Sean
Whenever I read Jerry Peterson's books, I always finish the same way: I cast the book aside and resolve once again to work on boosting my own prose abilities to his level. Jerry Peterson has an easy way with characters and dialogue that can't be taught; you either have it, or you don't. Jerry has it in spades.
With ICED, Jerry has turned his attentions to a new detective series, this one fashioned after the Japanese “thumb-novels” that were so popular a few years ago. Each chapter is only a couple of pages. The prose is sparse, clean, and effective. There are no unnecessary words. The action clips along at a hyperkinetic pace. And the characters–oh man, the characters. Some writers can spend trilogies developing characters that don't feel half as real as Peterson's characters do in a few artfully crafted lines.
With John “Wads” Wadkowski, Jerry has sculpted a modern-day hard-boiled detective from the Dairy State. This is no small feat. Wads, and the other characters in Iced, leap off the page with unflinching verisimilitude and heart. The dialogue is lovely and rich, in that way that only really good mystery writers can do, energetic and lively. In short order, ICED gives us Elmore Leonard-equse banter, a nice car chase, a pistol duel in the Wisconsin Capitol Building, and a toilet fired out of a house like a cannonball. If you can't get behind that, brother, I don't know what to tell you.
ICED is the first in a new ongoing series for Jerry Peterson. If it continues on as strongly as his other series have, then count me a fan.
Maddy Hunter's “Passport to Peril” series is everything you want in a cozy mystery series–good whodunits filled with eccentric characters, exotic locales, and a put-upon sleuth who somehow happens to be around when bodies show up. Her newest outing, SAY NO MOOR, is no exception.
“Passport to Peril” centers around a group of octogenarian Iowans who tour the world with the much younger Emily Andrew-Miceli leading the way as organizer of the tours. No matter where they go, someone always turns up dead and Emily reluctantly puts the threads together to find the murder. How she does it with a gaggle of elderly loons dogging her the whole way is beyond me. This adventure finds them ranging all over the beautiful coast of Cornwall, England.
The best part of any Passport book is the strange group of seniors that tag along on Emily's sleuthing. And the seniors are where Maddy's ability to really write shines. When an author slaps you in the face with a pile of characters, they run the risk of losing you. Your brain has to “create” these characters in your head, and without suitable source material, they can become a jumble of nobodies fast. Maddy doesn't have this issue. Each character is distinct. They quickly fall into archetypes of people that you actually know or have met before, and they become crystallized quickly in your brain. After the first two or three chapters, they become like old friends. And by the end of the book, they're family. And she some somehow manages to replicate this feat with each book.
As typical with Maddy's books, the humor in SAY NO MOOR is spot-on, fast, and fitting. It ranges from subtle one-liners to slapstick, to character-based humor that comes out of Iowans being...well, American...in foreign countries. Not to mention the pleasant humor that comes from the juxtaposition that technology has brought into the lives of these intrepid adventurers.
“Passport to Peril”–come for the mystery, stay for the jokes. As always, Maddy knocks another book out of the park, and I will be looking forward to the next adventure, CATCH ME IF YUKON, which should be out late in 2018, and will send the folks to Alaska. Poor, poor Emily...
‘The Happiness Playlist' is a strange title for a book that is ultimately about grieving. But it works. Like so many things Mark Mallman does, it seems strange at first, but in the end, it works. You don't necessarily know HOW it works, but it does. That's the magic of Mallman.
My buddy, Scot, introduced to me to Mallman many years ago. He'd seem him a few times around Minneapolis and told me, “You've got to see this guy.” Eventually, I did. My first Mallman show was at First Ave. in Minneapolis. It was a sight to behold. Mallman occupies musical space somewhere between Frank Zappa and the Muppets. He's not a comedy artist, but there's a humor to his performances. He's not overly-serious, but he definitely holds music as sacred. He is a genius on outlier, somehow remaining relevant, but on the fringe on a constant basis.
It took me exactly .03 seconds to become his fan. I have all his records. I've seen him live maybe fifteen or twenty times now. I've seen him play large venues and small. He never phones it in. He always delivers. When he announced his memoir, ‘The Happiness Playlist,' I knew I'd read that, too.
