Scott’s Top 6 Debut Novels of 2014

I know, you’re only supposed to have five. I wrote a list of these favorites, got six, and could not bear to take one of them of the list. Read them all and you’ll understand and be happy for the future of crime fiction.

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1. The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan

A Montana sheriff’s deputy guards an old hired killer, hoping to get information about his past crimes. What ensues is a hard meditation on sin, death, regret, and friendship. A book as harsh and beautiful as its winter setting.

 

 

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2. The White Van by Patrick Hoffman

A somewhat functioning drug addict is manipulated into being a part of a bank robbery. When she takes off with the money, she’s soon on the run from the criminals, the law, and a bent cop. Hoffman makes us feel the desperation of his characters in this steet-wise thriller that is part Elmore Leonard, part Hitchcock, yet completely unique.

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3. The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

Joe is a poor college student with a drunk mother, autistic brother, and his own baggage. When Joe gets an assignment to write a biography, the project leads him to a dying Vietnam vet, still proclaiming his innocence for the rape and murder for which he was convicted. As Joe searches for information to prove the vet’s innocence, he soon endangers himself and those he loves. A great new voice in the mainstream thriller.

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4. Stinking Rich by Rob Brunet

The tender of a Canadian pot farm runs afoul of his biker gang bosses in a situation involving a dead dog and a lot of cash in this comic crime novel. Brunet infuses his likable losers and bad guys with humanity and dialogue that keeps you laughing. The closest I’ve read to Donald Westlake. I almost forgot, there’s a lizard involved too.

 

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5. Dry Bones In The Valley by Tom Bouman

Bouman’s affable, fiddle playing lawman, Henry Farrel, takes on a murder investigation that could light up his rural Pennsylvania county, already turned into a tinderbox by meth, poverty, and family history. Reminiscent of Craig Johnson in the way the hero interacts with his community.

 

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6. Bad Country by C.B. McKenzie

McKenzie introduces us to meet former bareback rider turned PI, Rodeo Grace Garnett, who has to maneuver around wild women, shady good ol’ boy politics and business, questionable local law, and a rough and tumble Arizona that would make most big city detectives run for the safety of their own mean streets. I couldn’t help but hear echoes of James Crumley in the way it deals with people living a life on the margins.

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All of the books listed above are available on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. Look out for more top lists later in December!

Crime Fiction Friday: PERKO’S FARM by Rob Brunet

CRIME FICTION FRIDAY

We have the honor of hosting Rob Brunet with Terry Shames this Monday, November 10th. His novel Filthy Rich is getting great buzz as one of the best debuts of the year, combining crime and comedy brilliantly. In this story, originally a part of the anthology Down, Out, & Dead, serves as a prequel to Filthy Rich.

PERKO’S FARM

By Rob Brunet

Perko Ratwick needed a change in plans like he needed hemorrhoids. He rocked his Harley onto its kickstand and walked to the water’s edge where a man stood fishing.

“Biting today?” he asked.

The man grunted and looked at the white bucket beside him. Perko peeked in and saw what had to be half a dozen scaly creatures, gills flapping on the top ones.

“These good eating?” Making conversation when he’d much rather knee-cap the fisherman. Four months of planning, a twenty-thousand-dollar down payment so this bugger could set up a suburban grow op, and now he calls to say the deal’s off? No explanation?

“Free food.” The man finished reeling in his line, shook a clump of weeds from its green and yellow lure, and cast again.

Perko didn’t get it. Nghiem had to be worth a couple million, maybe more. He’d arrived from Vietnam a decade ago and was running at least six grow houses in the suburbs north of Toronto, one of which was supposed to supply Perko. Surely he could afford dinner. “We coulda met in a restaurant,” said the biker. “I’d a picked up the tab.”

Nghiem said, “Sense of obligation. No need.”

“So what’s the deal? Your message said something changed.”

“No deal.”

“Then what?”

“I said no deal. Go find new grower.”

Guest Post: Rob Brunet

Guest Post by Rob Brunet, author of Stinking Rich

Growing Up On a Beach Outside Ottawa

I often get asked about the characters I write about. Where do they come from? Do I know people like that? Often I point to the time I’ve spent in the country as if the whackos populating my stories are somehow representative of the people I know there. If you’ve read what I write, you’ll know that’s unlikely. I’m not sure that makes the reference a cop-out. It’s just incomplete.

Not unlike the tropes that drive country music, characters like Perko Ratwick or Terry Miner are painted a tad vibrant on purpose. If I’ve done my work right, they’ll engage my readers’ emotion, yet remain off-kilter enough to amuse.

Part of them is anchored in my experience down dirt roads stretching right back to my formative years on a beach upriver from Ottawa. In a lot of ways, I grew up on that beach. My city-kid lens skewed much of what I saw, but by the time I was a teenager, the barriers between the cottage kids and the locals broke down. There’s nothing like sitting on a log around a bonfire drinking underage beer to make everyone equal.

Until then, I’d naively seen the local kids—those who lived in cottage country year-round—as the lucky ones. I was oblivious to the boredom afflicting life at the end of the school bus run. Once summer ended and the population thinned to next-to-no-one, these guys had little to do. Breaking-and-entering to them was as common as road hockey to my pals in the city: a little wintry fun on a Saturday afternoon.

Between that and minor illicit behaviour sprinkled with occasional violence, more than a few of them experienced youthful run-ins with the local constabulary. In fact, if a guy hadn’t been sent to the detention centre at least once by the time he turned fifteen, his friends thought him “slow”.

I’m not suggesting petty criminality was universal, but its prevalence was higher than what you’d find in the city. And no one considered it a big deal.

I remember sitting round the fire one summer catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen since the previous fall. He asked me whether it was true my father had bought the cottage next to ours—a real fixer-upper my dad purchased as a defensive move when he’d learned the prospective new owner intended to park construction equipment on the property.

I told my friend my friend, yes, that cottage was now ours, and waited for the jab about how us city slickers were always buying things up and lording it over the locals. Instead, my pal hung his head just a little and apologized, telling me they’d never have broken into it that past winter if they’d known it was ours.

Later, my father told me he’d noticed a few things moved around. More than a squirrel might do. And he shrugged at the idea a few of the local boys had busted in. “There was nothing worth stealing in there anyway,” he said. And nothing more needed be done about it.

Another summer, I had a girlfriend up there. Well, for a week or so anyway. Her other boyfriend had gone off on vacation with his wife or something. He left this girl with a case of beer and the keys to a car. She was fifteen. I know my mother was happy that one didn’t last. Come to think of it, so am I.

Country had a way of aging people different from the city. More than once, I was surprised to learn someone was two or three years older than their apparent learning or behaviour would suggest. On the other hand, a lot of them had full-time jobs and something passing for real responsibility before they’d reach the end of high school.

I’m sure I could have found parallel worlds in the city and the reality is, I sometimes did. But something about the directness of life in the country stuck with me. It resonated in positive ways, and now finds its way into my writing. The characters in Stinking Rich may seem a little warped from an urban standpoint, but I trust their connection to their setting rings true.

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Copies of Rob Brunet’s book Stinking Rich are on our shelves now. He will be in-store speaking and signing Monday, November 10 at 7PM. Pre-order your signed copy via bookpeople.com!