Andrew Nette's Blog

Today is publication day for my second novel, Gunshine State.

Gunshine State is a heist thriller set in Queensland, Melbourne and Thailand. Think Richard Stark’s Parker, Garry Disher’s Wyatt, and Wallace Stroby’s Crissa Stone. Add a touch of Surfers Paradisesleaze and a very dangerous stopover in Asia.

You can read more about the book and some of the great praise it has already gathered at the 280 Steps site here: http://www.280steps.com/books/gunshin...

Gunshine State is available in hard copy and e-book form on Amazon here https://www.amazon.com/Gunshine-State... or check out the 280 Steps site for other platforms you can access it on. Review copies are available by contacting 280 Steps directly.

Perth based crime writer, David Whish-Wilson, whose work I have reviewed extensively on this site and whose new novel, Old Scores is out later this year, will be on help me launch my novel this coming Thursday, September 15, at Brunswick Bound boosktore, 361 Sydney Road Brunswick. The launch will kick off at around 6.30pm and go until 8 – 8.30pm, after which we will kick on at one of Brunswick’s many local watering holes.

Hope to see you there.

I’m incredibly proud to be able to show you the draft cover to the upcoming book I’ve co-edited with Iain McIntyre, Beat Girls, Love Tribes & Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture from the 1950s to 1980s.

Iain and I were both keen to do an examination of pulp fiction that went beyond simply focusing on paperback covers, as most pulp fiction related books do and I am sure we and the twenty plus writers who contributed to this tome, have delivered.

Beat Girls is first comprehensive account of the rise of youth culture and mass-market paperback fiction in the postwar period in the US, UK and Australia. It is not just a comprehensive selection of covers, but an in-depth look at the authors, how they worked and what influenced them. It is a must-read for anyone interested in retro and subcultural style and popular fiction.

As the young created new styles in music, fashion and culture, pulp fiction followed their every step, hyping and exploiting their behaviour and language for mass consumption. From the juvenile delinquent gangs of the early fifties, through the beats and hippies, on to bikers, skinheads and punks, pulp fiction left no trend untouched. Boasting wild covers and action-packed plots, these books reveal as much about society’s desires and fears as they do about the subcultures themselves.

Featuring over 300 pulp covers, many never before reprinted, as well 70 in-depth author interviews and biographies, articles and reviews, Beat Girls offers the most extensive survey of the era’s mass market pulp fiction. Novels by well-known authors like Harlan Ellison, Lawrence Block, Evan Hunter/Ed McBain, and by filmmakers Samuel Fuller and Ed Wood Jr, are discussed alongside neglected obscurities and contemporary bestsellers ripe for rediscovery.

Beat Girls will be out in the US, UK and Australia later this year, via Verse Chorus Press, but you can pre-order now on Amazon here http://www.amazon.com/Beat-Girls-Love...

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 17 Comments
For the second instalment of my year in books series, I’m very happy to welcome Margot Kinberg. Margot is one of those people who make the crime fiction community such a cool place to hang out in, a mystery novelist who has a genuine passion for reading, writing and talking about crime fiction. She has a wonderful website, Confessions of Mystery Novelist. It’s full of thoughtful reviews and features on a truly eclectic selection of crime fiction.

Welcome Margot.

Thanks very much for hosting me, Andrew; it’s a real honour. I’ve been asked to share my five best crime fiction reads of 2013 and to tell the truth, that’s quite a difficult undertaking. I’ve read some fantastic crime fiction this year and it’s very hard to narrow it down to just five novels. Let’s say, then, that these are five novels that have had a profound impact on me. Here they are in no particular order:

Witness the Night, Kishwar Desai

This astounding debut novel tells the story of the murders of thirteen members of the wealthy Atwal family, and the efforts of one social worker to find out what happened on the night they died. It’s an unflinching look at life in Punjab, at the choices people make and why they make them, and at the effects of class, wealth and prejudice. At the same time, Desai’s love for her country is also evident and she gives the reader a fascinating look at one part of India. The writing style is clear and compelling and the protagonists are beautifully drawn.

