The Scam Revealed!

Things are looking mighty uncomfortable for ol' Gabe as the plot thickens:

The Scam page 18

It's about to get craaaAAAAYyyyy-zzzzzaaayyyyyy....

So, even though I been busier than a bee with a beaver in it's bonnet, I always find time to read me some good old fashioned books. Mostly on the train to work. I've had a pretty good run of late with one really good book and one book that is so bone-chillingly awesome it just leapt into my top ten all-time favorites.

We'll start out with Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory.























I'd never heard of this one, but a friend gave it to me 'cause it's vaguely (very vaguely) superhero related. It's about an alternate reality where a group demons have infested the world via possessions of random people. Each of the demons has a distinct personality that seems to be based on iconic pulp heroes and villains of yore, and they possess people for a short time and wreak havoc or vengeance or whatever gets their demon jollies going. Our hero is a guy that was possessed as a boy by the demon called the Hellion and his life has been fucked up ever since. Cool things happen. We even run into Philip K. Dick and Sinead O'Connor. A really fast-paced pulpy read that's very good fun indeed. It kinda falls apart a little at the end, but it's still worth taking a look at.

The other book I read is The Shotgun Rule by my new favorite crime writer, Charlie Huston.
















This book is incredibly intense and absolutely horrifying. A real squirm-in-your seat thriller. This book is ten times more scary than anything that Stephen King ever wrote because you can imagine it happening to yourself or someone you knew in school. It's about four delinquent kids in California in the 80s. They're into small-time crime like breaking into neighbor's houses and running pills for their shady relatives. Then they make a mistake. And things go so horribly wrong that I am literally getting the shivers just thinking about it. This book will scar you for life. And you'll thank Charlie Huston for it.

I'm currently working on The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Good God, that man can write. More on that when I've read the whole thing.

Have a great weekend, guys and dolls!