Anders Monsen

Lost worlds and ports of call

Page 9 of 81

Peter Hook’s Substance

January 20, 2022 /

Recently I read Peter Hook’s book about his time in New Order, Substance. This is his third book, after the ones he wrote on the Hacienda club and his life in Joy Division, but the first one I’ve read.

I’ve been a fan of the band New Order ever since I heard a clip of Blue Monday on the radio in Zambia in 1982 and recorded that snippet on tape. As soon as I was in a place where you could actually buy records I bought the 12″ Blue Monday on vinyl. It might even have been the first vinyl record that I ever bought. I played their second album, Power, Corruption & Lies endlessly on my Sony Walkman, and later on CD. I think their third album, Low-Life, is the best they ever made, but aside from maybe two songs (Regret and Touched by the Hand of God), I’ve not cared enough about their subsequent albums to buy them, and I can’t remember any other of the songs (well, maybe a small part of Crystal). Although I didn’t care as much about Joy Division as New Order, they still had great songs such as Atmosphere, Decades, Transmission, Isolation, and even the overplayed Love Will Tear Us Apart. No doubt many people wonder what would have happened if Ian Curtis hadn’t killed himself, though personally I think he would have gone solo at some point.

Until a few years ago I’d almost stopped listening to either New Order or Joy Division. Then maybe in somewhere between 2015 and 2018 I started listening to Peter Hook’s band, The Light, on streaming services as they played every song in the catalog of Joy Division and New Order, and breathed new life into the catalogs of both bands (at least through the Low-Life album). At that point in time I didn’t know that Hook had left the band (not once but twice). In terms of music, they seemed to have over time become more electronic focused, and I always though the bass was an integral part of the band; not just the bass, but how Hook played the bass. Electronics in the terms of synths has always been a part of New Order, but instead of remaining revolutionary, the edges were all smoothened out over time. It was at that point that I read about the acrimonious departure of Hook from the band, the lawsuits, and read more about the musical direction of the band. Maybe because I read Hook’s words before anyone else’s, or just because I favored the bass, I fell on the side of Hook.

In reading Substance, and even some interviews, Hook is far from perfect. He comes across as a royal jerk at times, his pranks bordering on hurtful. He almost delights in his tales of sexual encounters despite being married, and the booze flowed freely and drugs of all sorts abused. He had no sense when it came to money, failed to protect the band’s brand (though trumpeted his own brand and name). But then, few musicians are perfect. Artists tend to be more screwed up than most people. The story of New Order, born as it was from Ian Curtis’ death, seems the typical cliched tale of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. There was plenty of all those elements in many bands back then (and even before and probably since). Hook doesn’t shy away from covering all those aspects, from the multitude of drugs, the booze, the partying, but also the music. He’s been part of two major bands in his lifetime, as Joy Division and New Order remain influential even to this day. When he left the band, though, it should have reformed under a different name. The band “New Order” doesn’t exist without such a key member gone.

Although Hook is far from the greatest prose stylist, and sometimes his cataloging of dates and events seems dry and irrelevant, his descriptions of the recording process, the tedium of road trips and concerts were perhaps the best parts of his book. From 1980 when the three surviving members of Joy Division formed the band, until his final departure in 2007, those decades leave behind a huge body of work. Unfortunately, those decades of work also led to a great deal of friction between Hook and the others in the band, especially guitarist and singer, Bernard Sumner. This is evident on almost every page in the book, and the rift between the two appears irreparable. If you take only Hook’s point of view, Sumner does come across as a major prick, in the English manner of speaking. The lead singer is the front person of the band, the ego grows, and if someone else in the band also has an ego (as does Hook), and they have diverging ideas, then inevitably a conflict results. In recordings, if we are to believe Hook, Sumner gradually edged out everyone. The fact that drummer Stephen Morris remains with the band is perplexing. His wife, keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, does not get any credit from Hook, which is one of the strangest parts of the book, as Sumner gets a lots of credit, and Morris as well, despite the rift between them all.