The Earth Hums in B Flat, Mari Strachan

The real appeal for me in this debut novel is the unusual and unforgettable character of twelve-year-old Gwenni Morgan, who’s coming of age in a small Welsh town in the 1950s. When a shocking death comes to the village, we see its effect on the town through Gwenni’s eyes, and that makes for a fascinating story. But this is as much a story of family, of living in a village with all of its secrets, and of sorting out life as it is anything else. Strachan has created a memorable protagonist and the Welsh setting is especially well-drawn.

Blackwattle Creek, Geoffrey McGeachin

This is a second helping of Melbourne cop Charlie Berlin, who first appears in The Diggers Rest Hotel. What begins as a simple request to look into an oddity about a friend’s funeral draws Berlin into a web of international intrigue, high-level cover-ups and murder. But this is much more than a crime novel and that’s what I found compelling. It’s an authentic look at 1957 Melbourne, a portrait of family life (yes – a cop can have a basically happy marriage!) and a look at politics. It’s also about dealing with the grit in life without succumbing to it.

Cross Fingers, Paddy Richardson

I admit I’m a Paddy Richardson fan, so I am biased. Even so, this novel is truly compelling. Wellington TV journalist Rebecca Thorne is working on an exposé of dubious land developer Denny Graham when she’s asked to do a story on the Springbok’s 1981 rugby tour of New Zealand. ‘The Tour’ was controversial and as Thorne looks into it, she discovers an unsolved murder from that time. For suspense, for an unmistakeable New Zealand setting and for a solid set of mysteries, you don’t get much better than Richardson. I know, cliché, but I couldn’t stop reading it.

The Rage, Gene Kerrigan

In this noir novel, Dublin DS Bob Tidey and Detective Garda Rose Cheney investigate two cases that turn out to have a common thread. Dubious banker Emmet Sweetman is murdered at home. At the same time Vincent Naylor has recently been released from prison and is planning the heist of a lifetime. These stories intersect effectively with the story of Maura Cody, a former nun who witnesses something that draws her into the cases. Through different perspectives, Kerrigan paints an indelible portrait of post-‘Celtic Tiger’ Dublin. There are brilliantly drawn characters and a solid discussion of social issues too.

Here are also a few ‘Honourable Mentions.’

You’re doing yourself a big favour by reading them:

Ghost Money, Andrew Nette

The Dying Beach, Angela Savage

The Twelfth Department, William Ryan

Web of Deceit, Katherine Howell

Welcome to the first of a series of posts I’m going to be running on my site over December, along the theme of my year in books.

I thought it would be great to ask a dozen or so writers and bloggers whose work I dig to do me a short overview of their five favourite reads in 2013.

While, all the people I’ve asked are crime writers, I specified their top five didn’t have to be crime. Neither did they have to be published in 2013. The individual concerned just had to have read them this year.

First cab off the rank is Jake Hinkson. A lot of you will know his work and, if you don’t you might want to check it out, because the guy knows his noir fiction. He is the author of Hell On Church Street, The Posthumous Man, and an upcoming novella with Crime Factory Publications, Saint Homicide.

He blogs on all things noir at his site, The Night Editor.

A Simple Plan, Scott Smith

I’ve long been a fan of Sam Raimi’s excellent 1999 adaptation of Smith’s novel about three men who discover a crashed plane full of stolen money, but this year was the first time I read Smith original novel. It’s excellent, but what is surprising is how different it is from the film (which Smith also wrote). Fascinating to see a writer telling the same story in different mediums.

King Cohn: The Life and Times of Harry Cohn, Peter Bart

The juiciest piece of movie lore I read this year. The founder and president of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, was as feared and loathed as any man in the history of Hollywood, but he was also a master of the game. By the end of the book, you kind of have to love the grumpy son of a bitch.

The Bounty, Caroline Alexander

I’ve read a lot about the mutiny on the HMS Bounty. I’m not sure why, but the story has always intrigued me. This comprehensive history of the ship, its crew, and their fateful voyage is by far the best thing I’ve come across. It’s a nicely evenhanded look at the conflict between Lt. William Bligh and his first mate Fletcher Christian.

