"Pork Pie Hat" by Peter Straub / Monday, August 20, 2012 / Reviewed by Clay Stafford

Why Clay Stafford chose this book:

From our 2012 Killer Nashville Guest of Honor Peter Straub, but that is not why I chose it. It’s one of my favorite books, which just happens to be written by Straub. This is literature and mystery at its finest. Something happened, we don’t know what it was, then over the course of the narrator’s lifetime, he uncovers the truth. I love the way Straub handles multiple plot requirements on the way to the end, leading us down one false path and then another. The ending – even the storytelling itself – is far from cliche and I’m fairly confident that whatever you guess as you go along will be incorrect when the final page arrives. That’s rare. The dialogue and prose are unmatched. If you want a well-written story with surprises, this is a great book to check out. (And if you’re going to be at Killer Nashville this Saturday, this is one I’ll be discussing with Straub in relation to plotting.) Enjoy!

From Amazon:

“Passionate about jazz, the narrator discovers that one of his greatest heroes, a saxophonist by the name of Pork Pie Hat, is still alive and playing at a club he frequents. Granted an interview by the Hat, the narrator gets a night of extraordinary stories from a man dying of alcoholism. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.”

If you want to make your own comments on this selection, we would love to hear from you. Join ourFacebook Killer Nashville group page or our blog and join in the discussion.

Remember that these books are listed at a discount through Amazon. You also don’t have to purchase the version that is featured here. Many of these books are available in multiple formats: e–book, hardcover, softcover, and audio. Enjoy!

– Clay Stafford, Founder of Killer Nashville

"Oregon Hill" by Howard Owen / Friday, August 17, 2012 / Reviewed by Clay Stafford

Why Clay Stafford chose this book:

A colorful reporter who is a sardonic spectator. The wrong perpetrator charged. The reporter saves the day. You probably think you’ve read this story before. But you would be wrong. This is so much better than those other books you might have read. Author Howard Owen is a brilliant observer of people. Set in Richmond in the dying world of print newspapers, this first person narrative is Southern investigative noir at its finest. I love the dialogue. It has that rare combination of being both plot and character driven, an infrequent amalgamation in most books. I first came across Owen’s reporter Willie Black in “Richmond Noir,” an anthology of short stories from Akashic Books. I thought he would make a great series character. I’m glad Owen introduced him here. I hope Willie Black makes another appearance. I predict a very successful series. On a side note: What’s the magic at Permanent Press? The house is fast becoming one of my favorite publishers. Consistently, publisher Martin Shepard and staff keep turning out winners. I don’t know how they do it, but the team has a golden touch. I’m looking forward to more stories from their organization in the future. You can check out all of their mysteries here:http://www.thepermanentpress.com/c-19-Mysteries.aspx.

From Amazon:

“Willie Black has squandered a lot of things in his life – his liver, his lungs, a couple of former wives and a floundering daughter can all attest to his abuse. He’s lucky to be employed, having managed to drink and smart-talk his way out of a nice, cushy job covering (and partying with) the politicians down at the capitol.

Now, he’s back on the night corps beat, right where he started when he came to work for the Richmond paper almost 30 years ago. The thing Willie’s always had going for him, though, all the way back to his hardscrabble days as a mixed-race kid on Oregon Hill, where white was the primary color and fighting was everyone’s favorite leisure pastime, was grit. His mother, the drug-addled Peggy, gave him that if nothing else. He never backed down then, and he shows no signs of changing.

When a co-ed at the local university where Willie’s daughter is a perpetual student is murdered, her headless body found along the South Anna River, the hapless alleged killer is arrested within days. Everyone but Willie seems to think: Case Closed. But Willie, against the orders and advice of his bosses at the paper, the police and just about everyone else, doesn’t think the case is solved at all. He embarks on a one-man crusade to do what he’s always done: get the story.

On the way, Willie runs afoul of David Junior Shiflett, a nightmare from his youth who’s now a city cop, and awakens another dark force, one everyone thought disappeared a long time ago. And a score born in the parking lot of an Oregon Hill beer joint 40 years ago will finally be settled.

The truth is out there. Willie Black’s going to dig it out or die trying.”

Owen knows his setting, his dialogue is spot-on and his grasp of the down-and-dirty work of the police and news reporters lends authenticity to the narrative. This is Southern literature as expected, with a touch of noir, and with a touch of Dennis Lehane s Mystic River. Willie Black deserves a sequel. – Kirkus

If you want to make your own comments on this selection, we would love to hear from you. Join ourFacebook Killer Nashville group page or our blog and join in the discussion.

Remember that these books are listed at a discount through Amazon. You also don’t have to purchase the version that is featured here. Many of these books are available in multiple formats: e–book, hardcover, softcover, and audio. Enjoy!

– Clay Stafford, Founder of Killer Nashville

"Miss Me When I'm Gone" by Emily Arsenault / Thursday, August 16, 2012 / Reviewed by Clay Stafford

Why Clay Stafford chose this book:

The accidental death of a bestselling author whose mother had been murdered 20 years before. An unfinished manuscript. A stack of notebooks. Tape recordings. And doubt. Buried within the outlines of fiction are the clues to the author’s killer. What story would someone kill (and continue to kill) to keep it from being told. The writing itself is superb and makes it even more a pleasure to read. New York Times notable author Emily Arsenault delivers an exceptional book and brings new meaning to “reading between the lines.”

From Amazon:

“Author Gretchen Waters made a name for herself with her bestseller Tammyland – a memoir about her divorce and her admiration for country music icons Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton that was praised as a “honky-tonk Eat, Pray, Love.” But her writing career is cut abruptly short when she dies from a fall down a set of stone library steps. It is a tragic accident and no one suspects foul play, certainly not Gretchen’s best friend from college, Jamie, who’s been named the late author’s literary executor.

