Review by New York Times Review
AT THE END of DARKNESS, DARKNESS (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), John Harvey advises us that this will be the final novel in his masterly series featuring Inspector Charlie Resnick. Is there any way we could take a vote on that? We'd hate to lose this Nottingham policeman whose love of jazz and compatibility with cats (named after the likes of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie) distinguish him as the mellowest of detectives. Hard as it is to let our hero go, the elegiac tone struck in this melancholy story makes it clear that Harvey has no intention of giving Resnick (or his surviving cat) a reprieve. To take the sting out of this parting, the detective's last case sends him back to the miners' strike of 1984, when he was much younger and less disenchanted. Jenny Hardwick was a real firebrand back then, and Resnick knew her as an impassioned orator exhorting miners' wives to keep their men out of the pits and on the picket line - never mind that Christmas was coming and the Thatcher government wasn't backing down. When he next lays eyes on her, some 30 years after she dropped out of sight, Jenny is a pile of bones, unearthed during the demolition of a block of houses. Casting the narrative in two time frames allows Harvey to show us both the Resnick that was (an intelligence officer, reluctantly sending undercover agents to spy on the desperate miners) and the Resnick that is (an older and wiser man with even more regrets). Assigned to the task force under a former protégée, he searches out all the old suspects and witnesses, even as he keeps losing himself in the long-ago. Harvey is too particular a stylist to limit his story to the old days. Every action has its parallel, every voice has an echo, and all the sharply drawn working-class characters are as complicated today as they were back then. "Long memories, some people," one former miner says of his neighbors, and maybe himself. "Resentments, buried deep." Once upon a time, those geezers puttering around in their gardens were young and dangerous, and it's Resnick's job to find the murderer among them. But reliving the past has been a painful experience, and by the end of the novel he seems genuinely content to sit on a bench "watching the good folk of Nottingham go about their daily business" without him. WHEN IT COMES to naming names, Walter Mosley knows no peer. A cop called Frisk, a guru who goes by Vandal, a boxer known as Hardcase Tommy Latour and a black militant with the excellent moniker of Most Grand all figure in ROSE GOLD (Doubleday, $25.95), Mosley's endlessly entertaining new Easy Rawlins mystery. This one, set in Los Angeles in 1967, comes with a Patty Hearstinspired plot about a poor little rich girl who adopts the cause of the black nationalists holding her for ransom. They call themselves Scorched Earth and threaten to take down the government, but one insider thinks otherwise: "As far as I could see really it was just a gang robbin' places and talkin' all big." Mosley has a great time making fun of the hippies in Laurel Canyon and the silly girls who declare their independence by enslaving themselves to "despots and dictators" in dashikis. But Easy is never happy unless he's doing favors for people with no one else to turn to, so there are plenty of secondary plots with frantic characters, all talking a blue streak. As always, Easy is their man. FOR SUCH a blunt-talking and down-to-earth detective, Peter Diamond manages to get involved in some pretty highbrow cases. He's the big cheese in Peter Lovesey's civilized English police procedurals set in the city of Bath, and past cases have found him hunting murderers among philatelists, literary scholars and the musicians in a string quartet, THE STONE WIFE (Soho Crime, $26.95) puts him in the company of art collectors fighting (to the death, in one case) over a medieval sculpture depicting the Wife of Bath that may provide evidence Chaucer had a house in the city. Once Diamond has read what this lusty lady tells her fellow pilgrims in "The Canterbury Tales," he becomes quite taken with her: "Whatever you thought about her, she wasn't repressed." The murder mystery is solved along traditional lines, but it's the wonderful tidbits of Chaucerian scholarship that enliven the novel. And whatever you think of Peter Diamond, he proves himself a "verray, parfit, gentil knyght." READING THE 15 Stories in PRISON NOIR (Akashic, cloth, $26.95; paper, $15.95) is a sobering experience. Unlike most claimants to that much-abused term, this is the real thing - the work of men and women incarcerated in correctional institutions across America. The anthology's editor, Joyce Carol Oates, long active in prison writing programs, is no pushover, so much of the material holds up on a literary level, notably "The Investigation," an austere narrative about an existential moment in the life of a longtime prisoner. It's the work of William Van Poyck, an inmate in a Florida prison who was executed last year. The power of this collection comes from the voices of these authors, voices suffused with rage ("3 Block From Hell," by Bryan K. Palmer), despair ("There Will Be Seeds for Next Year," by Zeke Caligiuri) and madness ("Shuffle," by Christopher M. Stephen). Perhaps the most harrowing is Andre White's "Angel Eyes," the stunning account of an old-timer who helps a youngster survive the culture of violence that now defines his life.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 28, 2014]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
For Akashic's celebrated noir series, Oates, a veteran instructor in prison writing programs, has assembled a remarkable anthology of stories written by inmates of correctional institutions across America. Standouts include Christopher M. Stephen's "Shuffle," in which a tormented older convict must confront an enigmatic new cellmate, and Linda Michelle Marquardt's deeply unsettling "Milk and Tea," about a survivor of horrific domestic violence who finally snapped and killed her sadistic husband. In Stephen Geez's heartbreaking "Tune-Up," violence cuts short the collaboration of a group of incarcerated musicians. Andre White's "Angel Eyes" is a tour de force about a compassionate elderly convict who witnesses the dehumanization of a young inmate. The 15 selections display a wide variety of literary styles and approaches, but, as Oates suggests in her introduction, they beckon the reader to identify with the perpetrators. Most importantly, this landmark volume amplifies the voices of the incarcerated. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Starred Review. This tremendous collection makes "civilian" crime fiction writers (like myself) seem anemic in comparison. These are stories that resonate with authenticity and verve and pain and truth. Any collection edited by the National Book Award-winning author Oates (them; Blonde, Rape: A Love Story) deserves attention, but the contributors are deft and confident, and great writers without her imprimatur. Many of the authors served or are serving long sentences for murder, bank robbery, assault, etc. William Van Poyck ("The Investigation") was executed in 2013. Andre White's stunning "Angel Eyes" proves that the pen is mightier than the sword in more ways than one. Jail suicide and pitiless partner abuse are the focus of the fine "Milk and Tea" by Linda Michelle Marquardt. The great writing in "Rat's Ass" by Kenneth R. Brydon makes the reader squirm. Marco Verdoni's "Immigrant Song" is moving and lyrical, and Ali F. Sareni's powerful "A Message in the Breadth of Allah " stuck with this reader long afterwards. I liked every story. VERDICT Kudos to Johnny Temple and the Akashic team for another milestone in the Noir series (83 and counting). There is need for Prison Noir II. Authentic, powerful, visceral, moving, great writing. Seamus Scanlon, Ctr. for Worker Education, CUNY (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
