quips and clips

just finished reading Stephen Graham Jones‘ triptych of novellas, Three Miles Past, the meat, the most delicious and horrifying nexus of code and prose: fear/the unknown; the crust/shell two incarnations of my new favorite fictional serial killer, SGJ’s William Colton Hughes (though he, in the appended Story Notes, only credits WCH for the first of…

just finished re-reading, now in published form, Stephen Graham Jones‘ Best Serial Killer Novel Ever: The Least of My Scars. appropriate to the Season, i read some of the home stretch listening to Classic Christmas music, Andy Williams, Elvis, Frank, Dino, so it seemed like i was listening to the Leatherface Christmas Album after a…

just finished reading Dirty Money by Richard Stark, thus completing my traversal of his Complete Works, and incidentally, this last being also the final work of the great Donald E. Westlake. the last three in the Parker series represent the Late Sonatas of the Stark ouevre, and i consider them the ne plus ultra of…

just finished reading on the plane, the latest in Richard Stark’s Parker series, Ask The Parrot. looks like the last three in the series are more integrally connected, this one starting out with Parker trying to escape from a botched armored car job, and the last, Dirty Money, also closely related. i’m going to be…

just finished another novel by Richard Stark, late in his Parker series, Nobody Runs Forever. it might be that Westlake just got better and better with age, but this one is my favorite of the series, especially for its tried-and-true practice of spreading around the narrative duties starting in 2nd Act has with this caper…

just finished reading another of the Parker novels by Richard Stark, Breakout. Parker gets pinched for the first time in the series, and it’s all about getting out. a real nail-biter, or maybe it was just the flight i was on. really great. i’m down to the last three, and i’ll have read all of…

just finished reading Firebreak, part of the latter-day homestretch of novels in his Parker series, this one the first to feature a hacker in Parker’s string. great, as always,

just finished reading another in Richard Stark’s series centered on the hardman, Parker, Flashfire. this one BEGINS with a doublecross, moves through a hit on Parker (closest brush with death of the series, so far), and culminates in the biggest jewelry heist ever. maybe my favorite.

just finished reading the next in Richard Stark’s Parker series, Backflash, in which a beautifully planned casino ship heist goes terribly wrong, as always, leaving Parker with dire options. one of the better action-heavy books of the series. i’ll be sorry when i get through this binge. brilliant

just finished reading Richard Stark’s Comeback, the 17th in his Parker series; bittersweet, as i’m now reluctantly entering the homestretch of the novels. this one was, appropriate to the title, written after a 23-year absence from the work of this, the darkest of Donald E. Westlake’s nom de plumes. i’ll be very sorry to see…