Done: "Hard Bite: by Anonymous-9

Done: Hard Bite by Anonymous-9 (Elaine Ash), 2013, e-version sent by Blasted Heath when I signed up for their newsletter.

Dean Drayhart was left partially paralyzed and his daughter killed when they were struck by a hit-and-run driver outside Knott's Berry Farm.  Dean's wife left him when Dean became obsessed with trying to find the driver.  Dean now lives with his service monkey, Sid, and tracks down hit-and-run drivers in Los Angeles.  He has income from his excellent insurance policy, an annoying nurse who visits, and a hooker girlfriend (Dean's dick does dong).

Dean has full use of one arm and his other arm has a prosthetic. Wait, was one arm fully functional? Or did the unparalyzed arm have the prosthetic? No matter, Dean has to use a wheelchair and purchased Sid to help out. His old van is adapted to drive from his wheelchair - although he has no license - but requires Sid to do some of the shifting.

Dean scours the web for hit-and-run news and tries to track down drivers so he can kill them. He's trained Sid to climb people and chomp on their necks with his sharp death-monkey teeth. Dean also has Girlfriend helping him out.  Dean and Sid track down a driver who killed a father of four. Sid chomps the guy's neck. Dean goes to a car wash in a dangerous neighborhood so he can clean up Sid and Sid runs off. Dean wheels after Sid and finds a guy hanging a fighting dog to death. Sid attacks and the guy falls. The dogs attack the guy and chomp chomp chomp.

A LASD Detective gets both murder cases. The two cases make people think both deaths are due to dangerous dogs.  One of the dead men was living under an alias. The dead guy was the favored son of a drug dealing queen. Mom does not believe her son was killed by a dog attack. Things start to happen and Dean is in desperate drama.

Dean is tracked down by the bad guys. Dean escapes attempted murder because the Queen's surviving sons are incompetent. Dean, Sid, and Girlfriend take off. Dean cannot resist meeting a guy off Craigslist (Dean was pretending to be a writer talking to hit-and-run people).  Dean runs the guy off the road. Before guy dies he said he was faking it with Dean to get the honorarium Dean offered.  Dean feels guilty.  Dean has to go home. Dean confronted by Queen. Sid attacks Queen. Dean ends up confessing to the cops when they stumble upon each other. More violence. Sid and Girlfriend drive off into the night.

Comments:
1. Was this a short novel of did I just read the e-version quickly?
2. A fun read and fast moving. Nice pacing with some sex included.

Read: "Easy Death" by Daniel Boyd

Read: Easy Death by Daniel Boyd, 2014, 9781857682579.

Another Hard Case Crime novel and better than the last couple Hard Case Crime entries I read.

December, 1951 armored car robbery in rural Ohio. Told from several points of view with some back on forth in the timeline. A fine, fine read.

Narration includes a one of the robbers, the organizer (a horrible man), a drunken helper, a down-on-his-luck helper, and a guy trying to track the crooks.

-Let the spoiling begin-

The robbery goes well with the armored car guards drawn out by a fake car crash. The crooks are dressed as cops and make their getaway as a heavy snowstorm starts flowing in. The crooks are on their way to cut through a state park when one crook is dropped off to steal a farm truck. The crooks figure the truck can make better progress through the deepening snow if they have to abandon the car. As the back-and-forth-in-time-tale is told we hear mostly hear from one crook, Eddie, and the cop, ForgotHisName. We later learn that the cop and crook are the same guy.

Eddie has trouble after trouble piled in front of him.   Eddie picked up the farm truck and is trying to catch up to the other crook, Walter.  Eddie stays in his cop uniform and ends up parked at the state park, and continuing his cop charade to get the local woman Park Ranger to use her Jeep.

Eddie and the Ranger get to a lookout tower where the gone insane Head Ranger starts shooting at them. Eddie sees Walter crashed at the bottom of a hill and has to figure a way to stop the shooter and recover the money and Walter.  He succeeds but Woman Ranger is shot and when Eddie gets to the hospital the cops spy the stolen cash which Eddie had to pile in the back of the truck.

