Attack of the TBRs

Back a few years ago, I used to worry about finding mysteries to read. I would haunt the local bookstores and library and get recommendations from the few friends who were also mystery readers. I would read every mystery I got my hands on through those methods and I'd have a small handful of TBRs (to-be-read books) at most.

Then it happened. I went online and met Georgette, the Maltese Condor, Della, Periphera and a lot of other mystery readers. Because of their stellar recommendations, my TBRs now number over 100 and are threatening to burst out of their bookcase. Sometimes I hear their authors reproaching me for leaving them on the shelf, and for my seeming to prefer new books fresh from the library or bookshop.

Some of the authors with books among the TBRs boldly accost me. Ian Rankin demands to know why I tore through each Rebus book as soon as it was published, but now, just because he's moved on to a new character in The Complaints, I'm not so eager. Fortunately for me, his Scots brogue is so strong that I don't understand a lot of what he says. I think he called me a "bampot," though.

Graham Hurley points to all the shelf real estate being taken up by the second through eleventh books in his Joe Faraday series and asks why I don't read them, considering that I have a 2012 series reading challenge going on. He's particularly peeved that I've chosen to read Josephine Tey's books for the second time for the challenge rather than his books for the first. I weakly respond that I did read the first book in his series and my husband has read all of the series, but he seems dissatisfied with my answer. "Hey pal," I want to say, "keep it up and you're getting moved to the already-read shelves."

Charles Cumming reminds me how excited I was to pick up The Trinity Six at the library's used bookstore six months ago, and how fascinated I've always been by the Cold War's Cambridge Spy Ring. It's been awhile since I've read a Cold War thriller, he points out. "And now that the remake of le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is coming out, it's the perfect time to read my book," Cumming reasons. He could be right, so I pull the book so that it stands out an inch from the others on the shelf. You know, like a little spy signal.

Andrea Camilleri seems to understand that I respond better to positive enticements than to criticism and pushiness. "Ciao, bella," he says, "there you are in your winter with your short days, and you deserve a visit to Salvo Montalbano's sunny Sicily. Ecco, you have three of his first four books right here! Put up your feet, pour a nice glass of limoncello and read."

Don Winslow appeals to nostalgia. "Hey, remember back when you found me at The Book Passage in Corte Madera? A Cool Breeze on the Underground and my other Neal Carey books, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, California Fire and Life. Those were the days, right? I know The Dawn Patrol didn't work for you, but we can get past that. You picked up Satori: A Novel Based on Trevanian's Shibumi at a book sale on a whim and it's been sitting here for the last couple of months. Give it a try; it's totally different from anything I've ever done." Maybe he's right. So I pull his book forward a little bit too.

Tana French is sulking over there on the far right of the second shelf. She knows I wasn't crazy about Faithful Place and she seems to guess that In the Woods isn't going to entice me anytime soon, no matter how many of my mystery-reading friends loved it.

Jedediah Berry is diffident, but he can't keep the injured tone out of his voice when he asks why I abandoned The Manual of Detection for something newly arrived from the library and then never picked up his book again, even though I was enjoying it. Unfortunately, I have no answer.

It's just as hard to explain to Thorne Smith why I haven't yet read Topper, even though Georgette and my husband loved it. I can't even look at Carlos Ruiz Zafón over there on the far right of the bottom shelf. The Shadow of the Wind is one of the longest tenants on my TBR shelves. How can I not have read it after years of my mystery friends telling me how great it is?

Then there are my old friends, the Michaels Gilbert and Innes. They sit there together, Gilbert's Close Quarters and The Danger Within, and Innes's Lament for a Maker and six Appleby books. The Michaels don't say much, because they know I'll get to them. After all, having read others of their books, I know I'll enjoy these books and I'm a lifelong fan of classic British crime fiction. And, of course, being British, the Michaels would never be pushy. The American in me wants to tell them that's not the way to get ahead, but I know they can't change their inbred characters. (I suppose their being dead is also a bit of an obstacle to a transformation in their personalities.)

