Tag: pulp

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

Posted September 2, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Science Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Leviathan Wakes (Goodreads)
Author: James S.A. Corey
Series: Expanse #1
Published: Orbit, 2011
Pages: 561
Genres: Science Fiction
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Humanity has colonised the solar system; the Moon, Mars and even the Asteroid Belt. With the colonisation tensions on the rise, will conflict erupt between Earth’s government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries and the corporations? Leviathan Wakes tells the story of two very different and very explosive characters; Holden the XO of an ice mining vessel that makes runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. And Detective Miller who is looking for a girl; one girl in a galaxy of billions. Leviathan Wakes is an explosive Science Fiction novel that weaves two different styles into one fast paced novel.

Both Holden and Miller are very dominating characters; the sort of characters that will take a moral stand against anything they don’t believe in. But both characters have a completely different sense of what is right and end up being polar opposites. They tend to end up being their own worst enemies making choices that are inevitably destructive towards themselves. I never really ended up liking Holden or Miller; with Holden’s storyline the writers tended to go for a real firefly style plot and I never felt like it ever worked. Holden is no Malcolm Reynolds and overall he had nothing to him that I ended up liking. I felt like he lacked the charisma and wit to make his story line stand out. Then Detective Miller was the storyline I was most looking forward to, the hard-boiled detective that will stop at nothing to solve his case. I didn’t mind that Miller was the joke of the police force, I thought that was a nice twist but I never felt like he was hard-boiled enough; he was also missing the charisma and wit needed for this character and in the end he was just unmemorable.

I found it interesting to know that James S. A. Corey is actually two people; Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, and each took on the role of writing one character’s plot and then they interweaved the two storylines to make Leviathan Wakes. I did end up liking the fact that Holden and Miller’s stories felt and read differently and the way they ending up complimenting each other worked really well. The end process is a thrilling novel with some great elements to keep the plot moving forward.

In the end I felt like the characters of this book needed to be fleshed out a bit more, to me they just weren’t three dimensional enough and I felt like I could predict their next moves without even trying. There was nothing in the book that did end up surprising me, except the one love element, which just ending up feeling like sloppy writing. It’s an interesting start for this series and I still think I want to read the next book in The Expanse Trilogy but maybe that was mainly caused by the open ended end to this novel.

Question Tuesday: Is Your Preferred Crime Style Gritty, Hardboiled And Realistic; Or Genteel And Cosy, A Puzzle To Examine With Cruelty And Realism Downplayed?

Posted August 14, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Question Tuesday / 0 Comments

If you are a regular reader or know me at all you’ll know the answer to this question is Dark, Gritty and Hardboiled. I’m a big fan of the hardboiled and Noir genres that have become famous in the 1940’s and you can see book reviews for these types of books under Pulp (if you are curious to know the difference between Hardboiled and Noir check out this post).

I’ve always been a fan of the dark and realistic, and while I do like that occasional cosy read, I often feel that the downplaying can often be overdone and in the end, I tend to not enjoy them. Those major bestselling crime novels tend to annoy me because they all feel formulaic and predictable. I want the laconic and dispassionate styles of a good pulp novel.

I know pulp novels don’t seem to be very popular anymore, there are some novelists that still write them like James Ellroy, James Sallis and Lawrence Block but I would love to know what others think of this genre and what they look for in a crime novel.

When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger

Posted July 12, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Pulp, Science Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: When Gravity Fails (Goodreads)
Author: George Alec Effinger
Series: Marîd Audran #1
Published: Orb Books, 1987
Pages: 288
Genres: Pulp, Science Fiction
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

It’s been awhile since I’ve been so immersed into a science fiction world like this; I think the last time was with China Mieville’s The City and The City. The city of Budayeen something I’ve not experienced before, the blend of Middle Eastern culture and religion really bring this to life in a unique way. Marîd Audrian makes for a great protagonist; he is hard boiled and reminds me a lot of the private detectives in the pulp genres.

When Gravity Fails is a brilliant example of tech noir (so science fiction noir). It has a twisted case for Marîd to investigate, which leads him on a fantastic adventure. It kind of reminds me a little of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher in the sense that it takes the best elements of the pulp genre and mixes it with a hard hitting protagonist in a well built speculative fiction world.