Plagued by anxiety that stems from grief over the loss of his mother in 2013, Mark is seeking a cure. Could music succeed where proscription drugs and sleep research have failed? That's the basis for this short memoir.
Mallman writes like he's writing lyrics. The sentences are short and punchy. They move rapidly from space to space. There's something musical about his words. It's not the jazz-rhythm riffs of Kerouac or Ginsberg, though. It's different. It's Mallman music. Somewhere between rock and metal, touches of glam, but ultimately simple and likeable when you really look at it.
The healing road is not an easy journey. Mallman is not the first musician to write about grief. He won't be the last. Grief is one of those universals that we'll never nail down because it is so intrinsic and so personal. We all struggle with loss differently.
But, as Mark learns, music makes it more palatable. And music makes life more worthwhile.
I wrote this. So, my review is probably biased.
This is the second book in a series I started writing as an antithesis to the standard post-apocalyptic survival novels. No warring factions, no children being forced into gladiatorial combat, no mohawked mutants fighting for gasoline in the Outback, and most importantly–no zombies.
Just a stupid, beta-male teenager from Wisconsin trying to figure out his place in a world where everyone died but him.
I hope you enjoy the first book, AFTER EVERYONE DIED, and the sequel, LONG EMPTY ROADS.
I hope I get a chance to write a third book.
If you do read this book and enjoy it, please consider writing a review. Any positive review, even a short one, helps immensely. Tell friends. Post about the books on your various social media feeds. Buy hard copies for people. Create fan art and post it. Anything that gets people to know more about these books helps, because I don't have any money to spend on marketing. I rely solely on reviews and word of mouth.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them either on my author page on Goodreads or find me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/seanpatricklittlewriter).
I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read this book.
I picked up a copy of this book at Mystery to Me a couple of weeks ago figuring it would be what the back cover promised: a simple mystery set in the 50s, a throwback to a simpler time. It was exactly what the back cover copy promised.
Set in the fictional, south-of-LaCrosse, Mississippi River-based town of Wahissa, Wisconsin, 17-year-old Jake spends the most memorable summer of his life playing baseball, working in a diner, and solving the mystery behind a string of brutal beatings.
Told in a charming, simple prose style that really felt like a 1950s story, the mystery unfolds slowly, filtered through the 17 year old memories of baseball and working at the diner. At times, I wondered if White meant to write a baseball story instead of a mystery, but I realized that when you examine that summer through the eyes of a kid, the baseball is going to be every bit as important as the mystery.
I enjoyed the book very much. It was wholesome and easy-going. White was a pastor for many years, so there is some religion in it, but it's not preachy. The town is very vibrant, made so through the cast of characters Whites illustrates. He makes some unique sentence choices, constructions that someone with more training in modern prose probably wouldn't make, but it does not detract from the story. There are some editorial choices that could have trimmed the book down by 20 or 30 pages, too. Overall, it does not make the book “lesser.”
It's definitely worth a trip down memory lane with this book. Enjoyable and lovely.
This book is a perfect example of how traditional publishing misses great books. This book, an indie title published through Black Rose Writing, is easily the best book I've read this year.
Parker Westfall is a career minor-leaguer. He's never made The Show. For more than a decade, he's been grinding out a career playing baseball in podunk towns for podunk teams, and those playing days are coming to a close. He's given one last chance for a season in the sun playing first base for the Fort Collins Miners, an independent baseball team. If there's one step below the minor leagues, it's independent baseball. With no other options, Westfall signs on. When he gets there, the team owner asks Westfall for a special favor—mentor a young pitcher who throws a helluva knuckeball.
Oh, yeah—that pitcher is a woman.
The signing of Courtney Morgan could be just a publicity stunt, and the book could have turned into a trite, damsel-in-distress novel, but it doesn't. Parker and Morgan don't fall in love. Parker isn't the white knight who teaches her the game, but rather a coach who helps her find her own way to play.
The book is a sweet paean to baseball, the unsung heroes who never get to be on baseball cards or interviewed on ESPN, and the tiny towns that keep the spirit of real baseball alive. As a baseball fan, and as a fan of good writing, this book falls into place at the top of my reading list (so far) for 2018. It's one of those books that probably should have gotten more looks from agents or publishers. It's one of those books that should get more readers than it's ever going to get.
