crime

CATCH YOUR DEATH by Lissa Marie Redmond

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Catch Your Death
(Cold Case Investigation #6)
By Lissa Marie Redmond
Severn House — 2nd August 2022
ISBN: 9780727891327 — Hardcover — 240 pp.

Cold Case Detective Lauren Riley and her partner Shane Reese are enjoying lunch at a restaurant after following up on a tip about an old mafia hit received by their department in the Buffalo, NY police. The tip seems to be another dead end; the woman they had gone to question would only tell them that sometimes, it’s best to let the past die.

Those words take on added meaning for the partners when Reese runs into an old high school friend, Chris Sloane, at the restaurant. Chris is opening a new luxury spa/hotel in the ski country south of the city, and wants to use that as an opportunity for a reunion of their high school friend group. He politely invites Lauren to come along for a fully comped experience.

These circumstances force Shane to reveal to his partner a dark moment from his past, painful memories of an unsolved murder that this reunion will surely drag up. Seventeen years ago their high school friend Jessica Toakese was found murdered, her body recovered from the Buffalo river within an industrial, working class neighborhood that now is the site of trendy bars and canal-side leisure. Reese, along all the other friends in the group, had been suspects in the investigation, an investigation that never led to any charges. The friends haven’t seen much of one another since. Since joining the Cold Case squad, Reese has looked into the official records himself, trying to find answers and resolution.

Upset that her trusted partner has kept this history (and a secretive personal crusade) hidden from her, Riley insists Shane takes a step away from the case, and allow her to take a fresh look into things, an exercise that could be aided by her opportunity to meet all the people involved all those years ago during the upcoming reunion at the spa.

However, once at the hotel, things quickly get out of Lauren’s control. Catch up chat among the former friends erupts into drunken chaos. One of them, a true-crime enthusiast named Erica, announces that she has figured out who actually killed Jessica, and promises to reveal all in a recording of her podcast the next day.

The next morning, Erica is found dead in her room, her throat slashed. An overnight blizzard continues to rage outside, trapping the guests inside the hotel, stranding thousands on roads and highways within the snow-belt, and preventing emergency services from getting to the murder scene.

Riley is left on her own, in unconventional circumstances, to try to take charge of the scene, separate witnesses, protect the integrity of any evidence, and stop further violence from occurring. And maybe, amid all that, she can identify and catch a killer.

Whether you have kept up with all of Redmond’s Cold Case Investigation novels, have sampled a few, or haven’t read one yet, Catch Your Death is a fine opportunity to jump into the series or enjoy a murder mystery/police procedural as a stand-alone.

I previously reviewed the second novel from the series, The Murder Book, after getting a copy at an author signing at a local book store. Though I never put up reviews, I went back to read the first novel, and then also bought and read the third. I also happened to pick up and read The Secrets They Left Behind, a fully stand-alone mystery novel outside Redmond’s Cold Case Investigation series. I actually didn’t know there had been further books in that series until happening upon Catch Your Death while browsing NetGalley. I immediately jumped on it to request. I wish someone would have told me of the last two novels in the series, now I’ll have to go back and find those.

All this is simply to say that I really enjoy Redmond’s writing. Her characters, her plot, and her prose are all superbly engaging. Even with that being said, Catch Your Death also happens to be the best I’ve read from her. Each of her novels has been entertaining and worth the read, particularly for a mystery or police procedural fan. For residents of Western New York like myself, there is added appreciation found in these by reading about local details. But, for someone outside of the area, the Cold Case Investigation novels might lack that special something to set them apart from other police procedurals.

Catch Your Death has that special something, though, a fullness and balance beyond what could be found in the earlier novels of the series. Firstly, this is not just a modern procedural, it is also a classic styled murder mystery, like an Agatha Christie set in some isolated manor house. Redmond achieves this with a modern setting by taking advantage of her Buffalo snow belt winter setting. The region has frequently been hit by surprise blizzards of snow and ice that bring life to a stand-still, cutting people off from travel, stranding people on the road, at home, at work, etc. Redmond’s use of this for the plot in Catch Your Death is not remotely a contrivance, it’s realistic and brilliant.

Pulling off a classic-feeling, cosy ‘locked room’ murder mystery in the modern age is one thing, but Redmond adds other elements to this to make it even richer. Just as the isolation of the pandemic forced us to connect experimentally in virtual ways, so too does the situation of Catch Your Death force Lauren Riley to virtually connect with other police authorities in reporting the murder and managing things ‘by the book’ in the aftermath. It’s a murder investigation done remotely, with Riley Facetiming the state police who can’t physically get on site. Redmond’s expertise and previous professional experience as a cold case detective in Buffalo comes into play here as she also demonstrates all the hoops Riley must jump through during her taking charge of the scene and subsequent investigation to ensure that everything is done legally, in ways that won’t compromise evidence or negate confessions. After all, it’s not as easy as something like Murder, She Wrote makes it seem.

Beyond the excellent mashup of procedural with classic murder mystery, Redmond also succeeds with Catch Your Death in bringing the setting fully alive with chilled weather that almost becomes a character of antagonism in and of itself, a force for Lauren to overcome. She also handles the cast of characters well, showcasing the petty bickering, jealousies, and hostilities that can be dredged up by a tragedy, and years without resolution or justice.

Finally, even with all these elements helping the novel succeed on its own terms, Redmond also uses it to nicely advance the overarching plot threads of the series, most notably the relationship between Riley and Reece. I like and prefer it being a platonic relationship rather than one of romance, but it’ll be interesting to see where things go next to take the series in new directions and new possibilities. (After going back to see what I missed in the last novels!)

