Review and News from Vacationland

(the title link is to the IMDB page for A Pinch of Snuff, the made-for-TV movie)

So as it is Wednesday (again), and I cannot get my comics (again), making me the only guy in the comic-reading multiverse who has no clue what's up in Blackest Night (tell me before I read it and you die), I've been reading novels to keep myself sane.

This week I read Reginald Hill's "A Pinch of Snuff." Now I had started reading this before, got about 130 pages in, and then never came around to it again until now. It's a good book, mind you, and I love Reggie Hill's writing. His wit, his dialogue, his diction and his pacing are all incredible to me. But A Pinch of Snuff fell flat where some of his other novels kicked ass.


A Pinch of Snuff is another of Reginald Hill's Dalziel/Pascoe mystery series. The books revolve around Inspector Peter Pascoe (who in more recent novels is now Chief Inspector) and Detective Superintedent Andy Dalziel (more affectionately referred to as "The Fat Man"). As always, they are accompanied by trusty Sergeant Edgar Wield, who I feel is just as important as Dalziel or Pascoe, but I guess that's too many names to put on every cover.

This novel in particular is a slice of classic noir. Pascoe's dentist refers him to a smutty little porn theatre called the Calliope Kinema Club because he suspects that a sadist scene in which a porn actress gets her teeth knocked out isn't faked, leading him to believe it was a snuff film. Dalziel seems uninterested in Pascoe's new "lead" until the owner of the Calliope turns up dead. (all of this you can discover on the back flap)

It's filled with twists and turns, all the expected ones and some out of left field, and it has enough culpable, criminal characters to make you just a little more cynical. There's a sleazy Russian, a corrupt cop, a porn matron, an angry workman, a pedophialic or three, and many many more characters wound up in this ring of kiddie-porn, underage sex, assault, and murder.

I love the writing, as usual, with it's well paced reveals and dialogue that gets you believing in these characters. The story is convoluted and surprisingly full of action and drama considering this novel is nearly 200 pages shorter than On Beulah Height, another Dalziel/Pascoe story with fewer twists but more dramatic success in my opinion.

There are enough bad people in this novel that you see are red herrings that when most of them turn out to be either in some way involved with the case or otherwise criminal it comes as kind of a shock. The same reveals are predictable, but well timed. The idea of the innocent teenage victim being not-so-innocent is one that has been seen a little too often to come as a surprise, though I have to give Hill credit as this was one of the earlier novels (as evidenced by Pascoe's change in rank).

I think what this novel lacked in comparison to other Dalziel/Pascoe novels, was real, moving drama. In On Beulah Height, the Pascoe home is struck with tragedy and a family emergency, while Dalziel rekindles old flame with a pretty reporter, and Wield struggles keeping the fire alive with his current boyfriend, all while the case of four kidnapped little girls is afoot. In Dialogues of the Dead, a new detective working under Dalziel and Pascoe find himself falling for a woman who loves another man, a character close to Dalziel is murdered and Pascoe's wife is approached by another man vying for her affections, all while a serial killer threatens to shake up Yorkshire. In Death Comes For the Fat Man, well, the drama there is obvious.

The point being that no ground-breaking, character-shaking dramatic events take place in this novel, apart from Ellie Pascoe (Peter's wife) getting pregnant. I think this is in part because of the format of the novel, which revolves around Dalziel and Pascoe a little too closely. In On Beulah Height and Dialogues of the Dead, we follow detectives Shirley Novello and "Hat" Bowler respectively, giving a third person's perspective of the "Holy Trinity" as Novello refers to Dalziel, Pascoe and Wield. However, I think that this format, with the extra detective's perspective, wouldn't be possible without earlier novels, such as A Pinch of Snuff, laying the groundwork for these iconic characters.

All in all, I give A Pinch of Snuff a 7/10. The story is interesting if you like noir inspired mysteries and intrigue, but there isn't enough substance to keep a casual reader involved. For them I'd recommend one of the later, more refined and dramatic Dalziel/Pascoe novels such as Arms and the Women or On Beulah Height. Dialogues of the Dead is still my personal favorite because of it's mystical and fantastic elements. Death Comes for the Fat Man, while I haven't finished it yet, may be a close third behind Beulah Height.