But, like the minor leaguers this story encompasses, sometimes what you get in the end is just good enough. I loved this book. I can't recommend it enough.
Richard Hooker (aka Hiester Hornberger Jr.–no seriously, that's his real name) wrote one of the funniest books about war ever: MASH. Anytime a book is successful, they're going to demand sequels. MASH goes to Maine was Hooker's attempt at a sequel, but it fails to capture the joy and zaniness of the original. When you take away the madness that is war, the antics of Hawkeye and Trapper John in the stateside world just don't really fit in. They still try to rail against oppressive authority, but without the military's super-strict regime, it just doesn't land like it should. Also, it should be noted that Hooker was a surgeon in real life, not a writer. While he writes a competent book, it's just not a ‘great' book. It's a fun read, but it doesn't knock it out of the park.
I am glad I read the book, though. It's something I'd been meaning to read for decades. I read the first book when I was in seventh grade. MASH was staple viewing in my house, and to this day if I'm flipping channels and I hit MASH in syndication on the tube, I stop flipping. I often watch episodes on Hulu now. Hands down, I have watching no TV show or movie as much as I have watched MASH (although ‘Scrubs' is a close second).
The main thing that came to light during my reading of this sequel is that Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould WERE Hawk and Trapper. Their portrayals of those characters in Altman's film version of the book were much closer to how Hooker wrote the characters than anything Alda and Rogers pulled off. Don't get me wrong, I love Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers, but when you read the dialogue Hooker wrote for this book, it's pretty evident how the characters should function and speak, and Donald Sutherland, in particular, nailed it.
I picked this book up from the local library the other day. When I checked it out, the librarian's eyes got wide. “No one has checked this out since 1993,” she said.
I graduated from high school in 1993. Reading this book made me feel old.
With Midnight Ink closing, there's a good chance that this will be the last tour that our intrepid Iowan octogenarians take. Beleaguered tour guide/detective Emily Miceli has certainly earned her vacation. This go-round finds the group hauling up for a wilderness tour in Alaska. Maddy Hunter finds a new way to insert murder into their vacation. Emily solves the crime. And, if this is indeed the final trip with these old friends, she ends the series on a satisfying high note, and we can bid farewell to Emily, Nana, and the rest with a full heart.
The trip around Alaska is full of typical Alaskan fun: sightseeing, Ziplines, and Bigfoot. (Yes, Bigfoot. He's big in Alaska. Well, he's big everywhere...especially the feet.) Maddy always goes on a “research” journey before writing the books, so her descriptions are first-hand, and she writes from experience.
As much as I'd enjoy further adventures, Maddy has certainly solidified her place as a master of the humorous light mystery. I will look forward to seeing what she does next.
I'm not a fan of vampires. I liked them when I was a kid, when they were the villains and not the heroes–and definitely when they weren't 100-year-old sparkly-skinned pedos hanging out in high schools.
However, I am a fan of great prose. Having read all of Alex Bledsoe's other series (the fun swordplay romps of Eddie LaCrosse, and the tremendous Tufa novels), it was either read about vampires, or suffer through a drought waiting for whatever he brings us next. I chose to go with reading about vampires.
And I'm glad I did.
Sent in Memphis, Tennessee in the mid-70's, a European vampire, the charming and intelligent Rudolfo Zginski, finds himself in unfamiliar waters. Brought back to life after decades spent as a corpse after being staked, he finds himself falling in with a coven of young vampires who don't fully understand what they are and what they can do, and battling a new drug whose sole intent seems to be to destroy vampires.
Frankly, the plot grooves, the descriptions and prose feel like something best-suited for the big screen of a late-night, 1970's drive-in. Everything about this book is so delightfully 1970's that it made me feel like I needed bell-bottoms and a wide collar just to fit in while reading it. And, while I'm generally not a fan of vampires, I liked this book a lot. Bledsoe can flat-out write. His background in journalism gives him that strong, move-it-along prose that sings. He's not bogged down in thick metaphors or marveling at his own genius–the man has a story to tell, and by god he's gonna tell it.
This book grooves like some old fuzzy-bass funk. I'll get around to reading the second book in the series, The Girls with Games of Blood, before too long, I'm sure.