Mystery fans should really enjoy the frigid temperatures and fiery emotions that Catch Your Death has to offer. It’s a well-rounded homage to the genre that still innovates, it’s a page-turner with a lot of psychological depth of character underneath. If Redmond or Severn Press reads this, please don’t let me miss out on the next.

THE NEXT TIME I DIE by JASON STARR

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The Next Time I Die
(Hard Case Crime Series #154)
By Jason Starr
Hard Case Crime (Titan Books) — June 2022
ISBN: 9781789099515 — Paperback — 256 pp.

Hard Case Crime has been on quite a roll with their releases of late, and this new novel by Jason Starr generated all sorts of positive buzz up through its release this past month. All those great reviews are warranted, The Next Time I Die is an imaginative creation of literary depth and irresistible diversion. It’s a novel that should appeal to fans of both crime and speculative fiction genres, while also gratifying readers of contemporary general fiction that don’t normally dip into genre pools.

“I saw you, Steven Blitz”

With these words spoken by an unknown male voice, as stab to the gut, and a fade to black for the protagonist at the close of chapter one, the wild ride of The Next Time I Die truly begins.

Before: Lawyer Steven Blitz is busily working to prepare defense for a high profile serial killer murder trial that should help launch his career to the next level. His agitated wife comes in to interrupt him, demanding a divorce and ordering him to get out of the house. She declares she can no longer stand him, and has never really loved him. She has been having an affair with her best friend and wants him and their stagnant marriage gone from her life.

After trying to talk more with her, Steven reluctantly does leave, gathering his work and making a call to his brother saying he’s headed over and needs to crash at his place. En route there amid a winter night’s storm, Steven swerves at a turn in the road to avoid sliding into a collision, and safely continues on. During a quick stopover at a store to pick up some things, Steven witnesses a man and woman having an argument in the parking lot. When the woman’s safety seems threatened, Steven chooses to step in.

A painful stab to Steven’s stomach, his vision going dim, and that mysterious unknown voice coming from the void, nowhere, somewhere.

Expecting to be dead, Steven instead finds himself regaining consciousness in a hospital. Only he quickly realizes things are not right. The nurses and doctors know nothing of any attack in a parking lot. There is no knife wound. Steven was injured in a car crash, hitting a tree while sliding on an icy, snowy stretch of the highway.

Even more strangely, Steven’s wife is there, rushing to his side, full of concern and affection. And with her is their little daughter, a child Steven has no recognition of, but who is worried about her father. The news on the television makes no mention of the growing coronavirus concerns, or fiascos from the dangerous fool who’s occupying the White House. Instead the anchors seem to be concerned about conflicts in India/Pakistan, and how President Gore will be handling things.

As Steven comes to accept the insanity of what seems to have occurred he tries to figure out how it did and when divergences of timelines from his memory and the reality he now finds himself amid must have started. He also quickly realizes he has to pretend all is fine and he’s not confused, lest they keep him in the hospital over worries of unknown neurological problems – or perhaps side-effects of the cancer Steven has recently been treated for. A cancer Steven has no memory of.

While trying to make sense of the turned about reality he faces, Steven finds some things might be nicer in this new life. He has a devoted and loving wife that he finds a recaptured attraction to. He positively adores his wonderful daughter. And here he is already a big time lawyer – a partner in the firm he had been working for on a lower rung, with a hefty bank account and life style that no longer needs a flashy defense trial of questionable morality.

But also, Steven begins to uncover some darker facts about the new found timeline. In this world, the artist serial killer he had been defending walks free, unsuspected of any crimes. Though, Steven knows better. And much to his shock, Steven finds that in this reality, he was the asshole, cheating on his wife and getting into troubles with repercussions that ignorant (and innocent) Steven must now deal with.

Starr’s crisp writing and the mysterious nature of what the protagonist faces both help propel the reader through The Next Time I Die with exceptional pacing and investment in Steven’s hapless situation and character, simply wanting to do good and find success.

And therein lies the brilliance of Starr’s novel: what makes a person good? The fantastical premise of the novel is not something Starr sets out to explain. Is this jumping multiverses? Are there really multiple versions of him that have swapped? Is the start of the novel all in Steven’s head? Or is the rest? Is someone doing this to Steven? None of the answers to these kinds of questions are what is at heart here.

Whatever its cause, whatever its nature, this ineffable phenomena is a means for Steven to discover the totality of his human moral potential, what he is at the core, or can be. Or looking from the outside perspective of author and reader, an exploration of the character of a character and the degrees to which the ambiguous possibilities and gray areas lie in us all.

From the very start of the novel, Starr paints his protagonist as someone with tremendous sincerity for virtue in himself, a preoccupation with proving his merit to himself and others. Like Linus in the pumpkin patch proclaiming righteousness while also adopting humbleness, Steven trumpets his inherent goodness with dogmatic earnestness, to others and in rationalizations to himself.

His wife’s emotional antagonism that sets off the novel is not his fault, and he’s big enough to respect it’s not really hers either. She’s simply off her meds, not speaking or thinking rationally. This is something they can work out – even if she is having an affair – because he’s willing to work things out with her, after all. Defending a serial killer with a pleas of insanity, though he knows in his heart him guilty of heinous acts and deep seeded psychological problems is okay, because the man will still be kept off the streets and be offered help, and it’ll give Steven a chance to do more and better work in defending other clients who really are innocent.

