Our group’s name notwithstanding, we read all sorts of books, not just pulp fiction. (Not even just fiction.) But when we do read pulp fiction, it’s often from a line called Hard Case Crime, which was founded by a friend of our group who kindly gives us advance peeks into what they’re going to be publishing months and months before anyone else gets to see.
This summer, that meant getting an early look at a first novel called Charlesgate Confidential by film critic Scott Von Doviak. And what a great read it is. An art heist in 1946 leads to a hunt for the missing art in 1986 and then to a series of murders related to the still missing art in the present day, and it’s all woven together in a twisty, satisfying way, all over Boston (even though we read it all over New York).
And we’d offer to lend you one of our ragged, dog-eared copies,
except now we don’t have to because this coming Tuesday the book’s finally being published and you’ll be able to get a copy for yourself!
We don’t generally shill for books, even ones published by our friends, but this one is pretty terrific. Don’t believe us? Here’s what a random guy named Stephen King said about it on Twitter back in June: “Get this book, campers. It’s a fun machine…the white-knuckle kind.”
How did Stephen King get his hands on a copy? Are we saying that Stephen King came to one of our events and stole one of our precious copies of Charlesgate Confidential?? We are so, so, so totally not saying that. Because it wouldn’t be true.
But we do love us some Stephen King too. 🙂
Your recommendations of Hard Case Crime books have certainly worked well for me. I just finished “Forever and a Death”, which you talked about a year and a half ago (https://toplesspulp.com/2017/04/12/happy-passover/). It took me this long to read it because I tried to emulate your group as well as I could by reading it all on infrequent visits to Gunnison Beach. But it turned out to be hard to put down and I scheduled another trip to the beach just to finish it this summer.
It’s amazing that Donald E. Westlake worked on the script for a James Bond movie at all, or that he later turned it into a novel, or that the novel remained unpublished for 20 years after his death. The result is brilliant: he retained the Bond villain and globe-trotting locations, but changed the main character to a more ordinary person, making it interesting to see how someone without the training could survive in Bond situations, and including lots of ethical dilemmas and small decisions that have a major impact. (Spoiler alert!) I’ll bet there is no other book where the heroes surprisingly turn out to be an engineer and an environmentalist scuba diver.
Anyway, I don’t generally shill for books either, but did want to thank you for the recommendation of a book I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
You might not be aware that Scott von Doviak, though hailing from Boston, has spent the last couple of decades in Austin. I recently listened to him on a podcast from the Austin American-Statesman (https://atxne.ws/2pi4Iwg) talking about this book and his work in general. It pleased me that when I heard the intro, I thought “oh yeah, I heard about him via OCTPFAS” and got to add that layer of enjoyment to hearing him discuss the book and his work generally.