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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

DIRTY SORDID CRIME AND SEEDINESS NOVELS

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

12:26 / 01.04.04

I saw there was a Detective Fiction thread....I didn't really think what I like is really Detective Fiction, though there are Detectives involved...

I really like Ellroy. And Vachss. And lately, I've found some jolly good English sordidness in the form of Jake Arnott and Ken Bruen. Nasty stuff.

I gotta say something right here about Jerry Stahl, too. Plainclothes Naked is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Those crackheads. Sheesh.

So come on, let's talk these Authors. Or this Genre whatever the fuck it is.

Or I'll get out the Rubber Truncheons.

Pinko.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:28 / 01.04.04

If you really want nasty, then I'd recommend "I Was Dora Suarez" by Derek Raymond.

Or (my current literary obsession) David Peace. Really. His prose is beautiful, his subject matter ugly. Do the fucking maths. Peace is fucking brilliant. Though (while intensely readable) hard work.

16:16 / 01.04.04

Vachs is hardcore. He can get a bit relentlessly grim sometimes, almost unbelievably so (though that could just be because I was bought up in a nice sheltered british market town). Jim Thompson is good as well though he is somewhat dated, lots of nastiness and criminals being, well, criminal really. Joe R Lansdale can do the kind of thing you're looking for, though often he doesn't, so you would have to pick carefully.

m

17:20 / 01.04.04

Check out any of Chester Himes' "Coffin" Ed and "Gravedigger" Jones books for some real hard assed crime fiction. I started with The Real Cool Killers, and I couldn't fuckin' believe the opening scene. Himes' heroes are often much scarier than his villains. Also, Charles Willeford writes some great pulp where the only crime seems to be how mean and desperate life can be. The High Priest of California is a good example.

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

10:43 / 03.04.04

I might get a kicking for this, but I've been reading a fair bit of Martin Amis lately as well... I think a coupla his books fit in quite nicely in this thread, being MONEY and LONDON FIELDS.

I mean, MONEY is pretty fucking sordid, isn't it? I love it. And Keith Talent in LONDON FIELDS...what a fucking scumbag eh?

Discuss.

Or throw a brick through my window.

Be aware that I'll set the Pitbulls on your children though.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:02 / 03.04.04

Amis is someone I've always missed out on... I've read Einstein's Monsters (which I liked) and, just recently, a short story called (if memory serves) The Palace of the End, that was in the New Yorker, and was about the doubles hired by a dictator... you get the joke, each time the dictator loses an eye/leg/whatever, the doubles have to do the same... but it was bloody good. And it's made me want to read Amis... well, that and the fact that almost everyone I know tells me I'd love him.

at the scarwash

01:28 / 05.04.04

The most fucked up thing I've read in ages was Blood Meridian by Cormack McCarthy. I guess it slots in as a Western novel, but what it does with the genre made my skin crawl for weeks after reading it. In a half-noir, half-Magic Realist style, it chronicles the unthinking descent of a group of drifter militiamen into a gang of ghoulish bounty hunters, murdering hundreds of Native Americans throughout the Southwest for their scalps. It's like a misplaced book of the Old Testament recast in 1800s America. I still have bad dreams about the character known as the Judge.

00:30 / 07.04.04

I'll second matthew's suggestions, vigorously. You read my mind, man.

13:06 / 07.04.04

For some reason I want to recommend Last Exit to Brooklyn (aka A Catalogue of Rape), just for a prank.

Vacchs is such a dilettante.

The Photographer in Blowup

10:02 / 08.04.04

James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia is an exercise in nigh-forced lesbian relationships, borderline necrophilia and willing incestuous sex...

... still I can't get past the fact the book is basically the movies Laura and Vertigo mixed together in one huge plot.

Whisky Priestess

19:02 / 08.04.04

Perdido Street Station is steampunk f/sf with a somewhat cloying obsession with dirt. (The physical, grimy slimy rimy kind, alas ... although interspecies relationships do get a look-in).

19:55 / 08.04.04

Gah, that's a terrible book, Whiskey. I hate every minute of every one of his long novels that I read in 2 days without sleeping. Someone find China Mieville a synonym for "cosseted", stat!

16:05 / 09.04.04

Vachss? Really? I don't recall which one I read but it seemed so feeble.

02:09 / 10.04.04

I'm a big fan of Richard Stark's "Parker" books - if you've never read any, they're all about this bad-ass tough guy Parker who does a different heist in each book - the movie Payback and Point Blank were based on one of these books. There's some newer ones, but the ones from the 70s have a much cooler vibe. They're all pretty much "pulp" but that's the reason to love them. Also, fans of Chester Himes might like Giveadamn Brown by Robert Deane Pharr - another pulp 70s (I think book) that was fun to read. David Goodis is in the same vein as Jim Thompson, but a more existential writer. Finally, has aanyone read Richard Price's Clockers - I read this last year and was totally hooked. What a totally horrifying, voyteuristic read.

