REVIEW: THE VIOLET HOUR by Daniel Judson

SYNOPSIS: Cal Rakowski is an auto mechanic, and a good one. He's young but he's suffered so much loss in his life that he just lives inside his boss's garage and tries to maintain a routine existence. But now he has a guest hiding out with him, a pregnant friend on the run from her rich, abusive husband. Cal's life suddenly becomes very complicated and non-routine when a beautiful assassin tries to kill Lebell, Cal's friend and co-worker, and Lebell disappears. The assassin and some other very nasty people, including the FBI, start thinking Cal may be able to help find him. With a lot of people looking for Cal, and not to help him, he suddenly has to start learning skills far more different, and deadly, than auto repair.

REVIEW: As thrillers go, I often become annoyed by the old premise of an innocent suddenly thrust into a world of intrigue and violence. That's because the author allows his innocent to make poor decisions that get other characters killed for the sake of moving the plot forward. I'm happy to say that Judson didn't do that to his readers in The Violet Hour.

Cal may be young, but he attacks trouble the way a good mechanic diagnoses engine trouble: He's organized, and he understands cause and effect. He plans accordingly, and adapts with his findings. The character of Cal is the linchpin for this story. Judson draws him as a sympathetic, somewhat repressed young man, and it is only when his friends are faced with danger that we see how much strength and resolve is in Cal. That might not come off as credible except that Judson also has drawn a careful back story for Cal's life, a story of unexpected loss and loneliness.

The pacing of the novel is wonderful, with rapid fire action scenes and moments of poignant characterization. No other character is as fully developed as Cal, but this is his story. The changes he undergoes as the action progresses are more profound and lasting - and maybe even a little scarier - than one usually finds in a thriller.

The weakest aspect to this book lies in the editing. In the early chapters there are some minor annoyances such as the use of "till" rather than "until" or "'til." Saying "upper-scale" rather than "up-scale." And too often using modifiers such as "nothing if not" or "no less than" when a more direct statement would be stronger. Small things like that, but they are frequent in the early going, almost as if there was a lack of confidence in the prose. But that's only in the first couple of chapters - or else I just got so sucked in by the rapidly evolving plot that I didn't notice the problems anymore.

Again, that's just quibbling on my part. The Violet Hour is an absorbing thriller, and it's easy to see why Judson has two Shamus Awards to his credit.

Disclosure notice: A copy of this book was provided by the publisher (or his agent) at no charge to me. The publisher (or his agent) neither stipulated nor received from me any promise that the book would be the subject of an endorsement or review, either positive or negative.

REVIEW: RIZZO'S WAR by Lou Manfredo

SYNOPSIS: NYPD Detective Mike McQueen has had his gold badge exactly three weeks when he is partnered with veteran Detective Joe Rizzo. Rizzo has a case clearance rate so outstanding that he is clearly the right guy to teach the younger man the ropes. A clearance rate so outstanding that he should have been promoted out of Brooklyn long ago. The partnership between the clean-cut newbie and the grizzled veteran has not fully solidified when they get an off-the-books assignment to find the runaway daughter of a city councilman. The daughter is not a minor, no crime has been committed, so how are two honest cops supposed to keep the investigation on the QT, get the mentally disturbed young woman back home, and not break any laws? Oh, wait. Maybe, just maybe, one - or both - of these detectives isn't as honest as he could be.

REVIEW: Okay, if you're looking for serial killers, gore, shoot-em-up-bang-bang action, go read a different book. If you're looking for a story with a complex web of moral and ethical dilemmas layered with gritty, tenacious police work, then open the pages and enjoy Lou Manfredo's debut novel.

The reader gets to know only two characters well, the wet-behind-the-ears McQueen and the wily Rizzo, and then we really only get to know them on the job. We see that they have private lives, but on the job is where they really live. Police work isn't what Rizzo does, it's what he is. McQueen has had a small taste of success, getting his detective badge via serendipity rather than getting it the old-fashioned way of earning it, and this has awakened his ambition to make it out of Brooklyn and into an office at One Police Plaza. Watching these two disparate men work toward a relationship of trust and understanding while coping, or trying to cope, with the constant moral and legal ambiguities of the job is really what this book is all about.

The structure of this book is an interesting one. Fully the first half of the book is episodic, as the two detectives tackle case after case: Burglary, assault, attempted rape, suicide. The reader is riding along, learning as McQueen learns: How to observe a crime scene, what crimes to expect - and when to expect them - in certain neighborhoods, that it's better to grant favors than ask them. Especially that last item. Rizzo holds markers all over the city, which is just as well because halfway through the book, when the detectives finally draw the no-win case involving the councilman's daughter, Rizzo is going to need every single favor he can swing, even from the likes of the Hell's Angels. And that still may not be enough to save his and McQueen's careers.