If you're up for some 70's nostalgia, some righteous prose, and a blood-sucking good time, check this one out.
If I give myself five stars, is that cheating?
Anyhow, this was just a fun little side project I wanted to put together. It's $.99 on Amazon, or you can read it for free on Wattpad.
I wanted this to be an homage to the true ghost story books I used to read as a kid, books like Haunted Wisconsin or Haunted Heartland.
I can honestly say that all the stories in this book were told directly to me by friends or family. They are all “true”–for whatever good that does.
Please read, enjoy, review, and tell friends.
I wrote this, so my review is biased.
It's the three Survivor Journal novels collected in one massive unit complete with almost forty pages of annotations to give the backstory on the writing process and inspiration for certain items.
Michael Allan Mallory knows what he's doing. This book feels like a 1940's noir thriller mashed up with a 1960s kung-fu movie without being over-the-top. Well worth the time. I hope he adds to this series.
A beautiful book of essays and prose poems. Anyone from a small town or rural background will appreciate this thing.
Alex Bledsoe is one of my favorite writers. Guy knows his way around some tasty, easy-to-digest prose. In “Dandelion,” Bledsoe puts his considerable gifts with words to work on the interesting and horrible idea of demonic possession.
In the end, I think the fear of possession comes from the idea of losing control. If I were looking for a theme in this book, I'd say it was control. The idea that something inhabits us and causes us to lose control of our minds, of our bodies–that's is terror right there. Demons just a convenient idea that represents that loss of control, and this book uses those ideas to great effect.
TLC Mart (which is basically an amalgam of Walmart) is the center of demonic activity in the book. The department store giant comes to the sleepy town of Somerton and pretty soon, it kills off the rest of the town. Where once the town controlled its own destiny, now they hand that destiny over to TLC Mart. The teenagers in the book whom the demons prey upon are the embodiment of the struggle for control. Teenagers in general want to be seen as adults, in control of their own lives, but they're still kids, prone to doing stupid kid things, which often includes losing control (even without demonic assistance) in ways that manifest as cruelty. Cruelty is often the lowest form of control. It's a method used by small minds to wrench back a modicum of the feeling of control, and the more it harms someone else, the more control they feel. The men in the book are often controlled by women because the promise of sex is a strong currency of control. Knowledge can be a unit of control, and the knowledge of good and evil, or the knowledge of unspoken truths control others. Even the themes of religion manifest as control, like the charlatan preacher Brother Knode controlling his revival meetings as a well-orchestrated stage show to separate the gullible of the town from their money in much the same way that large-scale megachurches and their charlatan pastors prey upon the gullible in modern society–“Salvation is free–but to get there will cost you cash.”
Control is a powerful motivation, and it's a powerful source of fear. We all crave control and fear the loss of it. This novel uses that fear as its root and makes you worry about the darkness that might be unnoticed in our neighbors. In a horror novel that takes a painful look at dying southern towns and the cruelty people visit upon each other, Alex Bledsoe controls a tight, terrifying narrative that walks a fine line between southern noir and a classic tale of demonic possession. It is a book that opens with a bang and doesn't let up until the horrifying, chilling end.
A fine adventure in the same vein as Clive Cussler or Matt James. This is a globe-spanning race against time and will make for a fun beach read.
I wrote this. So, my opinion is completely biased.
However, if you read this book and enjoy it, I would certainly love for you to write a kind review. It really helps me reach a larger audience.
I'm gonna go back to working on the fourth book in this series now.
For a Marillion fan like myself, this is mandatory reading.
For someone who has never heard of Marillion, you probably won't understand much of this book.
Mark Kelly is a lovely person and a tremendous musician, and as the keyboardist for Marillion, he is one-fifth of the greatest band on Earth (spoken with my deep bias as a slobbering, rabid fan of said band). However, so much of this book concerns Marillion lore that will only interest the slobbering, rabid fans.
Kelly is a solid writer, if a tad bit dry at times. His prose is workman like and professional. He does not have the lyricist's gift for writing, but he gets the job done well and even turns some profound phrases while delivering insights into the con game that is the music business.
I loved this book, but if you're not a Marillion fan you will not.
Clever and wry with a sympathetic main character. This book is very British and highly reminiscent of classic British mysteries. I enjoyed it.
