Luther, written by one of new favorite writers Neil Cross, is my new favorite show. Bar none. 

Best action movie in many a moon. Directed by Steven Soderberg? A great cast led by Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor and a slew of others.This is like a Richard Stark movie with Gina Effin Carano kickin’ ass. If they had asked her to act it'd be another story. This movie rocks. Urr!!

Ed Brubaker´s gritty exploration of crime stories, their clichés and their stereotypes, while maintaining its class and naturalism

James Ellroy changed modern neo-noir fiction. A writer bigger than his work. His mother was a small-time prostitute, a crime he would later investigate, a profound intellect and of deeply flawed character, but his work speaks for itself. NO modern crime writer worth his weight ignores Ellroy. You can find links to all of the Demon Dog documentary on youtube.

If Joe R. Lansdale’s book Vanilla Ride seems like a repositioning for that long-running series, this is Dennis Lehane’s swan-song for his detective series about Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro who are now married and parents of a little girl, not to mention older and far-less damaged. They revisit an old case, essentially a sequel to Gone, Baby Gone, and resolve it to some extent. It’s more than a bit disappointing as a mystery novel, it reads more like the mainstream fiction that he essentially has always wanted to write, Lehane is no genre-lifer, but a welcome coda to old friends long forgotten.

Any new Hap and Leonard novel by the master mojo magician is welcome, but this book signals either a direction change for the pair, despite the filth and the guns and the humor that abounds, or a reboot. Too bad these sorts of protagonists are by law incapable of changing their ways. You’ll know what I mean after you read it. Highly recommended.

Got a new favorite tee-vee show. Justified. On FX. Stars Timothy Olyphant, the guy from that Western show on HBO from a couple of years back. Olyphant plays this this discredited US Marshall, a guy plucked literally from a series of Elmore Leonard Florida novels, and sent back to his home-ground of Kentucky to deal with the past, regrets and all that noir bullshit. I like it cause of the snappy pseudo-Leonard dialogue and the guns, and people blowin’ shit up. I like it. Reminds me of Joe R. Lansdale too. Best crime-writer bar none.

Just finished a re-read of George Pelecanos’s Hell to Pay, second in the Derek Strange and Terry Quinn detective novels. There is a lot to like in the series. These aren’t stock characters and they don’t set in stereotypical situations. Washington D.C. is the setting, specifically the fractured urban center beyond the capitol which seems very far away. Drugs, crime and racism has hardened like black-tar and is pervasive, but this is not a bleak series by any means. There is much humor and the sort of good-natured ribbing that happens any time guys meet up.

As to the mystery, this is a why-dunnit more than a who-dunnit. The protagonists will solve the crime (a drive-by shooting of a small boy) eventually, but as all good mysteries there is also an internal path that both characters are on that makes the crime and its after-math much more gripping to follow.

It’s a very moving, very personal work, great if you love pop-culture, soul-music, and the rhythms and cadences of real people talking in real situations. I love Strange, one of the best African-American private eyes around, and Janine is a more well-rounded Velma to Strange’s Mike Hammer. Quinn on the other hand? He’s still an enigma. Time to read some Pelecanos to see if he fleshes him out some more.

Enjoying my trip through crime fiction again, I must say.