The clamoring and censorious looks from the TBRs became so bad that I recently moved them from the living room to the next room. I can still hear them, but faintly, and they try to accost me when I go past them to the laundry room, but at least they're no longer such a constant reproach. Now I just have to do something about my history TBRs. Some of those guys have guns!

Which of my TBRs would you spring from the shelf and place next to my reading chair?

We're Making a List and Checking It Twice

No matter what winter holiday you're shopping for, it can be difficult to find the right gift for a special someone. Here at Read Me Deadly, we're debating books to give a noir films-loving spouse, a 14-year-old niece who loves historical fiction, and our mystery-loving friends like you.

Crowd of Motivated Shoppers Outside Book Store

To escape hordes of grimly determined shoppers like those pictured, you might order online. Please don't forget to support independent bookstores. You can find one devoted to mysteries and thrillers by checking the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. Here are a few suggestions from the Material Witnesses:  Powell's Books (free shipping in U.S. with no minimum purchase and guaranteed arrival by December 24 (offer ends at noon Pacific time, December 13th); will ship worldwide), Book Depository (free shipping worldwide), Fantastic Literature Limited, Murder by the Book, Seattle Mystery Bookshop, M Is For Mystery, Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Partners & Crime, the Rue Morgue Press, Felony and Mayhem, and the Mysterious Bookshop. We'd love to hear your favorite source for books in the comments section below this blog post.

Here are some book ideas from Sister Mary Murderous and Georgette Spelvin.  Check back for more suggestions during the next several weeks because we'll be posting more.

It's hard to find books for our friends who read a lot of mysteries. But I have a few lesser-known gems that just might suit.

Jonathan Coe is a British novelist whose nine books are all very different, but are generally politically oriented and satirical. The first book of his I read was The Winshaw Legacy: or, What a Carve Up! This unusual book is almost indescribable. It's a pastiche of detective story, farce, gothic and savage satire of Thatcherism. Weird, huh? This story of the old, powerful, corrupt and bizarre Winshaw family plays out from 1940 to 1990 and is one heck of a roller-coaster ride. I'd recommend it to somebody like Georgette, who enjoys non-linear storytelling.

Do you know somebody who enjoys watching House on television, or who is a fan of Hugh Laurie's from his many appearances in British television programs like Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder? Impress that person by presenting him or her with Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller. In this entertaining spoof of espionage fiction, Thomas Lang, a freelance operative, is so morally offended when he is offered an assassination job, that he decides to warn the would-be victim. Not surprisingly, complications ensue. This is a book not just for Hugh Laurie fans, but for anybody who enjoys a British sense of humor. Here's just a tiny indication of the kind of writing I'm talking about: "'Vodka martini,' I said. 'Incredibly dry. Powdered, if you've got it.'"

I'm not at all sure why Don Winslow isn't better known. Over the past 20 years, he's written 13 mysteries, most of them PI novels set in California or New York. My introduction to him was his A Cool Breeze on the Underground, the first in his Neal Carey series and a finalist for both Edgar and Shamus awards. Neal is a grad student in English literature at Columbia when the story begins, but his back story is that he was a kid from the streets who was informally adopted by a one-armed dwarf named Joe Graham. Graham works for Friends of the Family, which is not a charity, but a mysterious organization that protects the interests of clients of a bank in Providence, Rhode Island. Over the years, Graham taught Neal a lot about sleuthing, and now Graham calls on Neal to find a client's teenage daughter, who has run away to London. I'd give this book to anybody who likes quirky characters, snappy patter and hard-boiled mystery stories.

