I want to apologize for my long absence. It was not out of laziness or a lack of things to write about. To make a long story short, you’ll understand if you know anyone that has suffered from pressure sores and if you research them, you’ll understand how bad they are. I have been bed-ridden on my side since the beginning of November. I’m back now with a vengeance and I’ll have some cool things like a Don Winslow interview for you all real soon.
This has been a weird year for books. There were plenty of good novels and a few truly great novels with long stretches of mediocrity. This list of fifteen is what I consider the must-reads of 2006.
15: Crime Beat: A decade of covering cops and killers
AUTHOR: Michael Connelly
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Not since David Simon’s Homicide: A year on the killing streets has there been such a good and effecting novel of what really happens on the streets and in the police stations. For a long time before he was a writer, Connelly covered crime in
14: Hollywood Station
AUTHOR: Joseph Wambaugh
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Josepeh Wambaugh is one of the masters of the police procedural and Hollywood Station is a welcome return after a long absence. These cops aren’t trying to save the world. They just want to get through their day anyway they can without getting killed, either by a gun or just sheer boredom. Wamabaugh portrays his characters with the blackest of humor and not a page goes by without something that would offend somebody and it is all extremely funny. Wambaugh has affection for these characters and makes the point that more than anything, the police are the garbage collectors of society and it’s really up to people to clean up their own shit.
13: World War Z
AUTHOR: Max Brooks
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The scariest and most heart-breaking horror novel of 2006. It tells the stories of the survivors of a zombie out-break and it is written in utter seriousness. Brooks covers everyone from soldiers to common people to how different kind of cultures handles this particular apocalypse. Like the best horror, Brooks builds up the horror and how it affects people.
12: Sorrow’s Anthem
AUTHOR: Michael Koryta
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I was not a big fan of Koryta’s decent but derivative debut Tonight I Said Goodbye, but in Anthem, he amps his game up several degrees. He respects the writers that came before him and influenced him, but this time his voice is all his own as he tells the story of his protagonist private detective Lincoln Perry as he strives to salvage the lost friendship of a childhood friend who is accused of arson and murder. It’s complicated, funny, and the streets of
11: The Ruins
AUTHOR: Scott Smith
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Welcome back, Mr. Smith, we missed you. His last novel was 1993’s A Simple Plan and he returns in fantastic form with The Ruins. I won’t say much because to reveal anything of the many twists and turns would be criminal. People who dismiss this as just another horror novel, but set in the jungles of
10: The Two Minute Rule
AUTHOR: Robert Crais
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I was almost ready to think that Crais was losing his touch. The last couple Elvis Cole novels were weak and had a weird sense of pacing and Elvis suddenly was a lot glummer instead of the realistic but hopeful hero that Crais had so carefully crafted in the books before. Frankly he felt like a different character, so imagine my surprise when Crais knocked it out of the park and wrote a tough and touching novel about an ex-con looking into the death of his police officer son. It could have been saccharine and pretentious, but Crais writes a great character in Max Holman. He’s a rough man with a bad past and the only thing important to him is finding out who killed his son and why. Read it for the great portrayal of a seedy
9: Hit Parade
AUTHOR: Lawrence Block
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I knew I was in love when Keller, on-site at a complicated hit in a
gated community, buys a stuffed animal to have conversations about
life, death, and the job of proffesional killing to fight off boredom
and loneliness.
Lawrence Block’s hitman protagonist John Keller is great. You can
relate to him as a regular guy who worries about bills, his love life,
and even having people to talk to. He just happens to be a professional
killer. What’s great is that Block doesn’t go the route of so many
writers who cover killers by having John Keller just kill bad guys.
He’ll go after them too, but he’ll also go after regular small
businessmen, baseball players, suburban moms, and in one truly
disturbing story, a dog. Hit Parade Is a collection of short stories
and as you read on, you may be horrified when you realize you actually want
Keller to succeed and kill the hapless innocent baseball player or the
mom with kids. They’re funny, personable, and I felt like I had to take
a shower after finishing it to get the feel of Keller’s world off of
me, but I know I’ll want to have a peek into the world of the hitman
that is like the nice guy who lives next door again.
8: Marked Man
AUTHOR: William Lashner
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How far would you go to better yourself and your place in the world? Is it worth killing over? Lashner explores this with his often self-centered protagonist lawyer Victor Carl as he searches for the answer as to why a little girl disappeared thirty years ago and what it has to do with a painting stolen around the same time. It is often funny and quirky, but never forgets the central theme of men and women wanting to change and sometimes going so far that they lose sight of who they are and do horrible things they can’t take back. These are not Grisham characters with eeeevil villains and brilliant small time lawyers, these men and women are engaging without losing realism.
7: L.A. Rex
AUTHOR: Will Beall
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Will Beall’s debut is perfectly crafted and gritty with a razor sharp realism. Beall is a real cop still walking the streets of south central
6: The Fourth Bear
AUTHOR: Jasper Fforde
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If you love reading, pick this up. It plays with literary conventions and tools and mercilessly rips them apart. It’s a hilarious police procedural set in a world where fairy tale characters are real and often as human as you and me. This book took chances and hit way more than it missed. This is a treat for both students of literature and those just looking for a good read.
5: Mad Dogs
AUTHOR: James Grady
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The best thriller of the year. A tale of very broken people in a psychiatric ward who just happen to be highly trained CIA agents. They break out to find out who framed them for murder of their doctor. The road trip they take is wild and hilarious, and the biggest danger for the five wacko’s are themselves as the clock counts down before they shut down from lack of medication. Often hilarious with some truly great characterization and wit, and never ever fake.
4: The Blonde
AUTHOR: Duane Swierczynski
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A great take on the femme fatale taking a regular joe for a wild and dangerous ride. Swierczynski is a writer not afraid of taking the reader and jerking him around with each new development. With surprisingly deep characters that all have murky pasts and questionable motivations, he keeps you laughing and cringing, but always desperate to find out what’s next.
3: A Dirty Job
AUTHOR: Christopher Moore
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A celebration of life as much as it talks about the subject of death. Yes, it’s a comedy, but it’s
2: The Winter of Frankie Machine
AUTHOR: Don Winslow
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Congratulations Mr. Winslow, you’ve arrived. Winslow was always a great writer and 2005’s The Power of the Dog was the best novel of that year. Frankie Machine is a drama, but not overly dour. It’s like the swan song of the Mafia as it tells the story of an aged hitman nick-named Frankie The Machine for how coldly he went after his targets for the small-time West Coast mob. Someone from his past is gunning for him and throughout the novel we learn Frankie’s history and the mafia scornfully nick-named the Mickey Mouse Mafia. It’s scary how Winslow writes a youthful Frankie and how easily he went from a driver and errand boy to one of their best hitmen. The genius is how much you feel for Frankie and how the benefits of the lifestyle are almost like a drug. He mixes real life events in
1: The Night Gardener
AUTHOR: George Pelecanos
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Pelecanos pulls no punches with his hard as iron dialogue and depiction of the men and women who live on and protect the streets of D.C., it’s a cold and dark world and characters don’t get any relief until they really earn it. Real people inhabit these pages and they all strive for some kind of hope, be it from a bottle or simply having dinner with your family. It will break your heart and punch you in the gut. This is a work of art and it deserves to be savored and treasured.
[Ian says, from the peanut gallery: Also Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day.]