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Recent Posts
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- Book reviews: Deadly dames, midcentury Brit pulp and 1970s science fiction
- Mackenna’s Gold (1969): Gold, Ghosts and Frontier Violence
- Orphan Road book launch
- Orphan Road now available
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- Cover reveal: Orphan Road, my follow up to Gunshine State
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- Why 1973 was the year Sidney Lumet took on police corruption
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Nothing but noir
Recommended reading
The lurid world of pulp
- 20th century Danny Boy
- American Pulps
- Bear Alley
- Bloody, Spicy, Books
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Category Archives: Noir fiction
A Time For Violence: Stories with an Edge
With everything that I have on at the moment, it has been a while between pieces of published fiction for me, which is why I am happy to have a story in this new crime fiction anthology by Close to the Bone Publishing, A Time For Violence: Stories with an Edge, edited by Andy Rausch and Chris Roy.
My story is titled, ‘Ladies Day at the Olympia Car Wash’. It is in there with some pretty decent company, including pieces by Joe R. Lansdale, Max Allan Collins and Richard Chizmar, among many others.
So, if you are after some short crime fiction to kick back with over the long weekend, you should pick this collection up.
It is available in ebook and hard copy from Amazon here.… Read more
Guest post: the indirect path to writing your book
It gives me great pleasure to welcome New York crime writer, Richie Narvaez, to Pulp Curry. Richie a friend. He is also a hell of a good crime writer. I loved his short story collection, Roachkiller and Other Stories, and I had the pleasure of reading a very early draft of the upcoming novel he is guest posting about today, Hipster Death Rattle, which is also great stuff. I don’t want to pre-empt Richie’s post, but Deathrattle is unique crime fiction take on the gentrification that have been sweeping New York. It drops from Down and Out Books in early March and you can pre-order it here.
You dream of writing a gritty noir but complete a cozy featuring fish detectives. Or you want to write a cozy but end up with a spy thriller featuring 0 cats. Writing is what happens while you’re busy making other plots. If you go after something too directly, if you have an object, an idea that you feel strongly about and you try to represent it as it feels in your head and beats in your chest, you will very often make a mush out of it. So sometimes you need to approach your object in the night like a thief, like a spy scaling a cliff face in order to sneak into a mountaintop stronghold.… Read more
2019 mid-summer reading report back
Summer is the one time of the year I am able find a decent amount of time to read. And, despite going full bore on my PhD at present, this year has, thankfully, been no different. Here is a very brief mid-summer reading report back.
The Real Lolita, Sarah Weinman
I have to fess up to not having read Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Lolita, or seen either of the films based on it (I have Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 version and, having read The Real Lolita, want to see it). This didn’t stop me from devouring Weinman’s book. The Real Lolita has two threads. The first deals with the 1948 abduction of an eleven-year-old New Jersey girl, Sally Horner. The second looks at the torturous process by which Nabokov created what is his best-known work, the story of a middle-aged literature professor and his obsession and, eventually, sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl, a story which Weinman contends Nabokov partly based on the Horner case.
Weinman painstakingly recreates the circumstances of Horner’s abduction and sexual grooming by a much older man, and the lengthy police investigation into her disappearance. It is fascinating, at times, horrific stuff and she puts it together brilliantly. I found the second strand concerning Nabokov less satisfying. … Read more
Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian noir, Crime fiction, Neo Noir, Noir fiction, Science fiction and fantasy, True crime
Tagged Anna Kavan, Dancing Home, David Whish-Wilson, he Coves, Ice, Ira Levin, Lolita, Lou Berney, November Road, Paul Collis, Sarah Weinman, The Boys From Brazil, The Coves, The Real Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
My top 10 reads of 2018
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
Posted in 1970s American crime films, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Non-crime reviews, Science fiction and fantasy, True crime
Tagged 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded, Beautiful Revolutionary, Bran Mak Morn: Legion From the Shadows, Charles Taylor, Elka Ray, Frank Walford, Hard Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Post-War Los Angeles, Jack Waters, Jon Lewis, Jon Savage, Karl Edward Wagner, Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Opening Wednesday at a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American 1970s, Patricia Highsmith, Red Dragon, Ripley's Game, Saigon Dark, Scott Adleberg, Scott Adlerberg, Thomas Harris, Twisted Clay