I've been warily eying my fellow Material Witnesses since August, when Sister Mary Murderous reminded us of the passage of time. At the end of the year, she said, it will be time to compose lists of our favorite books read in 2011. I detest list-making in general because it's foreign to my disorganized nature, and favorite-books lists specifically because, as Annie Proulx says, "Lists, unless grocery shopping lists, are truly a reductio ad absurdum." I dearly love reading other people's lists, however. You're probably wondering why I'm bringing this up now, but there is a reason: Della Streetwise is reading The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, edited by J. Peder Zane, and when I saw that, I hurried to buy it.

I love it. Yes, many of the books listed aren't a surprise, but this is still a book well worth owning, or you can check it out of the library. There's a section describing the books listed that is wonderful reading. There are lists of top ten fantasy and science fiction (in Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson, "after a nuclear war devastates the planet, residents of what had been the Florida Keys try to rebuild their lives and communities in a landscape where shards from the obliterated past–religious stories, Jimi Hendrix records, parking decks–remain but are barely understood"); comic works (Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse includes "perhaps the funniest scene in the Wodehouse canon–Gussie Fink-Nottle's drunken speech at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School–this madcap farce once again finds Bertie Wooster and his brilliant manservant Jeeves working to point Cupid's arrows toward other hearts." Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward is "a gay and witty farce about death. The sublime silliness begins when a writer holds a séance to research his novel on a murderous fake psychic. Who should appear but his first wife, dead these six years and none too happy about wife number two."). By American authors (if someone you know over age 12 hasn't yet read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, there's his or her gift), by Russian authors (The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is a complex book that would make a great gift for your satire-loving friends who like brain food), by British authors, etc. Given her love of straightening drawers and making lists, Zane's The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books would be a good gift for lawyer Sister Mary Murderous or other readers who are intimidatingly well-organized brainiacs but otherwise wonderful people.

The Top Ten's top ten mysteries and thrillers include some fine gift ideas. Before you gift-wrap John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for your espionage-loving friend, include a note inside the front cover inviting him or her to see the just-released movie of the same name starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. If movie night is drizzling rain, so you can wear a rumpled raincoat and pull the brim of your hat down, all the better. Sneak home after the movie (take a roundabout route if you're driving and look in the rear-view mirror a lot). Once home, serve hot tea and homemade English shortbread cookies or a hot toddy or hot buttered rum and dry biscuits. Our British readers will have to help me in refining these plans, or tell me what to do next. Maybe change into ratty bathrobes and retire to the library for a polite discussion about whether the book, new movie, or BBC production starring Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley is the best? You could also discuss le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the other George Smiley books, which are among the best espionage books ever written.

Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain also appears on the top ten mysteries list. It is about a woman "with two fatal flaws–an attraction to weak men and blind devotion to her monstrously selfish daughter Veda. These weaknesses join to form a perfect storm of betrayal and murder in this hard-boiled tale" set in Depression-era California, where you can smell the heat and watch people's dreams disappear. This book would make a classic hard-boiled fan happy. Watch Joan Crawford as Mildred and Ann Blyth as the vicious Veda in the 1945 Michael Curtiz movie based on the book. Eat plenty of popcorn and wash it down with that American classic, Coke.

We hope you're enjoying plenty of cheer as you prepare for the holidays. We'd love to hear about your suggestions for bookstores and gift books for people on your list. What are you reading now, and are you going to treat yourself to a new book for the holidays?

A Little Night Fright

Halloween is a night my kids look forward to all year. Dressing up in costumes. Going door-to-door, trick-or-treating with friends. Lugging home bags full of candy to be examined, traded with others and eaten until the kids are sick.

I won't be escorting my kids tonight and my husband and I aren't attending a costume party. Instead, we're having a few friends over for movies. We'll offer a choice of tried-and-true nail biters: Psycho (has anyone not heard of Janet Leigh's shower scene or how much Norman Bates loves his mother?), Carrie (Sissy Spacek shows everyone it doesn't pay to annoy her), John Carpenter's Halloween (who in the history of movies screams better than Jamie Lee Curtis?), The Shining (Jack Nicholson gets creepier and creepier as the movie progresses) and The Thing (Carpenter's 1982 movie starring Kurt Russell about a shape-shifting alien).

