Andrew Vachss,  best known for his Burke series of crime novels, takes a detour into ’50s noir with this gem, The Getaway Man. Eddie steals cars as a teenager and graduates to prison.  But his true love is driving.  Eddie earns the reputation as a dependable wheel man.  He links up with J.C. who plans capers.  Over the years, J. C. and Eddie pull off plenty of successful crimes.  Finally, Eddie and J.C. decide to knock over an armored car and retire on the bundles of cash.  The complication is J. C.’s girl, Vonda.  Vonda fears J.C. will dump her when they score all that money.  She tries to convince Eddie to be her getaway man.  The last few pages of The Getaway Man are as taut and suspenseful as anything Jim Thompson ever wrote. I loved the stinger at the end.

Darkship Thieves presents a future where humanity has separated into two sides: the “Earthworms” who inhabit Earth and ban any genetic manipulation, and descendants who have fled Earth and set up their own colonies where they practice advanced science including genetic engineering.  Athena Hera Sinistra, a spoiled brat whose father is a leading figure of Earth’s government, finds herself in the hands of a darkship thief.  She’s taken to Eden, the secret base hidden in an asteroid.  Thena confronts the chaotic past she discovers on this secret colony.  Darkship Thieves is written for a Young Adult audience.  I found the love story predictable and figured out the “secret” mid-way through the book.  Nothing special here.  GRADE: C

Here’s an interesting web site that will help you find books you might want to read. Let’s say you just finished reading a book and would like to read more books similar to it. Just enter the title of a book along with the author. Click on WHAT SHOULD I READ NEXT? and the web site will come up with 10 related titles. It’s a little kludgy so be prepared to try a couple of time before you get some results. I put in “Dying Earth” by “Jack Vance” and it came up with some interesting books. I would think this web site would be ideal for Book Clubs. To give the web site a test drive, just click here: WHAT SHOULD I READ NEXT?

Musical plays roll into Buffalo monthly, but unfortunately we’ve seen most of them. How many times can you see CATS or The Phantom of the Opera? But this month, a musical we hadn’t seen arrived: In the Heights. It’s the story of a Latino neighborhood in New York City. Various characters are introduced, the cast breaks into song every five minutes or so, and there’s enough energy in the songs and the dancing to hold the audience’s attention. Many of the songs are a blend of Latino music (heavy on the brass) and rap. Some people won’t like that. The fairly simple plot complications are resolved by [SPOILER!] “deus ex lottery ticket.” This musical won some Tony Awards when it was on Broadway. If it comes to your town, check it out. GRADE: B

Raymond Carver once said that Anton Chekhov was the best short story writer that ever lived. If you haven’t read any Chekhov, or you read the old translations by Constance Garnett, you might want to pick up this copy of Chekhov’s short stories with new translations by Rosamund Bartlett. Bartlett makes Chekhov’s sentences less clunky and modernizes the language from the Garnett translation that’s a hundred years old. This collection presents the wide range of Chekhov’s stories. “The Huntsman” (1885) is an early story about a huntsman who has been tricked into marrying a poor woman. The title story, “About Love” (1898) is part of a trilogy of stories that include “The Man in the Case” (1898) and “Gooseberries” (1898) about two men on a summer hunting trip. All three stories explore aspects of freedom. This collection includes what many consider Chekhov’s best story, “The Lady With the Little Dog” (1899). Chekhov presents some conflicting ideas about love and marriage in this story and leaves the reader pondering questions with no easy answers. I highly recommend this marvelous collection. GRADE: A
(This completes the January 2010 portion of my Short Story Reading Challenge. I will read and review one short story collection per month in 2010. To find out more about the Short Story Reading Challenge click: Short Story Reading Challenge.)

Dan Chaon is a crafty writer. First, he lures you in with a story of a young man who has had his hand severed under suspicious circumstances. Then, the story jumps to a history teacher and a former student who decide to “disappear.” Finally, a third story line about a brother who is searching for his twin emerges. All three story lines run parallel to each other until around page 200 when they start to intersect and the enormity of the relationships among the characters starts to crystallize. Chaon juggles all three plots deftly until he blends them together. This takes some getting used to at the beginning of Await Your Reply, but if you stay with it as the plots unfold, you’ll enjoy a masterful, suspenseful performance. GRADE: A-

Harry Whittington wrote Web of Murder in 1958, but the plot is still fresh. A successful lawyer, Charley Brower, falls in lust with his smoldering secretary, Laura. But Charley is married to Cora, a very wealthy woman. Charley and Laura decide to kill Cora and live on her fortune. However, as often happens in these noir novels, things go wrong. Really wrong. The Black Lizard edition of this book has a bonus essay by Harry Whittington talking about his career and thanking Bill Crider for the “best of the paperback pioneers” moniker. You can find this informative essay in Black Lizard editions of Forgive Me, Killer, Fires That Destroy, Ticket to Hell, The Devil Wears Wings, and A Moment to Prey. If you haven’t read Harry Whittington, Web of Murder would be a great book to start with.

In 1953, Hugh Hefner launched Playboy magazine and it was an instant sensation. The first issue featured Marilyn Monroe and sold out in days becoming one of the most collectible men’s magazines of all time. Through the 1950s Playboy featured Bettie Page, Jayne Mansfield, and Brigitte Bardot. Hefner’s editing strategy included in-depth interviews with prominent figures; serious literature by such writers as Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Kerouac; and for the art of illustrators like LeRoy Neiman, Shel Silverstein, and Alberto Vargas. These early issues are hard to find today and pricey when you do, which is what makes this digital collection so significant—every page of every issue of Playboy from the 1950s is stored in color on a DVD-ROM archive, complete with a powerful search engine for Mac and PC computers. The facsimile reproduction of the premier issue of Playboy with Marilyn Monroe is a bonus! This set lists for $100. You can buy it for $29.95 at salesbooks.com. What a great deal!

Graywolf Press publishes “The Art of” series as an aid to writers and wannabes. But, you don’t have to be a writer to enjoy Joan Silber’s tour of time. From a detailed analysis of The Great Gatsby to Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to Katherine Anne Porter, Silber shows how writers use time to tell their stories. Some stories use a triangle approach. Some use a spiral approach. Some writers tell a story backwards. Silber reveals the tricks Poe, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Chekhov, Henry James, and many other writers employ to structure their stories. This slim book, only 114 pages, can be read in one sitting. But you’ll be thinking about what Silber writes for a long, long time. GRADE: A

Liam Pennywell, teaching at a second-rate private school, loses his job just as he turns 60. He decides to move to a new, smaller apartment in Baltimore. Liam’s life changes and Anne Tyler delivers her patented “slice-of-life” novel. Will Liam have an affair? Will he find a new job? Will he draw closer to his children and his ex-wife? If you read this novel, you probably won’t like the answers. Noah’s Compass is Number Three on the New York Times Best Sellers List so there’s an audience that likes this kind of mundane novel. GRADE: B-