Audio: "Bust" by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

 Audio: Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, 2001, downloaded from Hoopla. Narrated by Peter Berkrot.

Dang. 2001? I selected this after reading the second in the series and there was a six year gap between the two. From the Max and Angela series.

Max runs a computer networking and support business in Manhattan. Max is a major narcissist and all-around asshole. Angela is Max's personal assistant with the same personality issues. Mac and Angela start schtuping. Max hates his wife and wants to her gone. Angela loves Max's money. Max and Angela conspire to have Max's wife murdered.

Angela uses her psychotic live-in boyfriend to kill the wife. The murder works out fine but Max's niece si also murdered. Oops. Max is a little bit bummed about the niece, but Max figures he does a fair job of faking sorrow during the entire process.

Anyhoo. Things happen. Genital herpes is spread. Max starts falling apart when people start blackmailing him and the cops are all over him. Max starts boozing like a madman. Angela has to deal with a uber-violent nutcase boyfriend. Most everything ends sadly for most everyone.

Fun stuff because this is all dark humor as all these idiots and assholes try to cheat one another. Bruen and Starr do a fantastic job of creating Max as a narcissistic bastard who will delude himself and cares for no one. 

Audio: "Slide" by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

 Audio: Slide by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, 2007, downloaded from Hoopla. Narrated by Peter Berkrot.

Pretty damn good with great narration. Second in the Max And Angela series and the first I read/heard.

Max wakes up in a hotel room in Alabama. He has no idea how he got there. He has not money. He has no food. He has no booze. Over the next couple days we learn about Max being a drunk and recently under suspicion for killing his wife. We learn he had a girlyfriend who he now hates.

Meanwhile, Max's former girlyfriend is Angela and she is in Ireland and earning a living by hooking up with dudes and using their dough. She hooks up with a sociopath whose goal in life is to be a famous serial killer.

Things happen. Max gets back to NYC and starts dealing crack after making friends with a small-time crack dealer in AL. Angela hooks up with Crazy Nutjob and comes back to NYC. Cop who investigated Max in the first book is still after him. Bruen and Starr mix all these assholes, murderers, and genital herpes sufferers together and they all make each other and themselves miserable and occasionally dead.

Comments:

1. Fun stuff with a lot of laugh out loud moments.

2. Each other skewers the other by making them characters - but without real names. They say things like, "But, I won an Edgar!" as they are being murdered.

3. Lots of genital herpes.

Crider: "The NIghttime Is the Right Time" by Bill Crider

 Crider: The Nighttime Is The Right Time: a collection of stories by Bill Crider, 2010, ebook off Wisconsin Digital Library.

Short stories with a few characters from the novels and a few characters from short stories only. Fun stuff and with more sex and gore than the Dan Rhodes series. 

I've not favorites that come to mind. But, reading Crider's work is always a pleasure. The two stories about a young guy who is a werewolf were quite good. I should check and see if he did any more than that. 

Damn and hell, I sure do miss his blog. Crider was a good dude.

Bailed: "Alive in Shape and Color" edited by Lawrence Block

 Bailed: Alive in Shape and Color: 17 paintings by great artists and the stories they inspired edited by Lawrence Block, 2017, 9781681775616.

Pandemic reading victim. I read about half the short stories. Nice list of authors but I could not get into this.

Comments:

1. Foreword by Block mentions that the paintings that were chosen also depended on licensing of the painting since the work is reproduced as part of each story intro.

Comic: Kill or Be Killed: Volume Two by Ed Brubaker, et al

  Comic: Kill or Be Killed: Volume Two by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Elizabeth Breitweiser, 2017, 9781534302280

More of the same as Dylan has the cops and Russian mobsters looking for him. Dylan's personal life is messy as Best Pal Girlie and he are secretly sexing it up, then stopping, and Dylan starts dating an old girlfriend again. Brubaker swings back around to whether Dylan is having hallucinations about the demon.

Worth your time. Great story and great artwork.

Comic: "Kill or Be Killed: Volume One: by Ed Brubaker, et al

 Comic: Kill or Be Killed: Volume One by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Elizabeth Breitweiser, 2017, 9781534300286

Dylan is a grad student in his mid-twenties with a history of mental health issues and suicide attempts. One winter night he goes to his NYC apartment building roof. Right when he changes his mind about killing himself he slips off the roof. By chance and luck Dylan survives the fall. By more more bad luck a demon appears to Dylan and says Dylan was supposed to die. Since Dylan survived the demon requires Dylan to kill a person a month for the demon.

Things happen. Dylan best pal is a girl dating Dylan's roommate. Best Pal Girl starts flirting and exing up Dylan. Dylan is quite confused and conflicted about the sexing up. Dylan has visions of the demon. Dylan is getting black market mental health meds from a street dealer. Demon makes Dylan violently ill. Dylans is badly beaten and Demon claims credit. Dylan figures out someone to kill.

This was quite well done. I really liked the artwork and Brubaker told a great story.

DNF: "Ain't Nobody Nobody" by Heather Harper Ellett

 DNF: Ain't Nobody Nobody by Heather Harper Ellett, 2019, 9781947993709

Rural Texas? Hogs? A rural County Sheriff? Idiotic people? A dead body? Well, hot damn, that has Sheriff Dan Rhodes all over it!

Except it isn't Rhodes. It's not supposed to be Rhodes. And I am still unable to focus when reading. Sure, I'm ripping through audiobooks but my reading is a still pandemically suffering. After starting and restarting I decided to bail and return this to the library.

Comments:

1. I like the title.

2. The cover design is quite good. 

3. I'll have to give Ellett's work another try.

DNF: "I, A Squealer" by Richard Bruns

 DNF: I, A Squealer by Richard Bruns, 2018, 9780983166559.

I first heard of Charles Schmid when Megan Abbott and Sara Gran ran the fantastic but short-lived Abbot Gran Medicine Show. Schmid was the Pied Piper of Tucson. In his early to mid-twenties he lived off his parents in his own house. He was the sketchy guy who hung around with teenagers. He hosted parties, supplied beer, and had sex with underage teen girls.

Schmid murdered three girls and the murders were something of an open secret among the group of teens and Schmid's pals. Schmid dumped the murder victims in the desert and took a few people to visit the girls's corpses. Schmid, being a nutbag murderer, was able to scare those people into silence. 

Bruns was 19 and 20-years-old, one of Schmid's grave visiting pals, and was also dating a younger teen girl. Schmid threatened Bruns and the girlfriend. Schmid, young and clueless and probably not too smart, thought the path to follow was to "stay quiet and protect my girly-friend". Bruns turned into an obsessive and controlling boyfriend and then into an obsessive and controlling ex-boyfriend. 

Bruns would walk up and down the sidewalk in front of the girl's home. He'd park his car up the street and stare at her window. The girl did not want him around. The girl's parents did not want him around. The police did not want him around. Bruns got away with an almost round-the-clock "surveillance" until a restraining order led to a conviction and Bruns being sent to Ohio to live with a relative.

I stopped reading this about 20 pages before the end. Schmid was a murdering nutjob and Bruns was a stupid 20-year-old with a hard-on for a 15-year-old. A shitshow of idiots and morons who built up their own little bubble with Schmid a larger than life boss, and Bruns - to my eyes - trying to play out a hero role.

I got sick of Bruns's bullshit and quit the book. 

Comments:

1. Bruns wrote this in 1967, shortly after the events. His family found the document and published the work. 

2. Bruns ended up telling the police - I, a squealer - after being sent to Ohio and worried for the girlfriend.