To accompany the movies we'll serve this hummus from Noble Pig and chips.


Pizza Hummus (Makes about 4 cups)
1 Tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
1 teaspoon dried basil
2 to 3 cloves garlic
3 cups canned chickpeas, drained & rinsed, 1/2 cup liquid reserved
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Kosher salt

Heat the olive oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the tomato paste, oregano and basil, cooking until slightly toasted, about 2 minutes. Transfer the tomato paste mixture to a food processor. Add the garlic, chickpeas, chickpea liquid, tahini, lemon juice and salt.  Puree until smooth and creamy.

If you'd like to read while waiting for trick-or-treaters, you might try one of the books below. I've given a couple of horror and other suggestions.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez. The first sentence of this slim book tells all you need to know: "On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming in." Atmospheric and relentless. By the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Drood by Dan Simmons. People either love or hate this 800-page book of steampunk/horror/historical fiction. Too long, but I enjoyed it. A story unreliably narrated by Wilkie Collins involving Collins, Charles Dickens and a mysterious figure named Drood who materializes from the scene of a train accident.

Dracula by Bram Stoker. Hey, I'm sick of vampires too, but this is the classic gothic fantasy and you must read it. Memorable characters in a tale of ever-increasing tension set in Victorian England and the spooky wilds of Transylvania. I've read it several times and still shiver when the Transylvanian peasants cross themselves.

Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula: The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count by John H. Watson, M.D. as edited by Loren D. Estleman. This is one of those books I had to read based on the title alone but I enjoyed this pastiche. It's for Holmes fans who've read Dracula. In this book, a schooner runs aground in an English harbor. The dead captain has lashed himself to the steering wheel and his cargo is 50 boxes of earth. The only living passenger is a large black dog. Sound familiar? Somebody better alert Holmes, and luckily for London, somebody does.

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler. The Peculiar Crimes Unit investigates London crimes with elements of the macabre or supernatural. This is the first book in an unusual series and it involves elderly detective John May's look back at the first case he and Arthur Bryant investigated during the London Blitz.

Savages by Don Winslow. Ben and Chon are happily supplying marijuana to their customers in Laguna Beach, California until a Mexican drug cartel decides to muscle in. Winslow is a great story teller. This book is thrilling rather than scary. It will keep you reading as you mindlessly reach for candy from the bowl for the little trick-or-treaters. (I hope you bought enough. What kind did you get?)

Appleby's Answer by Michael Innes. Priscilla Pringle is a well-known writer of clerical mysteries and, when a local rector dies mysteriously, her ears prick up and her nose begins to sniff. Her investigations are aided and abetted by the odd Captain Bulkington, who is interested in a real-life perfect murder. Soon Sir John Appleby, retired Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, gets an SOS. As usual, this book, the 27th in the John Appleby series, is a witty and literate gambol.

Make sure you put your leftover candy out of reach of your pets before you go to bed. This is a good night to keep your cats and dogs in the house where they'll be safe and where they can protect you from things that go bump in the night.

Oh, yes. You might want to sleep with a night light on, have a garlic clove on your bedside table and a heavy-duty flashlight under your pillow. You never know when some unannounced visitors will come tap-tap-tapping against your windowpane or ooze into the bedroom from under your closet door. It is Halloween after all. Sleep if you can.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

There are some chores we perform ourselves without much thinking. Washing the dishes. Cleaning the junk drawer.

There are other tasks most of us wouldn't dream of tackling. Subduing a rogue elephant. Performing a do-it-yourself appendectomy.

Then there are jobs like changing the oil in the car or tiling a kitchen counter. Some folks do these things themselves while others call in an expert.

Murder is that type of job.

A premeditated murder can be undertaken by a determined amateur but there are times a mere dilettante or gifted dabbler simply won't do. The potential victim is enveloped by security. The pool of potential suspects is shallow. The potential murderer is too fastidious to perform such a dastardly deed or not fastidious enough to plan and execute it without getting caught. Whatever the reason, the work is outsourced to a pro.

