Best of 2024 (Part One)

I’m still finalizing my list of best 2024 releases, trying to squeeze in one or two more reads before posting it, so in the meantime here are my favorite books from the past that I caught up with this year.

You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up by Richard Hallas

Richard Hallas is a pseudonym for Eric Knight, the author of Lassie Come Home. This guy had range. I’ve been interested in this barely-available cult item for years, ever since reading that David Lynch planned to adapt it as one of his many unrealized films, but never could find an affordable copy until I realized I could expend an Audible credit and give it a listen. This offbeat noir finds our seemingly hapless protagonist hopping a train to California trying to track down his wife and their child and almost immediately becoming entangled with all manner of shady characters. I can’t improve on the review that described it as James Cain filtered through Thomas Pynchon. Rarely has a narrator been more unreliable.

The Guards by Ken Bruen

The missus and I have a holiday trip to Dublin coming up, so I’ve been stocking up Irish crime. This is the first in the Jack Taylor series, and definitely not the last I’ll read. Jack is an ex-cop and attempting to be a private investigator, but he mostly investigates the local pub while supposedly trying to figure out whether a teenage girl was murdered or committed suicide. OK, so the drunk PI is nothing new in crime fiction, but Bruen’s elliptical first-person narrative finds poetry in Jack’s descent.

The Dry by Jane Harper

My other big “one of these days” vacation destination is Australia, so I’m always up for some Down Under crime. This one fits the bill as a federal agent returns to his Outback hometown to learn the truth about his childhood friend, who everyone believes killed his family and then himself. Sweaty atmosphere, personal stakes, and plenty of twists and turns along the way. This turns out to be the first in a series, which I’m not sure is a great idea given how self-contained this feels, but this is good enough that I’m willing to give the next one a shot.

The Ax by Donald Westlake

I’ve read reviews of my own work citing Westlake as an influence, but the truth is I’d not read any of his books aside from one of the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark until this past year, when I decided it was time to catch up. I read 361 and The Hot Rock, both enjoyable, but this is the one that knocked my socks off. Talk about economic anxiety—here’s a man so desperate to get a job, he decides to kill the competition. Talk about your unreliable narrators: here’s a guy who can justify his actions every step of the way, right up to becoming a full-blown serial killer.

The Hot Spot by Charles Williams

I’m starting to see a pattern here. This pure, uncut noir became a mediocre 1990 “erotic thriller” starring Don Johnson, but don’t let that stop you from reading the source material. As with The Ax and You Play the Black, we’re plunged into a point-of-view that can’t be trusted, in this case a drifter who gets a job selling cars, plots a perfect robbery, gets involved with two women (including his boss’s wife), and sees it all unravel despite his best efforts. Charles Williams hits every note perfectly, all the way to the gut-punch of a final page.

Other New-to-Me Favorites of 2024: Black Money, The Drowning Pool, and The Goodbye Look by Ross Macdonald; Gangland by Chuck Hogan; The Searcher by Tana French; What’s Done in Darkness by Laura McHugh; When the Sacred Ginmill Closes and The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block.

Next Week: My Best of 2024’s New Releases