Do Evil In Return, Margaret Millar

I’ve been on a pretty serious Margaret Millar kick this year. Of the five novels by her that I tore through ( the others: A Stranger In My Grave, Beast In View, Fire Will Freeze, The Iron Gates) this was my favorite. It’s the story of a doctor who refuses to perform an illegal abortion for a distraught young woman. When the young woman turns up dead, the doctor takes it upon herself to find out what happened. An underrated noir classic.

Corrosion, Jon Bassoff

This is a white-knuckler from one of the biggest talents around right now. Scary and smart, it’s the kind of freak show that only Jon Bassoff can write. As much as I adored his Nate Flexer novel The Disassembled Man, this one is even better.

Bonus Pick:

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright

It should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that I’m fascinated by all forms of religious kookery, and I was riveted by this look at the history and inner workings of the 20th century’s goofiest religion. I mean just look at the basic story: a hack science fiction pulp writer convinces movie stars that they need to wage a spirit war against evil aliens who take the form of psychiatrists and IRS agents. What’s not to love?

The long lists for the 2013 Ned Kelly awards for Australian crime writing have been released.

My novel, Ghost Money, has made the long list for best First Fiction, along with a number of other excellent books.

Ghost Money continues to get excellent reviews. So, if you haven't bought a copy, why not do so.

For those who don't know the plot, here's the pitch:

Cambodia, 1996, the long-running Khmer Rouge insurgency is fragmenting, competing factions of the coalition government scrambling to gain the upper hand. Missing in the chaos is businessman Charles Avery. Hired to find him is Vietnamese Australian ex-cop Max Quinlan.

But Avery has made dangerous enemies and Quinlan is not the only one looking. Teaming up with Heng Sarin, a local journalist, Quinlan’s search takes him from the freewheeling capital Phnom Penh to the battle scarred western borderlands. As the political temperature soars, he is slowly drawn into a mystery that plunges him into the heart of Cambodia’s bloody past.

Ghost Money is a crime nove about Cambodia in the mid-nineties, a broken country, what happens to those trapped between two periods of history, the choices they make, what they do to survive.

It's available in digital format for $4.99 and hard copy for $10 plus postage.

The full list of books in all three categories, Best Fiction, Best First Fiction and Best True Crime, is available here on the brand spanking new Australian Crime Writers Association website http://www.austcrimewriters.com/.

Congratulations to all the authors long listed.

Ghost Money, my crime novel set in nineties Cambodia, is now available in print.

Since Ghost Money came out as an e-book at the end of October last year a number of you have been asking when it will be available as a print publication.

Well that time has come.

The print edition of Ghost Money will set you back $15 plus postage and is available from Amazon.

For those of you who haven’t picked it up yet and prefer the e-book experience you can still pick up Ghost Money for your Kindle or e-reader for $3.99 .

Either way it’s a bargain for a slice of Asian favoured crime fiction that the prestigious UK site, Crime Fiction Lover called “the Third Man of Asian noir”.

As always if you have read Ghost Money it’d be great if you could leave feedback on Amazon or Goodreads and, most importantly, drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Ieng Sary. the former foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge, died in Phnom Penh today. Unfortunately, he passed before the trial for genocide for which he was standing, could passed down it's verdict. Sary's 1996 defection from the Khmer Rouge forms the historical back drop of my novel, Ghost Money.

Here's a piece I wrote late last year on how I came to write Ghost Money and the historical background to it.

Sary's death seems like a fitting time to dust off this piece and reprint it here.

I started writing the book that eventually became Ghost Money in 1996 when I worked for several months in Cambodia as a wire service journalist.

I’d first travelled to Cambodia in 1992 while living in neighbouring Laos. It was a desperately poor and traumatised country. The Khmer Rouge, responsible for the deaths by starvation and torture of approximately 1.7 million Cambodians during their brief rule in the seventies, were still fighting from heavily fortified jungle bases. The government was an unstable coalition of two parties who’d been at each other’s throats for the better part of a decade and whose main interests were settling historical scores and making money.

Phnom Penh, the crumbling capital of the former French colony, was crawling with foreigners; peacekeepers sent by the West and its allies to enforce peace between the various factions, and their entourage of drop outs, hustlers, pimps, spies, do-gooders and journalists. The streets teemed with Cambodian men in military fatigues missing legs and arms, victims of the landmines strewn across the country. There was no power most of the time. The possible return of the Khmer Rouge caste a shadow over everything.