There have been many other famous splits in music history—band breakups and departures, firings, simple dissolutions (The Beatles and The Smiths to name a couple from different lifetimes). If the Joy Division members decided that they wouldn’t continue under the same name if someone left, that’s not the case with New Order, as after Hook left in 2007 they still soldiered on, though any releases since that date has continued the life-less and bass-less trend from all post-Low-Life albums. Hook’s book intimates that Sumner was heavily to blame for this direction. (Interestingly, one concert video from near the time of Hook’s departure capture’s Sumner’s petulance, where he tells the audience that wouldn’t it be great to turn down Hook’s bass. It makes you wonder if he forgot what made New Order interesting and unique in the first place.)

In the end, I read Substance over the course of a few days, captivated by the tale. I’m planning on reading the book on Joy Division next, but may skip the one on the Hacienda. That one sounds like a true downer.

(Asides: The title of the book applies both to the collection of songs that New Order released, and the drugs often imbibed by the entourage and band. Also, I found it interesting that all his children’s names begin with “J” which is a very “hooky” letter, indeed.)

The Mysteries of Jack Vance

January 19, 2022 /

Setting aside the books written under the house name of Ellery Queen, noted SF Grandmaster, Jack Vance, wrote nearly a dozen straight mystery novels. The same tropes from mystery/detective stories appeared in his SF works, from the short stories featuring Magnus Ridolph, to his Gallactic Effectuator novellas, and even his five-novel Demon Prince books, but it was under names other than “Jack Vance” that he wrote what I’d consider the pure mysteries.

The books I consider pure mysteries are: The Deadly Isles, The Man in the Cage, The Dark Ocean, The View from Chickweed’s Window, The House on Lily Street, Strange Notions, The Dark Ocean, The Fox Valley Murders, The Pleasant Grove Murders, Bird Isle, and Take My Face. Arguments can be made for other books (Bad Ronald, for example), and possible some of these might be considered not pure enough (The House on Lily Street). Both these last novels are interesting because they are told from the viewpoint of evil people, although I’m possibly spoiling something here with The House on Lily Street.

In many of these books, the main character (and often the reader) doesn’t know the identity of the antagonist. Even in The Deadly Isles, when the protagonist is well-aware of the identify of the man who tried to kill him, neither he nor the reader is aware of that person’s accomplice. Like with Agatha Christie’s books, we learn the true identity of the murderer at the end. It’s a delicious tease, and almost never fails to surprise.

Both The Fox Valley Murders and The Pleasant Grove Murders feature a police detective, or rather sherrif, and thus represent The Law. The other books feature private individuals forced to become detectives to uncover nefarious deeds and evil motives. Murder is so easy that even a housewife can kill, when pushed in a certain direction. Hardened criminals exist as well; they occur elsewhere in his fiction as well, shrugging off ethics and scruples as if these elements do not matter in the grand scheme of things. We find all sorts of people in Vance’s stories, across the spectrum of good and evil. There’s a healthy mix of the in-between, but he doesn’t shy away from portraying people on the far end of the evil spectrum.

Although Jack Vance achieved some success in the fields of science fiction and fantasy, his mystery books were generally published under assumed names, or his real name—John Holbrook Vance. They therefore found little success. The original books are rare; reprints were published by small press publishers such as Underwood-Miller or Subterranean Press in limited editions. Even these latter editions now are hard to find, and often fetch premium prices on the collector’s market. As Vance didn’t make a career out of writing mysteries, no doubt few modern publishers would be interested in releasing mass market editions of his books, so aficionados are left with limited opportunities to read his books.

How well do they age? The Deadly Isles, which is set among islands in the Pacific and on that ocean itself, is artifact of a bygone age. Progress has long since caught up with these distant places. The tale itself is one deeply-rooted in human motivations. It comes down to love or lucre, at the end, as P.D. James once wrote. The other books are in the same category, but then so are most books, they are products of their times. The Fox Valley Murders and The Pleasant Grove Murders take place in an invented county in Northern California, and today seems almost as alien as any science fiction work. The View from Chickweed’s Window is a tale of revenge, and so perhaps one might call Take My Face. The Dark Ocean, set on a steamer heading down the California coast and through the Panama Canal, might be one of the tensest books, taking place mostly aboard the steamer, with characters trapped together. Bird Isle reads almost like a Wodehousian farce, as does some of the characters in other books. Humor in Vance’s books tends to be incidental, though, aside from those Magnus Rudolph stories. Aside from occasional lines here and there, none of what he writes even approaches the chuckles of a Jeeves and Wooster tale.

