In a “normal” year, I might have lost myself in crime fiction. Books, short stories, films, television, comic books, and graphic novels. Yet in a year and a nation overstuffed with real-life crime,
fiction often wasn’t enough for this lost Canadian.Oh, there were books I could almost lose myself in, and Lord knows I tried; but worries political, professional, and personal kept intruding. It has been one hell of a year, and Rap Sheet editor Jeff Pierce is not kidding when he suggests that we’re all—or at least most of us—tired.
Still, I was heartened by memories of my long-gone mother and her reports of how during World War II’s Blitzkrieg, Londoners took refuge in the underground Tube stations, huddled together, reading works by Agatha Christie and other authors, even as Nazi artillery exploded overhead. And so, as more figurative bombs kept falling right and left these last dozen months, I did manage to find solace in these 10 books:
• Untouchable, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly)
• Never Flinch, by Stephen King (Scribner)
• Murder Takes a Vacation, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• Picket Line, by Elmore Leonard (Mariner)
• Nightshade, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• Boystown, by John Shannon (Unnamed Press)
• Hatchet Girls, by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland)
• Galway’s Edge, by Ken Bruen (Mysterious Press)
• North Country, by Matt Bondurant (Blackstone)
• Out of Alcatraz, by Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook (Oni Press)
Each of those had a scene, a character, a mood, a spark—something—that let me achieve escape velocity for a blissful hour of so.
Mike Lawson’s Untouchable, featuring Washington, D.C., political fixer Joe DeMarco, wandered all too close to reality on occasion. However, I was heartened by its suggestion that even in the most vile of times, with corruption coming down like a hammer on a drum, maybe, just maybe, some spark of goodness may prevail. Stephen King and Laura Lippman also brought back two of my favorite series eyes, Holly Gibney and Tess Monaghan, respectively, even if the long-missing Tess’ appearance amounted to little more than an extended cameo or two—still, it was great to catch up with both of them. The Leonard novella barely qualifies as a book, and yet it was a delicious reminder of what a gift that author was to crime fiction. Fellow vet Connelly’s Nightshade was a
rousing introduction to a promising new series, featuring a big-city cop trying to bring law and order (or at least some approximation of justice) to the sleepy resort vibe of California’s beloved Santa Catalina Island, mere miles off the coast from big, bad Los Angeles. Back on that mainland, John Shannon’s beaten and battered, post-stroke private eye, Jack Liffey, continued to fight the good fight in the City of Angels and its myriad subcultures (Onward, West Hollywood?), while a few states over, in Texas, Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard go tooth, nail, and assorted weaponry against some well-armed women in a bloody froth of crime, misguided politics, and feminist ire. And across the ocean, in Ireland, the late, great Ken Bruen’s Galway’s Edge was a heart-wrenching adieu from one of the genre’s outstanding stylists and yarn spinners, and marked a swan song for his poetry-spouting, beleaguered but defiant detective, Jack Taylor, one of crime fiction’s most memorable characters. We’ll miss them both.There were also a couple of unexpected surprises this year that landed hard. North Country was way out of my usual wheelhouse, mixing hard-boiled crime with some surprising WTF? and dark-hearted woo-woo, as dishonorably discharged Tom Kaiser makes his way home to upstate Chazy, New York—a return that turns into a swirl of murder, backstabbing, stolen art, broken families, and drug smuggling that stretches from Vermont all the way to Montreal and back. Oh, plus satellites and shooting stars in the sky and something like death moving under the unforgiving ice of a frozen Lake Champlain. The Out of Alcatraz graphic novel also straddles the Canada/U.S. border, telling a twisted prison break tale based oh-so-loosely on actual events that occurred in 1962, with the escapees (whose bodies, historically, were never recovered) and their accomplices squabbling, dodging the law and assorted betrayals, and fighting their way from the infamous San Francisco federal pen cross country to Canada, and the whispered promise of shelter from the storm.
I know just how they feel.
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