When the opportunity arose several years later to fill in with one of the wire services, I jumped at it. As it turned out, from a journalist’s standpoint, my timing was good.

Unknown to most foreign observers, the Khmer Rouge has been splintering internally for many years. Partly this was the result of the government’s relentless military operations. More decisive were internal tensions over the movement’s direction and how best to divide the spoils from the guerrillas’ logging and gem mining operations along the border with Thailand.

In August 1996, a couple of weeks before I arrived, Ieng Sary, the former Deputy Prime Minister in the charnel house the Khmer Rouge called Democratic Kampuchea, announced he’d split from the movement and wanted to negotiate with the Coalition Government for amnesty.

He claimed he’d grown sick of fighting and wanted to end the war. A more significant influence were reports Khmer Rouge hardliners under Pol Pot had discovered Sary was skimming the proceeds from gem mining and logging operations, and were about to move against him.

Whatever the case, both sides of Cambodia’s dysfunctional coalition government courted Sary and his not inconsiderable military clout for their own ends. Sary, meanwhile, used his position to stay one step ahead of a prison cell. It was a bizarre, increasingly acrimonious game of cat and mouse that eventually resulted in open warfare between the two coalition partners.

But that’s another story.

These events form the backdrop to Ghost Money.

Cambodia fascinated me from the moment I first arrived. The people, the contrast between the anything goes, Wild West atmosphere of Phnom Penh and the hardscrabble but incredibly beautiful countryside.

History oozed from the cracks in the French colonial architecture and protruded from the rich red earth, sometimes quite literally in the case of the mass graves that litter the countryside. Things happened every day – terrible events and acts of heart breaking generosity you couldn’t make up if you tried.

I always thought Cambodia would be a good setting for a crime story. But I also wanted to capture some of the country’s tragic history, the sense of a nation in transition. In the mid-nineties, the young wanted change, the old wanted stability. In between was another group. Children of the Khmer Rouge era and the civil war that followed, who’d grown up adapting to the rigid economic and political austerity of Soviet Style system. But as the country opened up, a lot of these people were cut adrift.

I was too caught up in the day to day reporting of events and trying to make a living as a freelance journalist to put much of a dent in the book. That didn’t come until nearly a decade later, when one day I sat down and started reading through some old notes.

In early 2008, my partner and I quit our jobs and moved to Cambodia for a year with our then two year old. I freelanced as a journalist, did fixing work for foreign TV crews and finished the first draft of my manuscript.

A lot had changed. The Khmer Rouge insurgency was over. Sary was on trial for war crimes. The streets of Phnom Penh were full of luxury cars. Tourists could get a shiatsu massage in their ozone neutral hotel, then head out for tapas and cocktails.

On another level, a lot hadn’t. The same people still ran things and the methods they used hadn’t altered. The countryside was still poor and beautiful.

Using the skeleton of the plot I developed in the mid-nineties, the basic plot of Ghost Money, a private investigator searching for a lost businessman amidst the chaos of the Khmer Rouge split, came quickly.

The main character, a Vietnamese Australian in denial about his background, took a lot longer. For various reasons, the Vietnamese are intensely disliked by many ordinary Cambodians, something I wanted to use to create an even greater sense of tension in the book.

Ghost Money is a crime story, but it’s also about the broken country that was Cambodia in the nineties, about what happens to people who are trapped in the cracks between two periods of history, the choice they make, what they have to do to survive.

As the summer holiday's draw to an end and the business part of 2013 kicks off, it's time for a little run down of what I've read over the Christmas/New Year period and how I'm going to approach my reading in the year ahead.

I've seen the 1972 movie Fat City, directed by John Huston, many times but never read the 1969 book of the same name by Leonard Gardner. It was hands down my read of the summer. Indeed, I'll go as far as saying it's one of the most beautifully written novels I can remember reading in a while.

