Lou Berney is your Huckleberry

Read Lou Berney. Yes. If you like mystery/thrillers that explore the human condition without being predicable or falling into cliche, he's for you. "The Long and Faraway Gone" is one of my favorite books. His others are solid as well.

Also, enjoy a pic of everybody's favorite Beaglier, Jacks.

NYT calls 'Blood Sugar' one of the Best Thrillers of 2022. Agreed.

I hadn't heard of any of the NYT's (six) Best Thrillers of 2022. But being a newly avid e-book reader, I could read a sample of each before I decided to take the plunge. I settled on two: "Blood Sugar" by Sascha Rothchild and "The Island" by Adrian McKinty (more on that one later). "Blood Sugar" is an indeed a thriller more than a mystery; we know the main character is a killer, no suspense there, but the question becomes, is she a justified killer? Rothchild is a great pace-setter, adept at creating suspense, and this book hums along nicely. I found the protagonist's relationship with her best friend and lawyer, Roman, as well as their plan to find her justice, somewhat of a stretch. But overall "Blood Sugar" was a refreshing take for those of us used to reading mysteries and thrillers of a certain ilk.

Long Live Holden Caulfield

I just read J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” for the first time since high school. Nearly 40 years later, it’s still as powerful as it was in the late 1980s, when I was trying to make sense of the effed-up world around me in lily white northern Michigan. I don't know that I've seen a fictional character brought to life quite like 16-year-old Holden Caulfield, warts and all. Published in 1951, this book, which takes place over a period of just two days, addresses teenage alienation, bullying, mental illness, sexual assault and suicide. It was banned, of course, when in fact it should be required reading in high school.

 

“… What I’d do, I figured, I’d go down to the Holland Tunnel and bum a ride, and then I’d bum another one, and another one, and another one, and in a few days I’d be somewhere out West where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody’d know me and I’d get a job. I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere putting gas and oil in people’s cars. I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. ..."

Clunker of the Day (Christmas Edition)

Kevin rubbed his hand across his scalp until his blond hair stood up like naked winter trees.

... Page 9. No matter how good this mystery/thriller might turn out to be, I just can't take it seriously after that B.S. Naked winter trees? Back to the library it goes ...

"The 2nd Deadly Sin" by Lawrence Sanders

Boone was raising his head in a drunk's delayed response, features changing comically to surprise, outrage. Delaney, swinging an arm from the shoulder, hit the sergeant across the face with an open palm. It smacked the man's head around, left him quivering, face reddening. 

"Cocksucker," Delaney said, without expression.

Delaney, a retired chief of detectives in NYC, and his subordinate Sgt. Boone, an alcoholic, are partners trying to solve a high-profile killing. Boone gets shit-faced drunk. Delaney goes to his home to set him straight. He does, and then some. Delaney is a bastard when he has to be, charming most other times, but always relentless in hunting the killer. Sanders does a masterful job of character development in his 1977 novel. I don't read many 443-page books, though I'd gladly read another by Sanders. A marvelous writer who knows his stuff -- cops, crooks and often fine line between them.

"Whoops" by Nick Kolakowski in Shotgun Honey

Note to self, Ricky thought: The next time you need to make your mortgage payment, try to do it in a life-affirming and legal way, like getting a second job flipping burgers, instead of handing over fifty pounds of pot for a lunatic Russian to sell. Read story here.

Campaign '16: An Atmosphere of Apocalyptic Fear

The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years.

A conservative columnist wrote this in The New York Times. It's about the latest GOP presidential candidate's "atmosphere of apocalyptic fear."

It's not Trump. Does it matter at this point? Please ... pull your heads out of your respective asses, gentlemen.

Read it here.

The Best Short Story Writer in the Game Today

I turned back around to face her crotch—a tender triangle swollen and divided by the thick protuberance of her zipper fly, thick thighs pulling at the weave of red wool. A tiny key hung from a coiled loop of white telephone cord wrapped around her left wrist. She fingered the coils with long, chipped black nails. I had to marry her. If I couldn't, I would kill myself. I broke out in a sweat as though I was about to vomit.

