Category Archives: Book Reviews

Ghosts of Stories Past: Roachkiller Redux

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

I am very pleased to welcome back New York writer Richie Narvaez to Pulp Curry. Richie is a friend and he is also a hell of a writer, a fact I discovered when I read his first publishing effort, an anthology of noir stories entitled Roachkiller and Other Stories. It is a top notch anthology of noir stories, ranging from hardboiled crime pieces in the vein of Edwin Torres to dark dystopian tales. So when Richie told me recently that he had updated the anthology, I invited him to visit and talk about the process of revisiting old stories. Roachkiller is available at Amazon here. And while you are picking it up, can I suggest that you also get a copy of Hipster Death Rattle, he debut crime novel against the backdrop of the gentrification of Brooklyn, published by Down and Out Books. Both books are the perfect antidote to any lockdown spare time you may currently find yourself having.

Most of us, given a chance to go back in time to change something from our pasts, would do it. Besides obvious revisions to world history, we might save a loved one, reverse a career path, avoid that pub that one night. I recently had a time travel opportunity of sorts, although on a very mundane scale.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction

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Book review: Thailand’s Movie Theatres – Relics, Ruins and the Romance of Escape

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

I can’t remember when I first stumbled across Philip Jablon’s wonderful website chronicling the decline of the stand-alone movie theatre in Thailand, The Southeast Asia Movie Theatre Project. I think it was soon after I arrived back in Melbourne after a year in Cambodia, during which I spent my own fair share of time tracking down and photographing crumbling Khmer movie theatres (I also nearly broke my neck photographing the inside of an abandoned cinema in the Lao capital, Vientiane, but that’s another story).

My efforts, however, pale in comparison to Jablon’s painstaking work. His book, Thailand’s Movie Theatres: Relics, Ruins and the Romance of Escape, which emerged from his website, is a detailed, perceptive, beautifully rendered examination not only of the rise and fall of Thailand’s stand-alone cinema industry, but of a once powerful part of the country’s public culture which has now almost completely disappeared. As Jablon writes, ‘In Thailand, the standalone movie theatre represents a form of public entertainment that has all but slipped through the cracks of memory into the abyss of time.’

The first stand-alone cinema was established in Thailand in 1905. They proliferated rapidly, with the country boasting as many as 700 at the industry’s peak. Often established by local entrepreneurs, these movie theatres were usually a dynamic part of their community and deeply enmeshed in their economic and social life.… Read more

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Posted in 1990s American crime films, Book Reviews, Cinema culture

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My top 10 reads of 2018

Posted on December 4, 2018 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

I reconciled myself long ago to the fact I will never get to the end of a year without thinking I have not read as much as I should have. That said, I have read some great books this year. Fiction and non-fiction, old books and new, in no particular order, here are my top ten reads for 2018.

Red Dragon, Thomas Harris

This year, I read a few bestsellers from the past to see if I can figure out what made them so successful, and this was my favourite. The book that introduced Hannibal Lector, it is a riveting rollercoaster ride into the serial killer mind. Beautifully written and acutely observed. Harris includes some incredible detail on forensics and police procedure without overdoing it. Red Dragon is the perfect mix of elevated airport novel and hardboiled crime story.

Twisted Clay, Frank Walford

Australian writer, Frank Walford’s 1933 account of a murderous young woman,  a pathological liar and sociopath, was banned in Australia until the late 1950s. The story, which contains patricide, sex work, suicide and the young female main character’s burgeoning awareness and enjoyment of her lesbian sexuality, is a wonderfully lurid read. One can only wonder what readers must have made of it in the 1930s. Not surprisingly, they seemed to like it as it was a bestseller in the UK and US, where it was published.… Read more

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Posted in 1970s American crime films, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Non-crime reviews, Science fiction and fantasy, True crime

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Book review: Beautiful Revolutionary

Posted on August 5, 2018 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

I first came across Melbourne author Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s work when she participated in a Noir at Bar event I helped organise last year. That night she read one of the tales from her short story collection, The Love of a Bad Man. It is tempting to view her debut novel, Beautiful Revolutionary, as an extension of that collection – twelve terrific stories told from the point of view of the lovers and wives of various bad men in history. Indeed, if I remember correctly, one of the pieces in The Love of a Bad Man concerned the Reverend Jim Jones, a very bad man and the central focus of Beautiful Revolutionary.

Woollett’s novel spans the period of history from the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in June 1968 to the events that occurred in November 1978, when over 900 people died from drinking poison at the People’s Temple Agricultural Project, better known as ‘Jonestown’ in Guyana, founded by cult leader, Jim Jones. When I was younger, I remember Jonestown being described as a mass suicide but, as relatives of the dead have since pointed out, it was really a mass murder, as all but a few drank the poison under duress.

Although we never hear the story from his point of view, the book revolves around Jones, a self proclaimed socialist saviour, but also a sexual predator, quack faith healer and an increasingly unhinged demagogue.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Neo Noir, Non-crime reviews, True crime

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Book review: Clarence Cooper Jr’s The Scene

Posted on June 4, 2018 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

San Francisco based crime writer Domenic Stansberry recently sent me a copy of a book he has just put out through his very cool looking small publisher, Molotov Editions. The book is a re-released edition ofThe Syndicate by a little known Black crime writer, Clarence Cooper Jr.

I hope to write about the Molotov Editions reprint of The Syndicate, the cover of which is included below, in a future post. For now, however, I want to talk about the Cooper novel I have read, The Scene, also published in 1960. And if The Scene is any guide I am pretty sure I will dig The Syndicate.

The book set in a nameless US city, and deals with the bleak, dead end lives of the junkies, prostitutes and criminals who populate an area of it, known as ‘the Scene’.

A myriad of characters shift in and out of the story: there’s Rudy Black, a ruthless, showy pimp and up and coming pusher, part of a network of dealers working for a mysterious criminal called ‘the Man’, who controls the flow of narcotics in the Scene: Black Bertha, who also deals to support her and her daughters but doesn’t use herself; and Miss Dalton, the Man’s loyal secretary.

The novel also focuses on two cops.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Neo Noir, Noir fiction

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