Set in the fifties, Fat City is the story of two amateur boxers, Ernie Munger and Billy Tully. Tully is the older of the two, a former fighter who wants another shot at the big time. The fact he's an alcoholic means he's got no chance. Munger is a young man with potential, but you know from the first time we meet him, he's not going to amount to much. The book follows the hopes, dreams and most of all, anxieties of these two men through a series of bars, flop houses and dead end jobs. As I said, there's never any doubt the two won't amount to much, the question is just how far they'll slide.

I loved everything about this book, the writing, characters, the depiction of fifties California. Everything. It's 182 pages of prose to die for.

Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley is another book made into a film I've been meaning to get into for a while. Again, I'm glad I made the effort. I'm sure people are familiar enough with the plot for me not to have to spell it out in detail. What surprised me most about Highsmith's novel is how delightfully bent her story telling is. I particularly loved the way she skewed the middle class pretencences and mores of the post-war US middle class.

My only criticism of the book, and it's hardly Highsmith's fault, is that it feels somewhat dated. Tom Ripley is a man struggling with his sexuality and homicidal tendencies. But I couldn't shake the feeling as read, that if he was alive today, he'd be giving vent to these by being on reality TV.

Jim Nisbet's Lethal Injection has been on my radar for a while now. I've learnt from experience that having a James Ellroy quote on the front over saying how noir a book is, is no guarantee I'm going to like what's inside.

I'm pleased to say in the case of Lethal Injection, the hype is justified. Franklin Royce is an alcoholic prison doctor who executes people on behalf of the state of Texas. But when he kills a black convict (a chillingly portrayed scene), he's left with the strong impression he's just terminated the life of an innocent man.

With his practice in the toilet, his marriage on the rocks and a sense he's a middle aged failure, Royce decides to try and redeem himself by finding the truth behind the executed prisoner's alleged crime. I won't spoil the plot, except to say, his journey takes him deep into a hellish world of junkies and criminals, a world where he quickly abandons any lingering preconceptions about what he is capable of. On the strength of Lethal Injection I'll definitely be checking out more of Nisbet's considerable backlog of work.

Speaking of Ellroy, of everything I read over the holidays his novella Shakedown definitely required the least effort. Probably more interesting because it's his first foray into digital only publishing, Shakedown features Freddy Otash, a corrupt cop, extortionist, pimp and bit player in the author's LA quintet series of books. The story is essentially Otash's confession while he is waiting for redemption in hell. No surprises in this one, not even any attempt on Ellroy's part to stretch himself. If you dig his stuff, and I do, you'll like it, if not, you won't. Nothing more to say than that.

Dead Sea by Sam Lopez was released last year by new kid on the block small publisher Crime Wave Press, specialising in crime fiction set in Asia. After intervening one night to stop a particularly brutal mugging, Luke meets the victim’s daughter, Tara. They have dinner together, end up in bed, and before you know it, a year has passed and they're travelling in the Philippines. The thrill of their initial meeting and the early days of travelling have long faded, replaced by boredom and, on Tara’s part, a feeling she's wasting her life and needs to get back to England.

Along with two other young travellers Luke and Tara travel to a hard scrabble but untouristed island called Oras and have a series of increasingly fraught encounters with the locals. Just when things are beginning to get out of control, they meet Eduardo, a long-term English expatriate who lives on a remote stretch of Oras. He’s a lovable rogue, full of adventure stories and faux Eastern mysticism. Eduardo makes the young travellers what seems like an impossibly good proposition. Eduardo is going to take his luxury yacht, named the Blue Beard, on a little trip to an unchartered reef where he’s heard there’s the wreck of a Japanese destroyer. Would they like to crew for him in exchange for unlimited diving and a ticket off Oras. What could go wrong?

Dead Sea is a mixed bag. The structure of the book, a series of interweaving flashing backs and forwards, takes a bit of getting used to and will annoy some readers. Similarly, the ending is a bit abrupt and will either leave you blown away or disappointed. That said, it is a strangely compelling story and the the Philippines is an Asian country I’ve long thought has been neglected as a setting for crime fiction, so any attempt to rectify this is going to win points with me. The book is at its strongest when dissecting the worldview of the long term Western tourist, the way prolonged travel can be both enormously exciting and boring, what can happen when foreigners who feel they have seen everything suddenly realise they don’t have a clue what is going on.