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

08:52 / 10.04.04

Yes! I loved Clockers... I read it quite a few years ago...

same with Vachss actually, I haven't read it in years, but but I remember his books leaving a big impression on me when I was younger.

As a chef, of course I like Anthony Bourdain's book on Kitchens... but I think it fits in quite nicely here as he has a pretty seedy time of it.

Jerry Stahl.

Tell me one of you has read Plainclothes Naked.

It's like Hunter Thompson meets Elmore Leonard.

frenchfilmblurred

14:33 / 10.04.04

I'm with Stoatie in that I also like Derek Raymond's Factory novels and David Peace's Red Riding quartet. I'm looking forward to reading GB84, although I think he could soon be in danger of starting to repeat himself or edging towards self parody. He's the only writer who really could qualify to take on the late Raymond's mantle. Although Raymond's writing has many faults (he's not very interested in plot, the prose is very uneven, dialogue's variable in quality) the best passages of his novels are pretty amazing. Unlike some other writers who fill their books with extreme violence for potboiling purposes or cheap misanthropy, there's a real righteous anger in his books, a sense of despair and disgust at the cruelty of 80's/90's Britain. They're the kind of books the country deserves, and for all his shortcomings I don't know which other recent British writers, literary or genre, I'm supposed to prefer.

I also love what I've read of Stark's Parker novels. All that's available over here of the originals are The Hunter (as Point Blank) and two three book anthologies, with horrible covers, of the next six. But there's loads more. I'm hoping that some day someone will reissue the lot. I've not tried any of the new ones he's done recently.

23:28 / 10.04.04

Check back with Supernatural Crime's "Gravedigger" site in a couple weeks, when the comic launches. I read the first of these on the ModernTales site, and it was really good.

19:32 / 12.04.04

I'd reccomend any of Herbert Asbury's stuff

03:06 / 13.04.04

It occurs to me that Denis Johnson's Already Dead might fit well into this genre, although I don't think there are any alleyways involved per se. A more pastoral crime and seedineess novel then.

And boy do I wish I could find a Parker anthology of some of those early ones - they are available here (US) individually as über-expensive paperbacks that I really can't justify since each one takes about three hours to read.

Whisky Priestess

18:05 / 13.04.04

Q - I found myself quite into Perdido and it did absorb me, but I was pissed off by the non-ending and the cod-suspenseful chapter endings and the endless references to *everything* as being dirty, crumbling, stinking, etc. etc. ... I think there are a few faecophilia issues China would do better to work out with his psychiatrist.

But it is DIRRRTY.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:59 / 14.04.04

frenchfilmblurred- of Derek Raymond, I've only ever read (and loved) "Dora Suarez"- which others would you recommend? Was that indicative of his other stuff? I keep nearly buying them, and then think: "well, maybe that was his moment of glory and I'll be horribly disappointed". (I'm always like this with writers whose work I'm not familiar with.)

Sounds like there are more "Factory" novels- which are they?

13:17 / 14.04.04

Stoatie - The Devil's Home On Leave and He Died With His Eyes Open seem to be the easiest Factory novels to find. I know they've both been republished in the last couple of years. Both are well worth your time, especially since you like the Peace Quartet novels (I've just finished 1980 and am about to dive into 1983).

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:11 / 14.04.04

Cheers. (I'm just coming to the end of Nineteen Eighty... but will have to wait until the end of the month before I can afford Nineteen Eighty Three- ah well, maybe a couple of weeks' break from the dark shit might be an idea

)

I've definitely seen "He Died With His Eyes Open" in a shop recently... must check it out.

20:44 / 14.04.04

Whisky Priestess- K.J. Bishop's the Etched City is very similar, but with much less grime and lighter on the weirdness.

08:37 / 15.04.04

Von Kobra - Have you read Run by Douglas Winter? A real stay-up-all-night reading it book, vaguely comparable to the Parker novels, I suppose.

Or God Is A Bullet by Boston Teran? I always worry about recommending this because it's more than a touch unbelievable in places, but it is fairly hardcore.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:46 / 15.04.04

JR- I was looking at the Etched City in a shop the other day, and was intrigued by all the Mieville comparisons on the sleeve. Worth checking out?

19:29 / 15.04.04

Stoatie: I'd say definatly since if you like Mieville, then you'll definatley like the Etched City.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:17 / 16.04.04

Cool- going to Borders today with the price of a single book- will it be Etched City or Nineteen Eighty Three? Hmm...

frenchfilmblurred

09:02 / 16.04.04

Stoatie> Dora Suarez is probably the best. He Died With His Eyes Open,Dead Man Upright and The Devil's Home On Leave are also good. How The Dead Live less so. They're all worth a read if you like that kind of stuff. His sort of biography, The Hidden Files is an interesting read as well. Also the early non Factory novel, The Crust on It's Uppers.