My Best Reading of 2008

Let me preface this by saying that some of these books came in 2006-07, but I didn't get to them until this year. If there is one thing that did not dish out a heaping bowl of suck in 2008, that was the literature that came out. Now your results obviously, might vary, but that's probably because you don't read crime fiction.

Nevertheless, if you don't? I suggest-

If Chelsea can't make you laugh, you are brain-dead, and yes, it is as simple as that. She will offend you, guaranteed, but she will also make you laugh. The laughs will outweigh your outrage.

The same goes with David Sedaris. You might even cry with this book and it did bring a genuine tear to me eye. This is the most introspective of his books that I've read so far, but that doesn't mean that when the you laugh, you won't laugh hard. Neither of these books should be read in waiting rooms or in other social situations where your laughing out loud will embarrass you.

Now on to my favorite genre-

"It's Chinatown, Jake." Well this is not Chinatown, that is, it is not Jake Gittes's Chinatown, we're talking New York's Chinatown in 1976. While there is plenty of noir and a mystery to boot, those things are all secondary to the portrait of a Chinatown that none of us (outside of those that lived outside of there), has ever known. Ed Lin writes a good mystery, but he takes the long way getting there, and does such a job of showing you what every day life was in this hidden enclave, that you won't mind the distraction.

In "Say It With Bullets," our hero gets double-crossed and left for dead in post World War II China. The guy tries to live and let live when he comes back home to Philadelphia, and is promptly shot at by one of the guys that double-crossed him the first time.

"Say It With Bullets" has the protagonist searching for the antagonist across the Heartland of America, and the mystery is just which of his former friends is the one with itchy trigger-finger. Of course one of them is trying to bump him off before he discovers the truth. There is a great ending that is reminiscent of a certain Hitchcock film and for me to say more, would ruin it.

Many a writer can write romance and even more of them can write sex or p*rn, but only one author can truly write "steam." I'm talking about you pulling at your collar like Rodney Dangerfield, even when it is five below zero. I'm talking about the kind of book that will make a big 350 lbs. defensive tackle swoon, fan himself, and complain that he's got "the vapors" like some a tiny Southern belle, because that's what Meg Abbott writes-

S-t-e-a-m.

She also wrote a great crime novel, but day-um, skip the Viagra, 'cause this would kick start a dea...you get the the picture.

All of the great authors of old in one great tome. If you love pulp or wanted to know about it, this is the book for you.

P*rn isn't pretty (I asterisked this like anything else around here, because I get tired of morons searching for all kinds of things that aren't on my blog and while I love my pron, some of these searches would make Larry Flynt just vomit). If you write this book off because it deals with an ugly subject, then you are only depriving yourself.

Upton Sinclair didn't write about subjects that would've been considered "wholesome" in his day, but where would we be if nobody paid attention? You will also be missing out on one of the best and rawest neo-noir books that you've ever read.

"The Brass Verdict" is classic Connelly, which means to all of you Connelly-neophytes? Excellence. Part of the ending is little too convenient, but, hey.

The end of Easy Rawlins? Read it, and then, tell me.

For those who don't want to deal with violence or gore (uh, Baroness, uh Quin)? I give you "Snakeskin Shamisen." A great mystery in which the protagonist, Mas Arai, is a septuagenarian Japanese gardener that probably weighs all of 110 lbs, max.

Like Walter Mosley's Paris Minton, Mas probably couldn't beat anyone in his weight class in a fair fight, but don't doubt his mind or his heart. Unlike Mosley's Minton, he doesn't have Fearless Jones to defend him.

By virtue of his size and race, Mas is the fly on the wall that is underestimated or ignored all together and Miss Hirahara just gives you enough of the basics of the mystery to go on. The reader is as much in the dark as the protagonist is and it's a real treat to find everything out just as he does.

If you were to take the premise of "The Crime Writer" at face value, you might find it a tad soap opera-ish. I'm not going to give it to you here, you'll have to seek it out. I will tell you that Hurwitz out-Crais-ed Robert Crais this year and this book is in my top three reads of this year.

In my opinion, this is best effort of Max Allan Collins in the last three years. Don't be fooled by the cover or the premise of hitman with a heart, Collins manages to pull it off.