I just finished grading my third class of Froshcomp, leaving me a stack of film midterms to get through before Wednesday evening and the beginning of Fall Break. I’ve also managed to work in some Mondoville sports spectating (a win for the volleyballers, a loss for the pigskin crew), but what I’ve done the most this week is read.
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This is because I got a slew (or perhaps a slew and a half) of books in honor of completing another trip around the sun. Mrs. M and I marked the occasion with a trip to one of Mondoville’s nicer restaurants, where I had one of my favorite meals, a hamburger steak. (Yeah, I’m more gourmand than gourmet, but I like what I like.) Dessert was cheesecake — turtle for Mrs. M, Belgian chocolate for me. We even had time for a picture.
After that, it was back to the Mid-Century Mondohaus for the aforementioned slew-point-five. The writers represented ranged from Westlake (a Dortmunder novel from the Spawn) to Theodore Dalrymple (his second collection of short fiction/lacerating satire), and included all three volumes of Tod Goldnerg’s Gangsterland novels, and the first of James D.F. Hannah’s Henry Malone P.I. novels. Added to that are a collection of shorts by Joe R. Lansdale, the LoA’s collection of ’60s crimefic, and a biography of legendary fireballer Steve Dalkowski. Oh, and did I mention two books from Andrew Cartmel and a collection of essays on Power Pop? I also got a new T-shirt declaring my support for my beloved UK Wildcats, and I still have a collection of some of Mr. B’s very early work on the way. In short, I made a haul, folks. But the first two that I read came from Adrian McKinty and … there’s that man again… Jordan Harper.
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I started off with McKinty’s seventh installment in his Sean Duffy series. The Detective Up Late moves our hero from the 1980s to 1990. Duffy — doubly an outsider, as both a Catholic and an RUC Detective Inspector in Belfast — is on the verge of retirement, a glide path in the form of a seven-day-a-month position as a reservist until he can earn his pension while spending the rest of his time across the water in Scotland with his girlfriend and their daughter. But of course, there’s one more case — in this instance, a missing 15-year-old Traveler girl. Oh, and there’s the matter of Duffy’s former superior, an IRA mole turned double agent, and now Duffy’s responsibility.
While ordinarily, the “one last case” business would be an invitation to hackery, McKinty is far too skilled for that, and manages to maintain suspense and to surprise the reader — well, this reader, anyway. The ensemble of characters, both long-time and relatively recent, remain vital and interesting, and there’s plenty of action, including a firefight sequence in an abandoned estate block that was worth the price of admission in itself. But as always, I think the real star of the book and the series is Belfast itself, grimy, simmering, and dangerous, where the phrase “an acceptable level of violence” originated. The Detective Up Late may be the final Sean Duffy book, and if so, it makes a fine capper to a terrific series. The book — and series — are highly recommended.
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“Won’t Mondo just shut up about Jordan Harper already?” Well, I guess I could, but not when he writes books like my birthday gift (and 2018 Edgar winner for Best First Novel) She Rides Shotgun.
Once again, we find ourselves in the underworld of the Inland Empire of California, a milieu driven by gangs (especially ethnic gangs) both within and without prison walls. Nate McClusky, just released from prison, has learned that the leader of the Aryan Steel gang has put a hit out not only on him, but on his former wife and their eleven-year-old daughter. As Harper might say, every dirty whiteboy in California is jumping at the chance to exterminate McClusky and the people he loves.
Too late to save his wife, but desperate to protect his daughter, Nate essentially abducts Polly and the two go on the run, trying to stay alive — and to become dangerous enough that Aryan Steel calls off the greenlight. The novel is both poetic and savage, often simultaneously, and the pacing is relentless. Like Last King of California, which I reviewed a couple of weeks back, this is both a brutal crime novel and a consideration of family — common blood both shared and shed. As with the McKinty, I stayed up reading until almost midnight in order to finish it. Harper is a ferocious young talent (certainly younger than I am, in any case), in the tradition of James Ellroy, but with a present-day voice distinctly his own.
Do I even have to say it? Yeah — read the book.
Well, I’m closing in on suppertime, so I think I’d better wrap this one up. San Antonio’s Stoics were part of the city’s mid-60s scene; reportedly, three of the members met in a teen gang. They made exactly one record, a single released in January 1967 on the one-shot BRAM label. But it was a killer — one of the few records rated 10/10 on both sides by Mike Markesich’s garage rock bible, TeenBeat Mayhem. (The single was reissued earlier this year on the Okta-Bone label, if you want your own copy.) The A-side, “Hate“, is 2:25 of Stonesy jangle, all sneers and the first syncopated snare beat that every teen drummer learns. But we’re looking at the B-side today. “Enough of What I Need” is a snarly, aggressive, perfect example of what garage rock buffs call “tuff,” and has been covered by 90s-era revivalists Mystic Eyes and the late Creatures of the Golden Dawn. If you can’t dig this, you may need a new shovel.
See you soon!
Professor Mondo 