I’ve got a backlog of reviews, I know. I’m current on top my weekly reading but that sure hasn’t translated over to reviews. Though I’ve got other books in the queue to review I thought I’d start back with a review of what I had read this last week, Needle: A Magazine of Noir edited by Steven Weddle.

Whoa there! I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m cheating because this is a magazine? In name, technically it is. But it reads and feels like an anthology. An anthology of the best short crime fiction I’ve read. Granted there aren’t a lot of venues dedicated to crime, especially the gritty kind. At least not ones that show case the stories alone. Most are set along side more magazine like elements such as reviews, articles and inteviews. Needle is unencumbered by such. No ads either.

See why I’m treating it like a book? You know the duck analogy, right? Well, there you go.

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One of the most anticipated books for my 52Books reading list is Joe Hill’s Horns. I had previously read his short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and his debut novel Heart-Shaped Box. It was that novel that made me a fan, regardless of his pedigree, of the writer, Joe Hill.

Over two years passed and no word on what the next book would be, if there would be a next book. Maybe I wasn’t looking in the right circles, but in mid-2009 I saw a tweet of his next book and with little else than a title I was excited for a new book.

Almost three years later, Joe Hill’s Horns is in my hands and I’m nervous to read the book. So I crack the spine, hoping Hill’s words are as good as I remember.

Ignatius “Ig” Perrish wakes up with a helluva hang-over. His head is hurting something bad, only he soon discovers that it wasn’t from binging the night before. Ig has grown horns pushing painfully outward stretching the skin of his receding scalp.

Ig soon discovers that the horns aren’t the only change. People are compelled to tell him their darkest desires, asking permission to follow through with the impulses. Also if  he touches a person he becomes privy to their worst deeds. This discovery starts the book off on a dark comedy rift, as we discover the animosity the town has for the bedeviled Ig.

A year ago, Ig was the primary suspect in the rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin Williams, but when evidence was lost the case against him was dropped. Most everyone believes Ig was guilty, that his famous trumpeter father or TV personalty brother, Terry Perrish, had paid off the right people. Now with horns, silenced thoughts, even from his parents, come to light. When his brother, Terry, makes a damning confession, the story takes a darker turn.

Ig wants to get revenge and retribution, desires redemption, but most of all wants to get back what he lost, and every way he approaches it he damned if does and damned if he don’t.

Horns is many things through out the book and Joe Hill seamlessly navigates you through every aspect from comedy, horror and mystery. At it’s core though, Horns is a love story carried out through loss, memories, sadness and hatred.

Joe Hill takes us a lot of places in a short span, jumping between the present and the past, between perspectives Ig and other casts, between the gray areas of good and evil. As it says on the cover, … the devil is in the details …

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I intended to post this last week, but well it didn’t happen. Look for an audio review of Horns later this week in James Melzer’s podcast, Unleashed.

Still a bit behind the 52 mark, but I’m reading as much as I can. Current racing to the end of Jonathan Maberry’s The Dragon Factory and will soon be diving into Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein.

Learn more about Joe Hill at his website: http://www.joehillfiction.com

Read this book. Get a copy of Charlie Huston’s Sleepless and just read it.

I don’t have a long history with Charlie Huston. Before six month ago, I didn’t even know he was a writer. Had I still been an avid $200 a month comic junkie, I’m sure I would have come across the name well before now. But those days are gone.

How I discovered him isn’t important. I just know what I like. I like Charlie Huston. The man’s name even has a swagger that elicits thoughts of his preferred genre, Crime. Almost as if he’s a man in the know.

Read this book.

Sleepless is set in the now, a world so much like our own, I fear Huston might have a thumb on our future. Alter the timelines and choices made ever so slightly, I can believe the present as depicted in Sleepless, as lived by rookie LAPD officer Parker Haas.

In Parker’s world, one in ten are dying from prion based disease called Sleepless (SLP). Similar to Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), SLP prevents the infected from restorative REM sleep and the disease is 100% fatal. No cure exists, but there is a limited and government regulated drug called Dreamer that alleviates the symptoms reducing the suffering as SLP progresses to it’s final conclusion.

Parker, aside from being a rookie cop, is also a young husband and father, who’s wife suffers with SLP and suspects his daughter might as well. It is Parker’s job to work undercover as a drug dealer and ferret out a potential Dreamer black market. Because Parker is dedicated to the ideals of his job, when he finds a tangible link to what appears to be a gang slaying and is told to back down, proceeds with diligence regardless of the consequences.

Read the book.

Sleepless is told from multiple POV using Parker’s perspective told in first (a journal) and third person, as well as that of an aging hitman, Jasper, who becomes intertwined with Parker’s story.

This stand out novel by Charlie Huston is an engaging police procedural within a terrifying plausible science-fiction wrapper.

If you haven’t already made plans, go get the book and read it.

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I’ve fallen behind my book a week target, so sometime this month I’ll double up a week with my 52 Reviews.

Currently reading Horns by Joe Hill. After that will either be Jonathan Maberry’s Dragon Factory or another Charlie Huston, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.

Learn more about Charlie Huston at his website: http://www.pulpnoir.com

I bought 7th Son: Descent by J.C. Hutchins in early November and since then we’ve been playing a little shell game. Much like Good Omens, which I bought in ’91 or ’92, I managed to set it down and misplace it, only to find it again and start the cycle over.

Thankfully this little game of cat and mouse with Descent won’t be played out for nearly a couple decades. I managed to anchor on and keep the book at my side until I finished this last week. (I really should find Good Omens again)

Like Good Omens part of the precarious cycle is born out of a familiarity with Descent. Not because I’ve read the first 50 pages nearly a hundred times, but because I’ve heard it all before, at least the beginning of the 7th Son saga.

7th Son: Descent began life, at least to the public eye, as a podcast serialized and performed by the author, J.C. Hutchins. And I’ve heard the first words oh so many times over and over.

“The President of the United States is dead. He was murdered in the morning sunlight by a four year old boy.”

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It’s bad enough to work a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, but to be called in to a special meeting of key personnel on a Saturday really sucks. It can’t get much worse, but for Jamie DeBroux, a PR copy man, husband and new father, it’s going to be the worst day of his life.

Set in Philadelphia, Duane Swierczynski’s Severance Package hits you over the head in the first chapter by killing Paul Lewis, a non-essential character to events of the book, though essential to the underlying character of Molly Lewis. Then you are shuffled through the cast of characters who work for Murphy Knox & Associates, a front company for the hybrid intelligence agency CI-6. It’s a bit confusing as we are raced through the roster, but quickly comes together once the meeting convenes.

Murphy Knox & Associates is being liquidated and unfortunately in the world of CI-6 that means the employees, agents and civilians, are to be terminated.

Literally.

Jamie DeBroux can’t believe it when David Murphy, their boss, announces that they must all die and there is no escape from the building. But when co-worker Stuart drinks the deadly mimosa at David’s suggestion, Jamie clearly understands this is no joke.

Swierczynski then proceeds to take our PR protagonist through an ultra violent ride with the help of his “office wife” Molly Lewis as his fellow co-workers are taken out one-by-one. With violence cranked up to 11, Jamie DeBroux’s only desire is to survive, escape the building and get back home with his wife and child.

Severance Package is hi-octane fiction that burns hot and fast. I could easily see it adapted into a movie by Guy Ritchie or the likes.

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I enjoyed Duane Swierczynski‘s book well enough that I picked up The Blonde and pre-ordered Expiration Date.

Next up is J.C. Hutchins‘ 7th Son: Decent.