The first thing to know about Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel The Big Sleep is that it was published three years after James M. Cain published the serialized Double Indemnity. If your only knowledge of The Big Sleep is the big-screen adaptation directed by Howard Hawks starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with a screenplay written by the likes of Leigh Brackett and William Faulkner, you should go back and read the novel to see how wrong Bogart is for the lead detective Philip Marlowe. Both the novel and significantly modified movie version are convoluted tales of murder and mayhem, but the novel is better than the film in many ways. Its value is in its shocking subject matter for the 1930s and being an early entrant helping to establish hardboiled crime novels as a genre. Readers were first put inside the brain of Marlowe in this story, which reads like an effort to adapt Cain. Chandler also was a reader of Cain’s work and along with Billy Wilder, Chandler would adapt Cain’s Double Indemnity for the screen. Still in print, The Big Sleep is available in trade paperback here at Amazon.
Eight decades after its first publication, how does Chandler’s novel hold up?
We’re continuing our ten-year celebration of borg today with our favorite genre books. If you missed them, check out our Top 40 movieshere and our Top 40 TV series here.
We reviewed thousands of books and comics that we recommended to our readers since June 2011, and some even made it onto our favorites shelf. We don’t publish reviews of books that we read and don’t recommend, so this shortlist reflects only 23 of the Best of the Best books and book series reviewed from June 2011 to June 2021.
For Mike Hammer fans, every new story is worth the wait. Kiss Her Goodbye finds Hammer pal Captain Pat Chambers calling the old gumshoe out of his retirement in Florida to investigate whether a common friend really committed suicide. We meet Old Man Mike Hammer, not fully recovered from getting caught in the crossfire in his last big show. He’s ragged around the edges, but refuses to let a shelf full of pills and his loss of girth prevent him from pushing anyone out of his way. No matter how many guns they have drawn.
Max Allan Collins is back, taking notes left by Mickey Spillane and drawing them together into one of the most fun, and most down-to-earth, adventures of Hammer in New York City. This time he’s left to work his way through a Studio 54-inspired club, as he trips over dead bodies to learn the truth. But can Hammer really be Hammer without the lovable Velda? Originally published in 2011 in hardcover, Kiss Her Goodbyeis now out in paperback, and with an all-new ending.
Our borgBest of 2020 list continues today with the Best Books of 2020. If you missed them, check out our reviews of the Best Movies of 2020 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2020here, and the Best in TV 2020here. Our list continues tomorrow with the Best Comics and Games of 2020. And we wrap-up the year with our additions to the borg Hall of Fame later this month.
We reviewed more than 100 books that we recommended to our readers this year, and some even made it onto our favorites shelf. We don’t publish reviews of books that we read and don’t recommend, so this shortlist reflects only this year’s cream of the crop.
So let’s get going!
Best Sci-Fi, Best Thriller Novel –Hearts of Oakby Eddie Robson (Tor Books). It’s a far-out science fiction novel with all the right notes of a good supernatural fantasy. And it has an easy pace and an impending, looming darkness waiting ahead that will keep you planted firmly in your seat until you get to the last page.
Best Tie-In Novel – Bloodshot novelization by Gavin Smith (Titan Books). A great update to the genre that began with Martin Caidin’s Cyborg, Smith creates an exciting, vivid novelization of the comic book character adapted to the big screen. Honorable mention: Firefly: The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove (Titan Books).
If there is a better writer of pulp crime fiction in the long history of the genre than Erle Stanley Gardner, I don’t know who it is. Yes, Mickey Spillane and Donald E. Westlake are in the running, too, but even if you push aside Gardner’s more than 60 novels featuring Perry Mason, you’re going to be challenged to find a better duo of detectives from the 1930s onward than Gardner’s Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Gardner wrote 29 novels published in his lifetime featuring the larger than life Bertha of the B. Cool Detective Agency and loyal and well-trod upon employee Lam, the narrator of the tales who lost his license to practice law and uses his smarts to keep money coming in to the agency. Where the Hard Case Crime imprint is at its best is finding lost gems, and they have one in The Knife Slipped, written by Gardner and intended to be the duo’s second case, the publisher kicked it way back in 1939 because of Bertha’s brash, bombastic, and profane style. Maybe that attitude just reflected the era of the day, but reading the novel now it’s clear Gardner was ahead of his time.
Max Allan Collins is back with another nugget of gold from the files of Mickey Spillane. It’s this month’s first published release ofMasquerade for Murder, a Mike Hammer story from the 1980s. Like a few other novels released by Collins I’ve reviewed here at borg, this is the latest published posthumously with the late Mickey Spillane. As Collins discusses in a foreword to the novel, this story came from a story synopsis left behind with many others with express instructions by Spillane for Collins to finish and introduce to the public. Coming from more than four decades across the life of the famous detective, Collins has seamlessly taken over the Hammer stories as if Spillane never really left.