The cops at the hospital grab the cash and the local hospital administrator raises a stink because Walter is black and the hospital does not treat "their kind".  When robbing the armored car Eddie threatened the armored car guards with retribution. At the hospital he has to do the same with another Doctor and also bluff his way as an FBI agent.

Meanwhile, minor men characters meander meaningfully and threaten to thwart the thieving.

Comments:
1. I could go back and over alliterate the rest of this. But, I think I've done enough already.
2. Crider wrote that he knows Boyd - a pen name - and Boyd will sometimes comment on Crider's blog.
3. Great use of the snow and storm.

Quick: "Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of London" by Sylvain Cordurie and Lacoi

Quick: Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of London by Sylvain Cordurie and Lacoi, 2014, 9781616552664.

My wife's library had a Christmas party. The boys wanted to look at books so we went early and I looked at the YA section's comic book novel collection. I grabbed this one, another comic book novel, and picked up a Hard Case Crime book from the new section.

This was fun but really suffers from it's small size. I really liked the illustrations but the dang images were too small, they deserve a bigger format.

Holmes has survived his fight with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls and a month later is living under an assumed name in Paris.  Holmes is meeting Mycroft for dinner and they head back to Holmes's rented rooms. They find Holmes's landlady dead and Sherlock and Mycroft are attacked by vampires. Before the attack one of the vampirea announces their master wants Sherlock. Mycroft returns to London and Sherlock starts researching vampire history

Holmes figures the vampires will try again. They do. A vampire who looks exactly like the dead Irene Adler walks by and Holmes follows. Holmes follows her to a mansion, gets in some brief vampiric fisticuffs, a vampire burns after biting the holy-water-drinking-Holmes, Pseudo-Adler calls the other vampires off and says they will meet the Master vampire.

Holmes and Adler travel to London and meet the cruel Master. There is a rogue vampire out for revenge on the Master. Rogue's revenge involves the gratuitous public murder of wealthy Englishmen tied to the Queen. Rogue Vampire intends to disrupt the negotiated balance between Master Vampire and Queen Victoria. Master Vampires compels Holmes to search for the Rogue by threatening Watson and Watson's wife.

Holmes starts looking but plans his own counterattack upon the Master.  Holmes stalls a bit. Holmes studies the blood left behind by Rogue vampire. Holmes finds Rogue and they team up to destroy the Master.

Gave Up: "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marisha Pessl.

Gave Up: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, 2006, Overdrive.com audio download.

The blurb on Overdrive says, "Pessl's dazzling debut sparked raves from critics and heralded the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction." Well, sure, if you like books that go on forever and nothing much happens. (Another reminder of the Del Amitri tune.)

College student, Blue, gets call from high school classmate that sparks Blue to write about her senior year in high school. Blue styles the work much like an essay by including notes on sources and referenced photos.  Blue was seven-years-old when she and her Professor father started an itinerant lifestyle and would move every semester as Professor Dad took a new visiting job at another mid- to lower-tier university. They spent ten years traveling across the country with didactic dad delivering lectures.

Blue would rarely fit in at each new school and her big brains and intelligence were often taken advantage of by fellow students. Professor Dad would have new girlfriends every 4-8 weeks. On the approach of Blue's senior year Professor Dad announces he has taken a year-long job in North Carolina and that Blue can spend a full school year in one location in preparation for her expected admission to Harvard.

Through the benevolence of  a secretive film studies teacher Blue makes friends with the in-crowd. Secretive Film Studies Teacher hosts those students each Sunday at dinnertime. Blue hangs out with a couple other girls. Goes with girls to a bar that serves to underage people. Those girls pick up random dudes for sex in the women's restroom. Bizarre behavior. Blue then goes with other two girls to stake-out Secretive Film Studies Teacher who picks up old men at a remote Perkins/Big Boy/Shoney's/Whatever takes them back to a No Tell Motel, kicks the guy out after sex, and spends the night alone.