Upon the discovery of things prior Steven has done in the new timeline reality he awakens in, Steven sets out to do all he can to make better decisions than his predecessor. Cut off affairs and stop doing things that a ‘good guy’ would do. However, he wasn’t responsible for those things previous Steven did, so there shouldn’t be any negative consequences for him in this new life. He’s good and will do better.

Starr weaves a brilliant story here drawing parallels between Steven’s personality and that of the serial killer, showing what people might be capable of, lies that might be told to oneself, versions of oneself that might be created to keep an image in one’s mind to live with. As more falls apart for Steven in this new found life, is that okay still? After all, there may be an infinite multiverse of Stevens and decisions out there. If things come apart here, there’s always another version to try better at the next time I die.

The Next Time I Die is a chilling novel for what it shows through its protagonist and from the fact that Starr is offering no answers here as readers consider personal choices and possibilities of a lifetime spent inherently trying to be good, but also knowing selfish deviations from that have occurred aplenty. It’s a brutal, honest portrayal of human nature, though without going full on into nihilism. Though not a new theme to literature or other artistic forms, Starr’s approach to it here is freshly conceived and captivating.

Next up from Hard Case Crime arrives in September: The Hot Beat by Robert Silverberg. Look for a review of that up here just prior to its release.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JIM SULLIVAN by Tanguy Viel (Translated by Clayton McGee)

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The Disappearance of Jim Sullivan
By Tanguy Viel
(Translated by Clayton McGee)
Dalkey Archive Press — May 2021
ISBN: 9781628973716 — Paperback — 132 pp.

Strip the “Great American novel” down to its essential, deconstructed core. Have the author explain how they’ll reassemble these fragments: stereotypes formed into some characters, tropes threaded together into a plot. Round things out with the overarching theme of the historic disappearance of psychedelic/folk musician Jim Sullivan into the wilds of New Mexico. And somehow, you still end up with a captivating page-turner.

The formulaic nature of popular novel art forms leads to their success. It also allows others to mix things up a bit – to reinvent or subvert. Yet, if everything is so simple as a quick and easy formula, why can’t just anyone pull it all off? The answer of course is that it’s all what the writer does with all those formulaic bits and pieces, from the language to the style to the balances between familiarity and challenging invention.

The Disappearance of Jim Sullivan has a simple meta premise that author Tanguy Viel sets out from the start (or the fictional authorial narrator written by Viel – it’s always a bit unclear in the metaverse.) A French author decides he is tired of writing French novels. He wants to write something with international attraction, broad success. This, of course means, making it set in the American midwest of the ‘everyman’. The author creates a protagonist, Dwayne Koster, and sets things in the heart of the Iron Belt, Detroit. But being French and never having been to Detroit, the author has to make the setting a very barebones, Wikipedia-factoid sort of Detroit. He stylizes Koster as middle-aged, recently divorced, a budding alcoholic, and a man fascinated with Jim Sullivan’s music and mysterious vanishing into the desert night.

Viel then builds up the layers to this Great American Novel, interworking details from Koster’s past with the path he now finds himself on, and the routes open to him. Laying all of these basic conventions of a novel out before the reader, Viel then concocts them into an engaging narrative amid the parodic, meta exercise. And he pulls it off because of his inherent talent for the writing craft.

I read through the novel while listening to Jim Sullivan’s albums, starting with his most famous UFO. It’s an accompaniment I’d recommend. By the end of the novel, Viel takes his story of Dwayne Koster and merges it with Sullivan’s style and the history of Sullivan’s disappearance, paralleling the existential nature of Koster’s journey with the unanswered questions of Sullivan’s.

A big thanks to Dalkey Archive Press and translator Clayton McGee for getting this slice of Americana by way of France to English-speaking audiences. A true international novel achieved.

DEAR MISS METROPOLITAN by Carolyn Ferrell

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Dear Miss Metropolitan
By Carolyn Ferrell
Henry Holt and Co. — July 2021
ISBN: 9781250793614 — Hardcover — 432 pp.

Fern, Gwin, and Jesenia are three young girls from very different backgrounds, living their lives of unique joys and struggles at home and at school that nonetheless unite them in the transformations of adolescence. They’re also united in a nightmare experience: captives of an abductor they know only as Boss Man, who has stolen them from the streets and placed them in his basement, a chamber of horrors hidden in an unassuming, dilapidated Queens home.

When authorities finally descend upon the home years later and rescue the “Victim Girls”, they discover only two of the missing young girls, now women, and one young baby. Neighbors look on at the scene of police, ambulances, and news vans. They wonder how this could have occurred right next door, without them ever suspecting. Among those is local newspaper advice columnist, Miss Metropolitan, who feels particular guilt for having failed to notice anything amiss right before her journalistic eyes.

As the rescued Fern and Gwin come to terms with their traumatic abuse and experiences of victimhood and unfathomable resilience, they also ponder the fate of Jesenia, who helped keep them strong, alive, during the ordeal – Jesenia who was forced to bear a child of rape. Meanwhile, others associated with the case, its aftermath, and the next generation, deal with the lingering unanswerable mysteries: Why did this happen? How did it happen? How have the survivors been forever changed? What has been lost?

Dear Miss Metropolitan is a fast moving mosaic of a novel, a narrative stitched together from multiple viewpoints, in different formats, jumping around in time between past and future. Chapters are brief, with standard prose or in the form of document clippings, transcripts, even photographs. Points of view can jump from paragraph to paragraph, narration and dialogue bleed together.

