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Litchfield Reviews Fredric Brown’s Madball

LEP.CO.UK - Madball by Fredric Brown

Accomplished American mystery and science fiction author Fredric Brown, who died in 1972 at age 65, penned more than 30 books, 300 short stories and vignettes, and television plays for shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

His novel, Madball, reissued this month as a mass-market paperback by Black Gat Books, was originally published in 1953 by Dell Books and in condensed form, earlier that same year, under the title ‘The Pickled Punks’ in The Saint Detective Magazine.

It was the novel that began the pocket-size paperback revolution by Dell Publications – a project that revolutionized the publishing industry by offering, without a prior hardcover edition, original paperback novels for 25 cents.

According to The Fresno Bee, the author travelled with a carnival to get material for this story. You can tell as much from the carney slang, the interesting titbits of carnival lore, and the vivid descriptions of shooting galleries, fortune wheels, merry-go-rounds, and the strident selling spiel of barkers over p.a. systems.

It’s not surprising that authors like Aryn Rand and Robert Bloch spoke highly of Brown, an ingenious writer with an abundance of bright story ideas. Purportedly, Mickey Spillane named him as his all-time favourite author and Anthony Boucher of The New York Times hailed him as a successor to the late Cornell Woolrich.

Madball is a fun, exciting, and extremely enjoyable screwball story that is full of dark and devious humour and numerous surprising twists. A wise investment in time and money, it’s guaranteed to be a novel you will read multiple times.

My full review of Brown’s terrific novel is published today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. You can read the review here.

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Litchfield reviews ‘To the Bones’ for the Colorado Review

Colorado Review - To the Bones by Valerie Nieman

“This nicely paced, suspenseful tale, imbued with detailed knowledge of the Appalachian region and the coal mining industry, is aided by Nieman’s rich, artistic language and redolent descriptions of a grim but fascinating literary ecosphere where giant cracks open in the ground, ordinary rock underfoot leaks a kind of vile pus, and orange goo fills the waterways. It’s a strange, disconcerting place populated by thoughtful, articulate people; trigger-happy rent-a-cops; zombies; and residents who can mysteriously evaporate or be stripped to the bone.”

In To the Bones, the fourth novel  by American author Valerie Nieman, who teaches creative writing at North Carolina A&T State University, Nieman chisels out a post-apocalyptic, eco-justice love story set in the vivid yet fictional Carbon County, West Virginia. The tense and atmospheric story, enlivened by Celtic lore, Appalachian legends, and killer zombies, captures the reader’s attention from the outset, beginning with the intriguing emergence from a deep, coal mine crater of the central character, a hapless government auditor named Darrick MacBrehon.

Published today in the Colorado Review is my review of Valerie Nieman’s novel To the Bones.

Read the full, in-depth book review here.

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Litchfield Reviews Bernice Carey’s The Man Who Got Away With It and The Three Widows

LEP.CO.UK - The Man Who Got Away With It and The Three Widows by Bernice Carey

“Riveting and astutely written, The Man Who Got Away With It showcases Carey’s remarkable ability to get inside the minds of her many varied characters and convincingly present small-town community conflicts and sentiments of the era.

In contrast, the second novel in this collection, The Three Widows, first published in 1952, is a light, tongue-in-cheek murder mystery that is laughingly farfetched, and yet fun, likable, and thoroughly entertaining.”

Bernice Carey Martin wrote eight critically acclaimed mysteries between 1949 and 1955 using the name Bernice Carey. Despite her success and her unmistakable talent for crafting intelligent, absorbing mysteries filled with authentic townsfolk and credible character development, her literary career fell eerily silent after 1955.

Thankfully, this month two of her long-forgotten novels are back in print.

Nicholas Litchfield’s review of Bernice Carey’s powerful psychological drama The Man Who Got Away With It and tongue-in-cheek whodunit The Three Widows is published today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. You can read the full book review here.

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Litchfield reviews ‘Smoke City’ for the Colorado Review

Colorado Review - Smoke City by Keith Rosson

“Although somewhat uneven and, at times, repetitive, Smoke City is a distinctive, emotionally rewarding story that moves and entertains. Rosson, whose debut novel, The Mercy of the Tide, netted strong critical reviews, once again shows his talent for creating authentic, sorrowful characters and rich, beautifully wrought prose.”