I've been reading about those times and meeting one assassin for hire after another. Fictional bodies have been dropping like autumn leaves from the trees. Let me take a breather from watching the rain of corpses to introduce you to some industrious professional killers.

The opening scene of Lenny Kleinfeld's Shooters & Chasers finds a freshly recruited pro criminal, sweet but dumb Emilio ("Meelo") Garcia, working at the absolute pinnacle of his abilities—he's waiting in a Chicago hotel room. His new boss, the man Meelo knows as Oscar, told him to stay put unless he wants a bullet through his brain. In a valiant effort to follow orders yet cope with his boredom, Meelo struggles to smoke only a "professional" amount of weed and literally gets lit.

Meanwhile, a famous Chicago architect climbs into a taxi to go home. When he arrives, a mugger kills him just feet away from the horrified cabbie. Cops Mark Bergman and John Dunegan easily follow evidence straight to Meelo but he insists he was in his hotel room and didn't murder anyone. The two conscientious cops are uneasy with contradictory statements by witnesses and Meelo's crazy story involving Oscar. Is it possible that a deadly mugging is really an extraordinarily elaborate professional hit-and-frame job? Of course!

Yeah, yeah, I promised an intro to the hitters but handed you the fall guy instead. Listen, you should meet those memorable baddies (Arthur Reid, Dina Velaros and Hector B) yourselves. I will tell you this: A more witty, rambunctious, hip and hilarious, soft-hearted hard-boiled book is impossible to imagine. Assessing Shooters & Chasers as if it were a wine I'd say it offers up an enthralling bouquet of Quentin Tarantino, the Muppets, Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. Complex, savory and unadulterated pure fruit. Don't. Miss. It. Kleinfeld's sequel is in the works with a probable publishing date of 2013 and I am dying to get my hands on it.

Richard Straight took an unexpected career path to hit man. He was a Tchaikovsky-loving, Kant-reading New York City policeman with a good reputation until his wife was killed by a car bomb meant for him. Straight decided if he couldn't lick 'em, he'd join 'em so he called the boss of the Mafia soldier he'd been pursuing and asked for a job.

In Straight, the first book by Steve Knickmeyer, he is sent to Solano, Oklahoma to kill jeweler Arthur Taber. Straight's boss insists that Hamilton Coady join him there so Straight can give Coady some on-the-job training. The two hit men do not hit it off. Eliminating Taber doesn't go as planned and this summons two Oklahoma City private investigators, tough Steve Cranmer and his womanizing young sidekick, Butch Maneri. Events in Solano don't go smoothly for them either because the town's citizens aren't statues content to stand quietly in the park while two hit men mess around.

This well-written book is for readers who like theirs served hard-boiled with lashings of clever dialogue and sprinklings of humor. Despite their cynicism, the characters deliver some tender insights into the human condition. I liked this book and you can bet I'll read Knickmeyer's next one, Cranmer.

"It's a lot of work being me." Frank Machianno begins his narration of Don Winslow's non-series book The Winter of Frankie Machine with this lament and he ain't kidding. Frank is a Vietnam vet who now runs a bait shop on the pier in San Diego. He also furnishes linen and fish to restaurants and manages rental properties. A relaxing dinner out with his girlfriend means that while Donna powders her nose, Frank slips into the kitchen to ask the chef if he's happy with his current fish supplier.

Frank has a daughter entering medical school and an ex-wife to support. Yet he finds the time to make life good. Perfectly made coffee and pasta. Surfing with friends. Everybody likes and respects Frank but nobody respects him like those who knew him before he retired from the Mob. He was Frankie Machine. Efficient pro killer, honorable "made" man, no squealer. One night Frank the bait man has no choice but to perform a favor, meeting with a Detroit mobster, for the son of a West Coast Mafia boss. The meeting is a setup that forces Frank on the run from the Mob, the cops and the FBI. To bail out of trouble he looks back at his decades as Frankie Machine to figure out who in the Mafia now wants him dead. It's a gripping, tightly plotted and cinematic tale about a surprisingly sympathetic character and I cheered for Frank all the way.