One gets the sense that Ferrell employs this stylistic structure in order to depict the elements of such a traumatic crime from many perspectives through time, as the ‘truth’ behind things and the labels used to describe the victims (survivors) of the abduction and abuse evolve. The publisher and many reviews have referred to this stylistic choice as innovative, but it is not really. Authors have been doing this for a long time. I just finished reading Jean Ray’s Malpertuis, a gothic ‘puzzle-box’ of a novel meticulously structured among perspectives to astounding affect. More modern, and far more effective, Marisha Pessl’s Night Film employs a mosaic structure of media not unlike what Ferrell does here with Dear Miss Metroplitan.

The problem with Dear Miss Metropolitan is that it all comes across as a meaningless cacophony; the artistic reason for including multiple perspectives and time jumps drowns out any insights into the larger scale contexts directly from within the crime as a victim/survivor or indirectly from viewing it from the outside as voyeur, from living it and knowing one’s past or from seeing it only second-hand after the fact. Ferrell fails to hit all the themes and perspectives adequately, and confuses what is there and done well with misapplied structural artifice.

Dear Miss Metropolitan would work far more effectively by limiting aspirations and focus to the girls: their past, their ordeals, their strength, and their bravely facing the aftermath. Time jumps and perspective jumps would have even still worked fine. The mistake was to then also try and look at the outsider perspectives and needlessly use fragments from media text or photos. The majority of the novel indeed focuses just on the girls. The titular Miss Metropolitan doesn’t even really appear until almost the close of the novel, and her inclusion becomes far too little, too late.

This is a difficult novel to read due to the nature of its plot, a thriller based on real life horrors of the Ariel Castro case in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s a plot that also comes up frequently in horror fiction and crime thrillers. To Ferrell’s credit she does succeed in making this somewhat fresh, at looking at the themes of victimhood, survivorship, bravery, and guilt. She also does this without ever making the horror seem exploitative. However, she bites off too much to effectively chew by trying to make this a structural puzzle box that also reveals profound insights into multiple perspectives across space and time.

BIRDS OF PARADISE by Oliver K. Langmead

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Birds of Paradise
By Oliver K. Langmead
Titan Books — March 2021
ISBN: 9781789094817 — Paperback — 298 pp.

I’m not typically one to get awestruck by a cover, but even I had to stare impressed with the design on Oliver K. Langmead’s Birds of Paradise for a good while before cracking the book open to begin reading. It’s the work of graphic designer Julia Lloyd, and I want to be sure and give credit for such fantastic, evocative work.

Langmead’s novel takes an interesting premise and runs with it in inventive ways that create a hybrid sort of genre novel, equal parts dark fantasy and heist crime noir, with a dash of John Wick thrown in. The official blurb of the novel dubs it American Gods meets The Chronicles of Narnia. While I can see the Gaiman American Gods vibe going here, the latter comparison makes absolutely no sense to me. A Biblical story lies within the inspiration, but it is not working the Creation story in any of the ways that any established religion does, whether using the Hebraic version or another.

Instead, Langmead takes the concept of a created perfection in the Garden of Eden, and considers the characters who populated it prior to the Fall. There is Adam and Eve, of course. But, also all of the other created species that populate its land, air, and waters. In particular, all the animals that Adam had a role in naming, intelligences that while not quite human ‘in the image of God’ still have a relatable consciousness.

If these were all created in a perfection, immortal before sin and death entered the world, what might have occurred after the Fall? What if the mortality and the loss of perfection only affected all that came afterward. What if all those archetypes remained immortal, but their perfection became lost and fragmented to all the corners of the Earth? In other words, Langmead spins his own mythological take on the outcome of the Creation story.

Set during the present day, Birds of Paradise follows Adam as he struggles to keep up his existence roaming the Earth and not giving in to despair to end his immortality to meet the fate that all of his children that have come to populate the planet can enjoy. Only one thing keeps Adam driven to continue on, the potential of recovering Eden, finding the fragmented creatures and pieces of its ruins.

Stories of rumors and pieces being discovered start to reach Adam’s ears, and his former animal friends like Owl, or Raven, or Pig start to reunite, coming out from their lives among the human population they’ve learned to integrate into, hidden for centuries. Adam begins to imagine that if he can recapture, and recreate Eden, then maybe the paradise that he has so long been exiled from could finally return. Full of despair and yearning for Eve, the woman he exchanged hearts with, but has since lost sets him on a personal quest for redemption and reclaimed worth.

However, a group of powerful and rich individuals have also set their eyes on amassing the scattered fragments of Edenic perfection, and are willing to destroy anyone that gets in their way, even the archetypical animals who still persist across Earth with deep personal connection to their former home. When these individuals of desire and greed kill another piece of Adam’s cherished past, it sets the First Man on a path of violence, not just to recapture Eden, but to enact bloody revenge.

Langmead writes Birds of Paradise in rich, poignant prose, a beauty that contrasts sharply against the raw, violent brutality of many of its action sequences and the brooding weariness of its protagonist’s soul. This is a dark novel, even pessimistic, where the drive to fight on comes with the near total realization that Eden can’t be recreated, that Adam is doomed to failure, and his soul mate Eve cannot return. Adam’s a man who lives in an eternity of memory, knowing that the perfect good times he once enjoyed are gone. But, the only thing that can keep him going on is that shred of hope that maybe, just maybe he can build some sort of simulacrum of that perfection to at least pretend and experience some bits of joy anew.

And moreso, even if he can’t go back home to the perfect Eden, he is certainly not going to sit by and watch others create a bastardized version of it for their own selfish amusement as they rule over rest of his children. Or let them kill his only remaining friends in the process of their hubris, falling to the same sin as he and Eve.