The world is gritty and the story is full of sex, drugs and murder; it offers a lot the think about in regards to the modifications and technology on offer in Budayeen. If you can chance every aspect of your body, mind and personality, would you do it and what are the side effects? I can’t wait to dive further into this world and see what Marîd gets up to in the next book. Recommended for fans of science fiction and pulp novels or even just fans of The Dresden Files; actually I would probably recommend it to anyone that wants to read a captivating book.

Empire State by Adam Christopher

Posted July 4, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Pulp, Science Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Empire State (Goodreads)
Author: Adam Christopher
Series: Empire State #1
Published: Angry Robot, 2012
Pages: 445
Genres: Pulp, Science Fiction
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

During the last great superhero fight, a blast of energy rips a hole in reality, the result is Empire State; a twisted parallel prohibition-era New York City. But now the rift is starting to close and both parallel worlds have to fight for the right to exist. Adam Christopher’s Empire State tells the story of Rad Bradley a private detective investigating the disappearance for Sam Saturn which leads him to uncover something a whole lot bigger. This book is everything you expect in a pulp style superhero novel; you have the super villains, airships, robots, organised crime and prohibition (to make it feel more like a pulp novel). This is all a brilliant back drop for the main plot; the case the gets Rad Bradley tangled in a complex web of robotic killers, inter-dimensional doppelgangers and science.

The whole tone of this book feels very much like a superhero novel but never loses sight of the noir style narrative. The whole story cast is wonderfully unique and mystery that will keep the readers on the edge of their seats while reading this book. There are some things that didn’t quite work within the story and the constant world shifting can get the reader lost. I think in the end there turns out to be at least three different worlds; Prohibition New York, Empire State and New York 1950’s. The world, the crime and the characters show potential for a lot of great stories to follow.

Adam Christopher and publisher Angry Robot Books have invited others to create works based in the world of Empire State. Writer, artist, musician, sculptor, puppeteer, interpretive dance major, or poet, are invited to create their own stories with what they are calling WorldBuilder as long as you stick to their Guidelines and Instructions. They are authorising fan-created content to be created under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License which means content can be posted on the internet or beyond as long as it’s in a non-commercial way; publication rights of the stories are still in the hands of the publisher. There are plans for an eBook or Print-on-Demand anthology of the best stories which is pretty exciting; I’ve never seen a novel do anything like this, making for some interesting stories to follow. I think this world is capable of millions of other great stories whether superhero, science fiction, alternate history, organised crime or even pulp stories.

I’m curious to see what the results of this creative common might lead to but as for this book, if you want a fun, exciting novel with twists and mystery, then you really should give Empire State ago. There’s a certain uniqueness within this book while remaining familiar with the writing style. I feel nostalgic towards a good pulp novel and this blends that with science fiction elements with such ease. This genre is often called neo-noir (a genre that blends pulp with updated themes, content, or style, often blended with Science Fiction) and there have been some great books that have come out in this style, but Empire State is definitely one of the better ones.

The Grifters by Jim Thompson

Posted June 27, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Pulp / 0 Comments

Title: The Grifters (Goodreads)
Author: Jim Thompson
Published: Knopf Doubleday, 1963
Pages: 189
Genres: Pulp
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

There is a reason they call Jim Thompson the Dimestore Dostoevsky; his works really spotlight the moral dilemma his protagonists and main characters face, so I was really looking forward to reading The Grifters. I’ve seen the movie so I was interested in seeing the inner thoughts of the characters. 25-year-old short con operator Roy Dillion suffers an injury when a simple con goes horribly wrong; he finds himself in hospital recovering from an internal haemorrhage. This brush with death has led him to rethink his life, though his mother Lilly feels like Roy still owes her. She’s inattentive and manipulative while trying to care for Roy, but she is also trying to pull off a long con at the race tracks at the same time. Throw in another femme fatale, Moira, Roy’s girlfriend, who we also find out is also a grifter who favours the long con. The three explosive characters make for an interesting and twisted noir story, much to what we have come to expect from Jim Thompson.

I have to admit I do love Jim Thompson’s twisted plotting, he captures the pulp feel well while giving it is own flavour of surrealism. While The Grifters is not is most solid piece it does a good job at spotlighting what this author can do with crime and with is unreliable narrating. The characters are great and they each work well together while making life difficult for each other. His is one of the few pulp authors that break into the world of serious literary while never losing sight of what he does best.