Weaving between hope and destruction, fear and sorrow, fantasy and realism, American author and illustrator, Keith Rosson, expertly drives his ghostly, offbeat road novel, Smoke City, into interesting, unforeseen terrain. Set in modern-day America, Rosson’s impressive, character-driven fantasy is focused on two tortured souls, both haunted by past transgressions and both seeking atonement.

Published today in the Colorado Review is my review of Keith Rosson’s novel Smoke City.

Read the full, in-depth book review here

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Litchfield Reviews Ovid Demaris’s The Hoods Take Over

LEP.CO.UK - The Hoods Take Over by Ovid Demaris

“Highly engrossing, briskly paced, and with colourful and convincing characters, The Hoods Take Over is a grisly yet powerful hard-hitting crime story that shocks, fascinates and moves the reader. Those with a predilection for gangster novels should put this at the top of their reading list.”

Ovid E. Desmarais, better known as Ovid Demaris, was an acclaimed American author of historical and biographical works about the Mafia, several of which enjoyed a combined 64 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He was also successful at writing hardboiled crime fiction. Two of his best-known novels were Candyleg, which was turned into a 1969 Italian film starring John Cassavetes, Britt Ekland and Peter Falk, and The Hoods Take Over, filmed as Gang Wars, featuring Charles Bronson.

Published in June 1957, The Hoods Take Over was Demaris’s second successful published novel in a matter of months. It’s a tautly plotted, gritty tale of gang wars, racketeering, police corruption, and the dangers faced by a murder witness who risks his life to give testimony against powerful mobsters.

Nicholas Litchfield’s review of Ovid Demaris’s excellent ‬The Hoods Take Over is published today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. You can read the full book review here.

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Litchfield Reviews Pirates by Timothy J. Lockhart for the Lancashire Post

LEP.CO.UK - Pirates by Timothy J. Lockhart

Pirates, the latest novel from American author Timothy J. Lockhart, is a modern-day high-seas thriller set in the hazardous rough waters of the Caribbean. As with his suspenseful debut novel, Smith, this explosive action-adventure yarn has the same blend of violence and eroticism, as well as taut prose, exhilarating gun battles, and unforgettable villainy.

At the heart of the story is tough, disfigured Hal Morgan, a former Navy SEAL who now works as a boatman in Puerto Rico.

While returning a charter boat, his lonely life takes an unexpected turn when he comes across a sinking daysailer containing the beautiful mistress of a vicious crime boss and half a million dollars in stolen cash.

What follows is a tense, cat and mouse story with the crime boss and his obedient crew members relentlessly pursuing the girl and the money and brutally dispatching anyone who gets in their way.

With bullets zinging and baddies converging from all sides, it’s anyone’s guess who will make it out alive in Lockhart’s gruesome, exhilarating adventure.

Nicholas Litchfield’s review of the Lockhart’s unpredictable, blood-and-guts page-turner is published today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. The full, in-depth review can be found here.

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Litchfield reviews ‘Adiós to My Parents’ for the Colorado Review

Colorado Review - Adiós to My Parents by Héctor Aguilar Camín

“Given the private nature of Adiós to My Parents, you would think that the book would prohibit a readership beyond those with a personal attachment to the author, but, in fact, this is an astute and absorbing, deeply emotional family tale that can move, intrigue, and interest a far broader audience.”

First published in 2014 in Mexico as Adiós a los padres, distinguished Mexican author and historian, Héctor Aguilar Camín, offers up a bold and intimate account of his family’s checkered history in this powerful and uninhibited memoir, Adiós to My Parents, which has been translated into English for the first time. A recipient of numerous national literary awards, including the lifetime achievement award from Mexico’s Instituto de Bellas Artes—the country’s top cultural institution—Aguilar Camín is one of Mexico’s most revered writers. Although also a well-known novelist, with several of his works adapted to the screen, including Morir en el golfo, he is better known as a journalist and writer of Mexican history and politics.

Here, the emphasis of Aguilar Camín’s book is firmly on his ancestry and, in particular, his mother and father’s personal journey. Using a singular approach to chronicling his and their lives, Aguilar Camín jumps back and forth through the decades, offering a genealogical history, revisiting faded memories from youth, exposing ugly family secrets and painful truths, and sharing his parents’ candid stories.”