Langmead’s plot is a very compelling one, and he effectively delves without reserve into the dark emotions of humanity. Personally, I found it all too dark and depressive, the revenge too cold blooded. I felt as though Adam was just as reprehensible and vile as the antagonists of the novel. I just got a better sense of the intense trauma that got Adam to this point of weary despair, destroyed. But I’m not sure I enjoyed reading it, or if I wanted to particularly dwell amid it. However, for those who that strikes better, Langmead does deal in that darkness with aplomb.

The element I enjoyed most in Birds of Paradise included the various animal personalities from Eden who join Adam along the way to various degrees. Langmead makes these characters rich and vibrant, across a spectrum of personality traits that cleverly mimic their animal origins. The concept of these human-like magical Edenic progenitors of the creatures that now inhabit the Earth with us is an interesting one. And there are intersting parallels here in terms of Adam’s place within the context of these other characters – his responsibility to them and the concepts of humankind’s stewardship of Creation, to live as part of the ecosystem with conscious responsibility. Something we’ve failed at. It’s thus interesting that this is perhaps the one thing that Adam recaptures here from Eden, a sense of communion and connection, a reunion.

The other element I appreciated in the novel were the the protagonist – antagonist conflict and the heists of Edenic fragments that fuel it. Strip away the brutality and what we’re left with here is a very brutal noir story, with all its aura of dark pessimism. Langmead kept me engaged in Adam’s melancholic journey because of this plot conflict, with the exuberance of the novel’s villains.

As I think about it more, I usually go for noir that is brutally dark, so why was I a bit more off put by it here in Birds of Paradise? For one, Adam felt a bit too unredeemable for my tastes, I probably would react similarly if he were a corrupt and degenerate PI, for instance. But also it’s the religious aspects of the novel here, the idea that Adam is trying to recreate the ideal of God by doing things that are even more rebellious and counter to Christian concepts, at least. This is my own perspective butting in here, though. Langmead makes it clear that this is not a Biblical reality, God is pretty much absent from things here, certainly the Christian concept. But, it’s harder for me to make that separation and form that disbelief amid a fictional world. I could do it with Norse gods, or with Greek ‘mythology.’ Not so easily with what’s closer and more ingrained.

Birds of Paradise succeeds very well at doing what the novel sets out to do, and for fans of this type of fantasy genre there is a lot of wonderment within its framework to appreciate, enjoy, and ponder.

THE TURNOUT by Megan Abbott

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The Turnout
By Megan Abbott
Knopf Publishing Group — May 2022
ISBN: 9780593084922 — Paperback — 368 pp.

First released last August, but only recently out in paperback, The Turnout is the tenth novel from Megan Abbott, a popular suspense/crime writer whose work typically focuses on female perspectives. I have always heard good buzz around her novels, and I even have a couple sitting on my shelf that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet.

This solidly constructed thriller affirms why Abbott’s work has been bestselling and award winning. The Turnout is propelled forward by a simplicity of suspense and atmosphere that make it immanently readable. Furthermore, the familiarity of everyday characters and seemingly mundane conflicts of work and family form a curtain of universal relatability for readers. Beyond that curtain lie secrets and crimes that Abbott allows poke out: dark, uncanny shivers and susurrations amid everyday life. With plotting and language she deftly builds suspense up to the shattering revelations of the novel’s climax.

Sisters Dara and Marie oversee the prestigious Durant School of Dance, an institution of ballet they inherited after the tragic death of their parents in a car accident. Dara’s husband Charlie works alongside the sisters. Once their mother’s prized student, who spent life growing up with the sisters as an adopted part of the Durant family, Charlie’s ballet talent buckled to injury. Now, the trio work fluidly in an intimate choreography of instruction, molding a new generation of dancers into ballet artists.

The clockwork precision and smoothness of the professional and personal lives of this trio becomes unbalanced when Marie suddenly decides to move out of the familial Durant home and crash at the dance studio, away from Dara and Charlie. Then, just as the school begins its preparation for their annual crowning performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, a fire breaks out from a space heater Marie has been using. Though firefighters save most of the school, extensive repairs become necessary just when the school is busiest and the family is most stressed.

From word-of-mouth recommendation, Dara hires a construction remodeler to repair the damage. Though relieved to see the team gets to quick work, Dara becomes increasingly concerned by the odd behavior and comments of the lead remodeler, Derek, who has seemingly enchanted Marie into an alarming relationship of sexual passion and psychological control. Strange accidents and setbacks to the repair begin to occur, and Dara begins to fear that Derek is not just further fragmenting the Durant family, but has his eyes set on much more.

One of the things that Abbott does very well is to convey the harsh, painful toll of ballet on the dancer’s body, from the feet on up. Dara repeatedly echoes the voice of her mother in encouraging and glorifying the torment and self sacrifice given by children for their art. It’s a bitter truth that any success involves struggle and pain, contortions and wounds. Something like that physically embodies this. Abbot takes this dark idea and runs with it, showing the manipulation of students by mentors that parallel the bodily manipulations of muscle and skeleton in the ballet dancer. The title of the novel refers to this specifically: the turnout, where a dancer achieves full 180-degree rotation of their feet to jut at a right angle from front, a physical achievement requiring contortions of the hip to manipulate human anatomy into atypical forms.

These themes of physical manipulation and pain center into the dynamics of all the character relationships, and the plot of The Turnout. The family strife, the histories of past trauma kept hidden, and the toxic agenda of Derek: these all echo the tolls taken by ballet for excellence. The difference, however lies in the questions of what one demands from (and gives of), oneself, versus what others selfishly take. That distinction is key, particular in the example of protagonist Dara, who is quite willing to endure pain for the sake or her art and things she controls, but refuses to bear it for others.