If you haven’t read a Jim Thompson book maybe this is a good place to start, it’s not as dark or gritty, the characters are great, the plot isn’t as twisted as some of his other works and the suspense is a bit watered down. Let’s just call this book ‘Jim Thompson for beginners’; it gives you everything you expect in a Thompson book, just not to the same intensity, making the book approachable and easy to read.

The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. MacDonald

Posted June 24, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Pulp / 0 Comments

Title: The Deep Blue Good-By (Goodreads)
Author: John D. MacDonald
Series: Travis McGee #1
Published: Ballantine Books, 1964
Pages: 384
Genres: Pulp
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I’ve never read a John D. MacDonald book before and I’ve read a lot of good things about his Travis McGee novels, so I thought I might start at the beginning for this series. This is the first in what is now a 21 book series and the first time we meet Travis McGee, a self-described “salvage consultant”, almost like a treasure hunter but instead he recovers the property of his clients for a fee; half. He is hired and has to go up against the pathologically evil antagonist Junior Allen, who may seem friendly but has a very sinister agenda.

For a hard-boiled style “salvage consultant” McGee seems to be very ordinary; I felt like all the guys liked him (except the antagonist) and all the girls wanted him. There wasn’t much depth in the character at all except in one scene where he was ready to torture someone for information and I saw a glimpse of a sociopath in McGee. This just made me want to read a book with a sociopath hard-boiled detective, so if you have any recommendations let me know.

The story felt very predictable, it was more of a quick enjoyable story being told to me. I think, while this series might work well as filler reading to help recover from something heavy, there are much better books out there to read instead of this series. The sex and violence that was in this book was pretty intense for a book written in 1964 so I really don’t want to just write off the entire series because of predictability; so if you share a different opinion or can recommend me one of the Travis McGee books that could change my mind, please let me know.

Reading Cycles

Posted June 3, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 0 Comments

Have you ever noticed that you read in cycles? I have; I’ve found that I tend to get entrenched with an author at times but most of the time it with genres. While I like to say I read anything and everything, I know this is not true. I do find it interesting to look over my reading history and see just how it progresses.

I’ve said it before and most people already know that I only started reading in the middle of 2009 and while it was a slow start I gradually got better and better at reading that now I’m aiming for 100 books a year. While I would like to talk about reading challenges sometime in the future, for now I want to look at my reading cycle. I call it a cycle because I know that eventually I will go back to these genres and immerse myself with them again and again.

While I often just read on a whim, when I do an overall look at my reading habits the cycle looks like this;

Classics – My reading started with Frankenstein and I read a lot of classics as a way to catch up on the book I’ve missed out on. At the same time I was also trying to catch up on the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsey.
1001 Books to Read Before You Die – when I discovered this list of books, I set out to read books from this list as a good way to try out genres and styles with the knowledge that the books must be good because they made the 1001 list.
Sci-Fi – I’m not sure why I moved onto Sci-Fi, but there were so many books that looked interesting in this genre that it felt like the natural progression.
Mystery – I have a love for the macabre and crime that it wasn’t much of a surprise that I begin reading a lot of books in this genre.
Hard-Boiled/Noir – I finally found the style and genre in the mystery/crime genre that I like the most. Hard-Boiled and Noir will always have a special place in my heart. I love the era and the style of these novels.
YA – I started trying out YA because of this blog post about What is Wrong with Dark YA Novels and during the time I found my favourite YA author John Green, which meant I needed to read all of his novels (still have one to read) plus other novels that are supposedly similar to his writing style.
Literary Fiction – I often wonder if this was a result of my book blog or just because I wanted to read something with a little more literary merit after reading so much YA. But now it feels like I’m reading so many literary novels.

I don’t know where my reading will go from here but feel free to make a prediction. I’m happy to let my reading take me where ever it wants to go. I’m happy with where it has taken me so far. I would love to know if other people have reading cycles and what they are.

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø

Posted May 6, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Crime / 0 Comments

Title: The Redbreast (Goodreads)
Author: Jo Nesbø
Translator: Don Bartlett
Series: Harry Hole #3
Published: Harvill Secker, 2000
Pages: 368
Genres: Crime
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

When they advertise Jo Nesbø as ‘The Next Steig Larsson’, I’m inclined to pass on this author. But since a lot of people seem to be raving about this author, I thought I better check him out, especially when they class his Harry Hole series as hard-boiled. I’ve found the only reason they are calling him the next Larsson is simply because he is another Scandinavian crime writer; which means some overly graphic murders, Nazis and an expected twist. The Redbreast is the third book in the Harry Hole novel but the first available in English. Hole is investigating neo-Nazi activity which leads him to further explore Norway’s activities on the Eastern Front during WWII.