People ask my why I don't write more short stories.
I'm not talented enough, I tell them. There is a true art to writing a competent short story. You have to be able to relay the heart of the matter in as few words as possible, but yet still make it engrossing and readable. That's why I'm a novelist. It takes me 80,000 words to do what a good short story writer can do in less than five-thousand.
THE EFFECTS OF URBAN RENEWAL ON MID-CENTURY AMERICA AND OTHER CRIME STORIES is a lengthy title. It sounds more like the heading of a master's thesis than a collection of short fiction, but don't let the title throw you. Jeff Esterholm knows what he's doing. In this book, Esterholm delivers a watertight collection of short crime stories deftly written with prose cut to the bone but never lacking a poet's sensibilities.
Esterholm doesn't shy away from the grittier side of things. He handles the idea of human evil with a delicate touch, allowing bad people to do bad things, as they are wont to do in real life. The prose is striking. It is polished to the point that it glides on the page. The images and moods he evokes in his stories fit the writing, and all in all, he hands you a delightful tome of satisfying crime stories.
This is a collection well worth your time.
Another book I wrote.
Of course I'm going to give it five stars.
It's a spin-off from my Abe & Duff series. The first book I've written with a female lead.
I hope you enjoy it.
It's a yearly tradition: the annual trip back to Absaroka to catch up with Walt, Vic, Henry, and the rest. It's one of the few books I look forward to every year, and one of the few writers who doesn't misfire.
This time, Walt is dealing with the fallout from the previous book, THE LONGMIRE DEFENSE, and is being brought up on possible charges for a shooting that occurred at the end end of the previous book. He is also dealing with a story from the past, brought about when his fiancee, Vic Moretti, finds a behemoth longboard in Walt's basement.
What's a landlocked cowboy in Wyoming doing with a piece of vintage surf-riding wood?
Well, turns out–that's a long story.
Masterfully constructed by weaving the present into the past, Walt tells Vic the story of why he still has a longboard from his college days at USC, and details what seems to be the first time Walt and Henry really put their heads into a hornets' nest.
With the Vietnam war looming for both Walt and Henry, they had a week before they had to report to their respective locations for basic training. Intending to drive the country from Los Angeles to Fort Polk and Parris Island, respectively, karma has other plans when Walt and Henry end up sidelined in a barren nothing of a town where the only people there really want them to leave.
The town was dealing with its own history of being part of the internment camps for the Japanese in WWII, but that's only half the story.
Written in Craig Johnson's practiced and familiar laid-back prose, Walt and Henry seem to have odds stacked well against them this time.
We know that Walt and Henry will survive their encounter in the desert–but finding out how that first Walt-and-Henry adventure turns them into the men we know so well from the later adventures was a fascinating piece of history for this acclaimed and well-loved series.
It's a yearly tradition: the annual trip back to Absaroka. And it's also a yearly tradition that Johnson swings for the fences and knocks it out of the park.
In the last few years, Sebastien de Castell has become one of my favorite authors. His Greatcoats series is a masterpiece. His Spellslinger series up there, too. Geared more toward a YA crowd, the adventures of Kellen Argos is a fun romp, well worthy of reading. With the penultimate installment of this series, you can see the plane is landing, but you don't want the flight to be over.
Kellen finds himself in Darome, a country that exists inside of an intricate series of royal court machinations. Who is lying? Who is your friend? Who is your enemy? In Darome, the answer to those questions are Everyone, No One, and Everyone.
One of the things that de Castell does better than almost any author I've ever read is torture the protagonist. In almost every book he's written, de Castell invents some new method to lower his protagonist to a breaking point, and then somehow get him out of it in a clever and heroic method. Falcio Val Mond in the Greatcoats started this habit of his, but Kellen carries the torch of enduring abuse from the author quite well. At one point in QUEENSLAYER, I remember putting the book down and trying to think my way out of the predicament that Kellen found himself in, and I figured he was done. He was defeated, totally and utterly. In my mind, there was no way out of the trap that de Castell had thrown him in, but somehow Kellen figured out a way to beat the odds and punish the people who needed to be punished.
I love this series. I'll be sad to see it end. However, when it does when the sixth book comes out, it will be a series that will stand the test of time. This book is well worth your attentions.