All in all, anyone who enjoys classical mystery novels will enjoy these books. The style in these books is uniquely Vance. Sometimes the plots are repetitive, and the question as to the identity of the murderer too akin a Hercule Poirot book. I’ve read all of them multiple times (aside from Bad Ronald, which for some reason I feel I will never read a second time; it was just too evil), and even though I know the plots, part of the appeal is the color and texture of the characters and the language.

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 3

January 13, 2022 /

The third installment of Disney+’s Star Wars Boba Fett series was a bit of a disappointment. There was a chase scene that came over as slow and poorly choreographed, more like cut from Back to the Future II than the French Connection or Ronin, two movies with great chase scenes. Even the brief one in Solo was better. There was a confrontation with the Hutt twins, quickly dismissed. There was a battle with a large Wookie, also quickly settled and with minimal bloodshed; if you want to kill someone in a Bacta tank, shoot them or chop them with an axe, don’t haul them out and throw them across the room. Then there was Fett’s Tusken tribe, which met the fate of Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle.

With four episodes to go, it seems like the show it setting up some “big-bad” confrontations or build-ups for future seasons, not an arc for the current season. A crime syndicate has been making headways on Tatooine, and this syndicate, the Pikes, seems to be those big-bads. There are rumors that someone else is behind them, possibly someone from the Solo movie, which makes the show less about Fett and more about pleasing the fans again with easter eggs and nods to other movies, or books or comics. Just tell the freakin’ story without weaving in every possible thread from elsewhere so the “true fans” will nod and point and say “That’s so and so,” with a knowing wink. At least, that’s what I think, and I’m far from a Star Wars fanatic. The “new story” aspect is what made The Mandalorian great, at least until it introduced some more famous Mandalorians, and even some noted current and former Jedi, which then switched focus away from the titular person, and onto the cameos from more well-known characters.

There a degree of tension, though, with Disney+ releasing new episodes every week, vs. the “dump ’em all” philosophy of Netflix. Recently I watched season two of The Witcher, a Netflix show. Even though all episodes were available, it took me a few weeks to watch them all. Still, I did like the fact they were all there, vs. the wait one week method with Disney+; they did the same thing with Hawkeye, the only Marvel series I watched, as well as The Bad Batch, an interesting though uneven show. This is the way it was done with traditional TV, though most traditional TV isn’t episodic, like these shows. You had to wait a week until the next one, but for the most part the episodes were disconnected. I remember Babylon 5 as something unique (at the time), while most other shows on broadcast TV that I watched were just brief flashes—fun, yes, but still only flashes. Meanwhile, Babylon 5 set up a long arc, and most (but not all) episodes were connected. Then again, I watched Babylon 5 in reruns, with “new” episodes each day, a schedule that can be tough to meet. That was back when you either recorded to VHS or Tivo, or made sure you were in front of the TV when the shows aired. None of this “on-demand” stuff of today.

At least with the Disney+ shows you don’t get gaps with re-runs (for now), but can depend on new episodes dropping each week, until the limited run of episodes ends. It’s a shame these shows run only 6-8 episodes. They seem all too brief, unlike the Marvel shows that came out on Netflix (until they were cancelled, of course). I’m talking about Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, The Punisher. Those shows combined the best of both worlds: all available to binge (if you so wished), and all more than a dozen episodes per season. I miss those shows.

Protecting special books

January 8, 2022 /

I have a decent collection of unique SF/Fantasy/Horror hardcovers. Many of these are from small press publishers—vs. mass-market publishers like Tor and Baen. Some are from defunct mass-market publishers, lost in the mists of near-time (1970s and 1980s, with publishers like Doubleday or Blue Jay). When I buy older books from dealers or other collectors, the books usually come with mylar protection over their dust jackets. When I buy direct from publishers, or newer books from (cough) online major outlets, the books usually arrive with no extra protection. It’s up to the buyer at this point.