But there’s an unfinished manuscript Gretchen left behind that is much darker than Tammyland: a book ostensibly about male country musicians yet centered on a murder in Gretchen’s family that haunted her childhood. In its pages, Gretchen seems to be speaking to Jamie from beyond the grave – suggesting her death was no accident . . . and that Jamie must piece together the story someone would kill to keep untold.”

Outstanding … Arsenault’s lyrical, moving prose serves to make this more than just a compelling whodunit.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

If you want to make your own comments on this selection, we would love to hear from you. Join ourFacebook Killer Nashville group page or our blog and join in the discussion.

Remember that these books are listed at a discount through Amazon. You also don’t have to purchase the version that is featured here. Many of these books are available in multiple formats: e–book, hardcover, softcover, and audio. Enjoy!

– Clay Stafford, Founder of Killer Nashville

"Tigers in Red Weather" by Liza Klaussmann / Wednesday, August 15, 2012 / Reviewed by Clay Stafford

“Tigers in Red Weather” by Liza Klaussmann

Why Clay Stafford chose this book:

Five people don’t always see things the same, especially when some are concealing secrets. That’s the case in the Liza Klaussmann’s soap opera-like (meant as a compliment) debut novel “Tigers in Red Weather” in which a murder on 1950s Martha’s vineyard disrupts the family’s life. Klaussmann does a good job managing the five different points-of-view until the truth finally does come out in the end. The story is well-plotted and suspenseful with particularly strong dialogue. Incidentally, for those who like a little backstory with his/her reading, author Liza Klaussmann is the great-great-great-granddaughter of one of my favorite authors Herman Melville.

From Amazon:

“Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha’s Vineyard in a glorious old family estate known as Tiger House. In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their ‘real lives’: Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war.

Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena’s husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena–with their children, Daisy and Ed–try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same.

Brilliantly told from five points of view, with a magical elegance and suspenseful dark longing, Tigers in Red Weather is an unforgettable debut novel from a writer of extraordinary insight and accomplishment.”

(A) smart, unsettling debut… Klaussmann’s pitch-perfect portrait of the Derringer marriage gives the novel a strong emotional charge. Their complicated, painfully loving relationship and their mutual tenderness for fresh-faced Daisy ring true….stinging dialogue and sharp insights offer strong foundations on which this novice author can build. – Kirkus Reviews

If you want to make your own comments on this selection, we would love to hear from you. Join ourFacebook Killer Nashville group page or our blog and join in the discussion.

Remember that these books are listed at a discount through Amazon. You also don’t have to purchase the version that is featured here. Many of these books are available in multiple formats: e–book, hardcover, softcover, and audio. Enjoy!

– Clay Stafford, Founder of Killer Nashville

"Flat Spin" by David Freed / Tuesday, August 14, 2012 / Reviewed by Clay Stafford

Why Clay Stafford chose this book:

Pulitzer Prize winning author David Freed’s first book about an ex-military assassin turned flight instructor is enough to make your head buzz. “Flat Spin” is a fast moving chase-em-down thriller with plot twists galore. I love the humor in the tense moments; reminds me of some of the best in the hard-boiled world. Wonderful writing, as one would expect from a journalist who has been shortlisted for numerous journalistic awards. I love the premise: find the killer of the man who stole your wife. The only thing I didn’t like was that the book came to an end, but that’s the way of all good things. Good thing about a book, though, I can always read it again. In this case, I will. This is definitely a book to add to your shelf.

From Amazon:

“David Freed’s first mystery is a stay-up-late-to-finish thriller. It’s also got some of the funniest lines – and characters – one is likely to encounter in any mystery, along with a tense and compelling plot and a most original protagonist.

Based in sunny Rancho Bonita – “California’s Monaco” as the city’s moneyed minions like to call it – Cordell Logan is a literate, sardonic flight instructor and aspiring Buddhist with dwindling savings and a shadowy past. When his beautiful ex-wife, Savannah, shows up out of the blue to tell him that her husband has been murdered in Los Angeles, Logan is quietly pleased. Savannah’s late husband, after all, is Arlo Echevarria, the man she left Logan for.

Logan and Echevarria were once comrades-in-arms assigned to a top-secret military assassination team known as “Alpha.” The only problem is, the LAPD can find no record of Echevarrias ever having toiled for Uncle Sam. Savannah wants Logan to tell the police what he knows. At first he refuses, but then, relying on his small, aging airplane, the “Ruptured Duck,” and the skills he honed working for Alpha, Logan doggedly hunts Echevarria’s killer.

His trail takes him from the glitzy Las Vegas Strip to the most dangerous ghettos of inner-city Oakland, from darkened, Russian Mafia haunts in West Los Angeles to the deserts of Arizona. But that’s the least of his problems. It is his love-hate relationship with Savannah, a woman Logan continues to pine for in spite of himself, that threatens to consume him.”

Readers will find Cordell, intrigued by Buddhism and still emotionally vulnerable from his divorce, an engaging protagonist… Freed, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for the L.A. Times coverage of the Rodney King riots, capably balances humor and serious themes. – Publishers Weekly

If you want to make your own comments on this selection, we would love to hear from you. Join ourFacebook Killer Nashville group page or our blog and join in the discussion.

Remember that these books are listed at a discount through Amazon. You also don’t have to purchase the version that is featured here. Many of these books are available in multiple formats: e–book, hardcover, softcover, and audio. Enjoy!

– Clay Stafford, Founder of Killer Nashville