Ottessa Moshfegh writes about relationships, losers and the commonplace with unparalleled vitality and unpredictability. There are no guns, murders or mayhem that typically drive the stories I read/write, and yet I don't miss them whatsoever. The mystery, the desperation, are in the story itself. The characters. Amazing.

In this first-person story, "Dancing in the Moonlight," in The Paris Review, Moshfegh writes as a man, and nails it.

Later that night, leaning against the crumbling, mildewed tile of the shower stall back home, I looked down at myself. I was beautiful, I thought. Legions of curious fingers should be reaching out to touch me. My arms were thick and strong. A spurt of wiry black hair rose from my wrist, trembling in the warm spray like a delicate morning tendril in the dew. There I was, spectacular and alive, and the whole world was missing it.

This story is only in the print edition, but read one of Moshfegh's previous stories in TPR, "The Weirdos," here.

"Burn" by Danny Jarrett in fringeLIT

She communicated with me only by asking questions, and by talking dirty to me. Read story here.

"Brenda's Kid" by Lindsay Hunter in Wigleaf

But also true was how often she considered harming her child, just a little. Taser gun. Mace. Roundhouse kick. Judo chop. Good old windmill. Tires crunching over toes. She had never done any of it, she had once lobbed a small decorative pumpkin at his head, but that was the extent. Read story here.

"Steve's Father" by Molly Giles in Corium Magazine

Two inmates have escaped from Angola but Steve’s father tells Steve’s wife not to worry, he keeps 85 loaded weapons right here in the house, so even if the niggers do head for Mobile, they’ll be safe. Read story here. ... Other Corium entries here.

"Things You Won’t Tell Your Therapist" by Colleen Kearney Rich in SmokeLong Quarterly

The reason you can’t remember his face, not clearly, is because you waited too long to turn around and only saw the back of his head and his red backpack as he stepped off the bus. Read story here.

"The Waterdevil" by Kevin Corvus in The Molotov Cocktail

Wrapped around the water pipe in black greasy coils was something like a slug or a tapeworm. It must have been several feet long and was thick like a python but looked softer and squishy. The thing pulsated and writhed to an alien rhythm. Read story here.

"Force Feed" in the novella Animals

He says some things no ten-year-old should say. He calls his stepfather a motherjabber. He says Cleavon’s gonna turn that motherjabber inside out and torch his rotten corpse. From "Force Feed" in the novella Animals in Red Fez.

"Anabel" by Adam Trodd in The Molotov Cocktail

So, I hang the skulls of my murdered kin on forked sticks and I face the twilight. It was my name that was cut into their cheeks and foreheads before they did them all in, so I know those fellas will be back for what they couldn’t get the first time. Read story here.

"Beach Boys" by Michelle Meyers in decomP

Two months later my boots scuttered across a landmine. The Army’s official report said that it was my fault, that I was running away. True, I did not want to kill the Viet Cong. I did not want to kill anybody. But the real truth was that I was already dead. By the time the high tide came in and the waves lapped me up, the fragments of bone, the splatters of flesh, I was a ghost. I was ashes. I was a shadow from a past that no longer existed.

The kind of story that makes one whisper wow. Read it here.

"Scott Weiland's Family: 'Don't Glorify This Tragedy'" in Rolling Stone

Let's choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don't have to come with it. Skip the depressing T-shirt with 1967-2015 on it – use the money to take a kid to a ballgame or out for ice cream.

From an open letter from Weiland's ex-wife, Mary Weiland.

Read piece here.

"Closure" by Sarah Viren in Juked

"They say they’re going to remove part of my tongue," Darlene says and takes off her glasses to clean them with her shirt. She’s sixty too, but looks younger than Wanda on account of the extra padding. She hasn’t had sex in three and a half years. Read story here.

Other entries from Juked here.

"Generation Cry Baby: Why Millennials Are a F**king Joke" by Rachel Foote in The Oxytocin Chronicles

I was a camp counselor this summer, and the next generation is worse than ours. These kids are being raised on so much organic, special snowflake bullshit that they’ll probably have a psychological breakdown the second someone tells them they’re not as perfect as they think they are. And it’s nauseating.

Afuckingmen.

Read piece here.

"Executrix" by Peter Beckstrom in Dogzplot

Now, I can’t touch buckets without having gleeful, murderous urges. Read story here.

See other Dogzplot entries here.