As the protagonist and point-of-view for the novel, Dara represents the most complex and developed character. It’s a shame that Abbott doesn’t put the same intricacy into the others. To an extent she has little choice. We can’t know the thoughts of others, and to reveal more depth in many would ruin the suspense or reveal truths prematurely. However, I do think that Marie could have been more of a focus for development and insight.

Despite the darkness of its plot elements, The Turnout is a pleasure read, an engaging thriller that doesn’t require much beyond reading and enjoying. Dara’s voice of growing confusion and fear lend a shadowy atmosphere where the reality of what faces her becomes obscured amid her assumptions and suppressed memories. This creates a perfect mood for suspense fans to enjoy, and I look forward to reading more of what she has written.

RISE OF THE WARRIOR COP: THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA’S POLICE FORCE by Radley Balko

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Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Force
By Radley Balko
PublicAffairs — 2014
ISBN: 9781541774537 — Paperback — 528 pp.

This is a title that went onto my to-read list when it first came out, but it took years and a happenstance coming across the book at Burning Books to get a copy, and then awhile of it sitting in a pile before deciding I really needed to get into it. Despite those 8-or-so years, the relevance of the title has hardly diminished, becoming perhaps more important, focusing on issues that are germane to front page headlines in today’s New York Times.

The title of Balko’s books is somewhat incomplete. Thought he militarization of civilian police serves as a major focus of the book, it’s more broadly a history of, and commentary on the third and fourth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America. For those who don’t remember the particulars of this part of the Bill of Rights, these are:

Amendment III: No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Balko begins by discussing the colonial and revolutionary context of these amendments, with emphasis on the third that seems so irrelevant to us today at the surface level. He discusses how the amendments both relate to the common law Castle doctrine, and explains why these were considered so fundamentally important both then at the time of the writing of the Constitution, and now.

He then traces the concept of civilian policing through history, quickly getting to its use in the United States and focusing in a series of chapters on the decades from the 1960s to the 2000s. The starting point of the 1960s corresponds to the political introduction of the “War on Drugs” to the nation, as well as violent events that led to the development of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams.

The tie-in of targeted amplification of drug prosecution (particularly minor offenses that have no victims) and SWAT (increased militarization of policing) corresponds to the gradual, systematic erosion of civil liberties related to the Castle doctrine and the pair of Constitutional amendments. With mind-boggling and frightening implication, Balko relates how systems of policing have violated, or circumvented, protections against individuals in their homes, degraded the supposed protections supplied by warrants. Worse, politics have instituted a system whereby police departments are perversely rewarded for feeing this self-perpetuating machine of terror, and have even been penalized for actual fighting of crime with results.

The most obvious injustice that Balko brings up with anecdote again, and again (showing it is an acute symptom of societal, or institutional, disease) is the no-knock warrant that became created and justified to allow police to enter private residences with no warning, with impunity, violence, and little oversight or consequences for their actions. All that was needed became a the mere suspicion that drugs may be present, and that warning of entry to the home could, maybe, result in drugs being disposed of.

Balko shows how often this has been abused with horrendous consequences due to ignorance and errors. Misidentified homes, wrong addresses, poor or dishonest informants and intelligence, etc. I lost count of how many innocent people’s lives ended because their home was suddenly invaded by dark-clad paramilitary forces. And nothing would change, it would only increase.

Alongside this, Balko also addresses how police SWAT teams became increasingly used for situations where they were not required – for example, peaceful protests. Or police departments in areas of the country with no record of violent crime for over a hundred years got themselves a SWAT team and battle tanks. Simply because the money was made available, and this is America.

What may astound many readers of this is how pervasively the political will for this extended through the decades and broadly across party lines. Conservatives who introduced ideas for being tougher on crime were later stunned that their misguided legislation had grown beyond intent, misused to now not target criminals, but attack civil liberties. They recanted, and regretted their initial ideas. But it is too late. Liberals who fought for the rights of poor people don’t want to be painted as being soft on crime. So they support/introduce bills to increase funding or giving authority to police. And it comes back to bite them.

Sadly, the failure of the Supreme Court through the decades in protecting the Constitution equally becomes clear. And, it makes one realize that the recent erosions of Constitutional protection (and future that this current court is likely to take) is not that atypical.

The NYT article I mentioned earlier is actually about how President Biden is issuing an executive order in response to what occurred to George Floyd (and the many, many other similar travesties of justice. This order demands reductions in police use of the ‘choke-hold’ and reductions in the use of ‘no-knock’ warrants. Ironically, Balko reveals that one of the biggest political names in the past decades who has personally driven legislation leading to increased police abuses like the above was Senator Joe Biden.

The birth of SWAT and police excesses were ultimately born from fear of maintaining control of a population that could arm itself with weapons and armor that an ordinary citizen could not take on. Recent events remind us that continued access to such weapons and bodily armor by the general population will only further fuel the fear and the arguments in some eyes that police should do more to protect, and that civil rights should be sacrificed. Balko’s text reminds us just how vigilant we need to be, and perhaps even work more directed and effectively towards reversing the general trends of our democracy.

TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins

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Tough Tender
(Hard Case Crime Series #153; Nolan Series #s 5 – 6)
By Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime (Titan Books) — 15th March 2022
ISBN: 9781789091434 — Paperback — 346 pp.