Until recently, when acquiring new books, I tended to cannibalize some covers I already had from older books, applying any covers the right size to special books that came with no such protection. At some point, one runs out of books from which to cannibalize these covers. I finally bit the bullet this year and ordered 100 mylar covers from one of several such manufacturers/resellers. Although I have over 100 books that need these extra covers, I decided to start with 100, and at the size that covered book up to 10″ tall.

It’s a tedious and not too easy affair to wrestle dust jackets into these covers. The covers I bought are usually slightly taller than the books. The first step is then to adjust the covers to the right size. The next, straightening a reluctant cover inside its new protection, and the last step, bringing the book into its new jacket.

With 100 covers, I started with what I considered “high priority” books. Maybe that was a bad decision, as I was still figuring out how to fit the jackets into these covers. So far I’ve maybe done 20 books, and gotten slightly better at the process. I do feel a bit better about having the books protected this way. There’s one book I know that is beyond help, with a small quarter inch tear on the jacket. Other books have slight stains, likely from exposure to the sun before I bought them, or just part of the paper aging process.

So far I have prioritized small press books—those from Subterranean Press, Dark Harvest, Underwood-Miller, Zeising; a few others still yet identified. Lined up and waiting are books from favorite authors big enough to warrant mass-market publishers: Vernor Vinge, Charles de Lint. James P. Blaylock, Tim Powers. Other books, especially from Arkham House and Golden Gryphon, which are shorter, probably require jackets of a smaller size. It’s likely that I’ll run out of the first batch of 100, but at that point I’ll have a process in place, and will continue with the rest of them.

It’s interesting when stripping the jacket from a book to see what’s underneath. In some cases, the books are just books—nothing extra. In other cases, the publisher has made something special of the book itself, with text or art, that almost warrant its own attention. It’s here that I’m reminded of Steve Jobs, who made even the parts not usually visible to user as artistic and beautiful as the parts that were visible. This is counter-balanced by the moments when you remove a cover and see flaws that can never be undone; yellowing, spotting, foxing, and worse. Here you wonder whether any attempt to protect the book is worth it, for entropy comes to all things. In the meantime, I feel that I’m almost discovering some of these books anew. An exciting time.

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 2

January 6, 2022 /

This episode, almost an hour long, takes place mostly in the past. The present portion deals directly with the assassination attempt on Fett from Chapter 1, and his meeting with the mayor of Mos Espa. It also introduces Jabba’s twins, who lay claim to Fett’s new role. Then we switch to Fett’s dreams of the past.

The past involves Fett’s life between his Sarlacc snack and resurrection in The Mandalorian. Here we see Fett as he grows in his role as a member of a Tusken tribe. He introduces them to technology, in the form of stolen speeder bikes. He teaches them to ride the bikes and jump between them, a precursor to jumping on a speeding train. They hijack the train, establishing Fett’s role as a leader and trusted member of the tribe. He then walks a spirit walk, and gains a proper Tusken staff and role within the tribe.

With five episodes to go in the series, it’s doubtful they will spend as much time in the past as with this episode. Still, the past is important to Fett. He’s no longer a solo bounty hunter, but a part of a family. What, then, prompted him to emerge from the wilderness to save Fennec Shand and then reclaim his armor. Did his tribe get wiped out? Did they cast him out? Did he decide it was time to leave? My bet’s on the first option. How this influences his future life remains to be seen. Will he try to persist in his role to supplant Jabba, or will be move on to something else? We shall see.

Nonetheless, this was a much better episode that the first one. I still think the actor is two decades older than the role, but he still conveys the gravitas needed for his new role. It’s a bit too similar for Dances with Wolves for my taste, and I think it will end in the same way as that movie, but so far the visuals have been superb. This is a corner of the Star War universe far more interesting than seeing Luke Skywalker mope around and drink blue milk.

