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Bouchercon reading, pt. 1 of ?
I'm going to Bouchercon in Minneapolis with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija and scioscribe in September! This is a mystery con, and as I have done very little reading of current mystery/thriller in the last decade or two (I definitely read it, in fact I love it, but it's considerably more based around "Ooh, that looks good" than trying to keep up with what's current in the genre), the three of us are doing a sort of informal "book club" of books by the convention's guests - see guests of honor here and all attending authors here.
The first two:
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby - This had been on my radar to read for a while, so I'm glad this was finally the kick that got me to read it! This is a really excellent, noir-flavored heist novel set in a small town in the South. Retired getaway driver Beauregard "Bug" Montage gets pulled back in for one last job, and we all know how that goes. But the book is a lot more than a heist novel, although it's a good one. It's also a vivid, literary-flavored snapshot of a particular place and lifestyle - working poor in the small-town South - with dialogue and characters as sharp as Elmore Leonard's best, and a general sense of humanity and empathy with its characters throughout the book that makes even the worst of them compelling and most of them are somewhere on a shades-of-gray sympathy spectrum. The book has spectacular action sequences (seriously, this would make a fantastic movie; please take my money) and a series of escalating twists that sometimes made me gasp out loud. I can see why it's gotten all the buzz that it's gotten. It's very dark and a lot of people die, but it never feels bleak; it's engaging, vivid, and darkly funny enough to keep it moving along briskly.
Money Shot by Christa Faust - Also on my general to-read list because of Rachel's review here from a few years ago. This is a dark, bloody, classic-style noir set in the L.A. porn industry. Aging porn actress Angel Dare wakes up in the trunk of a car after someone tries to kill her - and things only get worse from there. The world that she carefully built around herself with the proceeds from her porn career is collapsing like a house of cards, she can't trust anyone, and all she can do is struggle her way from moment to moment, constantly on the run, trying to unravel the mystery of who's trying to kill her and why before the next betrayal turns out to be her last. She's an extremely engaging and scrappy heroine, with no more fighting skills than any ordinary person would have, driven by determination, raw will to live, and a willingness to tap into increasingly dark parts of herself to survive as her world goes to pieces around her.
These two books made an excellent paired set, because they are spectacularly different in almost every way except the broad strokes of the noir genre, but they are also both incredibly vivid portraits of a place, a time, and a subculture, and both are very well structured and fast-paced with a high body count. Would definitely pick up more books by either of these authors.
Next up in our mini book club: Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a noirish thriller set on a South Dakota rez.
rachelmanija and scioscribe in September! This is a mystery con, and as I have done very little reading of current mystery/thriller in the last decade or two (I definitely read it, in fact I love it, but it's considerably more based around "Ooh, that looks good" than trying to keep up with what's current in the genre), the three of us are doing a sort of informal "book club" of books by the convention's guests - see guests of honor here and all attending authors here.The first two:
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby - This had been on my radar to read for a while, so I'm glad this was finally the kick that got me to read it! This is a really excellent, noir-flavored heist novel set in a small town in the South. Retired getaway driver Beauregard "Bug" Montage gets pulled back in for one last job, and we all know how that goes. But the book is a lot more than a heist novel, although it's a good one. It's also a vivid, literary-flavored snapshot of a particular place and lifestyle - working poor in the small-town South - with dialogue and characters as sharp as Elmore Leonard's best, and a general sense of humanity and empathy with its characters throughout the book that makes even the worst of them compelling and most of them are somewhere on a shades-of-gray sympathy spectrum. The book has spectacular action sequences (seriously, this would make a fantastic movie; please take my money) and a series of escalating twists that sometimes made me gasp out loud. I can see why it's gotten all the buzz that it's gotten. It's very dark and a lot of people die, but it never feels bleak; it's engaging, vivid, and darkly funny enough to keep it moving along briskly.
Money Shot by Christa Faust - Also on my general to-read list because of Rachel's review here from a few years ago. This is a dark, bloody, classic-style noir set in the L.A. porn industry. Aging porn actress Angel Dare wakes up in the trunk of a car after someone tries to kill her - and things only get worse from there. The world that she carefully built around herself with the proceeds from her porn career is collapsing like a house of cards, she can't trust anyone, and all she can do is struggle her way from moment to moment, constantly on the run, trying to unravel the mystery of who's trying to kill her and why before the next betrayal turns out to be her last. She's an extremely engaging and scrappy heroine, with no more fighting skills than any ordinary person would have, driven by determination, raw will to live, and a willingness to tap into increasingly dark parts of herself to survive as her world goes to pieces around her.
These two books made an excellent paired set, because they are spectacularly different in almost every way except the broad strokes of the noir genre, but they are also both incredibly vivid portraits of a place, a time, and a subculture, and both are very well structured and fast-paced with a high body count. Would definitely pick up more books by either of these authors.
Next up in our mini book club: Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a noirish thriller set on a South Dakota rez.
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I think Money Shot is Faust's best novel. I have enjoyed the others I've read by her, which is almost all of them, but she has some recurring tropes that don't fit in all of her books, which is frustrating. I don't know S.A. Cosby at all!
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I don't know S.A. Cosby at all!
I can't remember off the top of my head where I'd heard of Blacktop Wasteland before, but it is GREAT. A very fine and stylish noirish heist.
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It's funny that movies don't tend to use mystery as an umbrella term. There are also different standards for labeling a book as noir vs. calling a movie noir. Classification geekery is both ARGH and kind of fun.
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That's a good point about movies being classified differently, now that I think about it. Actually, mystery in movies doesn't even seem to be a category that exists, per se.
Now I'm curious about book vs. movie noir standards; what are they, typically? (I found it interesting how many of what I sort of vaguely recognize as classic noir tropes Money Shot managed to hit while also being a bit atypical. I guessed the broad strokes of what was going to happen to her love interest just on the basis of thinking of him as a noir femme fatale.)
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The rule of thumb when it comes to novels is--or used to be, I feel like this has loosened up with cross-pollination between books and movies--is that if it has a cop or private eye protagonist, it's not a noir novel; it's a hardboiled detective novel. The one exception was if the detective/cop character was actually committing the crime. If they were just investigating it, it didn't count. Noir usually presupposes a kind of downward slide for the protagonist--they get involved with a crime and it generally does not go well--and they're usually more flawed, even if they're still sympathetic. To paraphrase Double Indemnity, it's a genre where the last trolley stop is in the cemetery. Whereas hardboiled fiction, per Raymond Chandler, was tough and gritty but still centered on a figure who could be trusted to navigate all that: "He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
But movies handle noir more as an atmosphere and mood and cinematic style (certain kinds of lighting and shadowing, etc.); no one really talks about hardboiled movies. So The Big Sleep is a hardboiled novel but a noir film, and there are plenty of darker cop dramas, like The Big Heat, which are usually classed as noir. And there are noir hybrids--Blade Runner and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers come up a lot as SF noir.
I do kind of think differentiating between "the crime happens outside the protagonist, who may be shaken by the investigation but is ultimately intact" and "the crime happens because of the protagonist, or maybe TO the protagonist, who runs the risk of being destroyed by their choices" can be valuable, because sometimes I'm in the mood for one and not the other, but I ultimately love both ways of looking at the genre, whatever medium it's in.
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Also, Blacktop Wasteland is astounding.
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I also thought Money Shot was her best book, but I did like the (even darker) sequel a lot; MMA is involved but it's less central than the porn industry in Money Shot.
I could basically see a movie playing in my head while reading Blacktop Wasteland, especially the vehicle action sequences. I'm sure it'll appear eventually and I cannot wait.
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