The Gospel According to Prisco

I don’t care much for the beach.  I have had enough near death collisions with jellyfish, crippling accidents with boogie boards, and suffered through plenty of washed up Jersey needles and hurricane force waves that I’ve had my fill.  So aside from a few splashes and occasional body surfing, I tend to go to beach, plop in an easy chair or on a blanket, and do some reading. 

I prefer paperback novels that are easily fit in your back pocket, and are often parts of large series.  I love digging my teeth into a new series, because if you enjoy it, there is usually more for you to feast upon.  I tend to read twisted bits of fiction, sprinkled with the occasional heady literary meal in the name of Steinbeck or Dostoevfsky.  Usually, it’s pretty much junk food, and I loves it.

So for your edification, I recommend the following series to get you from sunburn to boat drink and back safely and enjoyably:

Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill:  How Serge A. Storms passed beneath my radar for so long is beyond me.  This enjoyable series, about a homicidal Florida history buff, is somewhere around it’s 12 book by now.  The first book is Florida Roadkill, and reads like Carl Hiaasen or Big Sur Christopher Moore.  There are about 35 maniac characters who dwindle down to around 4 or 5 by the completion of this pulpy ride, in variously gruesome ways.  Such as tour bus full of Promise Keepers and Fix-A-Flat injected into the throat.  The star of this series is Serge, who’s easily one of the finest folks from the Sunshine State.

Harlan Coben, Deal Breaker:  The first of the Myron Bolitar novels, and a book that pretty much spring-loaded me into the whole comic murder mystery.  He manages to intersperse action with dry wit, and it’s a fantastic combination.  Myron is an ex basketball pro, who was injured during his professional career and now makes money as an agent.  He works closely with his seductively lethal secretary, Esperanza, a former lady wrestler, and his homicidal yuppie cohort, Win.  The mysteries have great twists, Myron’s a spectacular character, and the action doesn’t let up.  Coben’s stand alone novels are also pretty bad ass. 

PJ Tracy, Monkeewrench:  The first of a spectacular set of novels, set in Minnesota.  They are written by a mother-daughter team, and again, feature a lot of decent comedy with a scintillating mystery.  It’s a little pulpier than most, and I usually recommend these to fans of James Patterson’s excellent Alex Cross and Women’s Murder Club Series.  This first one is about a software company run by some less than saavy legal folks who develop a murder crime game that some copycat killer is aping.  It’s pretty damn fun.  There are only four books so far in this series.

Jim Butcher, Storm Front: The Harry Dresden Files.  If you aren’t reading these books yet, then what the fuck?  This pretty much has everything you’re looking for in a series.  It’s about a professional wizard for hire in Chicago, and reads like one part Sam Spade, and one part Harry Potter, and one part Punk Rock.  For a series that’s gone 10 books, it’s managed to keep the story surprisingly fresh.  Dresden is an all-around badass, and the cast of supporting characters gets even finer as it progresses.  Also, his Aleran fantasy novels are none too shabby either, if you’re into the whole D&D thing.

JA Konrath, Whiskey Sour: Inspector Jack Daniels Series.  I was skeptical at first about this series.  Slim little tomes with drink names, and the main character, a female detective named Jack Daniels.  It seemed a little too punriffic to be any good.  Boy was I wrong.  This is a spectacular series that gets better as it goes along.  The humor is brilliant, and the violence is fucking horrifying.  It’s like watching Dexter if he were being pursued by a combination of Sipowicz and Jerry Orbach.  Jack is a grim Chicago cop with a dry wit and a penchant for fine clothing and footwear.  I will be posting a review of book five, Fuzzy Navel, a little later this month at Pajiba, and I wanted to give everyone a chance to get started on the series.  Again, it’s like a combination of Christopher Moore’s wit with James Patterson’s murder sprees.

There are plenty more I know I’m forgetting, and tons of stand-alones I needs to mention, but if you want a quick breezy read, I would recommend getting these and ambling over to the beach.  Every time I’ve carried one of these books, it’s sparked up a conversation with a stranger.  Which annoys me, because hey, jerkoff, I’m trying to fucking read here!

Boat drinks and happy reading, friends!

Dirty Martini by JA Konrath

You know how I was saying that these books just keep getting better?  Well, the hits keep on a-comin’.  This was an awesome premise, and really put together wonderfully.  Rusty Nail was good, but it did falter a bit in the story.  But Dirty Martini was a smash bang hit.

Jack Daniels is back again, just as bad ass as ever.  Instead of dealing with her mom in a coma, like the last book, now we have her boyfriend wanting to propose.  Poor Latham.  This guy’s gotten his ass kicked and almost chopped up into little Conger bits for his devotion to Jack.  While this could easily be one of those throw away joke relationships, there merely to give the ol’ WAH-WAH horn to how hard it is to keep a mAY-ahn when your Jack, it’s played for wonderful effectiveness. 

A bio-terrorist is poisoning the city, injecting fruits and meats and packaging with deadly toxins and essentially murdering hundreds of people for the ransom.  It’s creepy and gruesome and fascinating.  Again, the hand isn’t tipped too quickly and the twists are clever.  It’s a much sadder book, with character potentially about to exit the story.  But if you’re in the mood for murder with laughs, start in on the series.  I was afraid it would be schlocky (I mean, the chick’s fucking name is Jack Daniels) but it turned out to be one of my favorite series.  And there are two more coming out in quick succession: Fuzzy Navel later this year and one more for 2009, Cherry Bomb. 

Rusty Nail by JA Konrath

Another fine turn in the delightful Jack Daniels series.  I really feel like Konrath just keeps getting better with each progressive novel.  The personal life is starting to creep into the story a bit more, which is always vaguely disturbing to me with murder mystery writers.  Patterson’s all but fucked up Alex Cross with his attempts at wooing, and Jeffrey Deaver has committed a crime against humanity with Lincoln Rhyme, but these novels are so tongue in cheek, that it’s actually the love story that keeps it relatively anchored.  

Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is a Chicago cop (rolling on the same turf as my boy Harry Dresden) who always finds herself pursued by or pursuing serial killers.  This time, she’s facing a copycat to the supposed Gingerbread Man from Whiskey Sour.  Like Paterson, Konrath allows us to see into the mind of killer, which really adds a brutally wicked element to the story.  He blends horribly graphic murder with a quick witted banter, and it makes for a delightful read.    

I would highly recommend this series to anyone who reads murder mystery, especially Patterson fans.  Much like P.J. Tracy, or even Hiassen and Dorsey, the books are gleefully violent and hilarious.  A great beach read or pocket potty book.