Heath Lowrance's I Was Born a Lost Cause

 

I am a huge fan of Heath Lowrance's short stories. I've read a number of the ones in this collection and I look forward to re-reading them and discovering new ones. Look for a review soon. And in the meantime, buy your own copy here.

A review of Monkey Justice by Patricia Abbott

Patricia Abbott crafts stories like Cartier designs jewelry, one polished gem of a word at a time. And yet there’s nothing “precious” about any of these stories—gritty, gravely, raw stories about people and their worst impulses. Many of these stories take place on the margins, in the places between memory and the present. Things aren’t always what they seem, and if there is any justice to be had in the end, it is rough justice, vigilante justice, final justice.

Abbott’s stories are character-heavy, and dialogue-rich. Even the internal musings of the characters have substance. Her descriptions are precise, and immediately relatable, as when she describes the “gluey, mousey” smell of all used bookstores. “I thought only cops used the word vehicles,” one character muses, “but maybe prisoners and cops traded words like a cold.” It’s an offhand comment but it seems like the perfect combination of words.

Most of the stories here are dark, effortlessly noir-ish and strongly rendered slices of low-life pie. But there are also delights like “Bit Players,” which features the late, great character actor Jack Elam and a telling bit about the way casting directors work in Hollywood.

Book Review The Dead Do Not Improve by Jay Caspian Kang

If you like your noir leavened with humor and a lot of local color, you will LOVE Jay Caspian Kang's San Francisco-based, cross-cultural mystery, The Dead Do Not Improve.

THE DEAD DO NOT IMPROVE by Jay Caspian Kang

The lives of a detective and an under-employed Korean-American intersect when a woman is murdered in Jay Caspian Kang's novel The Dead Do Not Improve.

Philip Kim, a first-generation Korean-American, sleeps through the murder of his neighbor, Dolores Stone. He never knew her name until after the fact, just always called her the "Baby Molester," a name bestowed on her by Kathleen, the girl Philip followed to San Francisco and hasn’t talked to in a year.

Philip often sleeps late and just as often is late to his job, working for a social network that targets men who have been dumped. (getoverit.com). He is responsible for greeting the new accounts and sending them chatty emails every so often. For this he’s encouraged to use the named "Philip Davis" because research has convinced his boss that no one trusts Asians when it comes to relationship advice.

The man investigating the murder is Sid (short for Siddhartha) Finch, and he's more interested in saving his marriage to Sarah than in solving the crime which is, as is often the case, a gateway murder that leads to a much larger problem.

The dual stories are both interesting and the worlds of Finch and Philip are populated by extremely good characters. Philip's internal monologues often have to do with Korean identity and there's a running motif about the Korean-American school shooter at Virginia Tech.

Some of the dialogue is absolutely hilarious, particularly the interactions between Sid and the waitresses at a restaurant called Being Abundance, where everyone seems to have a reddish glow. There’s also a scene at a vintage clothing store where Philip and a neighbor suit up for Dolores’ bizarre funeral that seems incredibly and indelibly San Francisco.