This Week's Reading

Maybe it's me, but this week seems unusually rich in good, free reads. Case in point:

1. Maxim Jakubowski's short essay on his friend (and noir legend) Derek Raymond/Robin Cook. No, not the medical thriller writer... ah, just read the essay at the Mulholland Books site and you'll see.

2. A free short story (also at the Mulholland Books site, but brought to you by Popcorn Fiction) by Secret Dead Blog favorite Charlie Huston. This doesn't make up for the fact that there will be no new Charlie Huston novel in 2011, but it does salve the wound a little. And Warren Ellis even squeezed a guest blog post out of Mr. Huston, which of course, was a must-read.

3. Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus put together this annotated Donald Westlake bibiography that just blew me away. He's packed it with little nuggets of review, analysis, and correspondence with Westlake himself. I want Iverson to keep going until this baby is a short book. But until then, enjoy the current version.

Also: In the spirit of both free reads and Donald Westlake, the good folks at Oceanview Publishing, who recently produced Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads (edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner), sent me a PDF of my short essay on Westlake/Richard Stark's first Parker novel, The Hunter. Want a copy? E-mail me at (duane DOT swier AT verizon DOT net) and I'll send it to you.

Opening Shots: Half the Blood of Brooklyn

I don't like him. I don't like the way he smells. I don't like the way he looks. I don't like his shoes. If I stuck a blade in him and drank the blood that shot out of the open wound, I wouldn't like the way he tastes.

Half the Blood of Brooklyn
by Charlie Huston
(Del Rey, 2007)

("Opening Shots" is a new feature here at Secret Dead Blog where I post the opening line of a particular novel. Check back every Monday for more!)

Charlie on Charles

Charlie Huston wrote a great post the other day about Charles Bukowski. It's one that Ecco Books should reprint in the front of every Bukowski novel, because it makes you want to run out and buy a bunch of Bukowski novels. And that's pretty much what I did this evening. I picked up Factotum, Women and Pulp, based on Huston's post, but also the first lines of each book. Check out Women:

I was 50 years old and hadn't been to bed with a woman for four years. I had no women friends. I looked at them as I passed them on the streets or wherever I saw them, but I looked at them without yearning and with a sense of futility.

How can you not continue reading? And then there's Pulp:

I was sitting in my office, my lease had expired and McKelvery was starting eviction proceedings. It was a hellish hot day and the air conditioner was broken. A fly crawled across the top of my desk. I reached out with the open palm of my hand and sent him out of the game. I wiped my hand on my right pants leg as the phone rang.

Dude, sold. I'm ashamed to say I've read more about Bukowski than his actual work, but I plan on fixing that situation over the next few days.

Though, as Huston cautions: "Don't read them too soon. Make sure you read them all before you walk in front of a car someday."