Tho Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 1

January 4, 2022 /

Strong characters never die, at least not in the movies. When last we saw the galaxy’s most feared bounty hunter, back in Return of the Jedi in 1983, he was unceremoniously dumped into the Sarlacc pit on Tatooine. Since then he’s refused to die, at least in the minds of fans across the decades, who have speculated on Fett’s survival and eventual emergence from the Sarlacc.

In Disney’s season two of The Mandalorian, Fett’s survival became canon, as they say. Now, with The Book of Boba Fett, a seven-episode series from Disney that debuted in late December 2021, the story continues. Played by the same actor who played his father in Attack of the Clones (2002), Temuera Morrison, this Boba Fett seems much older than the one who was disposed of so easily only a few years ago (in terms of Star Wars chronology). Morrison is around 60 years old during the time of filming; the events in the show take place around 9 ABY (after the battle of Yavin in Return of the Jedi), so he should technically be in his early 40s, as he was born 32 years before Yavin. Perhaps getting partially digested by the Sarlacc, and then spending 9 years hanging around with Tusken raiders have aged him, and no disrespect to Mr. Morrison, but this Boba Fett seems somewhat diminished at this point. He spends time in a healing chamber; he loses fights and gets wounded. How will he not only survive, but hang onto his new role as the replacement for crime lord Jabba the Hutt?

I do think that if a younger actor played Boba Fett, his journey from the wilderness to crime lord would make more sense, as at this point in time he’s still so new to his role that mistakes will be made, he will be forced to grow and assert himself. With six episodes to go, it will be interesting to see how this story develops. He does have a loyal (at the moment) associate, the assassin Fennec Shand, but will she remain loyal for long? He’ll face takeover attempts, assassination attempts, and other dangers, for as he says, he seeks to rule with respect, not fear. I fear that in the underworld, respect doesn’t keep you on top of the hill for long.

Could another actor have played Boba Fett? Sure, it would have disappointed loyal fans, but there are limits to fandom, especially where art is concerned. Nostalgia, here, has won the day. It’s a nod to the modern fanboy culture, with its callbacks and easter eggs, and the reluctance to let go and experience with new ideas. It’s the reason the newer Star Wars movies failed, in my opinion, as they just couldn’t let go of old characters. Then again, we’re about to see two more Star Wars shows with old characters – Obi Wan and Ashoka. What made The Mandalorian so unique was the brand new character, yet in a familiar universe. I wish the powers at Disney/Star Wars would see that as a way to explore newer stories, and not strip mine old ones.

Looking ahead to books in 2022

January 1, 2022 /

Some of the books that I hope to read this year include:

Stolen Skies, by Tim Powers. This comes out in just a few days, the third in the Vickery and Castine series. Not sure where he’s heading with the characters, but the story looks fascinating.

The Consequences of Fear, by Jacqueline Winspear. Latest in the Masie Dobbs series. As I only pick up the soft cover editions in this series, I need to wait a while after initial publication. This is a February release.

Road of Bones, by James R. Benn. I have to wait until September or October for this one, when it gets the soft cover edition. Sorry, Ms. Winspear and Mr. Benn, but as I have all the others in softcover, I can’t break tradition.

Sword & Ice Magic, by Fritz Leiber. Unlike the ones above, this is a limited edition hardcover, published by Centipede Press. It may or may not be released in 2022. I won’t know until shortly before publication. I finally get to retire the last of my Fafhrd and Gray Mouser Ace paperbacks.

The Mines of Behemoth, by Michael Shea. Another Centipede Press possibility. Announced via email. Hardcover edition. We shall see. One of those few luxuries I afford myself if it happens.

I don’t know if there are other books I want, vs. ones I stumble across, but so far these are the only ones on the aforementioned list.

And so ends 2021

January 1, 2022 /

I read three books this past week. One was crap, one was so-so, and one fantastic. All were part of a series, so to speak.