Throughout the book it switches between telling the story of Harry Hole in 1999 and the man he is hunting Daniel Gudeson during the World War II. I like how Nesbø switched between the two times and characters to flush out the back story that was leading up to a much bigger current day threat. But that is where I stopped liking this book; I just felt this book was generic and too predictable for my liking. I want to be shocked, excited and enjoy myself when reading crime novels; one out of three just doesn’t cut it.

Now to address the genre issue; Harry Hole could be classed as a hard-boiled detective, as he drinks, smokes and seems to be a very bitter man. However, this novel seems to missing some of the elements that makes hard-boiled novels what they are; for starters where was the dark and gritty realism that I’ve come to love in pulp novels. Also the book was missing a femme fetale as well as the strong dialogue with hints of wittiness and/or irony. This felt more like the generic bestseller crime formula and if we are going to call Jo Nesbø ‘hard-boiled’, we would have to let Michael Connelly in as well; and we don’t want that.

While this was in fact a fun book to read, I went into this book expecting something more pulp like and ended up getting generic. I’m sure there are plenty of people that will love this book, just don’t expect pulp; you’ll be sadly disappointed. If you are interested in knowing more about pulp fiction, check out my blog entries on pulp for recommendations.

Pulp Fiction

Posted October 26, 2011 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature, Pulp / 4 Comments

Thanks to the “1001 Books to Read Before you Die” list I’ve been able to explore all types of genres in an effort to find a favourite. I believe I’ve found this genre, and that is Pulp; not crime or mystery in general, but the dark and gritty style of Hard-Boiled and Noir novels. Pulp fiction originated as a type of inexpensive fiction magazine published from 1896 through the 1950s commonly releasing adventure, detective/mystery, fantasy, gangster and science fiction stories. One of the more famous pulp magazines was known as Black Mask which produced a lot of crime stories which became the basis of the Hard-Boiled and Noir genres.

Now there isn’t much difference between the two genres, both written in a laconic, dispassionate, often ironic style of realism. Hard-Boiled is the detective genre, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex, made famous by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. While Noir focuses on a plot where the protagonist is the victim, suspect, or perpetrator; this style was commonly used by seminal author James M Cain. While the two genres are not black and white, often authors like Jim Thompson would blur the lines by writing about a detective or police officer being the perpetrator of the crimes.

In the film industry these types of movies are all classed as noir movies, which has been a huge success in France and in recent years has been modernised (both in films and literature) creating a new genre known as Neo-Noir. This genre is not necessarily a crime melodrama set in modern times but often set in the future (blending Noir with Science Fiction and Cyberpunk).

From my experience, the pulp genre seems to become popular in waves; first in the 1930 and 40’s with the original greats like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M Cain. Later in the 1950 and 60’s it was revived again with authors like Jim Thompson, Ross MacDonald, David Goodis and Charles Williams. Then again in the 1980 and 90’s with authors like Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker, Walter Mosley and James Ellroy. It is possible that this genre is on the verge of making another come back; with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo been compared to this genre and the popularity of the new video game LA Noire which has sparked a book of short stories based in that world. I can only hope, but with so many dime store books to catch up with, I think I will be alright without the genre making a comeback.

I really took to these genres, simply for the gritty realism, strong dialogue and wittiness and/or irony. While I have a lot to get through, I thought I would end this post with a top 5, for anyone interested in trying this genre out. If you have any recommendations, please let me know.

5. Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson

The experimental style of Jim Thomspon made him one of darkest authors in this genre. The protagonist in this book is disturbing and still remains very realistic.

4. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

While many people would choose The Maltese Falcon, this book has more violence, gangsters and corruption.

3. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

Using a true crime as the basis of this book, The Black Dahlia is both modern (written in 1987) and keeping to the same style and feel to many of the great pulp authors.

2. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

This book was full of sexuality and violence that was startling in the time and was ended up being banned in Boston. It’s a shining example of what a good noir novel should be like.

1. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

While some people would recommend The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely; The Long Goodbye gets the nod from me for its social criticism and autobiographical elements.