A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Queenpin - Megan Abbott

QUEENPIN, Megan Abbott’s third novel, is the story of a young woman (whose real name we never learn, unless I just missed it somehow), who’s working as a bookkeeper in a sleazy, mob-connected strip joint when she becomes the protégé of an older woman who has spent twenty years working for organized crime as a courier and money launderer. Our narrator takes to the work with a minimum of fuss or mental anguish and becomes good at it, but then, wouldn’t you know it, she meets the wrong guy – a handsome gambler who always seems to be just one bet away from the big score – and Things Go to Hell.

When you just read the bare bones of that plot, it’s easy to say that QUEENPIN is something of a gimmick book: taking a standard, Gold Medal-type noir plot and inverting it so that the protagonist is female instead of male. Funny thing is, when you actually read the book you don’t really get that sense at all because Abbott is so good at creating characters and dragging you along with them as things get worse and worse. The setting of this one isn’t quite as well defined as it is in her other two novels; maybe it’s set in the Fifties, like DIE A LITTLE and THE SONG IS YOU, or maybe it’s the early Sixties, but either way it’s emphatically Not Now. The world of race tracks and night clubs through which the narrator moves is vividly rendered, and the dialogue that could have sounded like a parody of that era comes across as real and natural.

What it comes down to is that Megan Abbott is just a fine writer. Short, fast, and mean, like good noir fiction is supposed to be, QUEENPIN is her best book yet, and it’s easily one of the best novels I’ve read this year. And as usual with her books, it has a great cover by Richie Fahey.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on December 28, 2007. In it I mention Megan Abbott's first two novels. Her fourth novel was BURY ME DEEP, inspired by the infamous Winnie Ruth Judd trunk murders, and I really liked it, as well. As far as I know, those are her only historical crime novels, and I give all of them high recommendations. They're all still in print and well worth your time. And QUEENPIN is one of my favorite books of the past twenty years.)

Review: Sara and the Mad Dog - Stephen Mertz

Music was very important to Steve Mertz. Along with writing, it was really one of his passions. He was an accomplished musician, too, and it showed in his work. His novels that feature a music industry background have a real sense of authenticity to them.

So it’s fitting that his final novel is a thriller based on the music business. SARA AND THE MAD DOG is a wonderful amalgam of music history, gangster history, and fiction as the Carter Family, the First Family of Country Music, travels to New York City for a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1932, arriving just in time for Sara Carter, the group’s vocalist and wife of A.P. Carter, to get involved with Vince “Mad Dog” Coll, a ruthless Irish mobster who’s engaged in a gang war with Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano. That’s a great concept for a novel!

Mertz does it justice, too, with a fast-paced narrative in which the action takes place in less than 24 hours. The story moves back and forth between Sara, A.P., Maybelle Carter (the third member of the group), Jimmie Rodgers (the Singing Brakeman) assorted gangsters, and a fictional police detective named Tom Devlin. Mertz weaves all their storylines together very skillfully and creates a real sense of momentum and suspense. Great storyteller that he was, he really had me flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen.

The historical elements of the plot are well-researched and accurate, too, as Mertz explains in an afterword detailing what was fact and what was fiction. All of it comes together in a superb novel that’s the best thing I’ve read so far this year and maybe my favorite of all the Mertz novels I’ve read. I’d hate to have to pick between this one and HANK AND MUDDY, a fantastic yarn about Hank Williams and Muddy Waters. SARA AND THE MAD DOG is a fitting conclusion to a legendary career, and it gets my highest recommendation. You can find it on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions from Wolfpack Publishing.

And on a personal note, damn, I hate to think the phone’s never going to ring again with Steve on the other end, eager to tell me about some book or writer or the project he was planning to work on next. There was nobody else in this business like him. Nobody. He was, as they say, the Genuine Article, and I expect I’ll miss him from now on.