First up was Smoke and Whispers, by Mick Herron. I’d read and enjoyed several of his Zöe Boehm books, about a cynical detective in Oxford. This was apparent the last one in that series, and in it Boehm is supposedly dead. Not a great start. The alternate protagonist, a friend of Boehm’s, tries to determine whether Boehm really is dead or not. If she’s dead, who killed her, and if she’s not dead, what happened. It was a so-so book; I preferred the books from the viewpoint of Boehm, so I never really got on the side of the main protagonist. If the author decides to kill a decent character as the premise of the novel, it’s a strange situation. I suppose Herron grew tired of his creation, and moved on to other things. He has a decent MI5 series, though he’ll probably kill off those characters, too.

The crap book was by Andrea Camilleri, called Riccardino. It was his last published book in the Inspector Montalbano series, though written more than 15 years ago. I can see why it was held back, as Camilleri blends meta-fiction with fatigue, and the whole thing fizzles out at the end as if he painted himself into a corner and lazily gave up. Disappointing. Having read all of the other Montalbano books, I was hoping for something else, but this book left a bad taste in my mind.

On the other hand, I read and enjoyed The Red Horse, by James R. Benn. This is the 15th book in his WWII series, centering around Boston detective Billy Boyle, whose a distant (fictional) nephew of General Eisenhower. I read the first book (aptly titled, Billy Boyle) a few years ago, and have read most of them in order, but really as I found them. Some older books I had to hunt down, but the more recent ones I’ve picked up as they reach they softcover edition. This means waiting a year or more after initial publication, so I’ll need to wait until the Fall of 2022 for the next book, and then 2023 for the newly announced 17th in the series.

The Red Horse takes place mostly in a hospital for recovering special agents. It’s sort of a take on The Prisoner, and the source material was taken partially from the co-creator of The Prisoner, a fascinating concept. In this book, Billy Boyle is recovering from the traumatic events of the previous novel: the horror of the liberation of France, the fighting in Paris, and the betrayal of his true love. As is typical with detective books, dead bodies pile up around him. The book is a slow burn, tense from the start, and one of the best in the series. All of Benn’s books are well-researched and make the events of WWII vivid in all respects, covering multiple areas of the world. I look forward to reading the next ones, should I have that chance.

That’s 2021 over with. This year (in books) re-kindled my interest in Robert R. McCammon’s fiction. I read a bunch of books published by the Soho Crime imprint, reread (as usual) a few Jack Vance books, and picked up a handful of small press books. I made two trips to Houston and visited Murder by the Book, the best mystery book store so far I’ve ever visited (just beating out The Mysterious Bookshop in New York); I really enjoy specialty book stores. Book store in general are a vanishing breed. I’ve tried to cull my books, as I have no shelf space, but to no avail. For every book I remove, I add five more, despite trying not to buy as much.

Montalbano, the final book

December 29, 2021 /

It’s a bittersweet thought, coming to the end of Italian writer Andrea Camilleri’s last Montalbano book.

I was introduced to this writer almost a decade ago by my father. He lives in England, had read some of the books, watched some of the TV shows. I picked up one somewhere, at random, not knowing much about the author or the series. Since then I’ve searched high and low for all his books. Some I’ve found in used book stores, others more recently bought as they’re translated and published. They follow a standard formula, but I can’t put the down.

Camilleri died in 2019. By then he was already blind, dictating his last books. It’s an eerie parallel to the last books by Jack Vance, my favorite author, who also suffered from eye problems and dictated his last books. Camilleri was 93 when he died, Vance three years older at 96. Their styles of writing are vastly different. Both wrote mysteries, though Vance is more known for his SF and fantasy books.

It’s now the end of 2021, and I finally have Riccardino, the last Montalbano novel. Apparently it was written in 2005, with instructions to publish it after his death. Published a year after he died, this is an unusual step. When I last read the most recent Montalbano novel, The Cook of the Halcyon, it seemed that Montalbano was at a crossroads. What would happen in his life? How then, would a novel written over a decade ago, tie into that last novel?

At 254 pages, Riccardino is slightly longer than most Montalbano novels. My anticipation when I first started the novel was high. Why wait this long? How did it tie into other novels?

And then I read the book.