Last but not least, over the holiday period I finally got into Australian academic Nicole Moore's The Censor's Library. This is a fascinating and meticulous work which came about when Moore discovered the secret library of Australia's censors - 793 boxes of banned books from the 1920s to the 1980s. Of particular interest to me are the sections of the book that deal with the censorship of pulp and popular fiction in the sixties and very early seventies. The fact that Australia had perhaps the most punitive censorship regime in the Western world is just one of the many amazing things I've learned from Moore's work so far.

And now for how I'm going to approach reading in the year ahead.

I'm going to be less stressed about my reading in 2013, read what I want, when I want. Yeah, I know, that sounds weird and regular readers will probably wonder, 'Okay, what the hell's so new about that?'

On one level not a lot. On another, it means I am going to be more selective about what I spend my time reading and reviewing and follow where things take me rather than what the latest hot book is. For example, I'd marked out a couple of books to read this week, but these plans were totally derailed when I stumbled across a second copy of Thomas McGuane's 1972 novel, Ninety Two in the Shade. I read a couple of pages and was hooked.

Similar distractions pending, the following books are on to-read list in the coming month.

US writer Jordan Harper's debut anthology, American Death Songs. I've read some of his short fiction work in Crime Factory, so I'm very keen to check out what else he has done.

Lee Marvin: Point Blank is a new bio of one of my favourite actors by US entertainment reporter Dwayne Epstein. I'll be interviewing Epstein about his work in an upcoming issue of Crime Factory.

Blood of Paradise by David Corbett. A crime novel set in El Salvador, I'm reading this because a number of people have said it is similar to my own debut novel, Ghost Money.

Finish Nicole Moore's The Censor's Library.

Then again, by the time you read this, these plans could have all changed.

It’s been a great year for crime fiction and trying to narrow the books I have read down to a top five is not easy. Before I get onto that, however, as has been my past practice I’m going to cheat and hand out a few honourable mentions. Scott Wolven’s wonderful short story collection, Controlled Burn: Stories of Prison, Crime and Men, Nearly Nowhere by Summer Brenner and Don Winslow’s Kings of Cool were all in contention for my best of list. But my top five reads for 2012 are:

5. He Died with his Eyes Open by Derek Raymond
A police procedural like no other, it starts, like so many other crime novels, with the discovery of a body. The unnamed cop (the story’s narrator) who catches the case is a tough talking sergeant from the Department of Unexplained Deaths, also known as A14, at the Factory police station. There’s no apparent motive and all the cop has to go on are a series of old cassette tapes in the dead man’s property that contain the deeply unhappy ramblings of a deeply unhappy man. Most police procedurals deal with crime from the point of view of the police. What’s unusual about this book is that the cop concerned is more like his victim.

Raymond was the pen name of English writer Robert William Arthur Cook, who eschewed his upper middle class family for a life of odd jobs, bohemian travel and frequent brushes with the law. Although he wrote for years, success eluded until with the publication of He Died with His Eyes Open in 1984, the first of five Factory books.

4. The Darkest Little Room by Patrick Holland
A dark and totally original take on one of the standard plots of crime fiction set in Asia, ‘foreigner-falls-for-bargirl-who-ends-up-much-more-than-she-seems’. Joseph is an Australian journalist living in Saigon with a sideline in blackmailing high profile philanderers who he photographs in compromising situations in brothels. One day a foreign businessman approaches him with a picture of a physically abused but beautiful woman held prisoner in a brothel known as ‘the darkest little room’. Before long, Joseph has rescued the woman, who is mysteriously free of any physical wounds, and fallen in love, only to have her snatched back again by the gang of traffickers who bought her to Vietnam.

Wonderfully drawn characters, acute (often painful) observations about the expatriate condition, a vivid depiction of Vietnam and a break neck plot make this a mesmerising read.

3. Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cooke
This story of masculinity, drinking and violence in regional Australia, written in 1961, still packs a punch today. John Grant is a mild mannered teacher working in a tiny speck of a town called Tiboonda. He has six weeks leave ahead of him and 140 pounds in his pocket. All that stands between him and six weeks in Sydney is an overnight train stop in Bundanyabba or ‘the Yabba’ as the locals call it. That is until he wanders into one of the Yabba’s local pubs and loses nearly all his money in a two up game. He wakes next morning, broke and at the mercy of the locals who, as he discovers, can literally kill a stranger with their brand of kindness.

Cooke handles Grant’s slow descent into the nightmare landscape that is the Yabba with slow burn ferocity, heightening the tension through a series of bizarre interactions with the local residents. Wake in Fright is a genuinely menacing story. It was also made into an excellent 1971 film, which helped re-kick start the Australian film industry in the seventies

2. Dare Me by Megan Abbott
Abbott is one of the best crime writers working today and Dare Me is her latest book. Addy and Beth have been best friends for years and the top dogs of their high school cheerleading squad. Beth is the captain, Addy always her faithful lieutenant. Cheerleading and their commanding place in it is the ground zero of their world. Their carefully constructed social hierarchy is thrown into chaos by the arrival of a new cheerleading coach. Addy finds herself particularly drawn to the new Coach and away from her old friend. But Beth is not someone to take rejection lying down. When a peripheral male acquaintance of the girls is found dead, it’s unclear whether murder, suicide or an accident is to blame. As the final game of the season approaches, Addy begins to wonder exactly what her old friend may be capable of.

In the hands of a lesser writer, Dare Me could have so easily been just another tale of teenage angst with an edge. But Abbott delivers a much more challenging story that’s not afraid to question some major sacred cows about young women and what they’re capable of. She nails all her characters and transforms their cadence, feelings, fears, and secrets into something very sinister, part dark noir, part suburban Lynchian nightmare.

1. The Devil all the Time, Donald Ray Pollock
I read this book in the first week of January and it remained my best book of 2012.
The Devil All the Time is a multi-generational gothic novel set in the backwoods Ohio and Virginia. It opens with the return of a soldier from the carnage of the Pacific war and his drift into religious madness over the terminal sickness of his wife. Other characters include a couple of revivalist Christians performers (one of whom has a bizarre side-line involving spiders), a corrupt backwoods law man and a husband and wife team of roaming serial killers, one of whom likes to photograph their victims in sexual positions.

This is rural noir with major kick. But no matter how sexually and physically deranged things get (and they get very deranged), Pollock avoids the temptation to play the story for cheap thrills. There is real humanity in these stories, even the most wretched of his characters struggle for meaning.

As if I don't have enough going on crime fiction-wise at the moment, with my debut novel Ghost Money and the upcoming launch of Crime Factory's all Australian crime antho, Hard Labour, I'll be attending Noir Con in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, in early November.

Noir Con is a biennial three day festival of noir crime writing and culture. Philadelphia is a fitting host city, being the birth place of the influential noir writer David Goodis, author of Dark Passage, Street of No Return and Shoot the Piano Player, amongst many other novels.

The best way to get a feel for Noir Con is to check out the program, which you can find here along with an interview with the mastermind behind the event, Lou Boxer.

Among the writers attending I'm keen to see are Megan Abbott, Vicki Hendricks, Lawrence Block and Wallace Stroby. I'm also looking forward to checking out the authors I haven't heard of, as well as meeting some of the people I've been communicating with for a while now on social media.

In the lead up to Noir Con I'll be spending a week and a half in New York, a city I have never been too but always wanted to see.

I am going to be like the proverbial pig in shit.

There'll also be a little election going on while I'll be there. I looking forward to being in the US to see Obama kick Romney's Presidential ambitions back into the last decade.

Anyway, as part of my preparations for the trip, it occurred to me it would be a great idea to feature some of the US writers I like on this site, particularly writers from around the New York area, where I'll be visiting.

It's a way of giving regular Pulp Curry readers a little taste of the crime writing scene in the US.

So, I asked a group of people whose work I dig whether they would be prepared to write me something to post on Pulp Curry. So far all of them have said yes. Most of the people I've asked, in fact probably all of them, aren't well known in Australia crime fiction circles. But they are all people whose work I like and respect and who doing interesting things.

The first of these posts will appear next week.