As soon as Hammer takes his next job, his client’s son is clipped right in front of him, a hit-and-run by a red Ferrari. Soon the bodies begin piling up. They all have in common the firm where the son works. And the cause of death is incomprehensible to Hammer and the police: people are found dead whose chests were smashed in as if by a battering ram. Who is behind this, why are they doing it, and how the heck are they inflicting so much damage? Masquerade for Murder is Collins at his best, vintage Hammer, and indistinguishable from classic Mickey Spillane.
Few characters and genres are as easy to sink into as Mike Hammer crime novels. Hammer in the 1980s is a combination of all the great detectives from the then-recent past, some Thomas Magnum, some Jim Rockford, some Columbo, and some Lennie Briscoe from Law & Order to come years later. Of course, Hammer was a major influence behind them all.
Our borgBest of 2019 list continues today with the Best Books of 2019. If you missed them, check out our review of the Best Movies of 2019 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2019here, the Best in Television 2019here, and the Best Comics of 2019here.
We reviewed more than 100 books that we recommended to our readers this year, and some even made it onto our favorites shelf. We don’t print reviews of books that we read and don’t recommend, so this shortlist reflects only this year’s cream of the crop.
So let’s get going. Here are our selections for this year:
Best Read, Best Fantasy Read, Best New Edition of Previous Published Work, Best Translated Work – A Hero Born: Legends of the Condor Heroes 1by Jin Yong, translated by Anna Holmwood (St. Martin’s Press). The first book in one of the most read books of all time finally makes its way to the U.S. after its premiere in Great Britain. Readers will learn why George Lucas pulled its concepts for his Skywalker saga, and why generations of Chinese fans of fantasy of flocked to its heroes and villains. Honorable mention for Best Fantasy Read: A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery by Curtis Craddock (Tor Books), The Dark Lord Clementine by Sarah Jean Horwitz (Algonquin Young Readers).
Best New Novel, Best Horror Novel, Best Historical Novel, Best Mystery Novel – The Cthulhu Casebooks: Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils by James Lovegrove (Titan Books). A truly literary work combining a smart Holmesian adventure and the dark mind of H.P. Lovecraft. Readers will love Lovegrove’s approach, Holmes and Watson’s journey, and all the creepy surprises.
Best Sci-Fi Novel, Best Thriller – The Andromeda Evolutionby Daniel H. Wilson (HarperCollins). Wilson successfully conjured the spirit of Michael Crichton for this smart, creepy, and oddly current sci-fi sequel to The Andromeda Strain. A cast of characters just like Crichton would have put together, and a must-read.
Best Franchise Tie-In Novel – Firefly: Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove (Titan Books). One of the best authors around crafts a worthy story to expand the Firefly canon and give fans their own new movie of sorts for the franchise. Runner-up: Alien: Prototype by Tim Waggoner (Titan Books). Honorable Mention: Death of the Planet of the Apes by Andrew E.C. Gaska (Titan Books).
Best Retro Read – Mike Hammer: Murder, My Love, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Titan Books). Collins continues to bring Spillane’s characters to life with thrilling prose and all the best pieces of noir drama and action. Honorable mention: Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake (Hard Case Crime).
Best Genre Non-Fiction – Industrial Light & Magic Presents: Making of Solo: A Star Wars Storyby Rob Bredow (Harry N. Abrams). Bredow’s unique access to the production made for a rare opportunity in any production to see details of the filmmaking process. Every movie should have such a great deep dive behind the scenes. Honorable mention: The Making of Alien by J.W. Rinzler (Titan Books).
There’s much more of our selections for 2019’s Best in Print to go…
Fans of any character or universe love their fandom and often can’t get enough of it. It’s why writers keep writing new versions of Frankenstein 201 years later and new stories featuring James Bond 66 years later and Sherlock Holmes 132 years later. Fans of writer Mickey Spillane′s Mike Hammer novels (or the Darren McGavin or Stacy Keach television series) have not just the 13 novels Spillane wrote beginning 72 years ago, but now a full two dozen thanks to Spillane’s co-conspirator of hard-boiled crime and his successor, Max Allan Collins. In last year’s centenary of Spillane’s birth, that meant the release of the unpublished first Mike Hammer novel Killing Town (reviewed here at borg). Using the combined talents of Spillane and Collins, it’s a crime story as good as they get. With the latest team-up of Spillane and Collins,Murder, My Love, Collins proves he has mastered the voice of the famous cop-turned-private eye. This book is 100% end-to-end Collins, as the writer says he worked from Spillane’s notes but all of the prose is new material. And that’s fabulous, because this book is all Mike Hammer at his best.
As with Killing Town, Collins’ Murder, My Love is a shorter Hammer novel and a quick read. Personally at 200 pages I find it the ideal length–all pulp novels, classic paperback mysteries, true crime novels, etc. should be able to be gobbled up in a single trip (like on a Greyhound bus from Detroit to Cincinnati or a train from Omaha to Denver). I soaked up Murder, My Love in two sittings, and it was an entirely satisfying read, complete with Hammer and his assistant/also cop-turned P.I., Velda, who Collins writes cleverly here first person in a few pages of “off-camera” playback that is some of the best material in the book.