First, there was the blurb on the back cover, which mentioned the main character interacting with “the author.” Unlike any of his previous books in the series, Camilleri has avoided such a meta-novel, where the characters interact with the author. Not this one. It happens multiple times. It’s annoying, and dismisses everything previously written. The afterword almost has it makes sense. Camilleri thought it would be his last novel in the series, written when he was 80 years ago. That’s he write for another 11 years was then unthinkable. Maybe he saw reason and suppressed it for that reason. He should have burned it.

There are many frustrations with the Montalbano series: they are repetitive; they follow a formula; Livia: Montalbano’s long-distance girl-friend; many of the characters are annoying beyond belief. But, usually the plot (or multiple plots, interconnected in weird ways), are the main attraction. You sort of put up with the formula. Maybe you hope Montalbano finally moves on from Livia. He seems to do that a couple of times, but one ends in tragedy, the other in suspense.

So, Riccardino, which started off somewhat interesting (aside from the meta-fiction portion), falters at the end, devolving into some sort of brainstorming session between character and author. It then fades into nothingness. It’s a disappointing waste of time and money. Certainly not the way I wanted to remember the last Montalbano novel.

Soho Crime Books

December 24, 2021 /

I’m slowly amassing a collection of books published by the Soho Crime imprint. I’m only collecting trade paperbacks, as I’m intrigued by the near uniform design, especially on the spine, as well as the quality of the writers. All the books by the same author receive the same color, and colors vary from author to author. So far I have 136 books under this imprint, and that’s probably just a fraction of the books they’ve published.

Soho Crime publishes a lot of non-America authors. This includes writers from the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Scandinavia, Africa, Asia. They also publish American writers, usually with a focus on specific country settings, from Nantucket to Laos, Alaska to Paris. Around seven years ago I started my collection with one book by Janwillem van de Wetering, based on a recommendation from a co-worker. The first book might have been Outsider in Amsterdam, or maybe The Corpse on the Dike. Since then I’ve added several van de Wetering books, as well as multiple other series. Other well-represented writers include Mick Herron and Peter Lovesey, and almost all the James R. Benn books.

Since I sometime organize my shelves by publishers and then writers, at one point someone wondered if I organized them by color, since he saw all the Soho Crime books, and all the authors had their own colors on the covers. I think I mentioned my shelving philosophy elsewhere; I don’t always organize books by publisher, only if they stand out, like my Golden Gryphon hardcovers, or a single shelf of Arkham House books (Although there are, I think, two or three exceptions for the latter publisher, where the Arkham House books are grouped with their authors.) I now have an entire bookshelf devoted to my Soho Crime collection. It’s not a tall bookshelf, though I’m sure the books will migrate to a taller one once they outgrow this bookshelf.

The great thing about Soho Crime books is that most of them are reasonably priced, also also the stories take place in unique settings. There are exceptions, of course, but in many cases their authors limit themselves to specific places. So, reading their books are a way to visit strange places without having to travel there. This isn’t an issue of quantity over quality, as most of the books I’ve read so far have been superb. For some reason I’ve always struggled with buying books that cost more that $10; likely from years of poverty and a minimum wage job to support myself during college. That was a long time ago, but it stick with me, and while some of their books are around $10, most are in the $16 range. For a trade paperback, that to me seems excessive. Still, that’s inflation, I guess.

One major problem that I face is that bookstores were I live don’t stock a lot of Soho Crime books. There’s one big-box store, and one or two small independent bookstores in my city. Otherwise it’s hit or miss with used bookstores. So far I’ve had best success visiting specialty bookstores, such as Mysterious Books in New York City or Murder by the Book in Houston. The latter is closer, a mere three and half hour drive away, and the two times I’ve been there this year I’ve walked away with a stack of books. When I was in NYC, a few years ago now, and seemingly a different lifetime, I found an equal number of books. (Prior to that visit it had been two decades since my last trip to NYC, and that was during a a time I didn’t read mystery books.) Otherwise, I find some in used book stores, a fact that gives me a twinge of guilt as the authors get none of my money.

So, if you want an introduction to great crime novels, check out any book published by Soho Crime. Pick one at random, or look at the cover to see if the location interests you. It might be the start of a mad collecting habit, like mine.

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