Nothing much happens. I quit about halfway through.  Lots of teenage worries: studies, fitting in at school, unrequited lust, discomfort, why do adults act that way?, so on, so forth. The only thing that happens was about halfway through when a drunk falls into a pool and drowns.

EDIT: I gotta say this was disappointing because Pessl's Night Film was so damn good. I'll try her new stuff out because of Night Film.

Stopped: "The Fever" by Megan Abbott

Stopped: The Fever by Megan Abbott, 2014, Overdrive.com download.

I did not like the narrator. I stopped listening after two minutes.

I prefer to read Abbott's work anyway. I'll get to the print version later on, I have a stack of things at home.

Heard: "Devil May Care" by Sebastian Faulks

Heard: Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, 2008, Overdrive download.

Narrated by the sublime John Lee. Set in 1967. Bond has finished convalescing after injury in a previous novel. Bond spent time playing tennis and traveling but is now ready to return to duty.  M sends Bond to investigate a drug company founder, Dr. Julius Gorner.  Gorner is suspected of smuggling heroin.

Bond goes to Paris where he and Gorner play tennis at and place high bets on their match Gorner cheats during the match, of course. Bond wins the match anyway, of course.  Bond also meets a seductive woman, of course. 

Gorner is both a former German and Russian soldier who switched sides during the war. Gorner's humiliating experience as a post-war student at Oxford leaves him hating the English so much that he is planning England's downfall. 

Gorner also has a bizarre deformity. The deformity is a hairy left hand described by M as main de singe, monkey's paw. Gorner's murderous sidekick is Chagrin, a Vietnamese man who fought against the French with the Viet Min and had a penchant for killing nuns.
Things happen. The seductive woman asks for Bond's help to rescue her sister who is under Gorner's employ and slave to Gorner after he hooked her on heroin.  Bond follows Gorner to Iran and discovers a huge float plane intended to skim the water and avoid radar. Bond is caught by Gorner and taken to Gorner's desert drug plant. Bond is sent into the desert in a try to kill him. Bond escapes death but taken back to Gorner's lair and told of Gorner's plan to attack Russia with a nuclear bomb and blame the English.

Bond wins out, of course.

Comments:
1.  A fun listen. Nothing spectacular. I think I have read only one Fleming novel so I'm not sure how many of the standard character traits and plot points are from the books or the movies.  Car chases, beautiful women, torture, etc.
2. One character is a gay CIA agent blackmailed into working for Gorner. Or, was it the KGB? I don't recall. I thought that was a nice 1960s touch.

Final: "Stolen Souls" by Stuart Neville

Final: Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville, 2011, 9781569479834.

This showed up on my desk. I don't recall reserving it but there it was just the same. Third novel with Northern Ireland Detective Inspector Jack Lennon.

Recap: In the previous novels we learned that Lennon is a real shit. He got his Catholic girlfriend pregnant and dumped her. She lost her family by dating a government cop, fled to England and returned with a six-year-old daughter. Lennon did not much care. He ran up debt, drove an Audi and had free sex with prostitutes. When the former girldfriend died Lennon took his daughter in.

Current: Lennon works long hours and has been working to develop a relationship with his daughter while keeping the girl's crooked and IRA member family at arm's length. Lennon's daughter spends a lot of time with Lennon's neighbor and her daughter. Lennon and neighbor have a stop-and-start relationship that has not really started. Nascent is a good word for it.

Galya is a Ukrainian 18-year-old smuggled into Ireland on a Latvian EU passport and sent to work at a mushroom farm. Pretty young Galya is purchased from the people smuggling crooks by prostitution crooks. Galya kept in a locked room and stabs to death the crook who comes to rape her. Two other crooks wrap up the dead man and take the body and Galya to throw in the river.

More things happen with Galya escaping at the docks and Lennon called to the crime scene on Christmas Eve. The novel skips along with murder, torture, kidnapping, threatening, lots of cocaine, car crashes, child abuse, and generally weaselly behavior.