Max Allan Collins signing at San Diego Comic-Con in 2018.
It’s a story set later in Hammer’s career, with Collins establishing a perfect picture of New York City from a few decades ago as he takes a U.S. senator on as a client, a senator with White House ambitions. Unfortunately he and his wife have a history of extramarital affairs and now someone else knows, resulting in blackmail. Hammer and Velda embark on the detective work, interviewing the subjects of the senator’s liaisons. Once they find the schemer behind the blackmail, that’s when the body count begins. One-by-one the possible suspects end up dead, and Hammer isn’t exempt from getting in the line of fire.
A character who gives of himself to save lives, repeatedly, using his unusual mental and physical abilities–that’s pretty much our definition of superhero. If The Punisher is a superhero, if Batman would be a superhero without the costume, then you have the The Equalizer. Denzel Washington is back again, in the sequel to the surprise 2014 reboot of the 1980s television series, and if you missed Washington as this character in 2014, it’s time to catch up, as The Equalizer 2makes its way to several steaming platforms, including Vudu and Amazon Prime, and it’s now showing on Starz.
And what a sequel! It is another one of those rare films that surpasses its predecessor. More intrigue, more action, and even without the origin story from the first movie, The Equalizer 2 proves audiences don’t need it to jump into a finally crafted story of spies and revenge. Washington is back as Robert McCall, and he’s The Saint, Ethan Hunt, James Bond, and The Shadow all rolled up into one. This time he’s started a new life in Boston, and learns about the city through his job as a Lyft driver. Diehard film fans really only need to see the one other name on the marquee with Washington to know what they’re in for: Antoine Fuqua. Fuqua (Training Day, Shooter, The Magnificent Seven) directs the film like he does all his others, like he has something to prove. The Equalizer 2is worthy of its popular and critically acclaimed star, and Fuqua adds to the character with a spectacular setting for the film’s finale: a hurricane pummeling the coast of Massachusetts.
If you’re looking forward to the new Star Wars television series The Mandalorian, you have another reason to catch The Equalizer 2, as the series star Pedro Pascal(Kingsman: The Golden Circle, The Great Wall) plays a former team member of McCall in his CIA days. The subplots may even be better than the main story, and in one McCall mentors a young neighbor played by Ashton Sanders (Moonlight). Other supporting roles are filled by some familiar faces, including returning actors Melissa Leo (Homicide, Oblivion, Wayward Pines, Veronica Mars) and Bill Pullman(Deceived, Independence Day, Spaceballs), plus the always versatile Sakina Jaffrey(Heroes, Sleepy Hollow, Mr. Robot).
Our borgBest of 2018 list continues today with the Best in Print. If you missed them, check out our review of the Best Movies of 2018 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2018here, and the Best in Television 2018here.
So let’s get going. Here are our selections for this year’s Best in Print:
Best Read, Best Sci-fi Read – The Synapse Sequenceby Daniel Godfrey (Titan Books). The Synapse Sequence is one of those standout reads that reflects why we all flock to the latest new book in the first place. The detective mystery, the future mind travel tech, the twists, and the successful use of multiple perspectives made this one of the most engaging sci-fi reads since Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Honorable mention: Solo: A Star Wars Story novelization by Mur Lafferty (Del Rey).
Best Retro Read – Killing Townby Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime). The lost, first Mike Hammer novel released for the 100th anniversary of Mickey Spillane’s birth was gold for noir crime fans. This first Hammer story introduced an origin for a character that had never been released, in fact never finished, but Spillane’s late career partner on his work made a seamless read. This was the event of the year for the genre, and a fun ride for his famous character. Honorable mention: Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner, by Donald E. Westlake.
Best Tie-In Book – Solo: A Star Wars Story–Expanded Editionnovelization by Mur Lafferty (Del Rey). Not since Donald Glut’s novelization of The Empire Strikes Back had we encountered a Star Wars story as engaging as this one. Lafferty took the final film version and Lawrence and Jon Kasdan’s script to weave together something fuller than the film on-screen. Surprises and details moviegoers may have overlooked were revealed, and characters were introduced that didn’t make the final film cut. Better yet, the writing itself was exciting. We read more franchise tie-ins than ever before this year, and many were great reads, but this book had it all. Honorable Mention: Big Damn Heroby James Lovegrove (Titan).
Best Genre Non-fiction – Hitchcock’s Heroinesby Caroline Young (Insight Editions). A compelling look at the director and his relationship with the leading women in his films, this new work on Hitchcock was filled with information diehard fans of Hitchcock will not have seen before. Young incorporated behind-the-scenes images, costume sketches, and a detailed history of the circumstances behind key films of the master of suspense and his work with some of Hollywood’s finest performers.
There’s much more of our selections for 2018’s Best in Print to go…
