—Joe R. Lansdale's pithy "The Old Man in the Motorized Chair," about a grumpy, retired detective who solves crimes between commercial breaks —to the tragic—Ed Gorman's "Flying Solo," about two terminally-ill cancer patients whose turn to violent vigilantism reflects their deeply rooted social and personal discontent. Anthology-opener "Sleep, Creep, Leap" by Patricia Abbott, a clever slow-burner about neighborly good intentions gone wrong, evokes the patient plotting and redolent characterization of Margaret Millar. Gary Phillips' "The Investor" points to new directions in socially conscious crime fiction by fusing classic genre elements - mob corruption and hitmen—with timely economic and environmental concerns. And James Reasoner's "Warning Shot" mixes pathos and action, as a Depression-era night security guard copes with the emotional and tangible consequences of an accidental shooting. Happily, Damn Near Dead 2 does without nursing home pastiche and cranky cane wielders.

This review was originally published at the Los Angeles Review of Books on June 23, 2011. It appears here in a slightly revised form.

"The Criminal Kind: Voyeuristic Pleasures" at The Los Angeles Review of Books

My latest column for the Los Angeles Review of Books was published last week. The article was called, "The Criminal Kind: Voyeuristic Pleasures." Here are the books I reviewed:

Kings of Midnight by Wallace Stroby

"At their best, crime novels provide more than the voyeuristic pleasure of looking in on a lifestyle that us law-abiding citizens will never know first-hand: they offer a refractive glance back on our own world. In her own way, Crissa Stone is a modern-day hero for an America still recovering from the economic collapse. There’s an honesty and integrity to her work ethic that separates her from the fold."

And She Was by Alison Gaylin

"A moody, densely layered mystery whose emotional notes are as affecting as the plot points are enthralling. Gaylin excels at getting us into her protagonist’s complex (and crowded) mind."

Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale

"Imagine the literary love child of Carson McCullers and William Faulkner, but way more twisted, with a penchant for dismemberment, and a hell of a lot funnier. That’s Joe R. Lansdale’s Edge of Dark Water in a nutshell."

The Next One to Fall by Hilary Davidson

"Don’t let the exotic Peruvian backdrop fool you: this is in no way a picturesque walk in the park — or through the Incan ruins, as the case may be. From its doom-laden opening line (“Standing at the edge of the mountain, I imagined what it would feel like to let go”) to its unexpectedly savage finale, The Next One to Fall is driven by the noir impulse towards oblivion."

Dead Harvest by Chris F. Holm

"Dead Harvest is a wild and unpredictable ride that only gets more bold as the narrative unfurls, and now that the foundation for the series is set, I’m excited to see what hurdles Holm has set for Thornton in the sequel, The Wrong Goodbye, already slated for October 2012."

Blood on the Mink by Robert Silverberg

"What saves the book from becoming an orgy of excess, however, is Silverberg’s stylistic restraint, and his attention to detail and craft. Blood on the Mink is by no means as extreme as something by Mickey Spillane. Silverberg’s style, at least here, is more reminiscent of the cool precision of a Peter Rabe. When it comes to action, there’s a remarkable balance of clarity and brute force to his choreography"