The reprints of Collins’ Nolan series continue from Hard Case Crime, with another two-for-one packaging featuring the ‘retired’ titular thief and his young heist partner Jon. The series has had a complicated publication history, often out-of-print and relatively difficult to track down. This volume collects the fifth and sixth novels in the series, first published in 1982, Hard Cash and Scratch Fever. Even more-so than previous double collections from HCC, these two novels fit exceptionally well together, linked by a ruthless femme fatale antagonist. Tough Tender simply reads like one complete story in two acts.

The set up for these episodes in Nolan and Jon’s lives follows a standard format, also frequently used in the Quarry series: The criminal protagonist is trying to live a retired life, but previous deeds pull them back in. Usually what brings them back to crime is either the prospect of a really big paycheck, or someone coming out of the woodwork to kill them. The first part of Tough Tender, Hard Cash, offers a slightly different tactic: blackmail.

An executive at a bank that Nolan and Jon robbed previously in the series shows up at Nolan’s restaurant with an offer for another heist, this time with inside cooperation. Nolan wants no part in the risks or the executives eager ignorance. Facing the choice of either going along to hear more about the executives plans or killing him to prevent him from turning Nolan in, Nolan opts for restraint, taking Jon for a meeting to hear more about the heist plan, and the executive’s threats. There, they learn that the real drive and brains behind this plan is a sultry and dangerous woman name Julie, who has the married executive wrapped around her finger in adultery. Still not liking any bit of being ‘forced’ into a heist, Nolan and Jon choose to proceed, cautiously, expecting a double-cross.

In Scratch Fever, the second half of Tough Tender, Jon has returned to his life of comics and rock and roll, while Nolan is back at his restaurant/motel. As Jon’s band performs in a local backwoods music venue, he is shocked to see femme fatale Julie among the audience, a woman that he and Nolan thought was dead. Even worse, her deadly regard notices him. Jon manages to get a message of warning to Nolan, but not without also become captured by the jaded girlfriend of one of Jon’s old flames, a confused girl who has become ensnared by Julie’s destructive sexual allure.

Of the two components, Scratch Fever works best, offering a more unique scenario within the series than Hard Cash and focusing equally on Jon as on Nolan, in alternating chapters. Hard Cash also suffers from poorly inserting the Comfort family series antagonists into the plot. Though Jon shot the Comfort patriarch in the previous entry to the series, the old coot managed to survive, and is off with one son to get revenge on the guys who stole from them. The plot line only becomes possible due to a stupid slip up by Nolan and Jon in the previous novel, and Collins’ “oh, he actually wasn’t really dead!” ploy. This would be forgivable, but the Comfort plot in here really goes nowhere, with an evaporating resolution by mere chance as this B plot intersects with the main heist plot.

The other aspect that reads off in these novels would be Nolan and Jon’s automatic reaction to Julie (from first meeting) as “that bitch”. There’s a harshness to Nolan in particular that does not play well at all, particularly in 2022. Similarly, Jon’s relationship with the lesbian girlfriend who kidnaps him in Scratch Fever plays out in an unbelievable way that in today’s age would have to be depicted more delicately and realistically.

Then again, these were written in the 1970s – published in the early 1980s – and they are noir pulp. So readers who go for this fare shouldn’t be entirely surprised or put off even when things run counter to contemporary sensibilities or reader beliefs. The fact is that Tough Tender serves as a solid continuation to the Nolan series. Still not as refined or engaging as the Quarry novels, but essential for fans of Collins’ neo-noir and the HCC label.

DOUBLE DOWN by Max Allan Collins

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Double Down
(Hard Case Crime Series #149; Nolan Series #s 3 – 4)
By Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime (Titan Books) — 20th April 2021
ISBN: 9781789091410 — Paperback — 352 pp.

Even mediocre Max Allan Collins provides more entertainment value than much of the crime fiction that is out there, and with this volume one gets two episodes from the neo-noir series featuring the professional thief Nolan for the price of one. Double Down is a recent Hard Case Crime reissue of the third and fourth novels of Collins’ Nolan series, Fly Paper and Hush Money. Originally written back in the ’70’s, but not published until 1981, these novels have since been often out-of-print. This release by Hard Case Crime follows their publication of the final Nolan novel (#9, Skim Deep) a few months prior, which I reviewed here previously.

In Fly Paper, Nolan has settled into retirement from pulling jobs for the Detroit mob, surviving old enemies to manage one of organized crime’s legitimate businesses, the Tropicana hotel and nightclub outside Chicago. But Nolan receives a call from his protégé Jon that sets the pair up for a heist of some easy money from a member of the Comfort family, a crime clan who continue as a principal antagonist to Nolan in the series. Meanwhile, a man plots the daring hijacking of a flight for some ransom money. Unfortunately for this man, he has chosen the flight that Jon and Nolan are taking after netting their easy score.

Fly Paper is an odd entry to the Nolan series compared to the others I’ve read. The heists and crimes come down entirely to happenstance, showcasing the Pasteur quote “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” It all ends up feeling like a cakewalk, with Nolan and Jon barely breaking any sweat. Additionally, the novel has the feel of being two stories set in one (compounded here with Fly Paper being paired with another novel.) There is the one plot with the Comfort family, which easily resolves, and then there is the plot inspired by the real history of “D.B. Cooper” and his hijacking of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305. I imagine Collins read the news stories about this stunning event back in the early 1970’s and thought, hmm, I wonder how that would’ve gone down if a real bad ass were on board at the time to steal from the thief? Beef that concept up with a set-up to get Nolan on the plane, and print it.