Published today in the Colorado Review is my review of Héctor Aguilar Camín’s memoir, Adiós to My Parents.

Read the full, in-depth book review here

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Litchfield Reviews No Law Against Angels, Doll for a Big House, and Chorine Makes a Killing by Carter Brown

LEP.CO.UK - No Law Against Angels, Doll for a Big House, and Chorine Makes a Killing by Carter Brown

“This triple dose of Carter Brown mysteries from 1957 finds homicide detective Al Wheeler investigating the deaths of two call girls, tracing a missing girl, and taking a job as a private investigator to clear a lawyer of a murder rap.

No Law Against Angels, Doll for a Big House, and Chorine Makes a Killing are three light and lively entries in British-born Australian pulp writer Alan Geoffrey Yates’ phenomenally successful mystery series which spawned 300 books.

Yates, who emigrated to Australia in his mid-twenties, penned 215 novels and approximately 75 novella-length stories between 1954 to 1984, using the house name Carter Brown. The international appeal of these tongue-in-cheek mysteries was such that they rapidly became Australia’s biggest literary export.

The opening story in this newly released collection, No Law Against Angels, was the first Carter Brown to be published in the United States. The revised US version, with slightly tighter writing and an extra polish, was titled The Body.

Nicholas Litchfield’s review of the third volume of Carter Brown novels to be reissued by Stark House Press is featured today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 UK newspapers. You can read the review here.

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Litchfield Reviews The Made-Up Man by Joseph Scapellato

LEP.CO.UK - The Made-Up Man by Joseph Scapellato

“Absurdist humour and existential noir intermingle in Joseph Scapellato’s playful and intelligent debut novel about a soul-searching archaeology school dropout who finds himself at the centre of a strange and risky performance art project in the Czech Republic.

Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Scapellato, who now lives in Pennsylvania, is an assistant professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at Bucknell University. His previous work, the critically acclaimed story collection Big Lonesome, received high praise from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and the Lancashire Post, with the New York Times proclaiming: ‘Scapellato’s inventive, hallucinatory prose dazzles.’

His newest work is a wholly original hybrid between a detective story and a subverted examination of oneself, with the narrator, much like a previous character from Scapellato’s story collection, reflecting on his past, trying to make sense of the present, and exploring the myth of the self.”

Nicholas Litchfield’s review of Joseph Scapellato’s notable debut novel, The Made-Up Man, is featured today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 UK newspapers. You can read the review here.

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Litchfield Reviews Lead With Your Left and The Best That Ever Did It by Ed Lacy

LEP.CO.UK - Lead With Your Left and The Best That Ever Did It by Ed Lacy

“Singled out by Edgar and Anthony Award-winning biographer Marvin Lachman as worthy of rediscovery, these two forgotten novels are reprinted this month in a Stark House combined edition.

The first story, initially published in 1956 in Mercury mystery book magazine as ‘Keep an Eye on the Body’ and serialised in newspapers, was expanded and published by Harper & Brothers in January 1957 under the title Lead With Your Left. Engrossing and action-packed, it features a very ‘cocky’ 21-year-old New York police detective named David Wintino who is assigned a homicide case involving a retired policeman shot dead in an alleyway while working as a messenger for a brokerage house.

The second novel, The Best That Ever Did It, published by Harper & Brothers in March 1955 as part of their hardback suspense series, is a lively, fascinating tale about a private eye’s investigation into the apparently motiveless killing of a contest winner and a police detective outside a dive bar in New York City. Again, Lacy presents a three-dimensional, sympathetic narrator who strays from the norm… this time, Barney Harris, a big, tough, 18-stone car mechanic who moonlights as a private investigator.

Famed New York Times book critic and author Anthony Boucher, an avid reader of Lacy’s work, selected The Best That Ever Did It as one of the best books of 1955, describing it as ‘the year’s most original and off-trail variant on the private-eye theme.’ As with Lead With Your Left, it’s certainly a riveting, stimulating novel, with a particularly engaging, likeable protagonist, a sure-footed plot, believable characters, smart dialogue, and hard-hitting prose.”

Nicholas Litchfield’s review of these two exceptional mysteries from Ed Lacy is featured today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 UK newspapers. You can read the review here.