Tag Archives: Cormac McCarthy

My year in books: Eva Dolan

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

Long Way HomeNext up in my year books is UK crime writer and reviewer, Eva Dolan.

Eva is someone who I expect to be appearing in best of lists this time next year, not writing them. Her debut novel, Long Way Home, is just out via Harvill Secker. The start of a new crime series, it’s already generating buzz. You can check out more details about it here. Long Way Home is at the very top of my to-be-read pile over Christmas. 

Eva is also a great book reviewer in her own right. You can sample her wares at her website, Loitering With Intent.

Anyway, she’s taking a slightly different tack to most of the other writers and reviewers who have featured so far in my year in books, but I’ll let her explain that.

Since I’ve reviewed so many crime books already this year I’ve decided to do a crime-free list. These are books which I’ve loved but didn’t feel quite equal to reviewing, the ones which are best left to more perceptive critics, but I still want to press them on anyone who’ll listen. Which is you lot.

Stoner,  John Williams

Generally I avoid heavily hyped books but this long overlooked mid-20th century American classic lives up to the praise which has been lavished on.… Read more

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Posted in Non-crime reviews

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My year in books: Tom Pitts

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Piggyback-coverNext cab off the rank in the ‘my year in books’ series I’m running over December is one of my fellow authors in the Snubnose Press stable, Tom Pitts.

Tom is the author of a great little novella, which I read earlier this year, Piggyback. It’s the story of two young women who like to party and think they’ve ripped off a car trunk load of free drugs, when in fact all they’ve really done is bring down a s*** load of chaos upon themselves.

Piggyback, along with all other Snubnose Press titles (including my novel, Ghost Money), is currently just 99 cents until before Christmas.

Anyway, enough of my shilling.

Tom’s got a novel called Hustle due out with Snubnose in 2014. 

You can find him on the web here.

Tom, your five minutes start now…

Under the Dixie Moon, Ro Cuzon

I’m often seen touting the wares of French-born, New Orleans transplant, Ro Cuzon. That’s because he’s great, this book is great. It’s a huge tale with a lot of moving parts and it manages to tie them all together in an end-run marathon of staccato chapters that build and build until you think it’s got nowhere to go–then it takes you further.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Snubnose Press

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Book review: Wake in Fright

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Rural noir is big at the moment, if the interest in US writers like Donald Ray Pollock, Cormac McCarthy and Daniel Woodrell, is anything to go by.

While it is not be as well known, Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel Wake in Fight is as good as anything that’s come out of the southern US, a searing story of masculinity, drinking and violence in regional Australia that still packs a punch today.

Fear of being trapped in the outback, as we call the vast expanse of harsh terrain that makes up the majority of Australia, is still semi hard-wired into the psyche of most city dwelling Australians. So, imagine how terrifying the prospect was in the sixties, when our interior was so much more remote and alien.

John Grant is a mild mannered teacher working in a tiny speck of a town called Tiboonda. Its isolation and distance from the coast has obliterated nearly all aspects of civilisation, except the ability of the local pub to keep the beer cold. As Grant puts it: “In the winter you wished for the summer, in the summer you wished for the winter, and all the time you wished to blazes you were a thousand miles from Tiboonda.”

Grant has six weeks leave ahead of him and 140 pounds in his pocket.… Read more

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Posted in Australian noir, Book Reviews, Rural noir

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