Hush Money takes place concurrently with Fly Paper, and immediately following. Someone in Des Moines is killing business associates of organized crime, and the Mob thinks that Nolan may be the best person out there to find who is responsible and cleanly make it end. With the amount they offer him, how could Nolan turn it down, especially with Jon eager to help? It takes a good third of the short novel for Nolan and Jon to even appear, so a good chunk of Hush Money involves the killer, the targets, and their families during the time when Jon & Nolan are making bank off the Comforts and an odd plane trip home. Again, this gives Hush Money the feel of being two stories that merge into one. The plot feels superior to that in Fly Paper, though, with less of a reliance on happenstance, and without the DB Cooper gimmick going on. It’s also interesting to see Nolan work in a role of mediator where he ends up not ever having an ‘enemy’ or ‘evil person’ who he has to go up against for survival.

Neither Fly Paper or Hush Money are ground-breaking or remotely compare to the best noir that Collins has produced. But, regardless, he can write. Nolan shines with style, wit, and a charming elegance that imparts that compulsively readable pulp crime vibe. Jon has more naiveté, but an earnest drive to learn and find success. The stories and dialogue smoothly flow to give a simply entertaining diversion of crime fiction, bread-and-butter of the Hard Case Crime line that doesn’t demand much, but also doesn’t insult or fail.

Hard Case Crime is in the process of publishing additional works by Max Allan Collins, including titles featuring his character Quarry and volumes from the Nolan series that follow this one. The character of Nolan is inspired (at least in part) on a thief from Donald E. Westlake’s oeuvre writing as Richard Stark, and Hard Case Crime is likewise amid several Westlake releases. Look for reviews of those releases coming ahead, and check the novels out if you’re a fan of this pulp crime gold.

THE GODMOTHERS by Camille Aubray

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The Godmothers
By Camille Aubray
HarperLuxe — June 2021
ISBN: 9780063090279 — Paperback — 592 pp.

Greenwich Village, New York City, the 1930s. As war breaks out in distant Europe, a wealthy family of Italian Americans with business ties to the mafia works hard to ensure their continued success for themselves, and even more for their children. Gianni and Tessa have one daughter, Petrina, and three sons, Johnny, Frankie, and Mario; partnering them each with the right spouse becomes the immediate parental priority to facilitate their continued familial prosperity. However, the fashionable and intelligent Petrina has a marriage on the rocks, and she still hasn’t fully recovered from a potential scandal in her past that threatened the family’s stability.

Considerate and responsible eldest son Johnny has married naive Amie, a young French widow from upstate New York, who he helps after she has used a gun to end her abusive marriage to a bar owner. Fiery middle son Frankie marries the equally spirited Lucy, an Irish nurse who has prior experience standing up to members of organized crime. But for quiet and cerebral Mario, the doted-upon baby boy of the family, Tessa decides that he needs a good Italian woman from the old country, a woman who has not grown up with the influences of American culture. Tessa and Gianni arrange to bring a young woman named Filomena over for marriage to Mario. Outbreak of WWII in Italy and tragedy leads another girl to seize the opportunity to secretly come in her friend’s place, adopting Filomena’s name and identity.

The bulk of the novel deals with the history of this family from the 1930s through the 1950s. Chapters set in the 1980s frame each side of this story, featuring Nicole, who is learning all these hidden secrets of her family’s past from one of the four Godmothers. Aubray follows the opening bookend with chapters that separately introduce the pasts of each of the four women, with particular focus on Filomena. By the point of Filomena’s marriage to Mario, the singular path of the woman as part of the familial is followed. Their generation takes over more business operations with the death of Gianni and Tessa.

The gradual departure or loss of the men to illness or war gradually allow the women to take leadership more fully, making use of the survival skills they have each learned from their pasts, and their keen intellect. With strengths to complement one another, and ferociously protective of each other’s secrets, these Godmothers work together to separate their lives from dependence on crime and keep their children safe.

The basic feminist story in The Godmothers is solid. It’s a story of divestment from situations they have been born or married into while maintaining loyalty to ‘blood’. Establishing social independence alongside separation from criminal business ties that leave them vulnerable and at the mercy to immoral powers that they’ve all had personal prior experience with in some way.

Aubray’s construction of the novel is less perfect. The bookends to the story set in the 1980s are unnecessary, and even detrimental. The opening sets up expectations of really dark secrets and mystery that will have big implications for Nicole. There are some dark secrets and mysteries revealed in those days of the 1930s – 1950s. But from the point of view of decades later, they are all pretty unsurprising, and hardly scandalous to warrant panic for Nicole. If framed solely as learning more about her family it may have worked better at least (even if not needed). Instead it sets the novel up to be far more of a thriller and mystery than it ever is.

The other major issue with The Godmothers is that it becomes progressively less compelling as the read continues. The first half or so was engaging, but the plot soon settles into a lull of predictability, and the character developments among the women and their relationship stagnates into repetition of themes. Coupled with an anticlimactic end to the 1950s era story of the Godmothers gaining criminal independence, the fizzling of any story on the 1980s side of the history makes the final chapters of the novel more skippable than engaging.

Though Aubray writes well – if a bit melodramatically – and crafts interesting characters with a meaningful history, the structure of the novel and a second half of smooth-sailing against any remotely rough waters ends up dampening the initial joys of reading The Godmothers. Given the numerous mentions of the novel on “Best of the year/summer” lists and many enthusiastic reader responses, there are certainly readers out there who will enjoy this and not mind structural elements I found to not work.

For those who are interested in looking into The Godmothers further, there is currently a new Goodreads Giveaway running until April 26, 2022 to win a copy of the novel.