VACATION TIME BROTHERS!

News from the beach:

My family arrived safely. We'll stay here a spell. That is the reason I'm missing out on comics, but you know, comics come every Wednesday, family vacations are hard to come by sometimes.

Lots of swimming in the ocean (which I find relaxing), hanging out in the pool, plenty of my mother's cooking, new video games such as Fight Night Round 4 and NCAA '10, and gin (which I also find relaxing).

Occasionally, we'll hit the golf courses as we are in one of the world's gold capitals where my brother is studying to become a golf instructor/tour pro/club fitter/golf course manager/all around golf guy. He'll be helping me improve my game, which you may hear about via my Twitter updates from the course.

That's it and that's all. I'm starting up another book, but I'm a little burnt out on reading, so now that my laptop is running I may switch to writing a bit and posting it here.

Stay tuned.

Because I'm bored and I found it

You ever surf the internet, doing your thing, being a fanboy, all that jazz, and then you find a picture that makes you lose your shit and laugh until you start crying? Yeah, right here.

Check out the sleepy guy I circled. "I'm here to see Amanda Palmer, but I'm trying to nail this chick here who loves that guy, wosshisname? Kneel Gayman? Funny... name... sleeeeeeepy..."

Sorry, but that's what I heard in my head when I saw this. That said, I also saw the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book, interesting stuff, but I think I'm almost exclusively interested in Neil's stories. He's good at that whole writing thing. Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? Good stuff.

Review Day!

(The title of this entry is a link to an enlightening interview with Guillermo del Toro)

In lieu of not being able to hit the crack store (Velocity Comics shop) and pick up my crack (comic books), I will be unable to do my usual flashy imagetastic review of comics today. (Of course, come the first week of August there will be an extra long post about comic books)

Instead, I'll share a review of the novel I just finished, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's "The Strain."

This is a great read. I won't lie to you, the beginning is introduces a lot of characters and a lot of back story really quickly so to all you skimmers, "why the hell are you reading in the first place?" Seriously though, the book starts out strong, with a grandmother's ghost story followed by an unexplainable airport disaster on the day of a lunar (or is it solar?) eclipse, more appropriately called an "occultation."

Done in the style of those slice of life type movies where you see many characters whose paths may or may not cross at some point in the duration, the protagonists are many and compelling. An old man with a strong sense of duty, an alcoholic father out to do the right thing, a Mexican youth with nothing left to lose, a woman in love trying to come to terms with disaster, a young boy whose life has been stolen from him, a burly Russian exterminator... just to name my favorites.

The story is pretty fast-paced considering the span of the novel is only a few days and this is only one part of a trilogy. The plot lulls a bit in the late middle. That is to say not that the story is unimportant, but that so much is going on at this point that not a lot of action is getting resolved, but the story is being fleshed out. It is also interrupted by about four interludes into the past, where a young holocaust concentration camp prisoner encounters a vampire for the first time. Oh yeah, did I mention the book is about vampires?

Fuck all that Ann Rice/Twilight/vampires-should-look-like-Tom-Cruise bullshit. This is a scary, suspenseful and damn near tragic story about fast, strong, and cunning vampires with unique abilities and habits unlike any vampires you're used to reading about. I loved every second of the vampire mythos, the nature of their "clans," and the biology being explained in the story. I also loved del Toro's "homage" to the sexy, tempting vampire image.

In the course of a few nights, vampires have essentially declared war on the human race that doesn't even know they exsist. Aided by an unknown benefactor, the Master of these vampires quickly spreads his disease through New York and God knows where else.

Not to say the book is all fluff and no substance. The emotional content is there and there are lots of themes touched on such as racism in America today, the psychology behind terrorist response tactics, the psychology of men and women in distress and what to do when you discover your life has meaning and purpose. Not to mention the astonishing amount of research done prior to writing this book that enlightens the reader about a great many things such as astronomy, medicine, biology, pest control, airline protocol, and a bit of WWII history.

If you have the time, I recommend this read because once you're in it you'll be scared to death. The unsettling nature of these vampires combined with good storytelling and plenty of "huh, I didn't know that" moments should keep a reader entertained throughout. I give it my 9/10.

A screenshot of Guillermo del Toro's thoughts on vampires and his trilogy.