jdcorley's reviews
154 reviews

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

challenging mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A fantastic classic mystery; a Kindaichi tour de force. There are Kindaichi books that are too convoluted or too casual with serious subjects, this is not one of them. It doesn't quite pay exactly fair (

A second map might have avoided this criticism.

) but it's very close, and when Kindaichi solves it you get even more mystified - but just for a moment. Fast-moving, yet with the nostalgia and sentiment that makes a Kindaichi story great.

Before Midnight by Robert Crais, Rex Stout

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

A marvelous Wolfe, enhanced by his self-imposed (sort of) time limit which makes the whole impossible thing seem even more impossible. It's got such propulsion to it you almost don't notice that the ending just isn't all that much to write home about.

Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This, along with Barron's other great collections, establish him as a vigorous and vicious writer of exceptional horror. It's a cold collection; almost too cold at times, and Barron's tics sometimes make you roll your eyes, but overall, every character's descent feels imaginable and comprehensive. Lovely.

The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

There are other Barron works and collections in my review history where I sort of roll my eyes at his shtick.  "What if those pulpy adventures really, if u think about it, starred a bunch of real shitheels?!" "Yea man, I know, that's why we have postmodernity. Like everything in all of contemporary genre literature exists as a response to this realization" "But what if they were real bad AND they came across something else real bad" (sigh) "Okay, fine, sure".  And in the first story of this collection you're kinda feeling like he's just doing it all again - imaginative enough to get you over the bumps but a bad omen.  Then in the second story, he pushes his protagonist just a bit further over the line into loneliness and pathos and it REALLY works.  The whole rest of the collection is equally terrific.  He resists his worst tics and develops his strengths - imagination, the embodiment of our point of view character, cosmic horror at its finest. Don't miss this terrific collection - even, or especially, if you got bored with Barron before.

Dis Mem Ber by Joyce Carol Oates

dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Oates' incisive observation of cruelty - specifically, gendered cruelty - makes these stories a sharp set of lovely teeth, ready to bite down. A vicious parody of airline safety announcements is a bit less insightful. She must have had a tough trip!

The Pusher by Ed McBain

dark emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

It's really in this book that the 87th Precinct finds its feet. It's a very quotidian murder - a drug pusher is killed by someone else in the drug game. But the police procedural elements shine brightest when the wheels of the investigation and the counter-wheels of the criminals spread wider and wider, introducing new characters and systems of the city, and commenting on all their intersections and their thoughts. McBain commented that he thought of killing off a main character here, and the publisher stopped him. You can see his logic - ultimately this novel is a novel about the 87th Precinct and a dead junkie, not about any particular cop or criminal. Why not kill one of them? But the publisher noticed that everyone loves Carella, and Teddy, and everyone is right to love them.

I've commented on other works that, at their best, the 87th Precinct novels don't feel like a whitewash of American policing in the way some police procedurals do. This is a perfect example. Ultimately the observations of the city and the characters are what's happening. You're watching a location operate and the police are one of the forces in it. Things happen that are unjust - good luck and bad luck play themselves out - the cops are neither plucky underdogs in the face of evil criminality or genius soldiers in the endless war. They just stumble across stuff, and miss some other stuff, and so does everyone else.  It's a highly humanistic viewpoint, and thus lets the reader consider it with their own values.  

Perhaps this is the first real police procedural novel - one that's moved past the oohs and ahhs of the pulps and the grim racial politics of the more dire predecessors and is dedicated to the form as a subject for a novelistic lens. Very worth an investment.

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

You can't both want to make your story a careful and heartfelt plea for understanding and a really grotesque phantasmagoria of a horror thriller. It means you end up doing a whole bunch of explaining when it would have been better just to describe what was going on. 

The Pretty Ones by Ania Ahlborn

dark emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Perhaps this is Ahlborn gravitating to the structure and length that suits her best - a brief novella tightly in the point of view of someone who's too far gone to really connect deeply with, yet someone who has enough of an inner life to draw us in to their story. The genre recapitulation, right down to the oft used Summer of Sam, is a bit by the book but Ahlborn has a clear love for it and a passion for her central character and that covers a multitude of sins. I keep giving Ahlborn books second chances, this one is the first to really get me understanding why. There's great potential here.

In the Best Families by Patricia Sprinkle, Rex Stout

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The last book in the Zeck trilogy, it makes a turn into the more rip roaring pulp hard boiled adventure than was normal for Wolfe. The unexpected nature of the adventure is a delight. Sure as hell it's better than anything Doyle wrote about Moriarty.

The Spitting Image by Michael Avallone

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Noon finds his feet more in this one, and you start to feel the casual fun that the series will deliver more consistently. Slight, but pleasingly deft.