Manfredo plays no tricks on the reader. No time shifts, no alternating first-person POVs. The prose is straightforward, with dialogue that sounds like natural cop talk but avoids annoying and mystifying jargon. Thus it becomes very easy for the reader to slip into McQueen's or Rizzo's shoes and ask himself, 'What would I do if I were faced with these situations? What's the right thing to do?' And that's what young McQueen is always asking, both of himself and Rizzo: What's the right thing to do? And Rizzo's answer is consistent: There is no right, there is no wrong, there just is. Read this book and see if you agree with Rizzo.

Here is the author, at Otto Penzler's store in New York City, discussing the people who helped shape the novel and get it published:

Disclosure notice: A copy of this book was provided by the publisher (or his agent) at no charge to me. The publisher (or his agent) neither stipulated nor received from me any promise that the book would be the subject of an endorsement or review, either positive or negative.

REVIEW: CITY OF THIEVES by David Benioff

SYNOPSIS: During the siege of Leningrad in January, 1942, two young men face a daunting task. In a city of starvation, they must find a dozen eggs so that a Russian colonel's beautiful daughter can have a cake for her wedding. They have five days to find and bring back the eggs, and if they fail, they will be shot by the police, NKVD. The search for eggs will bring them face to face with everything that is both good and evil in humankind, and they will test the truth of what they believe about themselves.

REVIEW:Set during a relentlessly grim time and place, one might expect the same to be true of the story. Instead, Benioff has crafted a coming-of-age adventure tale that is by turns poignant, charming, frightening, and enlightening.

The adventures are not wholly unpredictable but are made fresh by the delightfully developed characters. Lev, only 17 and the son of a poet who was himself 'disappeared' by the NKVD, was accused of looting. His companion on the search is Kolya, 20, a soldier in the army. Kolya was accused of desertion. The two young men met for the first time when they landed in jail. They are both guilty as charged and yet neither of them has a criminal bent. Lev, the Jewish narrator, has spent his whole life knowing himself to be a physical coward. Kolya may have wandered away from the Army, but he is fearless to the point of stupidity. Kolya is also possessed of good looks, charm, and some higher education.

The author never makes the mistake of minimizing the suffering of that time, he faces squarely the violence and degradation of a place where survival is moment to moment. Yet he also understands that even in the direst circumstances, people can retain their sense of humor and can have dreams that are go beyond the basic needs of food and shelter. Lev longs to lose his virginity. Kolya is planning to write a great Russian novel. Each must learn to trust and rely on the other for survival, and their often childish bickering serves to distract them from their hunger, cold and fear.

From the monsters hiding among normal people inside the city, to beautiful women prisoners and resistance fighters and Nazi death squads beyond the front lines, the search for eggs takes Lev and Kolya into the heart of darkness and the spirit of light.

City of Thieves is fine entertainment, and no one could regret time spent in Lev and Kolya's company. In the following excerpt, Lev and Kolya have met a boy who tells them a wild story about a man who keeps chickens on top of one of the buildings in the city. This awakens Kolya's scatological fascination.

"The old man can't stay in the coop all the time," I told the boy. "He has to get his rations. He has to get water and use the toilet. Someone would have grabbed the chickens months ago."

"He pisses off the roof. When it's coming out the other side, I don't know, maybe that's what he feeds the chickens."

Kolya nodded, impressed by the old man's clever means of keeping the birds alive, though I was convinced the kid was making this up as his lips moved.

"When was the last time you had a shit?" Kolya asked me, abruptly.

"I don't know. A week ago?"

"It's been nine days for me. I've been counting. Nine days! When it finally happens, I'll have a big party and invite the best-looking girls from the university."

"Invite the colonel's daughter."

"I will, absolutely. My shit party will be much better than this wedding she's planning."

"The new ration bread hurts coming out," said the curly-haired boy. "My father says it's all the cellulose they're putting in."

"Where do we find the old man with the chickens?"

"I don't know the address. If you walk toward Stachek Prospekt from the Narva Gate, you'll pass his building. There's a big poster of Zhdanov on the wall."

"There's a poster of Zhdanov on half the buildings in Piter," I said, getting a little irritated. "We're going to walk another three kilometers to find a bunch of chickens that don't exist?"

"The boy's not lying," said Kolya, patting the kid on his shoulder. "If he is, we'll come back here and break his fingers. He knows we're NKVD."

"You're not NKVD," said the boy.

Kolya pulled the colonel's letter from his coat pocket and slapped the boy's cheek with it.

"This is a letter from an NKVD colonel authorizing us to find eggs. What do you think about that?"

"You got another one from Stalin, authorizing you to wipe your ass?"

"He'll have to authorize me to shit first."

I didn't stay long enough to learn how the conversation ended.

REVIEW: PARIAH by Dave Zeltserman

In two days, Dave Zeltserman's Pariah hits the bookstores. As a reminder, and because I think this is a terrific book, I'm bringing to your attention this review I wrote last May.

