The Core Dump

As you know if you’ve read this blog for a while, I love books. Love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em.

It seemed like a good idea to collect some of my favorite fiction and showcase it in one place. After some hemming and hawing, I decided to create a little Amazon aStore and populate it with hand picked crime fiction. And thus, Recoil Press was born. “Hand picked” as in, everything on there I’ve read or watched and enjoyed.

If you like crime fiction, please do check it out. As always with Amazon, if you buy something through Recoil Press, I get a teensy amount of philthy lucre, which I shall of course turn around and plow right back into Amazon. (Oh, they’re cunning…)

Enjoy.

David Simon is one of the creators of the fantastic HBO show The Wire. He wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets after spending 1988 observing three squads of Baltimore homicide detectives. Simon’s unprecedented access to the detectives as they go about their jobs resulted in a book so tight and well-written it’s sometimes hard to believe it’s not fiction.

Not only does Simon capture the lingo and banter of the detectives, but he also finds empathy and raw emotion in the most unlikely places.

As a bonus for fans of The Wire, one of the many classic scenes from that show, where the detectives use a photocopier as a fake polygraph machine, is straight from Homicide.

Even though now 20 years old, Homicide is a gripping read. It is hard to imagine that the business of murder has changed all that much in the intervening years.

Michael Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch novel, The Overlook, started as a serialized novel, and despite a serious reworking it’s less of a treat than we’re used to getting from Michael Connelly.

Apart from the length and somewhat shallow plot, the biggest problem with The Overlook is that Harry Bosch feels tired.

Not up to Connelly’s usual standards, but if you’re a Bosch fan, it’s better than nothing.

Related Core Dump reviews:

Chasing the Dime
Lost Light
The Narrows
The Closers
The Lincoln Lawyer
Echo Park

The follow-up to Dennis Lehane’s A Drink Before the War, Darkness, Take My Hand continues the story of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro and their shoestring PI agency. Like the previous novel, it is a dark tale of South Boston and the corrupt, nihilistic characters who inhabit its underworld.

Unfortunately, where A Drink Before the War was dark and grim, Darkness, Take My Hand ups the gore factor and the sheer amount of human depravity and evil to an unpleasant level. It’s a fine line to walk in noir fiction, and Lehane steps way over it in this novel—reading it is like taking a bath in filth.

On the plus side, Lehane’s prose is finely honed and crafted.

Darkness, Take My Hand is definitely only for the hard-core noir fan.

Related Core Dump Reviews:

A Drink Before the War

It seems like Carl Hiaasen really doesn’t want people to visit Florida.

Populated by, among others, the world’s worst salesman, a mother who’s literally off her meds, a tormented half-Seminole, and a completely psychotic stalker, and taking place against the backdrop of bug-infested wilderness, Nature Girl leaves you with a distinct feeling that Florida is one place to definitely stay away from.

Like Hiaasen’s other novels, Nature Girl blends a deranged plot with dark humor. It’s darker and less funny than his other novels, though, and lacks his usual verve.

It’s not a bad read, but not up to Hiaasen’s usual standard.

Related Core Dump reviews:

Native Tongue
Basket Case

Bleeding Hearts is one of Ian Rankin’s non-Rebus novels, and while it’s a solid page-turner about an assassin who ends up in trouble after being set up during an assignment, it lacks the sense of place and humanity of the Rebus series of novels.

As always, Rankin’s prose and plotting are of the highest caliber, and Bleeding Hearts contains some interesting characters, but unless you’re a die-hard Ranking fan, or you find yourselves in an airport needing a solid page-turner for the journey, it’s probably best to leave it on the shelf.

Related Core Dump Reviews:

A Question of Blood
Resurrection Men
The Falls
Set in Darkness
Dead Souls
The Hanging Garden
Black and Blue
Let it Bleed
Mortal Causes
The Black Book
Strip Jack
Tooth and Nail
Hide and Seek
Knots and Crosses
Fleshmarket Alley

Taking place in the seedy underbelly of Washington, D.C., George Pelecanos’s Right as Rain is a hard-boiled novel about racial tension set among drug dealers, junkies and corrupt cops.

Pelecanos writes with economy and grace, taking the time to bring his characters to life. The plot itself is not that special, but the characters and the vibrant portrayal of the crumbling city itself provide plenty of power to Right as Rain.

The feel is similar to HBO’s excellent The Wire, a show for which Pelecanos wrote several episodes.

If you liked The Wire, Right as Rain will do you solid.

Echo Park is the latest installment in Michael Connelly’s series of novels about Detective Harry Bosch. It features an interesting plot with some serious twists and turns, Connelly’s usual precise prose, and of course, Harry Bosch himself.

The novel is a good read, but certainly not one of Connelly’s best. The biggest problem is that Bosch seems to be mellowing out more and more as the series progresses, and Bosch himself and his issues were one of the main things setting the series apart. Another big problem is with the psycho killer in the story—the character never really goes beyond Psycho From Central Casting.

So, all in all, a decent installment, but not something to introduce new readers to the series.

Related Core Dump reviews:

Lost Light
The Narrows
The Closers
Chasing the Dime
The Lincoln Lawyer

Adrian McKinty’s The Dead Yard is his second novel about Irish sociopath Michael Forsythe, following the excellent Dead I Well May Be.

Like its predecessor, The Dead Yard is strong and well-crafted noir, with great writing and an uncanny ear for dialog, with a generous sprinkling of Irish slang and idioms that sets McKinty apart from other writers in the genre. Coupled with a strong, fast-moving plot, interesting and gritty characters, and a convincing portrait of the protagonist, the novel builds on the best parts of Dead I Well May Be and improves on them in every way.

It’s a hard novel to put down, especially as it barrels toward the grim ending.

While it can be read stand-alone, it’s best to first read Dead I Well May Be to get the back story and understand Forsythe’s motivations better.

Dead I Well May Be

Dead I Well May Be is a new generation of hard-boiled noir, featuring a young Irishman brought over to early-nineties New York to work as muscle for a mobster.

Adrian McKinty’s strong and fast-moving debut benefits greatly from his writing style, with a strong sense of place and a great ear for the Irish dialect and idioms. The plot is fast and furious, with great pacing and inevitability. It’s one of those novels that keep you reading way too late into the night.

Dead I Well May Be does suffer a bit from the narrator’s lack of pathos, coming across more as if he’s suffering from Asperger’s than from a violent childhood in Belfast during the Troubles.

That aside, though, it’s a gripping read.