Have you ever been caught with your mental pants down during an introduction? Not this time. I feel no humiliation admitting I don't know the real name of Thomas Perry's hit man. When his parents died he was raised by the local butcher. "The Butcher's Boy" is how the neighborhood knew him and how the Mafia knows him now. He's highly skilled in the arts of murder and life on the run, thanks to his now-deceased mentor Eddie. The Boy runs Eddie's advice almost constantly through his head as if he's fingering a talisman.

He needs more than luck in Perry's first book, The Butcher's Boy, when everyone is out to get him. Bad guys include Mafiosi and their connections, one of whom hired him. Good guys include the U.S. Justice Department's Elizabeth Waring, who analyzes computer printouts listing fishy deaths and whose expertise is the Mafia. She has long suspected the existence of a prolific pro killer. A pickup full of fertilizer that detonated in California, killing its union-member owner, catches her attention. Justice begins an investigation that explodes in scope.

It's a complex plot, engagingly told, well paced and suspenseful. The reader alternately accompanies the Boy as he ingeniously and energetically murders and copes with being chased by ramping up the mayhem, and Waring as she doggedly follows his trail. (I coped by taking the book into the bathtub and ingeniously and energetically splashed around. When I sensed Waring's frustration I ate Lindt truffles to deal with it.)

In Sleeping Dogs and again in The Informant, the Boy is flushed out of retirement in England, where he's been living as Michael Schaeffer. Certain Mob bosses are not ready to bury the hatchet with Schaeffer so he sets his jaw and travels back to the States to mow them down until they are. Waring picks up his scent in Sleeping Dogs and she's in full cry after him in The Informant. She wants him in the Witness Protection Program and Schaeffer wants to pick her brain about the Mafia don who's pursuing him. Neat, huh?

This is a series best read in order. The second and third books clarify events in the first and give more background about the Boy. I enjoyed these books very much. Elizabeth Waring is an appealing character, a dedicated fed who balances motherhood with her career and struggles with the Justice bureaucracy. I rooted for the Butcher's Boy because his enemies are plug uglier than he is. He's a pro assassin humanized by his desire to stay alive, an attachment he develops in England and most of all his bond with Eddie. It's a fitting memorial to Eddie that his Boy endures. I suggest you resist temptation to read one right after another or you'll be dodging bullets as you water your petunias. All the Boy's nonstop scrambling and inventive slaughtering made me walleyed and driving the car risky business but I've survived. Thanks, Eddie.

There are other hitters I want you to meet but they'll have to wait. I'm exhausted from evading capture. In coming weeks I'll tell you about these books:

Barbara Paul: Kill Fee; Teri White: Max Trueblood and the Jersey Desperado; Josh Bazell: Beat the Reaper; J. A. Konrath ed.: These Guns for Hire; Jerome Charyn: Elsinore; Frederick Forsyth: Day of the Jackal; Max Allan Collins: Primary Target; Lawrence Block: Hit and Run; Loren D. Estleman: Something Borrowed, Something Black.

I hope you'll try some of the books I've described above. Tagging along with these hired guns as they calmly dispatch their targets and fade quietly back into the woodwork can be very interesting. But pro hitters' lives are like yours and mine. Things don't always go without a hitch. The victim's neighbor pops over with a meat loaf or a solid citizen sideswipes the getaway car and stubbornly insists on an exchange of information. A pesky private eye decides to poke her nose in. What causes a blinding headache and more extemporaneous work for gunmen can cause rejoicing for us ignoble readers as we take unseemly pleasure in watching them desperately run up the death toll and run hell for leather outta there. Isn't it something, how exhilaratingly ignoble we can be?