SYNOPSIS: After eight years in prison for a bank robbery he most definitely was part of, Kyle Nevin is a free man. Not on parole, not on probation. Free. Free to search out and destroy the mob boss who ratted him out and set him up for the ambush. Fueled by a consuming need for revenge, for status and instant wealth, Kyle plans to attain all of these through a kidnapping. Of Irish descent, Kyle should have applied Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will, especially when there's always someone willing to rat you out. Never mind. He's smart enough, strong enough, and more than ruthless enough to beat, shoot, burn or even charm his way through all the problems. Nothing stands in Kyle's way, certainly not any of the finer feelings. He has other tools: intimidation, manipulation, deception, and a blinding rage always ready to boil over into violence. With these tools, he can do anything he wants - except see himself for the monster he is.

REVIEW: This book just sucked the air right out of me. It's more than great noir. This book's got teeth that bite and claws that catch, and it's a masterpiece. If you're looking for a hero or even an anti-hero, you won't find one here. Kyle Nevin is pure, unwavering psychopath, and the most finely drawn such creature since Charles Willeford put Junior Frenger on paper. If Jim Thompson's Lou Ford and James Cagney's Cody Jarrett (White Heat, 1949) are watching somewhere from the halls of twisted fiction, they are pouring out their warped blessings on Kyle Nevin.

All of the characters are well-drawn, no mean feat since the story is told from Kyle's point of view. Getting past his self-absorption and lack of empathy for others to see real 3D characters should be a chore for any author, but Zeltserman uses another attribute of psychopathy to reveal and create empathy for Nevin's victims: Nevin's merciless exploitation of their personalities. Virtually everyone who comes in contact with him becomes his victim in one way or another. The way Kyle systematically takes apart his struggling brother's life is like watching a wreck on the highway: you don't want to look but you can't resist the compulsion. It would have been very easy to make Kyle almost an evil superman, as he is completely unlikeable and irredeemable, a kind of noirish Gary Stu, but the author wisely found and manipulated the cracks in Kyle's armor. He does have psychological weaknesses - his vanity, his need to control, a craving for power and adulation - that manifest themselves in the physical, but Zeltserman walked a fine tightrope here, making the character fully rounded without ever giving the reader any reason or opportunity to empathize with him. Unlike the Joe Denton character in Small Crimes (my review here) whose full character wasn't truly understood even by himself until the very end of the book, the reader has no doubt from early on just what sort of vile anti-human Kyle is. Kyle may have some idea of what he is but that will never be something that troubles him. Just don't let anyone else mention it.

The setting is primarily Boston and its Southie section, with some brief forays into other locales. More than any other novel I've read, Pariah comes closest, scarily so, to breathing life and death into the news stories I've read about mob boss Whitey Bulger and the culture of murder, drugs, suicide and silence so prevalent in Southie then and probably to a great degree even now. Cultures and organizations with such hardened rules don't just change overnight, it takes years to eradicate or even just shift the old mindset.

While the general plot as I've described it in the synopsis may sound like something you've read before, I have been careful, I hope, not to write any spoilers, because this story takes Kyle down a far stranger, and yet more realistic, road than that brief summary would indicate. The author has both imagination and cojones by the boatload. He not only tackles the Southie history and culture of crime and violence, but he manages some truly sharp stabs at the publishing industry, specifically those kinds of publishers willing to pay huge money to OJ for that If I Did It book, while rejecting worthy but unknown authors simply for being unknown. Along those lines, there is a scene between Kyle and a struggling writer that is priceless. But don't think the stabbing stops at the publishing industry; the satire also lacerates the American fascination with and reverence for celebrity criminals.

The structure of the book is generally linear, and the reader gets clued in on Kyle's backstory as naturally as if the two of you were having lunch and chatting casually. When the character is this complex, it's good to keep the structure simple, no time shifts, no POV shifts. And no flights of fanciful prose here, this is Kyle Nevin telling you his story and he's not real big on poetry. He's direct. Not necessarily straightforward but still direct. While Kyle is always on the verge of or actually engaged in violence, he never gets too lovingly involved in graphic details, lending credence to his cold indifference to others.

The pacing of the book is a remarkable accomplishment. Pariah is moved along not so much by pace or tension as by torque. Definition time: torque is a measure of how much a force acting on an object causes that object to rotate. Zeltserman has put his objects - Kyle and the other characters - in motion and applies varying amounts of force to them. In turn, they apply force to each other, especially Kyle, and everybody starts to spin, carom, collide. The closer the reader comes to getting at the core of Nevin's character, the greater the torque, until something has to give. I don't think I breathed for the last 30 pages of this story.

Ken Bruen has written an elegant paean to this book and I want to share just one sentence of that well-deserved song of praise: 'Pariah is all I know of bliss and lament... bliss at reading a superb novel and lament at knowing that Dave Zeltersman has now raised the bar so high, we're screwed.'

If you revere the dark tales of Charles Willeford, Jim Thompson and James M. Cain, add Dave Zeltserman's name to your list. I promise you that in years to come, when those first three names are mentioned, so will the fourth.

Pariah by Dave Zeltserman. Serpent's Tail, © October, 2009.
ISBN 9781846686436 (trade paperback), 273p.